2017-2018 School Year

17 de julio 2017
Mount Prospect, Illinois, United States

Hello everyone!

I have a few travel posts to catch up on (I'm so terrible at keeping up on this, sorry!) but many people have been asking about my school breaks this coming year (probably my last year?) so they can come visit.

If you can't come during one of the breaks, that's fine!  I can meet up with you on the weekends and you can entertain yourself while I go to work.

For reference, Bucaramanga is approximately an hour flight to Bogotá, Medellin, Cartagena, and really anywhere else in Colombia (though depending on the city you'll likely have to fly through Bogotá anyway).

Without further ado, here's my work calendar.  I've underlined the larger breaks.

August 8 - First day of work!
August 21 No School
October 7-16 October break, but I have meetings on October 9 and 10
November 6 No School
November 13 No School
December 8 No School
December 14 - January 8 Winter break; I'll be coming home for Christmas, dates TBA
March 19 No School
March 24 - April 1 Spring break
May 1 No School
May 14 No School
June 15 - Last day of work!

I hope you can make it down to visit me!

P.S. I have a new address, email me if you want it.  I love mail!  For packages, FedEx is best and probably takes a week. Letters/postcards take about a month.

Marvelous Mountainous Medellin

28 de enero 2017
Bucaramanga, Santander, Colombia writing about Medellin, Antioquia, Colombia

This might be a new record for late posts.  Over two months ago, from 11 de noviembre 2016 to 14 de noviembre 2016, I went on a trip to Medellin with Kelsey, Andrea, and Kismeth.


11 de noviembre
Bucaramanga, Santander and Medellin, Antioquia, Colombia

Luckily for me (and everyone else), I wasn't sick for this trip!  We had an evening flight, pretty uneventful, and took quite a long cab ride to where we were staying: The Black Sheep Hostel.  The hostel was pretty nice - we had a private 4-bed room (2nd weekend in a row I slept on the bottom of a bunk bed!), shared bathroom with the room next door, common spaces (with lots of hammocks!), and drinks (including beer) and snacks you could get from the front desk and have added onto your tab.  They also had a bunch of activities, but the ones we were interested in filled up too quickly.  The neighborhood we stayed in was El Poblado, which was close to the metro and a short walk to all the nightlife.

Plus they had a HUGE bunch of fresh bananas you could pick and snack on whenever you wanted!

That first night after we arrived and freshened up, we decided we didn't want to waste any time and we headed out to Parque Lleras, the home of Zona Rosa, hub of the Medellin nightlife.  We wandered about and took in the scenery (lots of street art!) and hopped into and out of a few bars.  We even found a bar that played American club music (rap, hip hop, etc), and we payed a cover to get in and everything, but it turned out to be packed full of high schoolers and felt like a school dance, so we got our free shot included in the cover and left.

Such a cool atmosphere!

As we were walking around, we found a place that served FALAFEL! It was so exciting.  Bucaramanga doesn't really have food from most of anywhere else in the world, and it had been quite a while (probably since June or July) since I had eaten Middle-Eastern food.  Falafel Time was Subway-style, where you got to choose what to add on your sandwich, and damn was it good.

Just look at it.  Doesn't it make your mouth water?

Towards the end of our night we found a pretty cool discoteca called La Ruana de Juana, finally the atmosphere we were looking for.  We had some fun dancing, until this waiter started practically chasing us around the club because we hadn't bought any drinks.  After a while of dancing and dodging, we made our way back to our hostel to sleep.


12 de noviembre
Medellin, Antioquia, Colombia

On Saturday, we woke up and headed to Al Alma Café for brunch. Brunch! Brunch is such an American thing and so not a Colombian thing.  It was SO GOOD.  I got an eggs benedict, which was tasty, but the real star of the show was Kismeth's french toast.

Yum

Heavenly.

The food and the coffee was beyond good.  Once we finished stuffing ourselves with brunchy goodness, we headed over to the metro stop.  Medellin is the only city in Colombia with a train system, and they are very proud of it and take excellent care of it.  We got yelled at and almost thrown off the train platform for eating a bag of chips.  This was probably the cleanest public transportation I have ever been on.  The train was spotless and looked brand new.

