We've been in Colombia over three weeks now and it's been a whirlwind. From the sight-seeing around town, to Minca and then The Lost City. In between these excursions, we've been catching up on laundry, grocery, school and boat chores. We also had a rattle in the engine that Ken wanted checked out when we arrived. Sergio, the boat yard manager and mechanic has been busy as well, so it was just last week when he finally made it by. He and Ken worked out the probable issue through broken Spanish, a translator and double language barriers - it turns out Sergio is Italian and the locals have a hard time understanding his Spanish. The end result was we needed to haul out to fix a bushing (don't ask me, I don't know the details, but it involved the drive shaft). Normally a haul out requires scheduling days or weeks in advance. When I asked when we could do it, Sergio looked at his watch and said, "How about 15 minutes?" Ugh!! I was not prepared for that. But, 30 minutes later, we were out of the water and work began.

In the midst of all this craziness, our friend Andres whom we met our second night here, introduced us to a private school his family helped found 30 years ago. We toured it, met the principal, teachers and some students. We were all getting excited about the possibility of Kaylee attending for a month or so to get some much needed kid-time as well as the opportunity to really learn some Spanish. All the paperwork was filled out and we were finalizing the details when the school was informed Kaylee would need an official student visa to attend, even as a visitor. So, just before leaving on the 5-day trek to The Lost City, we filed online for the student visa. Upon our return we had the email from Immigration stating everything appeared to be order, all we had to do was . . . go to Bogotá, all three of us, to get her passport stamped. Another ugh!! Bogotá is 600 miles away from Santa Marta, not a simple bus or cab ride. Bogotá was on our list of places to visit, so I guess this was our forced opportunity. After making one last ditch effort at the Santa Marta Immigration office and getting confirmation that, yes, we really did have to go to Bogotá, we made plane and Airbnb reservations for the next day. Off to Bogotá!

Thankfully flying to Bogotá is not hugely more expensive than taking a bus, but much, much faster. The three of us flew round-trip for about $350 combined. We did have an exciting welcome to Bogotá when we aborted our landing just before touching down. None of our Spanish was good enough to understand what the pilot told us over the load speaker, but 20 minutes later we landed without incident. We were now in a city of 8 million at 8,675 feet above sea level - a massive difference from our typical environment.

The next morning we navigated the big city by foot to the Immigration office, thinking we were arriving relatively early, 8:30. As we entered the room and saw the 100-200 chairs 80% occupied, we knew we were in for a wait. We picked up our number and waited. Three hours later we were called to sit down with an official who asked our purpose, studied our passports and asked, "Isn't the entry stamp you already have good enough?" Sheesh! We told him it was good enough for us, but evidently not the school system. After a quick discussion with a supervisor, he returned saying, yes, we really did need it. Whew! Glad we didn't fly to Bogotá for nothing! One more hour of waiting and ta-da, Colombian student visa!

 

The next couple days we figured out the bus system, visited the Gold Museum, the National Museum and the Salt Cathedral. The Salt Cathedral was our favorite. It's an active salt mine that over the years the miners built chapels and the Stations of the Cross into the mine. It was quite impressive.

Now we are back in Santa Marta settling into a routine as Kaylee starts school. She catches the bus (really a private van) at 6:30 each morning and returns at 3:15, except on Monday and Wednesday when she has tennis after school and doesn't get back to the marina until about 4:30. The school is called Colegio Billengüe Santa Marta (​http://www.bilinguesantamarta.edu.co) and caters to families who want their children to learn English. We really want Kaylee to learn Spanish so are a little worried it might be too easy for her to get by just speaking English, but all the non-academic classes (PE, Music, Art, Computer), plus Spanish and Spanish Culture are all taught in Spanish, so she is still getting a lot of exposure. The kids typically speak Spanish unless they are in the English-taught classes (Math, Science, Social Studies, English), so all the lunch and playground time is a lot of Spanish too. 

So far she is loving it. She came home so excited the first day saying how great it was and how much fun she had. The kids are super nice and welcoming. She's already being invited over to houses after school - I'm just trying to figure out the best way to communicate with the parents between having a US-based phone number and not speaking a lot of Spanish. Most of the parents do not speak English. She is trying to learn the class dance in record time so she can participate in the Carnival performance next Friday. And, she is working hard on reading, speaking and learning Spanish - let's hope that continues! Lord knows I need a translator :)

The Lost City tour was on our list of must-do's for land-based activities in Colombia. After a week+ of getting acclimated, we decided to join our friends on Nomads for the 5-day hike. First, we checked with the tour company to be sure an 8-year old could go . . . they had no problem with that, and I knew Kaylee would be the least of the three of us who they would have to worry about getting through it from a physical perspective.

The Lost City was not truly lost as is true with most of the indigenous ruins around Central and South America, just abandoned and overgrown. The local indigenous populations were still well aware of its existence. The city was built around 800 by the Tayrona and abandoned in the 1500's when the population was decimated by conflict and disease after interaction with early European settlers. Today, there are four groups of indigenous populations, descended from the Tayrona, who inhabit the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountains. Here is the wikipedia link for a little more history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciudad_Perdida

The only way to reach La Ciudad Perdida is by foot (or mule) with one of the four sanctioned tour companies. It is a challenging hike, but made very comfortable by great guides, all food provided, beds with full mosquito netting and the ability to refill water along the way. Now, that isn't to say we weren't completely eaten up by bugs anyway and many in our group experienced stomach issues the last couple days as well.

We loved the group we were matched with; 4 Dutch, 2 English, 1 Aussie, 2 Colombian, 2 Czech, 2 Canadian and 2 other Americans. All but the Czech and Colombians spoke English and almost everyone had passable Spanish, so we managed communication quite well. Kaylee was a social butterfly who bopped around throughout the days, partnering up with whoever happened to be in the front of the pack. She was always waiting for us at the next stop. The group mascot, everyone was really sweet with her. She did an awesome job, we were very proud of her, covering the 30+ miles with a small pack and great attitude. The guides kept asking, 'she's really only 8?'