City Tour

We had another really fun day! A few days ago, we met a very friendly taxi driver. He only speaks Spanish, but he gave us his number and told us he did city tours. He was willing to be patient with my imperfect Spanish so we took him up on his offer. He picked us up at 9:30 this morning, we had no idea where the tour went, how long it would take or how much it cost, but you only live once! It turned out to be a really good tour! The tour lasted about 5 hours, and it was a pretty intensive 5 hours of Spanish for us both. I started out translating for Bill, but after 5 hours, he was picking up a lot more on his own. We saw a monastery on the highest point in the city, a really interesting fort built by the Spanish with tunnels that connected the fort to old, historic part of the city. Most of the city is built on what used to be water. We saw several different neighborhoods, rich, poor, and middle class and we visited an emerald workshop. Colombia produces some of the best emeralds in the world and they are very proud of them. Our driver just started doing tours a few months ago, but he did a great job and we really liked him. He also does tours out to a nature reserve so if he’s free this week, we are going to do that one morning. I hope we get to do that. There’s also a place where you can go soak in volcanic mud, but I don’t think we will be able to fit that in.

We got home around 2pm, fixed a quick bite to eat then rested for a while. I got a little burnt during our tour in the scorching sun, and we must have lost pounds of water sweating. Bill thinks I slept for a while because he came to check on me and I didn’t respond and didn’t realize it was already 5:30 pm when I finally got up. We both really enjoyed the trip though and we recommend the cab driver!

We walked down to the old city for supper and found a really neat Italian restaurant. It had interesting artwork on the walls. The paintings were done by a friend of the owner. The owner also proudly told us that Gabriel Garcia Marquez, one of Latin America’s most famous authors, had visited the restaurant. Marquez is Colombian and he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982. The owner had pictures of Marquez on the wall. I got a spinach pie and Bill had lasagna. The food was good and we got Gelato for dessert. It was a fun evening.

I’ve signed us up for a day of snorkeling tomorrow. We are really looking forward to that! I signed up and paid online so I hope that all works out. We have to be in the old city at 8am for an hour boat ride to Isla Rosario where there is good snorkeling. Everything got good Trip Advisor reviews.

I wanted to go to a dance club tonight in a section of the city called Getsemani. We toured through it today in the taxi and it’s a neat place. It’s also a huge party spot. Today is Saturday and a national holiday so we decided to wait on the trip there until one evening this week when it should still be fun but probably not as wild! We are both past the wild nightlife stage!

Pictures of our city tour are posted below! Bill will have an update soon. My first picture is of a drink Bill and I have been drinking all week. It’s lemonade with “coconut crystals.” The “coconut crystals” are really small, chewy, marshmallow- like pieces that float around in the lemonade. It’s very interesting. It’s good, but it takes time to get used to.