After much thought, I decided I could probably narrow it down to five(5) with the caveat that I might change my mind if I later discover any better cities in Latin America.  I did not rank them in any particular order.   If you just want a topical look, you can see my comments below on this post.  If you want a little more depth about each one you can read about them on www.travelblur.com along with some great posts from Charlie.  If you click here you can see my top 5 Latin Cities posts all grouped together on his site. 

Here are some teaser comments:

1.  Buenos Aires, Argentina–The Paris of Latin America.  Lots to do here, great food.

2.  Bogota, Colombia–If you want a sense of adventure in a beautiful city, then Bogota is the place for you. 

3.  Cartagena, Colombia-There is an old part and a new part to Cartagena.  Spend your time in the beautiful old city located on the coast.  Sitting in a sidewalk cafe on the narrow streets of Cartagena is day well spent.

4.  Quito, Ecuador-You really feel like you are in South America when you visit Quito.  Lots to do in the city, but the best part can be outside of Quito in the beautiful countryside.

5.  San Cristobal de las Casas in Chiapas, Mexico–This is a great town located in the southernmost state of Mexico.  Lots of arts and crafts. 

Now that you have learned just a little about each one, don’t forget to get the in-depth review about each one here

If you have any questions, please feel free to e-mail me:

Steve Barrymore ssb11@prodigy.net

Don’t forget to return to my blog site here on www.newsok.com often and check for additional travel news. If you are interested in reading about all my travels click here

The small terminal is much older and very basic. Check in was much easier than we had anticipated so we had plenty of extra time to visit a number of shops in the airport. I bought some post cards and then tried to find a t-shirt that said “Bogotá” on it. Huh uhh…no t-shirts that said Bogotá. Can you believe it? Our Avianca flight to Medellin was a continuation of one from Cali, but it was late so we now had another hour to wait in the airport. However, our wait turned out to be fortuitous.

While waiting for our flight, we met a woman who spoke almost perfect English. Her name was Olga and she was one of a family of Colombian doctors that had all previously lived in the U.S. for a short period of time. She was traveling to Medellin where she lived. She seemed intrigued by our travels through Colombia and told us her family had a weekend getaway that she called a “farm” located outside of Medellin. She asked us if we would like to come out to visit her and her family and see Colombia from a different perspective. Now, my last promise to Carol when she dropped me off at the airport in OKC was, “I promise I will heed the warnings of my Colombian friends and not travel out into the countryside”. But, my memory was fading fast when offered yet another opportunity to travel off the beaten path. Remember…..”it’s all about the journey”.

Olga gave us her cell phone number and asked us to call her the next day when we were leaving Medellin. She said we could come by their country home on the way to the airport and have coffee with them. We said we would call her. Jay and I agreed it was something we should talk about before just venturing into the countryside to spend time with a strange woman and her family. You will get more of this story in a later post.

After the delay our flight finally departed Bogotá. I was a little concerned because the hotel in Medellin was sending a driver for us and I knew he would be waiting for our flight that was late.

Next-Medellin, our driver agrees to help us enter the world of Pablo Escobar

On top there is a church, a little village, a market, a couple of restaurants, and one incredible view of Bogotá!

 I had seen a picture of Bogotá in a book over 6 years ago and promised myself at that time that someday I would make this trip. It was an incredible feeling to see the skyline from a point that was probably the same spot from where the picture in the book was taken.

Bogotá is a city of 8 million people and is surrounded by mountains on all sides. Often times there are clouds hanging around the mountains which can obscure the view. Fortunately for us, the clouds cleared and we had a great view of the city below. From up high you get a feeling of how really large this city is.  Check it out:

It was lunchtime and we were right on schedule. The plan was to eat lunch and be off the mountain by 1:30 because we had to be back at the hotel at 3:00 for our ride to the airport. We got a window view in the restaurant that sits right on the edge of the cliff. We both had “Ajiaco” which is the special soup dish of Bogotá….incredibly delicious and very filling.

