Columbia Day 9

Today was a beach day! There are lots of beach tour packages in the area. We opted to go with the most economical because it gave us the most time at the beach and included lunch all for the low price of $40,000 (about $13 so you don’t need to dig out your currency converter). When you can find transportation to a beach over an hour away for that price why do more research? Of course, it was a bit of a mad house trying to figure out which corner of the plaza we were supposed to be on for the bus. People kept dragging us all over the place, and it was so hot–even at 8 o’clock in the morning. But obviously, it all worked out.

We made it to the beach, and then we paid $40,000 (yes, the same as the whole trip) for our umbrella and 2 lounge chairs–there is an upcharge if you want 2 lounge chairs.  I managed to negotiate down from $50,000 but I was too hot after walking from the bus to our designated spot on the beach to haggle any further.  They were prime chairs because the people next to us ended up laying directly behind/underneath them.  

And then we spent the rest of the day floating in the Caribbean ocean.  It was glorious. The sand was white. The beach was narrow, but stretched for a mile or so. The water was warm, and fairly clear. It had a green tint.  The water got a little wavy, but that may have been because of the massive number of jet skis for rent and the banana boat which also covered up the smell of salt water with gas fumes.   And it was crowded with people, but we didn’t care. 

I am not sure how many massages I turned down, but I turned down even more “pearl” and “coral” bracelets.  All too soon, it was time to head back to the bus.  Just one problem, the guide couldn’t find the bus. Now it doesn’t make much sense to me at all why he didn’t have the bus drivers phone number to call him. He walked all over the muddy parking lot in the blistering heat looking for the bus, and then to the next lot. All the while we stood there in the sweltering sun literally sweating out sunscreen. Finally, the parking lot attendant said there was an accident on the road, but the driver would be there soon.  The way I look at it is that we could have had an extra half hour on the beach instead of wasting a half hour in a muddy parking lot, but oh well.   The beach was still great. 

Love,

thetwinsontour

Colombia Day 7 & 8

Saturday morning we left Medellin just in time to avoid the Pope and all of the craziness that ensues. He arrived in Medellin at the other airport, so we were safe. Our plane was mysteriously delayed for over an hour and changed gates a few times though.  

The airport in Cartagena is very close to the old town, so within 10 minutes we were dropped at our hotel right in the middle of it all.  The only problem is that there are 2 Casa Blanca hotels! And of course, this one is way outside of our budget. They hailed us a taxi and sent us on our way.   The taxi driver only had to ask 4 different people where the hotel was (fruit sellers on the corner, a man sitting on his couch in his living room, etc). The taxi drivers in Colombia ask a lot of directions though.  We finally found it, but then our taxi driver got into an argument with another taxi driver about a one way street. So he parked around the corner and said that he would escort us to the hotel.  Now I am not sure if that was to ensure our safety or to yell at the hotel owner for not having a sign.  My vote is for the latter.  

We had no plans for the rest of the day, so we asked the hotel guy where to go eat lunch and it was like he was a mind reader who could read the depths of our souls. He suggested Hamburguesa de Patacones– a hamburger that utilizes large, smooshed, and fried plantains instead of a bun?  holy guacamole! That is what I am talking about! (I don’t even like guacamole, which is a pity because there are a plethora of avocados in this country– almost as many as there are hat vendors.) Needless to say, lunch was ah-maz-ing!

After lunch, we whipped out our handy little map and successfully navigated ourselves to the old town, which is the highlight of Cartagena, and a mecca for tourists. Anyone who knows thetwinsontour, knows they are directionally challenged and get lost everywhere they go. Quite the feat! Of course, there is no need to mention that we just had to go down the street and make a slight jog to the right to reach our destination.  No need to mention that at all. That will be our little secret. 

Unfortunately, it had started to rain.  Luckily, this time we were prepared with our rain coats!  Yeah! We actually used something we packed. We wandered around the old town, from gift shop to gift shop, but nothing caught our eye. Shocking, right?! How can thetwinsontour single handedly improve the economy of Colombia if they can’t find anything to buy? 

We did eventually find the gold museum. The best thing is that it was free! thetwinsontour love free stuff! But, you knew that already. There were some nice pre-colombian bits of good work. We tried reading about it, but the rain, our full bellys from lunch, and the early morning flight had us battling to stay awake on our feet. 

Right next door to the gold museum was the emerald museum– also free! It is like Cartagena speaks thetwinsontour language!! The emerald consists of 1 room, with a few examples of emeralds as they are found in the mines. Colombia is famous for emeralds, which you would know already if you have watched Romancing the Stone. The emerald museum is conveniently attached to an emerald jewelry store. Imagine that! It is not, however, the emerald shop named Romance In The Stone– that one is on another street. 

After all this aimless wandering in the drizzling rain, we successfully navigated ourselves back to our hotel and crashed. Deeply and completely. So we could refresh ourselves for our Sunday in Cartagena.  