Medellin Metro Map. Our hostel was near the Poblado stop.

The coolest thing about the metro to me was that they had a teleférico (cable car) as part of their daily commuter system!  Medellin is in the mountains, and cable cars just make much more sense to ascend a mountain.  We took the train to the cable car and rode it up as far as it went.

Public transportation at its finest.

When we got to the end of the line, we paid an extra fare to take another cable car even further - up to Parque Arvi.  We had heard from our coworkers Ryan and Kate that there was a cool park if you rode the cable cars all the way to the top.  We were dressed cute in sandals and sundresses for a nice day at the park.

Joke's on us.

It's a national park. With hiking and horses and zip-lining and lots of cool stuff that you should be dressed differently for.  Oh, and it's raining.  We were so not prepared.

We should've done some research!

Parque Arvi seemed really neat though, just know what you're getting into.  There's several parks within the main park, and each has TONS of outdoorsy activities.  I'd like to go back with hiking boots and pants and a jacket. (It's pretty chilly up at the top of the mountain.)  We walked around a bit, and then explored a little craft/farmer's market, shopping and snacking.  

Oh deer.

After we had our fill, we headed back down the mountain, admiring the view and laughing at our misfortunes.  And what a view it was!  Everything looks so beautiful from up there.

Far o'er the misty mountains cold...

I've never really been in such a mountainous city before, so the concept was pretty fascinating to me.  From below, the city just looked like stacks on stacks on stacks of buildings.

So many!

We took the metro back to our hostel, where we freshened up and rested a bit before our next adventure.  Kismeth had made a friend on another trip she had made a few weeks prior - a Canadian that teaches Physics in Medellin.  Sam invited us over for dinner, and we made some pasta and garlic bread (though it turned out his oven didn't work and he had never noticed, so we had to improvise on the stove top).  We had some pretty deep conversations about philosophy and politics and more over our dinner and wine.  He was a pretty cool dude.

After dinner we headed back to Parque Lleras to meet up some of Sam's friends at a club, but Andrea and I didn't feel like paying cover to party that night, so the two of us slowly meandered back to the hostel and chilled in the hammocks on the roof.  We were originally going to try to make some hostel friends and play a game or something, but no one was really around, so we just chatted about life, our journey to/in Colombia so far, and our lives back home.  Andrea asks some hard-hitting heavy-thinking questions, which leads to some really deep conversations.  It was a really nice evening.


13 de noviembre
Medellin, Antioquia, Colombia

On Sunday, we decided to try and do some research after our mishap yesterday.  I looked at Trip Advisor at where we should eat and what we should do.  We decided D'Andre Gourmet sounded pretty tasty, so we headed up that way.  Unfortunately, we walked all the way there to find that it was closed.  Trip Advisor did not warn us of this.  We were near Parque Lleras, so we decided to amble around and find somewhere to eat.

We found a place that seemed cool, and we were hungry, and they advertised Mimosa Party, so we had a seat at Botanika Lounge.  The waitress initially told us that if we ordered an entree, we received unlimited mimosas, so we got super excited.  Then another waitress told us that was incorrect, and told us the actual price of the unlimited mimosas, and we decided to just have coffee instead.  It was an interesting place.

I ordered the ginger hash browns.  They were extremely gingery.

Kelsey's eggs had a bunch of flowers on them.

After we were nearly done eating, the waitress brought us a round ofggggy mimosas on the house and apologized for the earlier confusion.  They were damn good, and if we had ordered the unlimited mimosas after all, we probably would not have gotten much done that day.

After brunch, we grabbed a taxi to the center of the city.  We had seen some of it from the train the previous day and there were some cool-looking things we wanted to check out.

