Bogata to Medellin, Colombia
18 November 2015
Bogota to Medellin, Colombia
We have now been in Colombia a little over two weeks. We spent a couple days in Bogota and enjoyed seeing the capital and all the hoopla with Day of the Dead. Most misunderstand holiday. It is a day to remember those family members and friends that have passed on not a Latin version of Halloween. In lots of Latin American cities Halloween is now celebrated but it is on the 31st and is not associated with the Day of the Dead at all. But the children like the candy and to dress up, so we saw lots of spider-men and such on the 31st. We flew out of Bogota with fine weather however after the quick flight to Medellin (30 minutes) we found the airport was in a torrential downpour and had to abort landing twice. When we were about to touch ground we could see nothing out the windows, then without any notice we were at full throttle and everyone was looking at each other like WTF! We were told that the runway was like a lake at the moment so we were going to “go around” for awhile and see if it improved. As we gained altitude and got a few miles form the airport the visibility was clear and we could see a big black cloud over the airport. After 30 minutes we tried again and same thing full throttle at the last second, was a little less scary this time around. So we were told we would be going back to Bogota. We spent an hour in Bogota sitting in the plane then flew back and landed without any drama this time. We got a “good” taxi this time who took us to our hotel after what seemed like a road race through the mountain curves, 30 miles away. Our room turned out to be fine and at $16.00 a great deal. Our neighborhood was a little dicey but not bad in the daylight. At night different story, loud bars, a casino, and lots of hookers. We didn't go out after dark much and when we decided to make a break for a restaurant we had spied during the day we walked fast and looked straight ahead. We started looking for long term living quarters as we decided to spend two months in Colombia instead of one. Our old friend form Panajachel, Guatemala was by coincidence in Medellin and went with us to look for an apartment. We could not find one but there was an extra room where she was staying so we inquired about staying there and rented a room for two months. There were seven people living in one apartment but with five bedrooms, a large kitchen, separate huge dinning room and a living room if felt much like a hostel. We have been quite happy here playing games with our “roomies” and cooking up big communal dinners. The one exception to the bliss was our resident schizophrenic roomy. She would stay in her room constantly and turn down invitations for dinner. As time went on she seemed to become increasingly disturbed, with loud praying, chanting and general outbursts in her room (next to us). In the last couple days she had become confrontational and had verbally attacked most of us in the house and at one point put a curse on us all and called us lunatics. So we told the owner something had to be done or we would have to find other accommodations. We had taken to locking our bedroom door at night in fear she meet come in with a knife yelling God told her to kill us. We were careful to avoid her and looked out the door first before going out of our room at night to use the restroom. Finally after hearing complaints from all of us the owner told her to leave. That morning we woke to screaming, crying, and pleas to God as to why he had not kept her safe. We were all relieved to see her go, although we felt sorry for her wondering where she would end up. The next two days we partied it up with our friend from Guatemala Lissa and her fellow Dave. Our other roomies, Thomas and Jim, joined in and we played our game “Catch Phrase” late into the night. She just left today and we hope to see her again some day, but one never knows. We just got a new roommate who is Ecuadorian and is very nice. We will be picking his brain for intel on Ecuador as we will fly there in January unless we change our minds again. We have found a children's charity to volunteer at “Angels de Medellin” and we plan to start in another week of so. So stay tuned for more adventures on the Chrysalis Adventure.