This was not just any Sunday, though. This was Pope Sunday. The. Pope. In Cartagena. Where 92% of the population is Catholic. And they have had no papal visits since 1986. It’s kind of a big deal. And, I might have bought a souvenir shirt to prove it. We had originally thought to avoid all the craziness of the Pope, but we quickly realized that this wasn’t possible. Almost everything was closed. And there were crowds of Colombians in Pope shirts, wearing Pope baseball caps, and waving Pope flags. We couldn’t get across the street to the old town because the police had it blocked off for the Pope to drive down. This was quite the conundrum because we were looking for breakfast. We found a nice little street kiosk that wanted to sell us a solo cup full of shrimp and other seafood things, but that just isn’t breakfast food even if thetwinsontour liked seafood. Fortunately, they also served juice so we were able to get a glass of Lulo juice, sit at their tables, sip our beverages and watch the faithful gathering at the barriers to wait on the Pope. All this excitement and joy began to spread.  They told us the Pope should be passing by at any moment. We decided that we might as well wait and see the old guy. When in Rome, and all that Jazz. Except we weren’t in Rome, and neither was the Pope. We were in Colombia! We quickly realized we forgot the selfie stick in the hotel, and we would need to get decent pics since we were not on the front row. Fortunately, amongst all the people selling Pope shirts, hat’s, key chains, flags, posters, magnets, and statues, there was one man with selfie sticks for 10,000 pesos! What a deal! $3 bucks to add another selfie stick to our growing collection. 

We waited. And waited. Pretty sure the Pope must have stopped for a nap. And we waited. We thought for sure the people would be singing Ave Maria or reciting The Lord’s Prayer or something, but nothing. Just people waiting in eager anticipation. Then the helicopters started to fly overhead. The police started driving down the road. Then there was a random taxi. Then more police on motorcycles. And more police. And then the TV cameras for the 24 hour Pope coverage. Then there was a shout, and the crowd started to roar! El Papa! El Papa! The Pope was coming! And suddenly, there he was, standing up in the glass-enclosed Pope Mobile!  Pope Francis! And he was smiling and waving at me! And going way too fast. Within 10 seconds, he had flown past us and disappeared into the old town. I thought the Pope would drive at a more sedate speed. But all too soon it was over.  The crowds dispersed quickly, and the man selling Pope hats packed them up and replaced them with Cartagena caps.  But the men selling Pope shirts out of a suitcase were having a heyday selling up their shirts, $7,000 or 2 for $12,000. How can you pass up a deal like that? Thetwinsontour certainly couldn’t! And that’s how in our post Pope euphoria, we ended up with $2 Pope shirts that we will never wear, but that Pope fever sure is contagious! 

So we walked into the old town which was full of hopeful Pope- shirt -wearing people, and closed shops and restaurants.  We were so intent on finding a bathroom that we missed the Pope 2 times.  We knew that there was a bathroom in the Gold Museum (which we later found out was closed) so we tried to get there, but when we got to the church, the road was closed. We turned around to go another direction, but before we made it too far there was a cheer and an empty Popemobile. Then later, after we had found a bathroom we saw a crowd of people standing at a blocked off road. Again there was a cheer! The Popearrazzi, aka thetwinsontour went off at a run, I mean a slight jog, I mean a brisk walk. Alas he had already passed.  So close! 

We had decided that our cultural and sightseeing activity of the day was going to be to walk along the city walls because literally nearly everything else was closed.  So we walked along the wall, and there was only one spot where my mother would have said, “Girls that’s just not safe” because we were literally walking on top of a narrow part instead of the walkway beside the wall.  Then do you know what happened? We came to a bridge over the road, and it was roped off with police standing guard and a building crowd.  I asked the police, “cuando viene el Papa?” He said at 3pm which was just 18 minutes away! So guess what we did? That’s right, we found an open spot along the barriers and joined the Pope watch, again! Of course it was more than 18 minutes. It was so hot and humid, that I was literally melting. I could feel the sweat trickling down my back to my butt crack, but still I held my place with the selfie stick raised and ready to get a picture of the Pope. There were ice cream vendors everywhere, but we were afraid to turn around to buy one. Besides what would we do if we were eating a messy ice cream bar and the Pope came along? We would miss him. That’s how serious we were in our Pope watching. Everyone knows that thetwinsontour love ice cream, and don’t pass up that chance ever. Finally, there was a fleet of motorcycle police, and the television truck filming everything, but no Popemobile. He was sitting in the front seat of a small black Chevy. We almost missed him! But there he was, smiling and waving. And that my dear friends, is how we saw the Pope twice in one day.  So on that note I shall end because what could compare? 

Love,

thetwinsontour

PS Don’t worry! We promptly found an ice cream cart, and enjoyed an ice cream in the park.  