We walked out into a big square and were about to choose a street to walk down and observe, when a HUGE crack of thunder struck out right above us and the heavens opened up in a downpour.  We ran back underneath the roof of the expressway where all the street vendors were hiding their wares from the rain.  We looked at some of their wares, and I haggled a man selling Colombian jerseys down to $30.000 from $50.000, but then I remembered I was out of cash (plus I realized the jersey had buttons and I didn't like the buttons).  Still felt accomplished.

When the rain died down to more of a drizzle, we hazarded out and took some photos of the Palacio de la Cultura and the sculptures in the Botero Plaza on our way to the Museo de Antioquia.

What a gorgeous building.  We didn't get to go inside, but I'd like to someday.

Butts.

Guardian cat to the museum.

When we got to the museum, we found that there was a special price if you were part of a group.  Unfortunately, you needed more than 5 people to qualify and we were only 4.  So, we grabbed a few lone rangers to make our "group" and everyone came out happy.  One of our new group members stuck with us to tour the museum.  He was a German named Joshy who was volunteering for a year at a finca an hour or two out of Medellin that took in underprivileged youths and helped them to develop skills and get on their feet to become productive young members of society.  He was pretty cool.

The main attraction at the museum was the Fernando Botero exhibit.  Botero is best known for his voluptuous figures in his paintings and sculptures.  We learned from the exhibit that his uncle enrolled him in bullfighting school at 12 years old, and though he didn't end up pursuing bullfighting as a career, the environment inspired his first works of art.  He traveled to Europe and studied the Italian and Spanish masters, especially the Renaissance painters.  The Abstract Expressionists of New York taught him his loose, visible brushstrokes.  He donated many of his works to the museum of his hometown, Medellin.  I was surprised to learn that he is still alive, as I usually think of famous painters as being long dead from centuries ago (which I know is usually not the case; I had the same kind of realization when I realized Picasso only died not too long ago).

Botero's got a very particular style, and though he's got a bunch of historical figures in his paintings (Jesus, Marie Antoinette, King Louis XVI, Paul Cézanne, and Pablo Escobar), he's also got a lot of weird risque figures as well.  The one thing they all have in common is that they are very round (but not fat, Botero claims that his figures are simply voluminous, not fat).

Marie Antoinette and King Louis XVI, in all their voluminous glory

This picture has so much going on.  I'm not even sure what's exactly happening here.

Even his still life is voluminous

The Death of Pablo Escobar, 1999

After the Botero exhibit, we wandered around a few of the other exhibits until the museum closed.  There was some interesting stuff, mostly pretty modern.  We also had a nice view of the plaza below.

Hey, it stopped raining!

A study of Botero's hand

This was one of my favorites in the whole museum

Ain't that the truth!

What a fascinating collage of the baby Jesus.

After the museum closed and kicked us out, we looked again on Trip Advisor to find something to do that was open on a Sunday afternoon/evening.  We found El Pueblito Paisa, which we remembered Sam mentioning the night before, so we decided to grab a cab and head over.  Pueblito Paisa is a fake little town in the style of an old Spanish settlement in Antioquia at the turn of the century.  Think Renaissance Faire.  It's touristy and kitschy, but I like that kind of stuff.  We had heard it has a great panoramic view of the city, and we wanted to have a good view of our last Medellin sunset.

"The Little Town"

Marvelous Mountainous Medellin!

In addition to the kitschy little town, they also had a craft market there!  We looked around at all the booths and got a few cool little things.  I got a pendant for my mom and a necklace for myself from a woman who made things out of watch fixings.  My mom's pendant has a cat made of watch gears.  It's super cute.

Night view of the market and the Pueblito

All weekend Kismeth had been wanting to try the traditional Antioquian dish Bandeja Paisa, and she finally got to at the Pueblito!  Bandeja means plate or platter, and Paisa is someone from the region Medellin is a part of.  This dish is full of comfort food from the region - rice, beans, chorizo, chicharron, egg, avocado, arepa, ground meat, blood sausage, and plantain, all sharing the plate together.  It was so much food and looked good, but I wasn't hungry enough to order my own.  I did have a bite though, and it was yummy!

