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Published: December 30th 2009
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Represents female leader.We connected in Fort Lauderdale but the seats we reserved online at a cost of $20 each had been taken and we ended up with seats at opposite ends of the plane. We mentioned it to the flight attendant and just before we took off, she told us we could take two of the empty seats in first class. COOL, do you have any grey poupon??
We got thru customs with no problems and caught a cab to the hostel Fatima. While we waited for our room to be ready we sat in the bar and sucked back a couple of beers. $1 beers can get you into a heap of trouble in no time. Our room is very basic but clean with a comfortable bed and shared bathroom. The staff here are very friendly and helpful.
We headed out after getting settled and found some food at a little place that sold empenadas. Empenadas as we found out are kind of like pizza pockets but with rice and pork or beef. Very yummy. We also had to look for a lock as there are no locks on hostel doors, only latches. Can you tell that we're newbies at
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Gold earings. the hostel thing.
We met another Canadian couple that were riding their motorcycle (KLR 650) from New Brunswick to Chile and back again. As there is no road connecting central america to south america, they had to fly their bike from Panama to Bogota. They had been on the road for 46 days.
After a good nights sleep (thanks to whoever invented earplugs) we decided to walk around town in search of some breakfast. We found a market just around the corner and bought some apples, oranges, bananas and some blackberries. We also bought some pastries filled with cheese, these were very yummy.
We booked a flight from Bogota to Medellin for $75 each. We could have gone cheaper by bus however the bus ride is 9 hours and the flight is less than an hour.
We headed off to the gold museum where we learned about smelting, annealing and casting gold. The museum is well laid out with plaques in both spanish and english. Admission is only $3 each and well worth a visit.
We walked to the main square and had lunch in a nice restaurant. I had chicken and Laura had tongue,
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Breast plate. yep, that's right, tongue. Once you get past the thought of it, it wasn't bad. Quite tender but it has the texture of ......... hang on........let me see.......you guessed it......TONGUE!!!! I had to be careful so as not to swallow the wrong one.
We returned to the hostel and ........................................censored.......................................LOL
After that we decided to sit in the park and read our books. As we were enjoying the serenity of downtown Bogota, there was a loud explosion behind us. A man hole cover just 15 feet behind us was lauched 2 feet into the air by the force of what we guess was a transformer going bad. All the lights along the city block went out. After a second explosion (yeah, we don't catch on very quicky) we decided to evacuate the area.
As you'll see in the attached picture, motorcycle riders must have their license plate numbers on their helmets and also must wear a vest with this number. This measure was introduced by the government some time ago to try to deal with the rising number assasinations by motorcyclists. I don't believe this is any where near the issue it used to be back in
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Neil at the pillars of justice. the early 90s.
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Skip & Judy
non-member comment
wow!!
Good for you two!! Have a great time, we'll be checking in on your progress, whish we were there!!