Colombia Day 6

We had planned to sleep in today because we have had a lot of early mornings this trip, and then take a free walking tour in the afternoon. We had heard great things about said free walking tour, and you know thetwinsontour love free stuff. However, they limit the group size and you can only sign up 36 hours in advance. We had tried to sign up 37 hours in advance, and then we forgot.  By the time we remembered, 12 hours in advance, it was too late.  So we were frantically searching for something to do while sitting at the food court at one of the many malls near our hotel (they always send us to the mall because there are no stand alone restaurants near our hotel, except McDonald’s) we found another Graffiti tour.  We emailed them and they wrote back within 5 minutes even though it was after hours. Amazing response. So just like that we booked another Graffiti tour!

So no sleeping in too late today because we had to meet for our Graffiti tour at 10am.  The first 2 hours of the tour we spent riding the Metro and a different set of cable cars than we had the other day.  We kept getting off at each stop of the cable car so that he could explain some cultural stuff to us, then we got back on the cable car.  We really got our money worth out of that one metro ticket.  

At the halfway point, we stopped for a snack. Anyone who knows thetwinsontour is aware that thetwinsontour love snacks. Especially included snacks. And oh boy was this yummy–an arepa with a giant hunk of fresh Colombian cheese on it and a glass of lulo juice. Yummy, yummy. We devoured it.

Then it was time to hop onto a small little city bus to get to the neighborhood with the grafitti. Right as we were getting off the bus, it started to thunder. If you are reading that sentence as ominous foreshadowing, then you are reading it correctly. No sooner than we had stopped in front of our first mural than it started to rain. And then the heavens unfurled. We sought refuge under an awning. And it rained and rained. The owner of said awning invited us into his living room to seek shelter from the rain and even allowed us to use his toilet!!  (my aunt doesn’t even allow me to do that!)

Eventually our guide decided that the rain had let up enough for us to continue. Said we were tourists and were here for the experience so we wouldn’t mind getting a little wet. Now thetwinsontour are always prepared. Always. (ominous foreshadowing).  Yep, our raincoats were safely stashed away in the hotel because it had been so hot and sunny the previous days. Fortunately someone talked her reluctant sister into packing the 99 cent rain poncho that she has been dragging around the world since 2006. Of course, trying to put on one of those ponchos is not so easy–made me feel like George W at the inauguration ceremony. Luckily, I didn’t struggle as much as W, and got my poncho on after just a few seconds of fighting with it. Then we were off, happily snapping graffiti selfies in the rain. 

Our graffiti destination was Comuna 13, a favela high up the mountainside that actually has escalators to get people up the hill.  There are 6 sets of escalators in total.  The elevators are also a Trip advisor top 10, but I don’t think we would ever have been able to find them on our own.  They are clean and well maintained, with a guard at the top of each one (job creation more than safety), and each is covered by a canopy to protect from the elements.

The best graffiti artist (in our opinion, so it is true) in Medellin is Chota (Instagram @chota13). They all sign their work with their Instagram name. We went to a coffee shop near his home where his paintings cover the walls.  Do you know who else went there recently? Bill Clinton! I don’t know if he bought any artwork or what kind of coffee he ordered though.  I apologize for not being more informed because if I know what kind of hotdog he got in Iceland I should know what kind of coffee he got in Colombia. My only excuse is that I was mesmerized by the bright colors of the paintings.   

Several people purchased paintings from him. If we had a few days, we could have had one custom made and delivered to our hotel. Since we are leaving Medellin tomorrow at 6:30am that was not really an option.  Luckily, we were able to chat with Chota, and he had one ready to go at his house. He showed it to us, and we loved it. You have to study it to see all the details. It is a woman with a bird face. You know thetwinsontour don’t like birds, but we make exceptions for works of art as they don’t poop on you or try to peck your eyes out. In the background you can also see the Metro Cable car, so it is really a fantastic Medellin souvenir. Chota believes that color is life. Thetwinsontour agree with this 100%! Thetwinsontour love bright and colorful things–especially in their house, which is a giant cacophony of color.  And of course we took our photo with Chota. The sad thing is, it will probably cost more to frame our painting than it cost to buy it. 

We had no other plans after our tour, so we headed towards the botanical gardens, which had rave reviews on Trip advisor and a butterfly house. Sounds fantastic, right? yeah, it was closed until Saturday. Well, fuddy-duddy. So we just walked around a bit looking at the grafitti murals under the Metro tracks for a while, and then headed back.

Good Night! 

Love,

thetwinsontour

Colombia Day 5

Today we took a day trip to Guatapé and Peñal. For some reason the tours there are really cheap.  For the low price of $30 they pick you up at your hotel, feed you  breakfast after 2 hours on the bus, take you to a couple small towns (not super interesting), take you on a boat ride to see the ruins of Pablo Escobar’s house, feed you lunch, and take you to the best selfie pueblito in the world.  How can you pass up a deal like that? thetwinsontour love a great deal! We probably could have taken public transportation to get there, but thetwinsontour also love convenient travel as much as they love a great deal, but not as much as they love ice cream.  

