The most famous person in Medellín, and maybe in all of Colombia, is an artist named Fernando Botero. He is probably more famous than the president. The National Museum devotes the entire third floor to his works, and spread out in front of the museum, on a long and broad plaza called Botero Park, are many of his monumental scuptures in bronze. If you have ever visited a big art museum in the U.S., you will probably recognize his absolutely unique style. We have a number of his works at the DIA in Detroit, but as just a few in with so many others, his works seem like oddities. Here you see so many that they start to seem normal. He claims to be a figurative artist in the renaissance tradition of El Greco, Botticelli, or ... read more

Curaçao We flew 20 minutes from Aruba to Curaçao, with a 23 hour layover before flying on two hours further to Medellin. We took this weird flight because it was a free way to have a day on Curaçao, and we are really glad we did. We stayed in Hotel Scharloo (pronounced Shar-low), a small place in the harbor district of Willemstadt. Curaçao is very different from Aruba. First, the island is a lot bigger, and has a fine natural harbor. It was the capital of the Dutch Antilles, and the Dutch influence is a lot stronger here. The harbor is surrounded by brightly painted buildings with the traditional stepped roofline, all very neatly kept. All the bridges over harbor water are drawbridges, and the little streets near the hotel are packed with interesting things to ... read more

Bombini na Aruba The customs declaration card had a cheerful greeting, "Bombini na Aruba". It is not too hard to guess what it means, but it certainly does not look like Dutch, and Carol confirms that it is not Spanish. The JetBlue stewardess had never even wondered about it. It turns out that Aruba has its own language, and we were just outside the air terminal when we first heard it spoken, in the car rental office. I had no idea that it even existed, but it is certainly not in any danger of going extinct. The car people preferred it over English, which they both spoke quite well. You have to be careful how you accent it. "Bóm bini na Aruba" means "Welcome to Aruba" but "Bombi ní na Aruba" means "He did not come ... read more

Blog 8 Adios, Atitlán We are approaching the end of our idyll here on the world's most beautiful lake. We have a thick vine of orchid flowers on our terrace, and every evening tiny hummingbirds come to feast on the nectar just as night is falling. All day long we hear exotic bird calls, and sometimes we spot the birds they belong to. And there is always the deep blue Lake Atitlán in the background. Today we met the owner of Hotel Bambú; he was dressed in work clothing and was out with the gardeners who keep the grounds here so immaculate. This explains a lot. He is a govenment official of some kind, but his heart is in landscape gardening. It will be so easy for it all to go to hell when he is ... read more

We left our wonderful $55 per night hotel in Antigua (Posada La Merced), and came by van with several other turistas to the town of Panajachel on Lake Atitlan. It was a pretty nice drive through little Guatemalan towns that almost crowded onto the road, interspersed with long stretches of the verdant Guatemalan countryside. We rose fairly steadily at first into the Western Highlands , a winding highway, up and down, for about two and a half hours until we caught our first glimpse of Atitlan. It lies in the caldera of an ancient supervolcano , fed by several small rivers, but having no outlet to the sea. Someday it will be a salty lake, but not yet; it is still young, only about a million and a half years old. In the years after the ... read more