Parque Nacional Chicaque

Our weekend plans to go to a finca for a warm, lazy weekend by the pool fell apart on Thursday night.  On Friday, we tried to make a secondary plan, but nothing panned out.  So when we woke up on Saturday morning, we thought we would just have a Bogotá weekend, but that just didn't feel right.  So we started a quick search of places we could go that were close to the city.

That short search led us to Parque Nacional Chicaque.  A 40 minute taxi to the southern suburb of Soacha near one of the southern bus terminals took us to "la casa amarillo" where a bus would be there to take us the additional 30 minutes to the park.  We found the yellow house and the lunch spot that was next to it, so we sat for some arepas and empanadas while we waited for the bus to arrive.  Surprisingly, it was there and we were off to Chicaque.

Chicaque is a privately owned park established in 1990.  Within this small park, there are over 300 species of birds, 30 mammals and 7 different types of forests.

When we arrived, we paid our entrance fee and headed for El Refugio, our hotel.  Thankfully, we each had only a backpack for the overnight trip because we had a 45 minute hike to get to our hotel.  I guess we missed that bit of information when we looked over the website earlier that morning when making our decision to go there.

Linnea arriving at El Refugio

 Hummer

 Sunset from the deck looking toward the Magdelena Valley

 Morning view of the mountain face, Contrafuerte, from our room

 The forest trail called Bosque de Robles where we took a hike on Sunday morning.  Colombia is the only country in South America with oak trees.

The lower camping zone.  

 We decided to take a 4-wheel vehicle out of the park... 

 As we were waiting at the entrance of the park for our bus to take us back to Bogotá, we had to wait a bit, so we slipped into a restaurant for coffee and pastries.  The cloud surrounding the mountain top was so thick that the camera had a hard time focusing.

Halloween in Colombia

Have you seen the ghost of John?

Long white bones with skin all gone.

Ooohhh ooohhh oohh oohh.

Wouldn't it be chilly with no skin on?

We've been hearing this song now for the last few days from Dempsey who learned it at school.  It's a beautiful song but after hearing it 229 times, its level of creepiness rapidly increases.  

Halloween is surprisingly a big thing here in Bogota.  Last weekend, both in our neighborhood and in Simon Bolivar Park, there were people dressed in costume already.  There is a chain store that typically sells home goods throughout the year called Cachivaches.  But around the beginning of September, the costumes, wigs, vampire teeth and witch hats fill the store and most of your Halloween desires can be met there.  We were able to make our own costumes by getting some stuff from Cachivaches (witch's wig and hat, bat teeth, a top hat),  on the street (a cheap umbrella that was then cut for the bat wings),    "Smoking Ramiro's" (where Eric rented a tuxedo shirt, brightly colored vest and bib to look like President Snow from the Hunger Games) and the school drama department costume room.  We also randomly bought Linnea's witch dress at a seamstress shop in San Gil that was selling lots of costumes when we were visiting there a couple of weeks ago.

Here are some of our highlights for halloween, starting last Saturday night at our building Halloween Party and at school today.

 2 ninjas and a witch

 The pumpkin line-up

 President Snow, Ninja, Witch and Bat

 Another 5th grate teacher and I representing the dark creatures of the fauna world.

Dempsey in the primary and elementary parade, where about 800 students filed through the hallway.

The parade also passed through Middle School where we saw Eric playing science professor.  He was dropping bubbles filled with smoke down onto the parade.

Linnea with her classmates: Gypsy, Wonder Woman and Bat Girl.

Little Bag Full of Fun

A safer form of  Russian Roulette?

San Gil - Part 2

Thursday in San Gil was a big day for us.  We went 20 minutes down the road to the town of Paramo.  There, we were going to go caving in La Cueva del Indio.  We were outfitted with headlamps and a flotation vest and began our descent into the cave.

Once in the cave, we adjusted both our eyes and steps; our eyes to the low light and our steps to the slippery rocks.  We learned about los murcielagos (bats) that live in the cave.  They feed on fruit and insects.  As we ambled through the cave, sometimes needing to use our hands for balance, we sometimes put our hands in slimy bat guano.  Fortunately, the cave also had fresh water inside where we could rinse our hands.  We had to wade through waist deep water at times, and it was surprisingly not scary.

 The walk through the cave took about an hour and a half.  It culminated with a 5 meter jump off a little platform into a pool below.  Without our headlamps, it would have been pitch black.  We all did the jump except Linnea.  Dempsey make the jump twice!  When we exited the cave, we were on the other side of the little town and we walked back to our start point in our wet clothes.

Happy to be back in the light of day!

