Colombia (Part 10)-Cartagena-The First Day of Spanish school
At 7:30 a.m. Monday Morning, Jay, Rubi, Jenny, and I piled into Rubi’s car for the ride to school. The plan was for Rubi to drive us to school the first morning so we would know where the school was– after that we would be on foot. Rubi drove a confusing route of back streets and I thought “we should have left a trail of bread crumbs because we will never find our way home”! Fortunately, I had purchased a Cartagena map before leaving OKC. Secondly, I always carry a compass with me when traveling. The school was very small with probably 8 classrooms.
It was located in a neighborhood named Getsemaní.Here are some photos of the neighborhood:
Inside the school we met Jesús, the director, who gave us a brief interview in Spanish to check our verbal skills. After that we took a grueling, written exam. It was one of the toughest Spanish exams I have ever taken at any immersion language school. There were a total of 10 students in the school. I found the administration to be friendly and helpful and I liked all the other students and teachers.
Jay was assigned to a class with 4 other students, all of which were from countries other than the U.S. I had 2 classmates: Margarite who was a 60 year old doctor from Manhattan and Travis, a 42 year old software engineer from California. Travis was retired and just traveled the world. Rough life.
Class was 4 hours per day and totally in Spanish. The teacher allowed us to structure our own curriculum which we all agreed should be made up mostly of conversation. Travis and Margarite were both more advanced than I, but I felt it was a good opportunity to learn from them.
Here is a photo inside the school and their website address.
After class on the first day, 5 of us walked to a small neighborhood restaurant for lunch. Inside it was hot, busy, loud, and chaotic, but it was exactly what I like to experience in foreign countries! We were now totally immersed. There was not another foreigner in sight. We had become just another group of neighborhood people doing their own thing in Cartagena, Colombia. Life had become seamless.
Next-Cartagena-Living our Daily Lives
See my other travel blogs on NewsOk.com:
Colombia:http://blog.newsok.com/thewanderer/category/colombia/ Mexico:http://blog.newsok.com/thewanderer/category/mexico/
Caribbean island of Barbuda: http://blog.newsok.com/thewanderer/category/barbuda/
San Juan with a 5 hour layover: http://blog.newsok.com/thewanderer/category/san-juan-puerto-rico/
Fly around the U.S. for the day: http://blog.newsok.com/thewanderer/category/day-trip/
Barbuda-An unspoiled island getaway in the Caribbean
I thought I would temporarily break from writing my blog about my travel through Colombia to bring you some information that I learned recently about a interesting island in the Caribbean
I am not in the habit of blogging about places that I personally haven’t visited, but I felt this was too good to pass up.
Take a look at this approach photo:
Don’t confuse it with Bermuda or Barbados. It’s Barbuda. It is not necessarily well known because there isn’t much there. Not much……. except some stunning beaches
I had first heard of Barbuda over 20 years ago when I was spending some time on the island on Antigua. At that time I was told I needed to visit Barbuda someday because not many people traveled there. Over the years I have kept it in the back of my mind.
It was not until this year that my interest in Barbuda was re-awakened by a chance meeting on the island of Anguilla with a Brit named Mark who lives on Antigua and has for the last 20 years. Mark and his girlfriend happened to be staying in the apartment just beneath ours on Meads Bay, Anguilla. Mark is a friendly chap who shares my interest in travel and out of the way places. He told me about spending time on Barbuda and how remote and unspoiled it was. He had his laptop with him and he showed me many, many pictures of the beach and the small inn (4 rooms) where they had stayed.
I asked Mark to forward some of his photos to me and I would put them on my blog. He said if you are looking for a true unspoiled island getaway then Barbuda is for you.
(All photos are courtesy of Mark Harrold)
Mark told me about spending some time in one of 2-3 beach cottages on North Beach. Here is a link to the cottages:
http://www.northbeachbarbuda.com/
Barbuda can be reached by boat from Antigua but Mark advised against it because of the possibility of rough seas. His recommendation was to take Carib Air from Antigua. I took a look at their web site www.carib-aviation.com and it looks like most days they fly twice a day to Barbuda for $44 each way from VC Bird International Airport on Antigua. Looks like they fly the DHC-6 Twin Otter 20 passenger STOL(short take off and landing) that are known throughout the Caribbean.
