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This the first content post about traveling in Colombia. The airplane ride to Bogota was rather uneventful trip on December 27, 2018. It was a reasonably pleasant use of slightly in excess of three hours in Avianca's good hands.

El Dorado airport is a large building and very busy at all hours of the day and night. Our arrival at about 10 P.M. was no exception, but we navigated through immigration and customs without a hitch. We then started looking for my wife's friends, which took about 20 or 30 minutes. Upon finding them we all commenced the trek to the parking lot to find the car. After finding the car our friend, the driver, began a 20 minute process of finding a way out of the parking lot and joining the traffic of a bustling city of about 14 million inhabitants. So we were out of the airport and were off to our eventual destination, Guaduas, Colombia, a much smaller city of about 30,000 inhabitants.

The trip to Guaduas from Bogota covers about 71 miles or about 122 kilometers north and down from almost 9000 feet to a more balmy 3900 feet. The temperature in Bogota is cool at night in December and the drive to Guaduas while long was somewhat nice due to slightly warmer temperature.

The drive is not for the faint of heart as the road is very busy with cars, motorbikes, and trucks. It is full of twists and turns and small towns much of the way to Guaduas. After an uneventful drive from Bogota we arrived at our destination, the hotel San Cristobal at about two A.M. in time to collapse into bed and fall asleep. Tomorrow we can explore some familiar places in the town and seek a restaurant for sustenance.

I will try to post again by Monday and hopefully weekly thereafter to encourage future travelers to Colombia.

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A Closer Look at Guaduas

The next day began with more time spent in the hotel consuming some local fruit for breakfast and a cup of excellent Colombian coffee, the nectar of the gods.

View (above) nearby the hotel on a street in Guaduas. It must be early as there is little foot or vehicular traffic.


 A scene from the patio inside the center parking area at the hotel. It is tastefully decorated with hammocks surrounding the center of the hotel, an open air atrium, pleasant during most of the day and cool in the morning, but a very nice place for coffee and pastries.


A further view from inside the atrium of the hotel. While there is another tree of a similar size, this is an ever green cedar or conifer providing a splash of green and a bit of shade for our enjoyment. Well that concludes this short post and perhaps the blog will be more animated with  pictures and video in the future.










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Desert in Guaduas and a Trip to the Country

While many nights of our time in Guaduas, we went to a restaurant to eat supper, most nights were topped off with a delightful desert of ice cream and strawberries with bananas. Sometimes the ice cream was simply a delicious vanilla ice cream, but sometimes the cold treat had a pink color and a decidedly different taste. On occasion the ice cream had a green hue and appeared to be pistachio. Whatever the flavor of the frozen milk concoction, it was truly delicious.

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Miguel also provided a bit of a respite from relaxing in the patio of Hotel San Cristobal by offering a trip into the country for him to work briefly at two or three farms near Guaduas. One was a chicken farm which y…
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A Little more Time in Guaduas

After Miguel returned me to Guaduas we had some ice cream at a local ice cream parlor near the plaza and talked in athe somewhat loud shop and watched the people going to and coming from the plaza.

Just as we finished  the ice cream and our discussion, some friends came from the hotel and we started the walk back to eat, spend some time relaxing and go to bed. The sun was low on the horizon and the evening was cool.

Supper was at a local hamburger restaurant in the plaza. The shop had hamburgers of different types and pizza. Our group expanded from three to about ten. The restaurant had problems accommodating the group, but the staff did in a most gracious manner.

Guaduas has celebrations periodically and these sometimes involve small seemingly spontaneous parades and on this occasion one occurred  with the following display:


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