As we came out of the cave we realized that the cloud cover had burned off and it became obvious that it would be a perfect day for parapente (Spanish for paragliding). We got to have a quick lunch before we hopped into a van for the drive up to the top of a mountain so we could ride the wind and thermals into the sky.  The kids got to go first to take advantage of the lighter winds that happen earlier in the afternoon. Once the wind picked up a little, the bigger people got to have a go. 

Linnea getting ready to take off!

Dempsey's turn!

Flying together!

In this picture you can see the grassy take off and landing area.

We had to wait until late in the afternoon for the winds to pick up again so Eric could take his turn.  Our plan was to take the bus a short ride to the town of Barichara where we were going to stay for 2 nights.  Eric didn't land until about 5:00, which meant that getting back to San Gil, picking up out stuff from the hotel, then figuring out the bus schedule was going to be a pain.  Fortunately, we had met a Colombian family that was also vacationing in San Gil.  We had spent the day together in the caves and parapet.  The offered to give us a ride to Barichara and we gladly accepted!  We had dinner together before they took us to our hotel.

San Gil, Santander

Leaving for our apartment early Sunday morning for the Terminal de Transportes Bogotá, we bought our bus tickets (40,000 pesos, or about US$20) and climbed aboard a bus for the north-central department of Santander.  The 7 hour ride took us to the town of San Gil.  About 300 kilometers from Bogota, this area was inhabited by the Guane Indians in pre-Colombian times and now has a population of about 44,000 people.  Tobacco, coffee and sugarcane are commonly grown here and we saw loads of tobacco leaves drying in open-sided barns across the mountainous countryside.

This region is known for it's desportes extremos;  rafting, caving, repelling, paragliding, hiking and mountain biking.  The Rio Fonce cuts the town into northern and southern halves and we stayed in a hotel about 2km outside of town on the river.  We eased into our adventuring by going to the Juan Juri Waterfall.  For a small entrance feel, we entered the park and walked 20 minutes to the bottom of the waterfall's 180 meter drop.

 We crossed the river with the help of a rope that spanned a shallow part of the swift flowing river.  Eric and Dempsey braved the swimming hole at the bottom of the falls.

The next morning we were off on a rafting trip on the Rio Fonce.

NO HANDS!! WEEEEEEE!

Kite Festival Weekend in Villa de Leyva

It has been a while since we've posted... the summer came and went quickly as we spend 6 weeks in Sebastopol; spending time with family, camping, and painting our house (that was a lot of work!).  We got back to Colombia in the beginning of August and it has been full tilt since then!  We escaped to Villa de Leyva for a long weekend for the kite festival.  The town plaza was abuzz with kite flyers, but we preferred flying our kites at our friends Bonnie and William's place.  Linnea flies her kite with William's advice...

On Saturday morning we went to the local market to get ingredients for our pizza.  The little guy above on the left was sitting with his grandma (?) as she pulled the kernels off the mazorca.  He took a nip off her Poker beer without even skipping a beat.  The mora in the picture at the upper right makes tasty juice - think blackberry juice with sugar added.

A family picture in the plaza while we enjoyed the kite festival and people watching.

Linnea and I took a horseback ride.  She was on Odelinda (Ode to beauty) and I was on Sereno (Serene).  The horses belonged to Bonnie and William's friends and 6 of us rode together to Pozos Azules, some beautiful ponds that invoked the colors of caribbean waters.

Pozos Azules

Our friends Moses (who also came to be known by the following names by Linnea: MoMo, Big Monster, and New Daddy [that one was a little strange, but somehow, seemed to not bother Moses]) and Rachel were traveling through Colombia for several weeks before they met us in Villa de Leyva.  We had met them in Honduras where they were Peace Corps volunteers in a sweet little town called Marcala.  We spend the long weekend together in V de L and then they came back with us to Bogotá and they stayed with us for 3 days before flying back to their other life in the states.

One of the reasons why Moses got called New Daddy... doesn't this look like a great family photo?  Moses and Rachel have an instant family!

Back at Bonnie and William's, there was still much to do... 

Dempsey spend many hours catching and releasing frogs from the numerous ponds.  

Of course there had to be a pizza making table to create all the tasty pizzas to cook in the pizza oven.  While we were outside cooking, the smells of the pizza and the kindness of the pizza-eaters attracted a stray dog that had been lingering around the periphery.  We coaxed him closer with our sweet voices and bites of pizza.  William was quickly warming up to the idea of having a dog, but I think Bonnie will take a little more convincing.

Bonnie and William's place on Monday morning, just before we got on the bus to return to Bogotá.