Anyways we took a boat ride on a lake they created in 1977 when they built a damn and flooded the town of Old Peñol.  The main purpose of this is to float past the ruins of Pablo Escobar’s bombed out house and take lots of pictures. But there are also several nice houses that belonged to drug dealers in the 80s and 90s. Now one of them belongs to a famous Colombian soccer player.  

The next activity on the itenary was lunch with a beautiful view of Guatapé lake, so that we would have the energy to climb 744 steps to the top of El Peñol, “the rock with the best view in the world.” That part was not included. We had to pay $18,000 (about 6 dollars) for that torture, I mean pleasure.  The stairs are nice, evenly spaced, cement stairs with a separate stairway for the ascent and descent. Every 25th stair has the number spray painted on it which is both very discouraging and encouraging at the same time.  For example, step 100 seems to scream at you, “Why are you out of breathe already fatty? You still have 644 steps to go.” The same with 125 and 150. Then when you make it to 300, the labored breathing makes you do bad math because you tell yourself that you are halfway there.  The steps don’t get encouraging until about 600 when you realize how far you have come and there’s only a few (like 144) left. Our guide had said it would take 15 minutes to get to the top. It took us 20, and someone stopped every 25 steps to breathe and read the signs telling you what number to call for rescue if you start to feel nauseous or light headed, or vomit. We were moving at a marathon snails pace. Once we made it to the top, we realized how breathtaking it was — both literally and figuratively. On the one hand, you are out of breath and sweaty. On the other hand, you are awestruck by the amazing views. From the top of the rock (which is privately owned by the way.) you can get a great 360 view of the surrounding area. The lake/damn is huge with little islets of land that break up the monotany of water give it the appearance of happy little islets and trees. Truly a sight not to be missed. 

After what felt like just a few seconds of gazing at the bucolic countryside– actually I don’t know if a lake can be bucolic, may be that is just verdant grasslands with herds of grazing Shetland Kuhs– anyways it looked peaceful and serene and not at all like a former stronghold of the number one enemy of the USA, Pablo Escobar– we decided it was time to head down the rock. Because if you climb 744 stairs up, you have to climb 744 stairs down. There is no elevator, escalator, or zip line to get down. Just your own two feet. The down stairs are to the inside of the up stairs, so they are dark and dank with no view to enjoy at all. Which is a good thing because thetwinsontour had one thing on their mind. No, we are not talking about a sale at Kohl’s. We are talking about local ice cream snacks in local flavors! Hot, diggity dog!  Yum yum!  

What flavors did thetwinsontour settle on? Arequipa con pasas and Maracuya. Say what? Arequipa is like a dulce de leche/caramel flavor which evidently pairs nicely with raisins. Maracuya is passion fruit. Obviously, we opted for the local ice cream treat. They were kind of like a popsicle or one of those fruit bars, but they were cone shaped.  Interestingly, the popsicle stick is at an angle.  I was too busy devouring my ice cream to study the physics and logic behind this.  Maybe it’s so you don’t lose so much while you are eating it? Or maybe it’s so it doesn’t take up as much space in the freezer. I don’t know.  I just know that thetwinsontour love ice cream in any shape or form.

After that we went to the town of Guatapé which is known for its colorful houses. I may be wrong about this because our guide spoke in the biggest mix of Spanglish I have ever heard. His English wasn’t great, but then again neither was his Spanish.  I don’t think Guatapé was always colorful.  I think they added the color after the drug wars because color means life.  Anyways, the part that makes it even more colorful are the zocolos, decorative carvings along the bottom of the building.  They vary in content from llamas to sunflowers to pastoral scenes to the Virgin Mary. We took so many pictures, but you should know that. Selfie heaven.  All too quick our time was over and we had to head back to Medellin.  

And just like that, we are done with Day 5 in Colombia.  

Love,

thetwinsontour

PS. Don’t forget to tell all of your friends to like thetwinsontour on Facebook.  We need your help to get to a million followers. We are so close! Only about 999,640 to go.  Let’s do this! We figure the more likes we get, the closer we get to our ultimate goal of a TV show travelling the world eating ice cream and candy.  I know that you all want to watch that!  

