Cali+Bogota

January 11-20, 2016

After leaving the beach, there was about 2 days of travel to get back up to Cali in Colombia. This included way too many hours on slow buses and an unexpected overnight at the border to avoid a 1am crossing. But I made it.

I spent a week in Cali, relaxing, doing research to figure out where I was gonna go for the next month before Panama, and getting my blogging caught up on. I stayed at my favorite Kingbird hostel again, and made a new friend.

I was told he has expressive eyebrows.  I think so too.

This puppy was a street rescue my first night by Sofia, who is also my Colombian hairstylist. I'm happy to report I'm sporting newly shortened, cool, easy to take care of hair once again.

I went dancing, shopping, and finished up my Christmas present for Marcella and Jose, a cross stitch of the Kingbird logo, which I framed while I was there. You can do just about anything with cardboard and glue.

My friend Cheryl was in Cali at the same time on vacation from teaching in Bogota . I went one day with her and her friend Janelle to Rio Pance, an hour from the city.

We had a lovely time in the water, and once you got used to it, it wasn't so freezing anymore.

I finished off my stay with a sunset walk up to high places in Cali, before heading to the bus terminal for an overnight bus to Bogota.

In Bogota I didn't really go to new touristy places, though I did wander the Centro again.  My hostel was in a different part of town though, so I had those streets to explore.  I stumbled upon a new favorite church, read the whole post here.

Well this was the church from my last night. For new favorite, see below

I spent some time with Michelle and Cheryl, both apartment hunting and job hunting.  Both things seem to be less than fun, no matter what country you're in.

Now I'm on to explore new territories around Medellin. I'm super excited, everyone says Medellin is a beautiful city. There's some day-trip towns nearby to see, and I plan to spend a couple days relaxing at the giant man-made reservoir of Guatapé.

More adventures soon!

(Since my blog is a couple days behind me ((now at time of publishing its more than a couple days...)), I can give you a sneak peak!  This was the bus ride to Medellin, there were some really pretty views around sunset as we crossed the Rìo Magdalena)