Bandeja Paisa

We didn't find the big 360° panorama mirador for our sunset, but we did find it after the sun went down.

To end our last day in Medellin, we wanted to get some food we couldn't get in Bucaramanga, so we traveled over to an Indian/Middle Eastern restaurant, Tabun.  The food there was so tasty, and no matter what you order, you are treated to an appetizer spread of naan with several dips and salads.  We stuffed ourselves full!

Dayum.

We rolled ourselves out of the restaurant, and on our way home decided to pop in to get something else we couldn't easily get in Bucaramanga - good craft beer.  We sat down at Bogota Beer Company for a drink, and we got really excited at the selection of fancy craft beers!  (In Bucaramanga, you have your choice of Aguila Light, Poker, or if you want to kick it up a notch, Club Colombia in types of dorada, roja, or negra.  As comparison, Aguila Light and Poker are like your Bud Lites, and Club Colombia is probably equivalent to Miller.)

LOOK AT ALL THESE CHOICES

We read the whole menu and picked out our tasty treats, only to hear from the waiter that they were out of most of the choices.  We selected our beers from the few that they actually had in stock, and were still pretty happy!  I may have snuck out with a glass...that Lulo pushed off a table and broke a week or two later.

We headed home for a few hours of nap at our hostel, full of food, beer, and memories.  We then woke up as many were just getting home from the bars to take the long cab ride back to the airport to catch our out-before-the-sun flight home to Bucaramanga.

Coastal Caribbean Cartagena

27 de noviembre 2016

Bucaramanga, Santander, Colombia writing about Cartagena de Indias, Bolívar, Colombia

I'm about 3 weeks late on this post, but it's busy down here this month.  We've had two  three-day weekends, our school sports teams were gone for a week for championships, and it's the rush to the end of the semester.

So let's rewind a bit.  On that first 3-day weekend (4 - 7 de noviembre 2016), I traveled to Cartagena with 10 other people (mostly coworkers, plus two extras).  Colleen, her friend Carla, Rosa, her sister Katalina, Dan, Néstor, Kate, Ryan, Andrea, Kelsey, and I packed into a gorgeous apartment we rented from AirBnB for the weekend.  

We flew Viva Colombia, which is like the Colombian version of Spirit Airlines - cheap if you go for the bare minimum.  You are only allowed to bring one personal item without paying extra - i.e. pack everything you need into your backpack.  You even had to pay extra if you didn't print your boarding pass ahead of time.  Turns out it wasn't even that cheap...my flight to Medellin the following weekend on Avianca was about the same price, and I was allowed to check in at the desk, bring my roll-aboard carry-on, and I got a juice box and a snack without having to pay!

4 de noviembre 2016

Bucaramanga, Santander, Colombia

So as I was packing stuffing everything into my backpack the night before the trip, my stomach started to feel weird.  I didn't think much about it and went to sleep.  I woke up the next morning feeling pretty bad, but I didn't want to miss work (1. Making sub plans is more work than going to work, 2. I didn't want to skip work and then go on vacation, that seemed like a weird thing to do, and 3. I hadn't printed my boarding pass yet).  So, I went to work and had to sub for Colleen's class as she had left the previous night to have an extra day in Cartagena with Carla (turns out she spent most of that "extra" time being stuck in Bogotá, but that's not my story to tell).  I was watching her class 2nd period, making semi-frequent trips to the bathroom where, TMI alert, I was shitting straight water, when suddenly I had to go again, and I ran out, but turns out this time I had to throw up...immediately.  In the bushes right in front of the classroom.  I could not control the liquids coming out of either end (though the barf was more solid...the mangoes and pineapple I had eaten the previous night had not been digested at all) so I went to the secretary, told her I needed to go home, wrote up some sub plans, and asked HR to send a doctor to my house (we get 5 home visits a year on our health insurance plan!).