Colombia Day 4

Our plan for today was to take a Fruit tour at the local market. thetwinsontour love local fruits and trying different fruits that you can’t buy in Kansas. We decided to just take a taxi to the meeting point rather than walking half an hour to the metro stop, taking the metro 6 stops, and then having to transfer to the metro plus bus. We were supposed to meet a little before 9:45. Remembering back to our 50 minute taxi ride in Bogota, and how we barely arrived in time, someone amongst us decided we should take no chances with traffic this time around. Yes, you guessed it. We left our hotel at 8:15 in our little yellow taxi cab. And we arrived at our destination at 8:28.   For a 9:45 tour. Well, at least we knew we wouldn’t be late. We wandered down the road a bit and spotted a local cafe/restaurant/bakery type place with lots of bright orange plastic chairs and customers. It looked promising. So we walked up to the counter and stared at the menu-less walls. Yeah. Nothing there. So I did what I always do. I pointed at this girl’s drink and said “what’s that?”  Milo caliente. Perfect! Dos Milos Calientes por favor. In case you are worried about what thetwinsontour are imbibing at 8:33 in the morning, Milo is their brand of hot chocolate, like Nesquick. We sat and sipped our hot chocolate for a full 48 minutes. Of course, after 42 minutes it wasn’t really hot anymore, but we were trying to kill time. A lot of it. 

We learned a lot about fruit, most of which i have already forgotten.  We only ate stuff that is grown in Colombia, so no pink dragon fruit from Ecuador. We ate the yellow kind from Colombia, which may be the most delicious thing I have ever eaten in my life.  Alas, it is not recommended to eat more than 2 a week because they have a laxative effect. We learned that the best way to eat Passion fruit and Guava is to just swallow the seeds.  Don’t chew them.  I never really cared for Passion fruit before, but it is much more enjoyable that way. 

Actually my other favorite fruit of the day was a member of the Passion fruit family: the sweet granadilla.  It is actually a favorite of Colombian school children too because of the fun way you eat it.  It’s got a hard exterior which you have to crack open.  You could hit it against the table, or preferably against someone’s head.  Then you peel off about 2/3 of that shell, and you are left with what looks like the thick skin of a  naval orange. You poke a hole in the top of that and the squeeze the fruit out from the bottom, or if you are really boring you can scoop it with a spoon.  It is both delicious and entertaining to eat.   

The other interesting thing is the giant corn. We didn’t eat it, but we watched them processing it by hand.  Our guide was quite amused that we all wanted to take our picture with a giant ear of corn. It was like Blue Ribbon at the State Fair sized corn. They shuck the corn and save all of the pieces.  The husks are fed to cows, the silk is boiled into a tea for upset stomachs, and they save the cobs for the pigs. 

The market is very safe and all of the vendors are very friendly, but they hadn’t always been the case.  Mother, don’t read this part.  A lot of locals won’t go here, and some taxi drivers won’t take tourists there because of its shady past.   Back in the drug cartel days, there were a lot of murders in the market. There are lots of small aisles and corners so it would be easy to discreetly commit murder there.  

After the tour, our guide made sure that we all knew how to get to our next destination. We decided that we wanted to go to Botero Plaza to see all of the statues by the Colombian Artist Botero.  We had read mixed reviews about it. Our hotel concierge said that it was very safe during the day, but that we shouldn’t go after 5pm.  So to get there from the market, we had the option to take a bus and a metro, or to walk 25 minutes on just 2 streets to get there.  We opted to walk, so that we could see more of the city. We definitely saw more of the city than we had intended. It was a nice little walk down a residential pedestrian area with trees and furniture stores and a college with lots of students. Mom, you should probably skip over the rest of this paragraph as well.    As we got closer to downtown, there were more people everywhere with several scantily-clad women standing on each street corner. Then right in front of the church, we saw a larger woman walking on the street wearing nothing but panties and a negligee. We just kept walking a little faster. 

Our destination was the sculpture park which is in a giant plaza surrounding the cathedral. It is chock full of Botero sculptures, tourists, hawkers, vendors, homeless people, and more ladies of the night. thetwinsontour let none of this dissuade them from their task at hand–to take a selfie in front of each of the 23 Botero statues. Taking a selfie is obligatory. And this is not some archaic, obscure rule. You look at these statues of voluminous proportions, and they practically scream at you “selfie, selfie, selfie!”  And who are thetwinsontour to deny the pleas of the statues?  

We decided to break up the selfie-palooza and get away from the scorching sun by visiting the Museo de Antioquia, which is an art museum with a bazillion Botero paintings as well as some other Colombian artists and one Picasso drawing. It was a nice respite from the hooligans in the plaza and the blazing sun. Plus, there are bathrooms in the museum! Very exciting. The guards in the museum were very intent on us seeing everything and in the proper order. They kept pointing us in the correct direction and telling us to read things. They were either very friendly or bored out of their minds. 

Anyways, after the museum we went back out to a sun that was a little less ferocious and took more Botero selfies. It was great. We just blithely went around snapping pics, and no one tried to rob us or pick our pockets. They just tried to sell us colombian hats that won’t stay on our big heads. 12 times. There are a lot of hat vendors in the plaza.

