Archive for the 'Colombia 2009' Category

Another early start today – this time we arranged for a driver to take us south to Zoologico Santacruz. Our driver picked us up around 10am and we headed off, expecting to arrive at the zoo in around an hour or so. Alas this was not to be.

It is a long weekend here in Colombia and there are quite a few road closures on Sundays – every Sunday and public holiday, many roads around the central part of Bogota are closed to cars and only cyclists and pedestrians are allowed.

The road we took south took us through some of the poorer areas of Bogota – vastly different to the wealthy inner city and northern suburbs. After about an hour or so of traffic, we met up with our other driver (the same guy we had yesterday) who was to take us the rest of the way to the zoo. We thought at this point we would be out of the worst of the traffic, but it actually got worse! The main road heading south seemed to be heavily congested – I’m not sure how much of the traffic was local and how much was people leaving town for the rest of the long weekend.

Then it got even worse, we discovered what seemed to be the main source of the congestion – the police had actually blocked off one part of the main road for some reason. We were directed down a side street along with everyone else, and three lanes (with five lanes of traffic!) became two lanes, and then one as we made our way down the back streets of this area at the southernmost end of Bogota. At times we were stationary for 5 – 10 minutes at a time, watching pedestrians and cyclists go past enjoying a Sunday outing.

Fortunately Andres seemed unfazed by all of this and laughed and played with us in the backseat of the car. He had fun smiling at people in cars and buses stuck next to us in traffic, and dancing to the 80s music on the radio. The driver tuned the radio to his favourite station (the same station we listened to yesterday as well), which only seemed to play hits from the 80s – which suited us fine!

After two and a half hours of fighting the traffic, we finally cleared the city limits and sped off down the country roads trying to find a way back to the highway south. Eventually we found the road we needed and then we found the turnoff to head towards the zoo. The sign said 16km, so I thought it would be just a short distance – but then things got really interesting!

The road we were now on wound its way through a valley following a river. I thought nothing of this until we passed a rather large waterfall which dropped down several hundred metres from where we were. You may have difficulty picturing it – so I’ll try and explain why this seemed amazing to us.

Waterfall along the road to the Zoologico Santacruz

The city of Bogota is largely flat – with a north-south running mountain range rising steeply along the eastern edge of the city providing a spectacular backdrop to the city skyline, and providing an easy landmark to get your bearings (to head north, keep the mountains on your right hand side, and on the left to head south).

With a flat landscape where we haven’t driven up into the mountains at all, we didn’t expect to be arriving at the top of a large waterfall, with a valley disappearing below us. What’s more, as we drove further, the road now narrow and winding its way down along the mountainside, we were able to see where this narrow valley lead to – an enormous valley that spread out below us, probably a kilometer deep – below the level of Bogota.

When I thought about it, it does kind of make sense – Bogota is quite high up at around 2,600m above sea level. It is quite reasonable for there to be valleys nearby that are substantially lower than this. After heading north the previous day where the road was pretty much flat the entire way, we just found it surprising to see such different terrain here.

Checking the logs from my GPS tracker, it seems that we dropped from around 2,500m to around 1,800m where the zoo was, and the zoo was only halfway down the mountain, with spectacular views further down into the valley from there!

This last part of the journey took us 30 minutes – despite our driver’s enthusiasm for getting us there sooner along the narrow winding roads (we would have rather he took it a bit more slowly so we could enjoy the stunning scenery more). So all up, it took 3 hours to get to the zoo – although we consider the last 30 minutes of the trip worth suffering through the first 150 minutes of it.

The zoo itself was somewhat of a disappointment, despite the interesting location perched on the side of the mountain, and the narrow winding path that took you down from the entrance past each of the exhibits. The exhibits themselves were generally small empty cages which would be deemed vastly inadequate in most zoos back home. They have a reasonable collection of local species, plus a few exotics (lions, tigers, emus, ostriches), but I think most of the same animals can be seen at the Zoologico Jaime Duque that we visited yesterday, with much better enclosures. Once again, Andres took a liking to the birds – colourful and noisy.

Simon at Zoologico Santacruz

Roadside Hawk

I guess part of my disappointment was the overcast conditions we found ourselves in down in the valley – which made it less than ideal conditions for taking photos. Also, due to the layout of the zoo (one path which winds its way down the hill from the top of the zoo to the bottom), it was not really practical for me to go back and take photos with the wide-angle lens (and I didn’t want to be swapping back and forth between lenses the whole time we were there).

