Halloween in Bogota – Days 121-125

Children sitting in the Bogota sign

We arrived in Bogota recognizing that the Colombian leg of our trip was ending.  Our last 5 days consisted of doing some slow living (i.e. laundry), watching the Raptors and getting schoolwork done.  We did no research on Bogota ahead of time and felt like we had no real objectives to cross off. When it was all said and done, we watched some Raptors, we had our first doctor’s visit and the kids got to experience Halloween, “Bogota-style“.

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Zona Cafetera – Here we come Juan Valdez! – Days 119-120

It did not seem right to visit Colombia without visiting the Zona Cafetera (the Coffee Axis), so we added a quick 2-day trip to the itinerary. Although the distance did not seem far, I knew that this might be a long drive so we splurged for a private driver from Medellin to the Hacienda Venecia near Manizales. We were picked up in Medellin at 9:30 and we were glad that we’d had a good breakfast because, once we cleared the outskirts of the city, there were not a lot of places to stop. The drive was very scenic as we drove through green mountains and fields of Avocado trees (a crop that is an expanding Colombian export). I kept waiting to see coffee and kept asking the driver “cafe?” as I pointed in distance. But he kept responding “aguacate”. It was not until we were very close to our destination that he smiled and pointed to a hill saying “cafe!”.

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Medellin – Bring on the Tours – Days 113-118

Two children riding the cable cars in Medellin

We arrived in Medellin (pronounced Medejin as Julie keeps correcting us) with our sunburnt bodies. We settled in the area of Laureles, as Paigey decided that was the place to stay. She found a “hipster-ish” Airbnb that worked for us perfectly (it had laundry which we desperately needed). Our goal was to spend a full week settled in one place doing some slow living and some schoolwork. We filled all the drawers with our freshly laundered clothes. We filled the fridge with actual groceries (yep, we bought butter) and not just snacks. We even signed up for an NBA league pass to watch Raptors’ basketball in Colombia. We made ourselves a comfortable home base.

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Tayrona National Park (but not really) – Days 110-112

Family buying bananas on side of the road in jungle area

If you’ve had 4 days of warm, wet weather, why not go someplace with warmer and wetter weather?! We had a great intro to Colombia with our stay in Cartagena but since we had booked things ahead of time, we were on the move! Our destination was a mini-resort hotel just outside of Tayrona National Park at the base of the Sierra Nevada mountains. It was our first internal transit day and we were anxious to see if we still had those backpacker skills from years ago.

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Cartagena – Finally an Airplane – Days 105-109

Flight #1

We have finally reached the part of our trip where we go somewhere international! We wanted to explore parts of our own country before exploring other destinations. But… oh how excited I am to finally get on a plane again after 3 years of the pandemic. When we decided to come to Colombia, we really knew very little about the country.  We’d heard that Cartagena was cool and we’d watched Narcos – that was about it.  

With Colombia, we did not follow my own rule and booked a whirlwind 21 days where we’ll stay in 5 different places.  Oops….  But the guidebooks suggested way too many cool places to visit.  We decided to start our adventure in Cartegena which we knew was a little more touristy and hopefully a little bit less culture shock for the girls.

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