By this time it was 4:30, and remembering the words of our hotel concierge– that we shouldn’t be there after 5pm, we decided to get the hell out of Dodge. We quickly hopped on the metro to head back towards our hotel. 

That is all of the excitement for the day. Toodles!

thetwinsontour

Colombia Day 3

Today we left Bogota for Medellin. We left our hotel at 8am for our 10:33am flight.  There are flights like every half hour to Medellin. Seriously, the boarding announcements got a little confusing because the gate next to ours was a 10:30 flight to Medellin on another airline. You actually had to pay attention to what they were saying.  The flight was super short.  We made it to altitude, they made an announcement that you could buy snacks, and then less than 5 minutes later they were saying to return your seats to the upright position because we would be landing shortly.  

So since we are on our own for this trip, we have nothing planned. We had no idea what we wanted to do, or where to go. We got to the hotel about 12:30 and tried to research something to do.  We gave up and asked the concierge what we should do.  He suggested the cable cars, so that is what we did.  After a quick lunch, we headed to the metro station. We walked, and then we walked some more. We walked so far that we thought we had missed it.  We asked a lady who told us it was down the street and to the left. Just follow the people she said.  So we followed people to a little shortcut through the grass.  Then we followed people through several areas that look like they should be metro stations, but they weren’t. We just kept following people. But how do you know when you are following the right people? So we asked again, and we still had a ways to go.  It was a long, hot walk to the metro station and it seemed like forever. Luckily, it was mostly downhill.   

The metro is not a subway. It is all above ground. The part we rode seemed to run the length of the city. It was about half an hour until we got to our stop. Riding the Metro is one of the top 5 attractions on Tripadvisor. Shows you that reviews cannot always be trusted. Unless it is my review of course. Anyways, you can actually see a lot of the city from the metro simply because it is above ground. That is if you aren’t blinded by the sun or jamb-packed like sardines. Anyways, we rode the metro so I am checking it off my list. We were riding the Metro to get to the Metrocable–a cable car that goes up the side of the mountain where all of the poor people with tin roofs live. It was pretty neat view, going up over the houses except we were sandwiched in between the locals who were using it for transportation and not touristic purposes. This cable car goes forever and actually has 3 different stops. The fantastic part is that it was included as a transfer with my metro ticket!!!  When you get to the end of the metro cable, all the locals disappear. And all of the tourists walk over to the adjacent station and hop onto a second cable car. We did have to pay extra for this, as it is not part of the metro system. This cable car goes forever.  We were there just happily snapping pictures of the view. First of the roofs of the houses at the top of the city, then some small farmland, then we reached the top of the mountain and it just kept going and going through the forest of super tall trees.  I thought we were just going to the top of the mountain for a nice view of the city below, but that is not where it goes.  It just keeps going until you finally make it to a national park. There are supposed to be some walking trails, but I don’t know where they were.  We weren’t going to hike anyways because it was already after 5pm.  So we just wandered there at the welcome center a bit, and bought our tickets to go back down.  This time we had a car all to ourselves, so we were able to take lots and lots of selfies. We made sure to pay attention to the time, and it was exactly 20 minutes. It’s a real good thing I got over that fear of cable cars I had when I was 8.   

Our morning taxi driver had told us her favorite Colombian restaurant chains.  One of them was a hamburger place called Corral. When we saw that at the mall food court, we decided that was ok to try since a real Colombian had recommended it.  But we got the least American burger on the menu. It was topped with dried plantain chips, a type of cream cheese called suero, and some shredded cheese.  It was delicious! I am going to have to be brave and make a trip to Trader Joe’s when I get home for some plantain chips.  Unless I have room in my suitcase…What a great plan. Seriously, you should all try some crunchy plantain chips on your next burger.  Also I upgraded the fries to yucca fries which was hands down the best yucca I have ever eaten.  Oh, and I got a Colombian brand of pop for my drink. It was apple flavored and is a new favorite.  

Don’t forget to likethetwinsontour on Facebook.  Also, you probably noticed that we changed blog sights. Try to subscribe so that you get notifications. I am still trying to figure out if I can email them myself.  

Love,

thetwinsontour

Colombia Day 2, free walking tours 

We started the morning with a super long taxi ride to the city center. Not good hotel planning on our part, but I blame my sister for that.  It is a 32 minute taxi ride with no traffic, but at that time of day it is over 50 minutes, so we barely made it to our free walking tour in time. Luckily, taxi rides are fairly inexpensive so it only cost us $26,000 (about $8.68) and a lot of worries to get there.  Thetwinsontour do not like to be late, nor do they like to miss out on free tours.  

We chose to go on the Spanish tour rather than the English tour because it was a much smaller group (6 people instead of 30), but boy did that put my Spanish to the test. Our guide talked so fast! I understood what she was saying, but there were a few times I had no idea what she was talking about.  But maybe I would have been confused in English too because she was talking about politics, and leftists, and assassinations. All in all, I would say my comprehension level was about 90-95% (Mom, all that money you spent on my college education was worth it.)