Bird of prey (unknown species)

Variegated spider monkey taking fruit from a bowl

In the end we stayed only about 90 minutes at the zoo, we were already about 2 hours behind schedule and didn’t want to arrive back at the hotel too late. We also didn’t feel like waiting around for lunch at the zoo, and so we ate our snacks (oreos and snakes) and ignored our rumbling tummies.

The trip home was much faster – we made it back to the hotel in around one hour, which was what we had expected for the trip there. Apparently while we were gone they had some heavy rain all afternoon (which would explain all the standing water we found over the main road while driving in!), they even had to cancel the BBQ they had planned at the hotel for lunch.

After we got back, we headed around to the supermarket to get some supplies and some more snacks for a late lunch (mmm – Haagen Dazs Dulce de Leche icecream!), and then started our packing for our trip to Cartagena in the morning.

As usual, I’ve only shown some of the best photos from the zoo here, I’ll upload more photos to ZooChat.

GPS track for our trip to Zoologico Santacruz

After breakfast this morning we arranged for a driver to take us to Parque Jaime Duque – a theme park just north of Bogota. With traffic pretty heavy, it took us nearly an hour to get there. It rained pretty much the whole way and we were hoping for the typical Bogota “four seasons in one day” weather such that it would be sunny and nice at the park. As it turned out, the rain cleared just as we arrived at the park and it was dry (but overcast) the rest of the time we were there.

Flamingo

Leanne and Andres admire a bottlebrush

Squirrel about to take a bite

The reason we went to Parque Jaime Duque was to visit the zoo there – we didn’t bother with the rest of the theme park, just paid for entrance to the zoo. I wasn’t expecting that much, and indeed our first impression was that they had nice grounds, but not a lot of animals. I was wrong.

Squirrel

Parrot

Toucan

Once we actually found the main enclosures, we were quite impressed with their collection of cats (both exotic and native to South America), and even more impressive was their collection of bird aviaries with macaws, parrots and birds of prey from Colombia and South America. They also had a collection of deer and antelope in large enclosures up the side of the hill. Andres loved the macaws – very colourful and making lots of noise.

Lunchtime

Leanne and Andres crossing the monkey lake

Gardens of Parque Jaime Duque

We spent around 2 hours there (our driver was waiting for us, otherwise we would have spent longer), and then headed back to Bogota. Of course, it started raining again just as we reached the outskirts of Bogota.

Taj Mahal in Colombia?

Parque Jaime Duque entrance

We then headed out again to get some lunch and on the way back we stopped at the small shopping mall just up the road and I got a haircut at the local barber shop. You know you are in a wealthy area when there are guys getting manicures at the barber shop! I declined, but they did give me a shoulder and head massage after my trim. which was very nice.

Was a tiring day – we all went to bed quite early.

GPS track for trip to Parque Jaime Duque

Had a reasonable night of sleep, although Andres was a bit restless in the early hours of the morning which kept waking us up. Andres turns 8 months old today – he’s a big boy now!

Leanne and Andres

Our room at the Hotel Halifax

Guest kitchen at Hotel Halifax

Hotel Halifax Lobby and library

Kids play room at Hotel Halifax

Lounge - Halifax Hotel

Leanne and Andres on the slippery dip

Leanne and Andres on the swings

Out the front of the Hotel Halifax

Central courtyard of Hotel Halifax - our room is on the left

I got a call from Patricia not long after breakfast telling me that she had checked with ICBF and the corrected papers were ready for us to collect and that since she was busy this morning, she had arranged for Carlos to pick me up at 10am and take me there.

So I went with Carlos (a taxi driver who speaks reasonable English) back to ICBF and he escorted me to the offices (acting as my interpreter). After a quick check to see that the document was now correct, they asked me to complete a survey about the adoption process. Finally, I signed their copy of the document and we headed back to the hotel, our adoption process in Colombia is now complete. All we need now is to collect a visa for Andres at the Australian Embassy in Santiago when we get to Chile on our way home.

After lunch, we went for a walk around the area to stretch our legs and familiarise ourselves with what facilities are around. The Hotel Halifax is in a great location – a very up-market part of Bogota with a good supermarket just around the corner, a small shopping mall with banks and other services close by, and a short walk to a beautiful park surrounded by nice restaurants and coffee shops (and a McDonalds). We sat in the park for a while enjoying the sun (which poked its head out from behind the clouds briefly), and watching the locals.