Here are a couple of other links that list some info about the island.
www.barbudaful.net/
Barbuda looks like an island of which dreams are made. Not many people have heard about it, friendly people, safe, no major developments and maybe the best of all……your friends haven’t been there yet!!
Steve
Colombia (Part 9)-Cartagena and my new family
When we arrived in Cartagena it was very hot and muggy. A representative from the school was supposed to meet us at the airport. I don’t know what happened, but they weren’t there. Jay got the girl at the information booth to call someone for us. After about an hour, a driver finally showed up with some weak excuse about why the first driver never showed up. He drove us directly to the home-stay families with whom we would be living for the next 5 days. Jay and I were staying with different families, but in the same apartment complex. Jay was staying with a single, 40ish female attorney named Rubi, and I was staying with a 60ish woman named Jenny and her maid Rosa who appeared to be around 80.
Here is where I lived. click on the photos for the description and to enlarge.
Based on the info packet that the school had sent me I had concluded that my accommodations would be in a two bedroom, 1 bath apartment with 2 women: Jenny the owner and Rosa her maid. Turns out, it was a 3 bedroom apartment, but the other bedroom was rented to another boarder named Jamie who was a newscaster for the Colombia Radio Network in Cartagena. Okay, so now we are up to 4 people and 1 bath. Then Gustavo, Jenny’s son shows up. Apparently he lives there too!! That makes 5 and one bath! Over the course of the next 5 days there would be other family members that would come and go. I never did know exactly how many people really stayed there but there were times it seemed to bump up against 6 or 7. However, I will say, they were all very courteous to me and let me have the bathroom in the mornings when I was getting ready for school.
The interesting thing here is that Rosa, the maid, slept on a bed in the kitchen. No kidding!! Turns out that is fairly common in Colombia. At first, I was a little uncomfortable when I would go into the kitchen for water and Rosa would be laying on the bed in her nightgown, but she didn’t seem to mind and after a day I just got used to it too. There was no air conditioning in the apartment and Cartagena is very, very, hot. I had a very small room with a single bed and a fan. We were on the 4th floor and at night I opened the window for a little cool air. The cost for my room and 2 meals a day for a week was $140 including laundry service and all the Spanish I could handle. They did not speak English. I liked them all from the moment I met them.
Here are some pics of the family:
(I’m the one in the red shirt in the back)
Jay’s Colombian mom, Rubi, had a very nice well decorated apartment. She was a gourmet cook. He had a private bath.
We had arrived at our final destination in Colombia. It would be here in Cartagena that we would spend the next 5 days weaving ourselves into the fabric of Colombian life. The nice hotels of Bogotá and Medellin were behind us. Now, we were sharing apartments with people we had never met and who did not speak our language.
Stay tuned—school starts the next morning
See my other travel blogs on NewsOk.com:
Colombia:http://blog.newsok.com/thewanderer/category/colombia/ Mexico:http://blog.newsok.com/thewanderer/category/mexico/
Caribbean island of Barbuda: http://blog.newsok.com/thewanderer/category/barbuda/
San Juan with a 5 hour layover: http://blog.newsok.com/thewanderer/category/san-juan-puerto-rico/
Fly around the U.S. for the day: http://blog.newsok.com/thewanderer/category/day-trip/
Colombia (Part 8)-Retiro and meeting the family of Dr. Olga
When we arrived in Retiro at 2:30 p.m., Olga was nowhere to be seen. We stood around in the town square for about 10 minutes second guessing our decision. What had we been thinking? We meet a stranger in an airport in Bogotá, Colombia and then drive out to the countryside to meet her in a small town? But, our gut told us we were still doing the right thing. It was an opportunity to have a unique experience. One of life’s “wow” moments! Finally, we heard a horn honk, and there was Dr.Olga!