They call it a free walking tour, but of course tips are much appreciated. I think their website says the average tip is $5-10, but at the end of the tour they leave off the $5 part. But $10 for a three hour tour of any kind is pretty good.  I challenge you to find a better deal anywhere.  

We just had about an hour and a half for lunch before our next free tour.  Our guide had recommended several to us that are right next to the Cathedral.  The one that we wanted to go to had a line out the door, so we were worried about time. We went to the other that had no line at all for a typical Colombian meal. We decided on the soup with potatoes, carrots, pork, and finely cut beef belly. We thought it was just a bad translation because never in a million years did we think it was really tripe.  That thought never once crossed our minds.  Not once! Who would eat a big ass bowl of finely cut stomach? I tried one piece before I realized what it was.  It was soft and chewy and disgusting.  I spit it out into my napkin. I couldn’t even swallow it.  It is a culinary abomination! That being said, the broth was actually very good, so we tried to eat around the tripe, but there was just too much to avoid. The potatoes were also finely chopped, so they were too hard to find.  We ended up ordering a tamal off the breakfast menu.  It’s way different from the Mexican tamales that you know.  It’s huge, and wrapped in banana leafs.  The corn meal isn’t as dry.  It’s really moist with pieces of corn and supposedly carrots, but I only found one of them.  It also has a large piece of shady looking chicken that is really easy to eat around.  What a lunch adventure! Not to be repeated. 

After our traumatic lunch experience, we were ready for our second free tour of the day. We love free stuff! This time it was a graffiti tour. I was really worried because there were close to 50 people there for the tour, but it worked out just fine (except for the rude people that would stand right in front so that no one could get a good picture). The guide had a speaker so we could all hear, and then I took my pictures as we were walking to the next stop.  

It was fascinating.  Graffiti is legal, so long as you have the owner’s permission, so they actually have artists that come from all over the world.  We saw a couple by a guy from Los Angeles. Some of them are commissioned by the building owner, like one next to a Mexican restaurant that is a luchador. Others are allowed by the building owners because they are tired of “tagging” and murals are a good way to cut down on that. So there’s all different kinds of graffiti. There is tagging which is what we are used to seeing. That’s someone writing their alias on benches and sides of buildings. That’s actually a sign of expression, but not to be confused with hooligan tagging which is gang names where they cross out the name of a rival and paint their name next to it. Also stencils are a form of graffiti. Some stencils are more complex than others.  You can see the same stencil all over the city.  And finally stickers! Yes those stickers on stop signs are a form of graffiti and self expression.  Who knew? Needless to say, we now have a new appreciation for all things grafitti. 

But, now it was 4:30 and we were downtown with nothing to do. We could go stand in line to get into the Cathedral and see some miraculous painting of the Virgen. If we wanted to wait an hour or more. The Pope is coming to Bogota, and he wanted to see this Virgen for himself, so they brought it in special from some Podunk village a few hours away. So everyone in Bogota– all 9 million of them– are waiting in line to see this painting. Evidently what’s good enough for the Pope is good enough for them. 

We opted instead for dinner at La Puerta Falsa since we didn’t get to eat lunch there. We had the brilliant idea to eat at a restaurant and then have them call us a taxi. Pure brilliance. We have read some horrible stories about taxi safety in Bogota. Things so bad I can’t tell my mother, or even your mother. Things that would have my mother on an airplane to Cartagena to rescue us faster than Joan Wilder came to rescue her sister. (If you don’t know what I am talking about, I don’t think we can be friends anymore. And if you say you think it’s an episode of Family Guy, I will scream.) So with a firm plan in mind, we set out to enjoy a true culinary delight. There were no menus, so I started pointing at what some other people had on their tables. Sometimes that is the best way to get something yummy. We had hot chocolate that you dip soft cheese and sweet bread into, and some sweet corn thing wrapped in corn husks. It was so delicious! Dessert for dinner! That’s what thetwinsontour are talking about!

So as we were paying we asked the lady downstairs if she could call us a taxi, but she said all of the roads are closed in anticipation of the Pope’s arrival, and we should just go up to the next street to grab one. However, as we mentioned we told the lady that we had heard that it was not safe for foreigners to do that. Luckily our taxi guardian angel was paying at the same time.  Just like my mother would do, she said my daughter will call a taxi on the taxiapp for you. But she couldn’t get it to work. There weren’t any available on the app.  So she had us call the taxi company so she could translate, and give them our location.  But the taxi company didn’t answer. Nor the next one. Nor the next one.  During this time her daughter was still trying to get the taxiapp to work to no avail.  So they decided they could escort us to the plaza to find a taxi.  Then we tried calling again, but no answer.  Then they realized that they were going to a pizza place near a hostel owned by their friend, and surely she could help us because she does that for her guests all of the time.  So we walked with them around town (through areas we had covered on our free walking tour that morning) in the hopes of getting a taxi.  So she delivered us to her friend at the hostel who spent about 15 minutes trying to find us a taxi. There just weren’t any taxis in the area because of the road closures, but there are millions and millions of taxis in Bogota, until you need one.  Thank goodness for our taxi guardian angels, or we would still be looking for a taxi.  We made it back to the hotel in the 32 minutes Google maps said it would take us.