Leanne and Andres at Parque 93

Parque 93

Eventually we headed back to the hotel – via the supermarket to get some other things we needed. The internet was still down at the hotel, which was very frustrating. Just before it went down I got some messages from American Express asking me to call them – I had experienced difficulty using my card at the supermarket the previous day (it worked once, but then a second transaction failed to go through). I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to contact Amex (without making an expensive call from the hotel) and that I wouldn’t be able to use my Amex card until I did. Finally the technician arrived to fix the problem in the late afternoon, and I was able to make the call using my VoIP service and answer Amex’s questions (yes, we are in Colombia, and yes, we stayed at the Pension Stein, flew Avianca and shopped at Carulla supermarket).

Just after 5pm, the hotel put on a “happy hour” with drinks and nibbles provided, and a two-man band singing local songs rather loudly and trying to get everyone up to dance (the kitchen staff love to dance it seems!). It was all rather loud and noisy – but kind of fun.

Happy Hour, Friday night at Hotel Halifax

After dinner I managed to get a little bit caught up on emails and things that had accumulated over the past couple of days.

Up early this morning to finish packing – our flight to Bogota leaves at 12:15pm. Somehow we managed to squeeze all our gear into our bags.

We had some time to say goodbye to everyone and exchange a few last minute emails – I have a list of people waiting for copies of some of the photos I’ve taken (I haven’t forgotten you all!).

Enrique drove us to the airport and then escorted us through check-in and to the security gate to make sure we got there in time. It seems Enrique knows everyone there – from the truck driver delivering the icecream (apparently he delivers to the hotel too), to the taxi drivers, the trolley guy who helped with our bags, and various other people inside the airport terminal.

On the flight to Cali we had 80kg of baggage (we are allowed 20kg each), on the return trip apparently we had 91kg of baggage! We don’t get an allowance for Andres on these domestic flights either, so the excess baggage fee was rather excessive.

Cali airport is fairly small, so it didn’t take long to find our gate – we arrived with plenty of time to spare, the plane hadn’t even arrived yet. Eventually it was time to board – we were waiting in the queue to board the plane when Andres decided he was hungry and started whinging and crying, rather inconvenient timing. As we got to our seats he decided he had waited long enough and started screaming – I quickly mixed up a bottle of formula and passed it to Leanne, it was like turning off a switch, he was instantly quiet and didn’t make much noise at all for the rest of the flight (much to the relief of the other passengers I’m sure!).

The plane Andres took his first ever flight on

Andres seemed quite happy on the plane – didn’t complain at all and didn’t seem to have any problems with his ears. We did try and give him a dummy for takeoff and landing, but he’s never had one before and didn’t really seem that interested. This was just a short flight, and the long haul flights typically fly quite a bit higher, so it will be interesting to see whether he has any problems descending after the longer flights.

We arrived in Bogota and collected our bags, and met by our interpreter, Patricia who was waiting outside. She organised a large taxi for us and all our gear and we headed off to our hotel.

On the way to the hotel we stopped off at the ICBF offices to collect our adoption compliance certificate. This is the final step in the adoption process in Colombia and verifies that all the documents have been prepared correctly and gives us the final signoff from the adoption authority.

Our papers were ready, but we found two small mistakes on them. It may not have caused us any problems, but it was suggestd that we get them fixed just in case. Unfortunately, the person who needed to sign off on the updated document was not in the office at the time, and so we had to leave without collecting our compliance certificate. Patricia said she will check later today and if necessary, again in the morning to see if the documents are ready yet and then pick me up to go and collect them.

We continued on to the hotel – we are staying at the Hotel Halifax, which is similar to the Hotel Pension Stein in that it caters for adoptive families. This hotel is favoured by the scandinavian countries and apparently they haven’t had that many Australian families staying here – until last week when the other Australian family arrived on their way home from Cali! They had emailed us telling us about the hotel so we decided to stay there too. All meals are provided, which is useful given that we didn’t want to be wandering around trying to find a restaurant at night with a tired and cranky baby.

After settling in to our room, we went for a walk around to a supermarket just around the corner to get some supplies. The weather here in Bogota is much cooler than Cali – typically around 18 degrees maximum with high humidity making it feel a bit warmer. When we stopped in Bogota on our way to Cali, it was warm enough for me to just wear a tshirt with long pants, and it didn’t seem to cool down that much overnight. However, it has cooled down somewhat this time and gets quite chilly overnight – it has also been raining a lot more.