Here is a photo of the town square of Retiro:
Germán was a little nervous about what we were getting into so he didn’t want to leave us until he met Olga. He spoke with her and her sister for a few minutes and when he felt everything was fine he gave us the “thumbs up” and left. We piled into her SUV, luggage and all. Olga drove us a couple of miles through beautiful countryside where there were a number of what I would call very nice, “weekend country homes”. When we got to their house, they introduced us to the other 2 family members: another sister and their 82 year old father. They showed us around the house, walked outside with us on the beautifully manicured grounds while explaining about the different types of plants. Then we all went inside and for 2 hours drank Colombian coffee, ate cookies, and had very stimulating conversation about the economic and political climate of South America and the relationship with the U.S. It helped to have done a little research on Colombia before our trip. The family was all very highly educated and well-read. They knew all about what was happening on the campaign trail in the U.S. Presidential race It was a great experience to spend those 2 hours with such a nice family.
At 4:30, Olga and her sister drove us to the airport for our 6 p.m. flight to Cartagena where we would spend the next 5 days in a very different kind of life.Next-Cartagena and my new family
Colombia (Part 7)-Medellin-the Pablo Escobar tour
We were up at dawn on Sunday morning. I gorged myself on a big buffet breakfast while Jay went to Sunday mass. We had agreed to meet Germán at 8:30 for the big tour and he showed up right on time.
Here is the breakfast buffet:
First stop was the house where the final battle occurred when Pablo and his driver were killed in a hail of gunfire. I had seen photos of the house on the internet so when we drove up we recognized it immediately. I had to have my picture taken in front of it! This is now a quiet neighborhood and many people were on the streets walking to church while I am having my picture taken in front of the house. I am sure they thought “crazy tourists”. Germán described the battle in detail and it pretty well matched up with what I had read. It was unbelievable, just having finished the book, and now I am standing in front of the very house! It was like living the story. 
Next, it was off to the cemetery to see the tomb of Pablo. Again, as soon as we walked onto the cemetery grounds I recognized the tomb after seeing pictures of it on the internet. Quite an impressive little plot of dirt! Several family members are buried right there next to him. Germán told us that Pablo was considered the “Robin Hood” of Colombia and that people still bring flowers to his grave every day.
Here German is giving Jay a little history of the events surrounding the burial of Pablo:
For the next 4 hours Germán drove us around Medellin visiting various sites which were major points of interest including many of the buildings that Pablo used to own and some of the apartments where he lived. We finally got our fill of Pablo.
One more thing I wanted us to do was to ride the cable car that is an extension of the metro system in Medellin. The cable car is part of a transit system that serves a rather large, lower socio-economic neighborhood that is built up into the hills. It is the main system of transportation for this neighborhood and connects with the metro for travel throughout the city. It is a series of 3 different cable car stations; each one located a little higher up the hill than the other–similar to a ski lift. We jumped on a car and rode it through all 3 stations and back while Germán waited on the street for us.
It was quite interesting to go over the top of the neighborhoods and see how people are living below you. Each car held about 6 people. The other passengers were all very friendly so we chatted with them a little in Spanish.
As you can see, it is an interesting way to travel through your neighborhood:
(click on the photos to enlarge them)
By this time it was 12 noon and we still needed to call Dr. Olga. Germán dropped us off in the park where we had dinner the night before. We used a pay phone to call Olga. Olga wasn’t there but her sister answered and said she was aware we might come by the farm. She said Olga would return in an hour and suggested we call back then. We used the hour to have lunch at an outdoor restaurant. Great cheeseburgers!
When we returned to the hotel we called Olga again and this time she answered. She suggested we get Germán to drive us to the little town of Retiro which she said was on the way to the airport (sort of). She told us to have him drop us off in the town square and she and her sister would pick us up at 2:30. So, on a wing and a prayer we told Germán…”It’s Retiro for us, Amigo”!
Next-Retiro and meeting the family of Dr.Olga