That is all for now.  Don’t forget to like thetwinsontour on Facebook!

Love,

thetwinsontour

Colombia Day 1

What a great first day in Colombia.  We took a private tour to Lake Guatavita and Zipiquira Salt Cathedral.  This is about the only thing we planned from home. We knew for sure that we wanted to go to the salt mines because, well, who wouldn’t want to do that? But then we found a tour that did the salt mines and Lake Guatavita for just an additional $30 dollars each.  Everyone knows that thetwinsontour love a good deal and jamming as many activities into one day as possible, so it was a no brainer to plan an 11 hour full day tour for our first day in Colombia.  Now it may not have been the best idea to plan such a long excursion for our first day, but we did it anyways. 

Leaving Bogota, we got to see the bike lanes. On the weekends, they close down more than 100 km of road, and dedicate them to bicycles. There are bikes everywhere! Once we left the city and were on the country roads, there were even more bikes. I actually think i saw more bicycles than cars. thetwinsontour were very glad that they had decided it was a double Dramamine kind of day! There’s lots of hills, swerving, lane changing, bicycle avoiding, quick stopping, and getting out of the car so that the car can make it up a slick hill involved in today’s adventure. 

Our tour guide took us up to a lookout in a shady part of Bogota so that we could see all the different stratosphere of the Colombian society– 6 of them–from rich to poor. We were supposed to be able to see all the different housing types and neighborhoods. Due to the aforementioned lack of sleep, the significance and interpretation was lost on me. So I did what all confused and dumbfounded tourists do, I nodded my head enthusiastically and said “ahh, sí” over and over. 

Lake Guatavita is famous because of the legend of El Dorado (there are several legendary cities of gold throughout South America that the Spanish searched for forever). This legend is based on the coronation ceremony for the chiefs of the Muisca people.  It takes years to learn all the necessary skills to be chief-at least the first 12 years of your life. Then you must go out in the wilderness and live alone for 9 years, with no contact from anyone, not even your mommy. So after many years of studying and isolation, the young chief is ready to be declared chief.  This involves him going out on this small crater lake on a gold boat at 5am so that the rising sun can shine on him. He is also dressed in gold, but not like a suite of armor.  He is covered in honey and they blow gold dust on him and the dust sticks to the honey. I don’t know if that attracts flies or other bugs? They didn’t really cover those important questions.  While the honey and gold covered chief is out there on the boat, his faithful subjects stand at the top of the crater cheering and throwing gold objects at him.  Hence the legend of El Dorado.  

It’s a nice little hike around the top of the crater, but there’s a lot of steps to the top. And its a much higher altitude than what thetwinsontour are accustomed to.  This is where you correctly infer lots of heavy breathing from thetwinsontour.  Luckily, we were part of a large, slow moving group, so we didn’t feel obligated to run up the hill.  We were the only English speakers in our tour group despite the fact that our local guide was wearing a Kansas City Royals cap. 

I just had a thought, can we call visiting a mine spelunking? Despite having sworn off spelunking several years ago, somehow we keep finding ourselves in caves.  A mine is kind of like a dry cave with neither stalagtites nor stalagmites, but I am going to say it qualifies. Anyways, the salt mine was pretty neat, and way different from the one in Hutchinson, Kansas. First of all you are able to walk into them from ground level–there is no need to take a miner’s elevator to get down there. I missed the explanation as to why there is a cathedral and chapels in the mine, so don’t ask me about the history of it.  I do know that it is fairly new though (like 50 years or less). There are 14 different chapels that are supposed to signify the different stations of the cross, but it really takes a lot of imagination to interpret that. For some of the chapels they even brought in marble floors. And they have colored lights illuminating all of the chapels because everyone loves a cave (or salt mine) with colored lights! thetwinsontour love artificially colored cave lighting.  All in all it was quite enjoyable.  

Despite the fact that the Salt Mines were only like 30 km from Bogota, it took over 2 hours to get back to our hotel due to monstrous traffic jams. It was after 8 by the time we made it to our hotel. It was a good thing that we didn’t eat lunch until after 3pm because that meant we were still full and didn’t have to brave Bogota by night to find something to eat. (Don’t worry mother, it was a really big lunch, and we had snacks.)  thetwinsontour were worn out and quickly hit the sack. 

that is it for day 1. 

thetwinsontour