When we got back to the hotel, we put some washing on – there is a washing machine available for guest use (for a small charge), we just had to supply our own washing powder. They have quite a bit of undercover hanging space which is nice – we didn’t have to worry about the rain.

After dinner we got ourselves a bit more organised and then headed to the guest kitchen to try and work out how to sterilise our bottles. The kitchen staff at the Hotel Pension Stein in Cali did all this for us, which was very helpful when we were first coming to terms with looking after an infant. We would put all our bottles and gear in a plastic basket they provided and leave it in the kitchen at the beginning of dinner and the kitchen staff would sterilise it for us in a big pot of water they kept boiling for this purpose and then leave it for us to collect, usually by the time we’d finished eating.

One of the kitchen staff at the Halifax showed us where to find dishwashing detergent for cleaning things, and a large pot and tongs for boiling the water for sterilising. It took a while (mostly waiting for the water to boil), but we worked out what we were doing in the end and got it done. Back home we have a sterilising machine which was given to us as a gift – that should make it much easier to manage.

The internet went down not long after dinner and didn’t come back online, so we headed to bed early, exhausted by the long day.

It was actually our 15th wedding anniversary today, but we really didn’t get a chance to celebrate – we’re staying in a nice hotel next week in Cartagena to make up for it.

We were going to get up early this morning to go to Cali Zoo again, but it was raining. Given our previous trip to the zoo was quite short, we didn’t get to see everything we wanted to, and I didn’t get to spend any time taking photos of the enclosures (as opposed to the animals themselves) for ZooChat. As a result, we had always planned to visit again – but then our court process finished about a week ahead of schedule and Leanne had been unwell for a few days, so we were running out of time. We had actually extended our stay in Cali especially to visit the zoo, so it was going to be disappointing to not be able to visit due to the rain.

We sat around most of the morning before the rain eased off a little and we could see the skies starting clear a bit in the distance. So we took a chance and packed our bags – then caught a taxi to the zoo, about 5 minutes drive!

Lizard up a tree

Leanne and Andres at Cali Zoo

The rain pretty much stopped within minutes of our arrival and we ended up with reasonable weather for the day – although it did become more overcast a bit later. It was also much cooler than our previous visit, which made it much more pleasant.

Leanne and Andres at Cali Zoo

Puma

We spent a few hours wandering around before stopping for some lunch – after which I did a quick turn around the zoo again to take enclosure photos while Leanne waited with Andres. After I got back, we decided to walk home rather than catch a taxi – it is pretty much impossible to get lost, we just followed the river along until we got to the hotel. It took us 40 minutes to walk, which includes waiting to cross some roads which didn’t have traffic lights which can take a few minutes to find an opening in the traffic. It is an easy walk, but tiring with me carrying all the camera gear and Leanne carrying Andres.

Hummingbird (wild) at Cali Zoo

Lion cubs at Cali Zoo

Just as we were crossing the footbridge to get to the other side of the river to where the hotel was, a guy walking in front of us stopped suddenly just before the end of the bridge and was looking intently at something near the steps. He turned to us and pointed – showing a small snake (probably less than 30cm long) hiding under a broken bit of concrete. I have no idea what type of snake it was or whether it was poisonous – and the cameras were in my backpack, so I didn’t get a chance to take a photo before it disappeared.

Hummingbird in the butterfly house

Leanne and Andres

We finally made it back to the hotel, stopped to have showers and cool down a bit, and then we got stuck into packing our bags ready to leave in the morning. It turned out to be a more difficult exercise than we had anticipated – even though we had donations for the orphanage and small gifts for some of the people who had helped us, we had souvenirs and gifts we had received to find room for, and the books that we bought proved to be really heavy – we knew we were going to be in for some serious excess baggage fees, and without a handy set of scales, we could only guess at which bags were the heaviest to try and even out the load.

Magnolia came by the hotel late in the afternoon to say goodbye, and spent a bit of time helping us book some accomodation in Cartagena. It is going to be sad to leave – Magnolia has been a wonderful help to us, she has helped many Australian families get through the adoption process and was able to give us advice on what to expect, and helped us ensure we had all the documentation and other requirements in place when needed.

Leanne, Magnolia, Andres and Simon

It ended up being a rather late night and I had to set an alarm to wake us up at a decent time in the morning so we could finish getting packed and have time to say goodbye to everyone.

As usual I will upload more of my photos from Cali Zoo to ZooChat – when I get time!