So I went home and waited for the doctor, alternatively lying in bed in misery and laying waste to the toilet (luckily it's a short trip from my bed to my toilet) until the doctor showed up.  The school was unable to spare anyone to translate, so we communicated in a combination of broken Spanish and sign language (big shout-out to Google Translate). Turns out I had gastroenteritis.  The doc gave me a shot in the butt full of heavy-duty antibiotics, a long grocery list of prescriptions, and a promise that I'd be better in about two days.  I asked about the trip and she told me I should definitely still go.

A few hours more of lying in bed (feeling slightly better) and I decided I would go on the trip.  I knew I'd be mad if I got better quick and missed out, and worse comes to worse, I knew I could chill at our sweet rental apartment if I needed to.  I bought some Gatorade on my way out to refresh my electrolytes and got in the taxi.  

Now, a bit of a side note about the route from Floridablanca to the airport.  Bucaramanga's airport is situated on the top of a mountain.  Colombian cabs are small (picture a toy car), fragile (don't slam the door too hard), and manual (I have yet to see an automatic car in this country).  Not the best conditions for a sick stomach, but I made it all the way to the airport without being sick.  I did not make it all the way to the airport bathroom.  Luckily it was only Gatorade (unlike the lentils and rice that had come up undigested earlier in the day), and it was in the hallway to the bathroom, and there happened to be a janitor nearby finishing mopping up the bathroom.  Most of the Colombians nearby made noises of disgust, but a nice woman who was walking by asked me (in English) if I was okay and told me to come into the bathroom to clean myself up.  I cleaned myself up and joined my friends as we waited for our flight (which had been delayed two hours).  The security line was short, but I apparently had forgotten about my Swiss army knife in my backpack.  I didn't understand at first what they were saying to me, and then that same woman that asked if I was okay came by and translated for me before walking away (later found out she was on our same flight too!)

I made it through the whole flight (paying $4.000 COP for a bottle of water...) and the van ride through heavy traffic to our home for the weekend, where I opted to stay in and health-up as everyone else went out to explore the Cartagenian night-life.  As the sicky of the group, I was relegated to the bunk beds, as those were the only beds small enough to not warrant sharing.  This room was the smallest  and didn't have an attached bathroom (Dan said we were staying in the slave quarters; he was really excited about sleeping in a bunk bed though), but it was alright, since I had a bed to myself and didn't need to bother anyone or get anyone else sick.  

Turns out that same woman that I had embarrassed myself in front of had helped me twice earlier was staying in the same place as us!  As we were checking in, she and her companion came out of the elevator and she excitedly exclaimed to him, "That's her! That's the girl!"

5 de noviembre 2016

Cartagena de Indias, Bolívar, Colombia

The next morning, we rented a private speedboat to explore the Caribbean islands.  I was a bit wary, but also didn't want to miss out and I was feeling a lot better than the previous day (still not 100% though), so I joined in.  I'm so glad I did.  I wasn't sick, and our captains drove a smooth boat.  It was a fantastically relaxing and fun time.  Everyone else was drinking and snacking, but I was happy to finally be able to keep down a couple of saltines.

The cool kids sit in the back of the boat.

Our first stop was a little bay to swim in, where we floated around on some noodles and splashed around.  There was a tienda on the tiniest island (literally the tienda was the size of the island) selling some beer for swimmers and boaters.  Canoes of vendors paddled by, selling hats, jewelry, beer, and fresh-caught lobster ceviche.  A couple people of our group got it and said it was pretty good.

Little island tienda

Our big salty pool

So many canoe vendors

Fresh ceviche, delivered straight to your boat!  The new Grubhub?

It passes the test!

After our little post-swim snack, we jetted off to our next destination - Playa Agua Azul on Isla Barú.  This tiny strip of beach was nice and chill, if filled with vendors selling everything from coconuts (with or without rum), fresh-caught seafood, bracelets, and massages (¿Masage mas tarde?).  We walked along the shore, in and out of the water, until we found a nice spot of sand to chill.  A few of our group rented a tube ride and whipped around behind a speedboat.  Kate and Ryan played catch with a coconut I found on the ground.  It was quite fun and relaxing.

