Thanksgiving

This was a view from a bridge at the Coffee Park I visited. One of the great things about living here is that you see every shade of green all the time.

Another great thing is that it is not uncommon at all to see birds of many beautiful colors. This blue one is one of my favorites.

Love birds, more of my favorites.

This is a view from my hotel room of the plantation we were staying on.

This is back at the park, in this section called the Bamboo Forest.

Ah, the pool at our hotel. So relaxing.

For Thanksgiving, we had a long weekend. That's the nice part about working for an International School in Colombia. I get a few of the North American holidays and the Colombian ones as well. So, last weekend, my friend Lisa and I decided to venture out and take a big trip to San Agustin. It's a long bus ride from here, about 12 hours, but we had Thursday through Sunday off and it's supposed to be this really neat place where you can hike and see all of these ancient ruins and statues. Well, a couple days before Thursday, we decided we should probably start planning a bit. One of the biggest differences between life here and life back home is that there really is very little planning that goes on. If you want to go on a bus trip, for example, you just go to the bus station and you catch the next bus, there is no schedule to follow. Then, when you arrive somewhere, you just find a place to stay when you get there, you don't have to call ahead and make reservations, unless you're staying somewhere a little pricier. Well, on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving we started hearing from people at work that there were volcanic eruptions recently near San Agustin and that it might be impossible to take a bus there. So, we quickly had to come up with Plan B, which was to go to Armenia, a town in the coffee region, about 3 hours from here. Lisa's boyfriend knows a travel agent who found us an all- inclusive deal to stay in a hotel. (I guess for this trip there was a little bit of planning involved.) We left Thursday morning and took a bus for a few hours. The bus trips are a safe way to travel here and it's a very inexpensive means to get somewhere too. For instance, it costs the equivalent of $10 to take a 3 hour bus trip. It's only $25 to go about 10 hours away. You never know exactlly what you're getting, there could be air conditioning or not. There could be a lot of stops or not. The one thing that seems to remain consistent is that the buses fill up and the seats don't leave a tall gringa much leg room. Oh, and there seems to always be a very violent, dubbed movie playing. This last trip, they were blasting one of the Rambo movies in Spanish. I tried to just sleep, but it was a pretty bumpy ride.

One of the most interesting things happened on the bus ride to Armenia. We were about two hours away and one person had already been dropped off. So, there was one seat open. At the very next stop, a woman, well a young girl who looked about 20 years old, got on the bus with her 4 or 5 year old son and her daughter in hand, who was just a baby. The 4 year old was dragging their bag behind them and the conductor put it into the trunk for them. I kept thinking, "there aren't enough seats, where will they sit?" They got on and the mom took the one empty seat, holding her sleeping daughter. And, a woman siitting in front of her, took the 4 year old onto her lap and he proceeded to fall asleep in her lap...a complete stranger's lap! Who does that? Colombians I guess. I kept wondering if they possibly knew each other somehow, but no, it was obvious they didn't. I also kept thinking that if I were the woman sitting in front of the mom, would I be nice enough to let her kid sit on my lap and take a nap? Hmmm...no, I wouldn't. But, I'm not Colombian. I also tried to imagine being that little boy. Could I have sat in a stranger's lap at the age of four and taken a two hour nap? No. But, I guess I grew up where strangers were scary and bad. It was an interesting cultural difference.

So, the rest of the trip was great. Lisa and I were literally the only guests at the hotel, because nobody else apparently gets off work for Thanksgiving here. We had the whole restaurant to ourselves, the pool to ourselves. It was great. The place was cute, had a bunch of different house-like buildings with wrap-around porches and benches and hammocks hanging outside to lounge in. Our all-inclusive deal also included an excursion, so we went to this place called Parque del Cafe (Coffee Park). We thought it was just a tour of a coffee plantation, which it was, but it was so much more than that. They had hikes to see Indian monuments, a coffee plantation and museum, and even a couple of roller coasters and rides. The bumper cars were fun. All was well until I got the flu, but I will spare you all the details of my bus ride home with a fever. Not so much fun, but I like to focus on the positive here.