Colombia: from the Andes to the Caribbean

Hey Vloggers, 

Here another update about our South-American adventures. Following some hints after our first blog last week, we will try writing in English. We survived Rio Carnaval. Unfortunately, we are unable to share the Samba video, as Frank left his IPhone (with the Samba videos) in one of the million Rio taxi's.... Yes, Frank, not Henk, as you probably would expect. However, my wallet disappeared in a moment of distraction, so at least we are equal now. Furthermore, Frank suffered from an inflammation of his ankle after a mosquito bite (no, not the zika mosquito, just a regular one). So, we had to spend the remainder of our days in Rio on the beach, o, o, o, what a punishment... After some anti-biotics, his ankle is fine now. 

Wednesday, we took the plane from Rio to Bogota, the capital of Columbia (six hour flight). A huge city (7 million people) in the Andes. Because of its altitude (2600m) the temperature increases from 10C in the morning to 20C in the afternoon. We did a very nice bike tour around the city, visiting the historic centre, parks, cemetery and fruit markets. Because its quite cool, but still bright blue skies, we got heavily sunburned (we are such experienced world travelers). Colombia goes through a lot of change at the moment after being terrorized by drugs cartels for years. This makes Bogota a very interesting place, as it is developing at such a rapid pace right now. People are beautiful and extremely nice; and the food is amazing! We visited mountain Monserrat with a cable car where we had a spectacular view over the city. Also - yes we do cultural stuff too - we visited the museum del'oro. At night, we met with Bas Heemskerk from Rabobank for some beers and food, who happened to be in Bogota too during his 9 months South-America trip. After dinner, we ended up in a huge gay club in downtown Bogota and we danced until dawn. 
 

Yesterday (Saturday), we took the plane again for 2 hours to Cartagena. This is a very nice colonial town on the Caribbean coast. The temperature is 33C here and we are planning to spend the next few days on one of the small Caribbean islands not too far away from here. Whites beaches, blue water that kind of thing. So the Main activity on the program this week is snorkeling as we need to get ourselves ready for our Galapagos trip. Thanks to the wonderful app AirB&B, we stay in very nice apartments for really good prices. But today, we are spoiling ourselves, as we staying in a hotel with a rooftop infinity pool & bar. We try to exercise every day with a 10k run or some core exercises, however the food, cocktails, icecreams do distort the metabolism slightly.... 

So all in all, we are having a great time here although we do miss you and especially Sam & Sem. We will be back next week with another update. 

Cu then. Henk & Frank