We then all climbed back aboard our small vessel to head to Playa Blanca for some food.  Our captains parked right in front of a restaurant that they suggested we try, as it was owned by their boss.  I was so excited about the earlier success with the saltines that I ordered a portion of coconut rice, which was twice as delicious since it was the first real food I'd had (that stayed in my stomach anyway) in nearly 48 hours.  

Ever had seafood this fresh?

This guy was staring at me as I ate my rice.  Look at those teeth!

Look at this guy's antennae!  Yeesh.

While we were eating, vendors kept coming up to us offering cocadas (carried on their heads in typical Caribbean fashion), beaded jewelry, wraps/scarves/coverups (I bought one of these - negotiated her down to 20 mil!), and of course, ice cream.  After lunch, we explored a little bit, but Playa Blanca was mostly just restaurants and bars, but I got a couple cool pieces of coral (there was SO MUCH washed up on the beach there) before we headed back onto the boat to go home.

But first, lemme take a #selfie

Hello Cartagena!

Back on land, we all took a bit of a siesta before venturing back out for some dinner.  Kate and Ryan had found a good Thai/sushi place on Trip Advisor, so we headed over there to get some of the worldly food we miss out on in little ol' Bucaramanga. I had pad thai!  It was not at all spicy, which was probably for the best for me.  I was only able to eat a little bit before getting full, but still...accomplishment.  We had thought about going out more, but we were pretty pooped from our boat day, so we went back home to sleep.

6 de noviembre 2016

Cartagena de Indias, Bolívar, Colombia

The next day I woke up and was basically back to normal (90%?) so I joined Kate, Ryan, Andrea, and Kelsey for brunch at a spot right near our apartment.  We then ambled around a bit, looking at all the colorful doors and buildings (this city is SO BEAUTIFUL - I highly suggest you visit) and the street vendors' artwork (I bought a painting!). 

The most colorful city I've ever seen!

So many beautiful doors.

This is supposedly the house where Love in the Time of Cholera takes place.

We found our way to the old city wall built by the Spaniards back in the day (Las Murallas De Cartagena) and wandered along the wall, circling the old city.  We had a lot of fun taking photos - a lot of them look like they belong in a Gap catalog.  Luckily we weren't the only goofs taking a thousand photos...we even saw a wedding shoot!

Totally belongs in a catalog.

Looking out into the future

Mad hops.

Partway over the bridge between reality and fantasy

Bombshell babes

After our jaunt along the wall, we headed indoors to the history museum - and you will definitely not expect what we learned about there.  We saw some pretty painful instruments of torture and learned a bunch about the Spanish Inquisition (I didn't even know it was in South America, for instance).  Pretty intense stuff!  It lasted 211 years, processed over 800 prisoners, and sentenced witchery, solicitation, bigamy, Judaism, Lutherans, and those who read forbidden (heretical) books.  The Court of the Holy Office of the Inquisition was established in Cartagena in 1610 - the third in America after Mexico and Lima.  This court sent 5 people to burn at the stake.  The museum is located in the palace of the court.

That does not look comfortable.

This one is placed around your boob and then squeezed.

Learning from the history teacher

After learning about all the death and destruction the Spaniards wreaked on the world, we headed upstairs to the rest of the museum.  The second floor had an art installation - Footprints of Memory - someone had taken pictures of shoe prints of hundreds of people who had disappeared in recent years due to the guerrilla warfare in Latin America.  It told their stories, occasionally including family members of the disappeared.  It was heartbreaking.

After composing ourselves, we continued upstairs to learn about the history of Cartagena itself.  The city used to be called Kalamary by the native Karib warriors, but the Spaniards named it Cartagena de Indias and the name stuck.  When the Europeans came over, they enslaved the natives and brought over African slaves as well.  Cartagena was a big port for trade, especially the slave trade.  All of these cultures melded into the Caribbean culture we see today in Cartagena.

After becoming thoroughly depressed by the museum, we needed something to lift our spirits, so we headed to (according to Ryan) Barack Obama's favorite gelato place (I can't remember if it's supposed to be his favorite in Cartagena, Colombia, South America, or the world) - Gelateria Paradiso.  I got a brioche (read: McDonald's hamburger bun) filled with Guanábana and Maracuyá gelato.  It was super tasty.

