B is for Bikes

We all know that the Dutch have a sensibility about transportation and bicycles.  In the Netherlands, more than 1/2 of all trips within cities are taken on a bike rather than in a car, taxi or bus.  A bike can be ridden a in a suit or dress with heals while carrying a load of groceries in a basket.

Things are a little different on this municipality of the Netherlands.  Although Bonaire is relatively flat and small, the roads were built first for cars, not bikes.  Also, the heat makes it difficult for riding long distances.  But that didn't stop us from renting bikes to ride to the town of Rincon.

We rented our bikes from Rolf, a Dutch man who started his mobile bike rental company 6 months ago.  We called him and within a hour, his yellow van arrived with a variety of bikes, mountain and Dutch bikes.

We rode north from Kralendijk to the town of Rincon.  Once we left the capital, the traffic lightened up a lot and it was very safe.  Many drivers would wave as they passed.  Most of them were divers that we would catch up to when they parked at the dive sites along the western side of the island.

 It was a blazing hot day.  Fortunately, we were able to stop at 1,000 Steps Beach to snorkel and have lunch.  There were really only 109 steps (Dempsey counted).  The beach was mostly coral, so it wasn't the build-a-sand-castle, hang-out-on-the-beach kind of place, but we did get in the water (briefly, the waves were a little big here and it was hard getting in and out... the kids were not fans).  While we were eating lunch, this iguana came over to check out our back packs.  He stayed for a while.  Maybe he was waiting for a handout?

Rincon is nestled in a valley, so there was a huge hill to ride up  and over to get there.  With a 55 pound kid on the back of my bike, I only made it about 50 yards before I had to walk.  She walked, too.  Obviously.  She was a good sport about it though.  It probably took 20 minutes to get to the crest.  But the downhill was fuuuuun.  When we got to Rincon, we went to a market and guzzled down some sodas and a bag of Cheetos.  We weren't sure what kind of place we would find for lunch (lunch #2) until we found this Chinese restaurant.  The eggrolls were huge, the sweet and sour tasty and the vegetable fried rice hit the spot.

At the top of the hill before the descent back to our side of the island.

 Looking to 1,000 Steps beach where we had lunch earlier.

 The ride back to Kralendijk seemed to go by quickly.  We stopped a few times for a water break, to pick up or fins and snorkel gear that fell out on the road from our bag and take in the views.  As we rode past 1,000 Steps, there was a huge iguana that had been flattened by a passing car.  We hoped it wasn't the same one we had met earlier on the beach, but I have a sinking feeling it was the same one.  Poor guy.

Tuckered out!

The B in the ABC's

Back in early fall, we began making plans for our December vacation.  We wanted to find a place with a little something for everyone... scuba diving and snorkeling, wildlife, plenty of time in the water and outdoors.  My mom suggested Bonaire, the least known of the ABC islands: Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao.  The more we looked into it, the better and better the idea seemed.  Netherlands Antilles, here we come.

Located in the southern caribbean about 50 miles off the northern coast of Venezuela, the island is relatively flat and dry.  All of the waters around Bonaire have been protected since 1979 and are calm and great for swimming and diving.  We stayed in  the capital of Kralendijk.  About 16,000 people live on the island, so you can imagine the capital doesn't have a big-city feel.  


The original inhabitants of the island were indigenous people called Caiquetio from Venezuela who went to the island about 1,000 years ago.  When the Spanish arrived in the 1500's, they called the island "las Islas de los Gigantes", or the Island of the Giants because of the Caiquetio were a very tall people. The Spanish didn't see any commercial or large-scale agricultural use for the island.  Instead, they enslaved the indigenous people and shipped them to the Island of Hispanolia (today Haiti and the Dominican Republic) where they were used on large plantations.


In 1621, the Dutch established the Dutch West India Company.  The Dutch and Spanish fought over the island for nearly 80 years and in 1636, the Dutch conquered the island.  The British took over for 2 brief periods in the early 1800's.  During this time, the settlement of Playa was built, now known as Kralendijk.  This diverse history has led to diversity in language as well.  The official language of the island is Dutch.  However, the most commonly heard language is Papiamentu, a mix of creole, Spanish, Dutch and bits of English.

Kralendijk sits in the southern half of the island directly across from Klein Bonaire, an uninhabited island.  Washington Slagbaai National Park is to the north and world class wind surfing and kiteboarding on the eastern side, notably in Lac Bay.

Kralendijk

Thanksgiving at Mesitas del Colegio

We spent Thanksgiving at our friend Sandy's finca in Mesitas del Colegio, about a 2 1/2 hour drive southwest of Bogotá.  The property has been in her family for years and it was once a high producing coffee plantation.  Coffee is still produced and processed here, but on a smaller scale.

An alter is being built, but the Virgin Mary hasn't shown up yet.  We improvised.

Walking up the river.

Centipede!

 Sandy and Linnea

Pictures from around the property...

Little Yellow Jobs

 The old beneficiadero (I don't know if I am spelling that right, but it's a coffee processing barn).  It has a lot if big roasters inside that they stopped using because they were powered by gasoline.  

 Inside the beneficiadero.

 In the states, we only see poinsettias in December, but in Colombia, we see them all the time.  They are full shrubs, not gangly and leggy like the ones that get planted in the ground after the holidays are over.

We had a great Thanksgiving meal of Eric's deep fried turkey, Allison's brussel sprouts and white beans, vegetarian pumpkin lasagna for the vegetarian in the group, and my sweet potato gratin, stuffing and pumpkin flan.  Being in Colombia, we had to get creative with some of the ingredients that were available to us.  We scrambled to find cream of tartar (got it from our neighbor from California who brought it back from the states), pumpkin puree (we made it from scratch and will probably never buy canned pumpkin puree again), and paid as much for the oil to fry the turkey as we did for the actual turkey.  Sorry, there are no photos of the meal.  We were too busy eating!

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.