monserrate and san gil

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hello friends and fam! it's tuesday evening now, we're relaxing in our hotel room in san gil right now after another long day. i'll jump back to what happened on sunday first, to explain the pictures. in the morning we made the trek up to monserrate, a beautiful church located on top of one of the andes peaks that run north/south and abut bogota to the east. carmen and i rode the cable car up the cliffside, a total gain of about 1700 feet in less than 5 minutes, but adam, being his burly self, took the long way and walked up the steep stairway and met us there. it was a beautiful view to behold...the church itself is incredible, with hundreds of people also making the journey to be present for the sunday sermon, plus we could peer south across a ravine to the top of the closest mountain where yet another church sits, and it's rio de janeiro-like christ statue, and then also look west out upon bogota, where i really began to comprehend the size of this massive city (see attched :). it was windy and chilly up there, but again, very beautiful. we all took the gondola back down :)

later in the afternoon, we took a cab from our hotel and went to the family home of carmen's friend, enrique, in northern bogota. yima (pronounced geema, enrique's sister) and her family were all very sweet and welcoming and invited us to stay with them when we return to bogota at the end of our trip. so nice of them!

yesterday, we packed up all our stuff, checked out of our hotel in bogota, and hopped on an overly teal decorated bus headed north/northeast toward the city of bucaramanga, where carmen has an aunt, blanca. we made the majority of the winding and nauseating trip, about 200 miles, but stopped just shy of bucaramanga in a smaller town named san gil (pronounced san heel). adam had done a little research on river rafting in colombia and found this city known for it's extreme sports. we arrived in san gil last night, walked into the first hotel we saw, and crashed. this morning adam and i walked to the business office of a guiding company named colombia rafting, located in the heart of san gil, where we signed up for a trip down the suarez river. it was a fun trip, the three other customers on the boat were all from canada, two from vancouver and one from toronto, and were around our age. our guide was very knowledgeable about the river and the surrounding land and we all had a great time (unfortunately, no pictures of that...we neglected to bring our pelican case for the camera).

tomorrow we finish the bus ride to bucaramanga, hopefully only another 2-3 hours, where we'll visit with carmen's aunt. then hopefully the following day make a quick trip to matanza, the small village outside bucaramanga where cecilia raised carmen and yolanda...how exciting!!!

see you guys soon, gnight! xo

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