COLOMBIA: PLANNING A TRIP AND GETTING TO CARTAGENA

 March 14-15, 2023

About a year ago I read an article in what I think was the New York Times Travel section about how while Colombia was once considered one of the most dangerous places on earth, it was now actually a great place to visit and pretty safe as long as the usual precautions were taken.

I mentioned that to Bob (All it takes is a mention), and before you knew it, he was working with a tourist company to plan a trip during my spring break at the college where I work. 

Our main destinations were Cartagena, Bogotá, the mountains around Pereira, and Medellín.

Then, when our daughter and her family came for Thanksgiving, we learned that our oldest granddaughter was totally obsessed with...take a guess...Colombia! She had been studying it, had written a story set in Colombia, and had even learned how to make arepas, Colombian pan-friend cakes made from special corn flour and eaten as is or stuffed with cheese and other fillings. She made some for us, and they were delicious!

Anyway, she couldn't believe that we were planning a trip to Colombia, and we couldn't believe that she already knew a lot more about Colombia than we did, and then suddenly, Bob and I looked at each other and one of us said, "Do you want to come?"  She seemed pretty excited by the prospect, and once she cleared it with her teachers (the time we were planning to go was NOT her spring break), we started to process of getting her a flight, adding her to our hotels and tours, etc.

As we got closer to the trip, we learned interesting facts about Colombia and would share them with Savannah, things like:

• Colombia is the physical size of California and Texas combined, but while Colombia's population is about 52 million, the combined population of California and Texas is 69 million.
• Colombia is the second most bio-diverse country in the world, behind Brazil, which is seven times bigger than Colombia. However, Colombia has 1826 species of birds, more than any other country on earth (which may explain why Bob was so quick to plan a visit).
• Colombia is the largest producer of emeralds in the world.
• Colombians are some of the world's largest consumers of fruit juices.
• Colombia has over 30 different kinds of exotic fruits, including araza, carmbolo, cherimoya, curuba, granadilla, and guanabana.
• Colombia is #2 in the world for flower exporting. The US alone orders 4 billion roses every year from Colombia.
• Shakira is Colombian.
• Bogotá, the capital city, is one of the top cities in the world for graffiti art.
  

For a trip to Colombia, our doctors recommended a yellow fever vaccine, which Bob and I had but Savannah had to get, a polio booster, which Bob and I needed, and because we were going to be in the jungle, malaria pills. Interestingly, each of us had a different prescription for malaria pills that required a different regimen/number of pills. I think the first time Bob and I took malaria medication was when we went to Peru in 2009, and back then everyone in our group was taking the same medication.

Also, while Colombia does not require a visa, there is an annoying migration form that has to be filled out online before the trip. If you don't have one, they don't let you into the country, and you have to fill out the form on your phone before you can go through immigration, which may mean paying someone to do it for you. Luckily, the tour company Bob worked with made sure we got ours done before we left home.

Our adventure began late Tuesday night when we picked up Savannah from Ontario Airport at about 11:30 PM. It was her first solo flight and she did great. I got a few hours of sleep, and then went to work for a few hours before clocking out around noon, just in time to pick up Sav and make it to our mani-pedi appointment. It's a girl thing.

The picture of our hands reminds me of a TV soap commercial from my childhood where a mother and daughter's hands were compared and they looked the very same because the mother had been using Dove (or was it Palmolive?) soap.  Obviously, I don't use either one.

That night we got a few hours of sleep and then left for the airport at 3:45 AM. It was smooth sailing (or driving), and we got to our parking at the Hilton in less than 1.5 hours. The shuttle was there when we got the the front of the hotel, so it was an unusually quick transport.

We had plenty of time, so we ate a leisurely dinner at P.F. Chang's in the LAX international terminal.

I should mention here that my phone was stolen two days into the trip, and I hadn't connected to wifi since leaving home, so all the pictures that I took with my phone during the first two days were lost. Everything else was backed up to the cloud, thank goodness. There will be a shortage of photos for my first few posts as I am using only the pictures Bob and Savannah took (and Bob took only a few).

Anyway, we flew Avianca Air, Colombia's biggest airline. By the end of our trip, they were at the bottom of our airlines list, but more on that later.  For the first leg of the trip, a direct flight to Bogotá, we had the three middle seats in a 3-3-3 configuration. The flight was 6.5 hours long, and they gave us dinner a couple of hours in--mashed potatoes mixed with veggies and chicken. It was a pretty small meal for such a long flight. The drink options were coffee and water--no soda or juice.

I think we all got at least a few hours of sleep, but not much. For "breakfast" we got a little bag of crackers and a plastic cup of water about half an hour before landing. We had a 1.5-hour layover in Bogotá, pretty much just enough time to get to the gate and wait a few minutes before boarding. I bought some pastries at a shop across from our gate, but they weren't very good.

I had paid an extra $3 each (a deal too good to pass up) to get priority boarding to make sure we could get an overhead bin for our carryon luggage, but when we got to the gate, they made Sav and me check our bags. Very annoying. However, the flight to Cartagena was just over an hour, and by the time I had found a restroom and an ATM after we landed, our bags were out.

Cartagena

NOTE: We took several intra-country flights during this trip, and Avianca required face masks on ALL  of them. We haven't had to wear a mask on a plane for well over a year in the U.S.  No one seemed to mind, however, and we didn't see anyone refusing to wear one or wearing it beneath their nose as is common in the U.S.

Coke Zero mural in the airport parking lot. Hooray!

We were picked up at the airport by Harold, our driver, who took us to the Armeria Real Hotel. It is a gorgeous old hotel, and we got a two-story room with king-sized beds and bathrooms on each level. Sav had the top floor all to herself, and she lived luxuriously for our one-night stay.

We dropped off our bags at the hotel and headed out for our first experiences in Cartagena, which will be my next post.