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Just came back from a two week vacation in Colombia. I know many would be surprised. Why go to such a dangerous place? I had my eyes on the Amazon for a long time. And I knew I could go there from Colombia. It so happens Bogota has the cheapest air fare two weeks after Thanksgiving at a little less than $600 each so we grabbed it. Wife and our three grown children loved it. My wife does not understanding any Spanish. Our three kids and myself only know the very rudimentary Spanish barely enough to get by. We spent four days in the Amazon at the tri-frontier town of Leticia bordering Peru and Brazil. One night we slept in the jungle. I was going to go up the Amazon River to Iquitos in Peru on a slow boat after the jungle trip. All of us have enough mosquito bites we decided to fly back to civilization in Bogota after four days in the wilderness.
We did not plan the whole itinerary before undertaking the journey knowing in that part of the world it is difficult to plan ahead. We had only reservation for an apartment in Bogota for the first night. The rest of the trip was ad hoc. We brought only the laptop I retired last year and my cell phone which has an international plan. I was so intimidated by the warnings of dangers I did not bring the current laptop I am using. Nor did I bring my Nikon D70 digital SLR which I regret very much. I missed many opportunities taking wild life pictures using the generic Nikon 4300. We saw numerous fresh water pink dolphins in the Amazon, sloths, monkeys, at least one aligator, and many exotic birds we do not know the name of.
Colombia has the nicest, most friendly people on earth. We experienced none of the dangers and annoyance mentioned in the book nor warnings by friends who have visited the dountry prior. So much so by the start of the second week we let our guard down completely and decided to rent a car to go cross counry. But after coming back yesterday we learned there were six tourists who were kidnapped by the guerrilla group FARC so we really don't know what to make of it except to say we were lucky and perhaps we have listened to suggestions by others to travel only the relatively safe places of the country.
posted by 12.31.1...
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