Brioche is a strong word.

It was damn good though!

We continued on our self(ie)-guided walking tour of Cartagena, stumbling upon a parade - "Tunas por la Paz de Colombia."  There were several troupes playing and singing, advocating for a peace with the FARC.  There was a handicapped boy in a wheelchair, and one troupe surrounded him and sang a private concert for him and the look on his face was pure unadulterated joy. (Have you ever thought about how adult is the main thing that is seen to "destroy" things, i.e. unadulterated joy...the joy hasn't reached adulthood and become jaded yet.  Something to think about.)

We finally got to our next destination - another Trip Advisor find from Ryan and Kate - The Beer Lovers.  Colombia's not really big on the craft beer scene.  A few of the big cities are getting into it, but Bucaramanga hasn't gotten there yet, so we've been a bit deprived.  The Beer Lovers had a HUGE  worldwide selection and a super knowledgeable staff.  Plus, we got a charcuterie plate, which was super tasty.

¡Salud!

We had some dinner at a bar called Alquimico.  I had a Bánh Mi con Pollo (only ate half of it, but hey, improvement!) and a Mint Lulep (a Lulo julep!).  It was a hipster bar (complete with mixologists), which is rare in Colombia.  Most of the bars around here play super-loud (not talkable-volume) Colombian music and have your choice of light domestic beers.  Alquimico had fancy mixed drinks and played chill tunes.  Very cool aesthetic too.  I recommend it to anyone who happens upon Cartagena.

We stopped home to freshen up and drop off leftovers, and then headed back out to the World Famous Café Havana to drink some rum and watch some live salsa.  We thought the $20.000 cover included two drinks, but turns out that's only on weekdays.  We ordered half a bottle of house rum at our tiny table and strained to see the band.  Kelsey and Andrea tried dancing in the aisle a bit.  My stomach was threatening me again, so I had some water and observed.

"WORLD FAMOUS!"

So crowded.

Just hangin' out with my friend Ron.

Salud once more!

Our entertainment for the evening.

After a set or two, we headed out.  I wasn't feeling great, so I headed home while all the healthy kids got to go out and have fun.  I had to negotiate for one of our three keys though - 11 people sharing 3 keys is a bit tough sometimes.  But I finally made it home and into my bed for a good night's sleep!

7 de noviembre 2016

Cartagena de Indias, Bolívar, Colombia

The next morning, we woke up and packed up our stuff to leave with the portero - checkout was at 1pm and we had to leave for our flight around 3pm - and headed out for one last adventure in the city.  We found a little internet cafe where we could print our boarding passes and Dan, Néstor, Rosa, Katalina, Colleen, and I went to a delicious brunch place called Mila Vargas.  I got pancakes!  Colombian breakfast is usually soup, or scrambled eggs, but we got our fill of US brunch on this trip (I think there is a total of one place in Bucaramanga that serves semi-American brunch).

Damn.

We rolled ourselves out of the restaurant and onto the (rainy) streets of Cartagena, taking one last amble around the town.  We stopped at a couple of shops, getting some last minute souvenirs and gifts.  We made a quick stop at the little chocolate museum, ate and drank some samples, went upstairs to learn about the chocolate-making process, and bought a few tasty treats.

Rosa Maria the Cacao Farmer

Colleen and I wanted one last view of the ocean (gotta say goodbye before we head back to our mountains), so we left our group at a tienda with some beers and headed down to the wall to stare longingly into its depths and reflect upon our weekend in paradise.

Colleen looking out at the ocean she can never have

It was then time to head back and catch a taxi (or three) back to the airport.  Our time on the coast was at an end, and it was time to go back to work.

P.S. Guess who was sitting next to me on the return flight?  THAT WOMAN FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE TRIP!  Turns out she's from Singapore and is studying Spanish for a semester in Bucaramanga at one of the universities.  She was very nice.