VivaMas Tour Company
January 6 – 15, 2024
Two flights to Bogota through atlanta to meet Jane
Three flights and a hotel room from Barranquilla to Miami to Charlotte, hotel overnight and to Daytona Beach the next day
Traveled with Jane and new friends Patty, Pati, Susan, Don, Erin, Steph and Scott
Tour Guide Luis Fernando something, lives in Cali, Colombia
Woo hoo! We were in Colombia. I’ve seen coffee mugs that say “It’s Colombia; NOT Columbia!”
Think Colombian coffee and Juan Valdez!!
We arrived at a convenient 2 PM and there was no time change for Jane and me — so no jet lag!
We met two of our travel partners, Pati and Susan, on the plane to Bogota. They were in First Class, I was in an upgraded Comfort Plus seat, and Jane was back in steerage. With texting, Jane told me their seat numbers and I broke through the First Class Barrier (a netted curtain) to meet them. Pati lives in Colorado and Susan in South Carolina but they’ve know each other since their daughters were in high school together.
We checked our rooms and came down to meet our Tour Guide, Luis, and hit the streets for a ten minute walk.
It turned out to be 4 hours, without jackets. (Poor planning). Luis offered to take us to Montserrat, a church way up at the top of the mountain. If you go back to the Bogota photo, way at the tippy top is the white steeple of the church. We were all huffing and puffing up the steep road to the cable car. Altitude was 8,300 feet and most of us live at Sea Level. It does a number on your breathing!!
People were everywhere and in line to catch the cable car to the top. Luis got us through a second long line and we left him at the bottom.
This is the skyline of Bogota once we reached the top.
It kept getting colder and colder as we rose, plus it was getting toward dusk.
we quickly saw the inside of the church.
We saw the Virgin of Montserrat, which turned out to be a black Madonna (much like I saw in Montserrat, Spain). Dad says I’m jaded, since nothing much impresses me any more.
The picture with the people are automatons and they moved! It was a Christmas scene.
Pati, center, bought 5 rosary necklaces and three holy medals. She definitely turned out to be the winner of Biggest Shopper of the Trip title.
We were just past Christmas and decorations stayed up until past the Catholic Holy Day of The 3 Kings, on January 8. However we continued to see Christmas decorations through January 14 when we left.
We took the cable car up and the funicular down. The sun was setting and this was the view of the city.
We went to the largest gold museum in the world. Some local bank began to buy gold items for its company and someone suggested they let the world enjoy the items too. So the bank started this museum. I say, skip buying all that gold stuff with your profits and instead spread a little help to all their customers by reducing their loan interest rates!! But that’s just me.
Homelessness. Always shocking. This is someone’s son, father, brother.
Barbed wire. I am not used to seeing that in my town.
Visited the flower and vegetable market juxtapositioned near the IKEA showroom, employer to many, many Colombians.
You KNOW I love an open food market!! The colors, the smells, the foreign foods. And THIS time Luis provided us with four kinds of bread and cheese, bread and marmalade, bread and garlic, etc. And he cut open at least eight kinds of fruit I had never seen nor heard of.
Reading travel literature warning never to eat the local food, I was a little skeptical at eating all this stuff. But it was delicious and it had no ill effects on any of us.
There are 800 varieties of potatoes in Columbia. There are ten varieties of avocados, 4270 species of orchids. And the huge number of eggs, not refrigerated, was crazy!
OK. Some fruits weren’t so delicious or sweet.
Always have to get photos of mountain, since I don’t see them in my home state. The bicycles remind me that on Sundays, the city shuts down two lanes of traffic for bikers and walkers.
It is the same story in most non-North American countries. Their septic systems are not the best, and we are requested to put our toilet paper into the garbage can in the bathroom stall, rather than flush it. I finally get used to the idea by the end of the trip. I’m now so programmed that I have been tempted to throw my used toilet paper into MY trash can.
In addition to that, often there is no toilet paper in the stalls. This was a first, when the bathroom attendant handed out little boxes of toilet paper. Cool!!
It turned out our hotels were pretty much 2-star — something I haven’t really had to deal with, except in the desert of Jordan and on the Tanzanian safari. I kept thinking the NEXT hotel would be better. But it wasn’t. I can’t deny there were cute parts of the hotels, like this window in the doors of this hotel and the fantastic view of lush Columbia right outside of the room. All the rooms were clean and the actual properties were well maintained, but the rooms had much to be desired.
I’ll continue to bitch about the rooms as we go along. But the people we met on the trip and the places we visited far outweighed the fact that our rooms didn’t have coffee makers or hot pots to boil water. (Luckily, I brought my portable hot water kettle and a portable light for those dark bathrooms.)
I have to admit, the rooms weren’t the most modern, but the views and pools were magnificent on this trip.
Safe Travels!
Linda Jeanne