We started down the mountain around 1:30, this time in the cable car. On the car we met a woman who could speak a little English. She wanted to know what our plans were and I told her we were going to try to at least see the Zona Rosa which is the upscale area I referred to in an earlier report. She validated our choice but insisted we not hail our own cab. So, what did she do? She gets one of the many soldiers standing around at the cable car station and asks him to hail a cab for us!! She waited with us and told the cab driver where to take us and the rest is history.

Here is the cable car ride down the hill:

When we arrived in the Zona Rosa area we knew we were in the big money part of Bogotá. Very nice looking condos and hotels in the area. The Lonely Planet guide had suggested visiting an enclosed mall. The mall was full of high end shops. We walked through it, and then strolled outside through the myriad of sidewalk cafes filled with people. We finally stopped, had some dessert and Colombian coffee, and watched Bogotá walk by in their designer clothes. Life was good!!

By this time it was 2:30 and time to head back to the hotel. We had a 30 minute taxi ride back to the hotel and knew our airport driver would be waiting for us. We had seen a lot of the city in a short time and in a fun and exciting way. When we arrived at the hotel, they gave us our bags and signaled our driver we were ready. The hotel staff was very pleasant, asked us to return someday and wished us luck in our travels the rest of the way through Colombia.

Next –the airport in Bogotá and meeting Dr. Olga

That morning we were up by 6 a.m., at breakfast by 7 a.m. which included an impromptu English lesson with our waiter, packed, and ready to be on the streets at 8 a.m… A final check with the desk clerk assured me our travel plan was sound. We left our luggage at the hotel and they arranged for a car to be ready to take us to the airport at 3 p.m. when we returned in the afternoon for our 6 p.m. flight. Great service at the Hotel de la Opera!

For me, there is no greater excitement than to step into the streets in any city in Latin America and start walking! It must be a combination of the language, the colors, the street vendors, the people, and the music that makes it so exciting. It makes my heart race!! For those of you that have traveled to Latin America you will know exactly what I am saying.  This is the scene as we left our hotel:

While our hotel neighborhood may have been a little spooky at night, there was plenty of activity on the streets in the a.m. Our first stop was the Plaza Bolivar which is a famous landmark in Bogotá. We hung around the Plaza taking pics, talking with street vendors, asking directions and in general just being tourists. There was not another gringo in sight!!

From there it was off to what I was anticipating to be one of the highlights of my Latin American travels…….the world famous El Museo del Oro (The museum of gold). The regular museum was closed for renovation but they had a lot of the collection on display in a temporary location. It was incredible. This photo will give you an idea:

The goal was to be out of the museum of gold by 10:45 a.m. so we could take a cable car up the 2,000 ft mountain by the name of Monserrate. The Plan was to have lunch in one of the two restaurants at the top that were supposed to offer an incredible view of Bogotá. Since it was a little rainy and cloudy that morning we wanted to make sure we made it up to the top while there was still a decent view of the city. Fortunately it just a short cab ride to the base of the mountain. We took our first stab at hailing one of the street taxis ourselves. At least it wasn’t the driver that was doing the stabbing!!

The system of taxis in Bogotá is interesting because they have a meter that counts the number of units they drive and there is a chart in the back seat that cross references the fare to the number of units. The taxis don’t expect tips in Colombia and the other Colombians don’t want you giving them tips either otherwise it spoils it for them. Marino had told me that if you give a tip in a taxi you are immediately tagged as “the gringo”. I’m gringo enough; I didn’t need to add to my reputation.

next–Bogotá-Seeing Monserrate and time is running out. 

Getting the hotel reservations nailed down was the easy part. The trip from OKC to Bogotá was tough. It was a grueling 14 hour trip through DFW with a connection in Mexico City where we changed airlines from American to Avianca for the final leg. The Mexico City airport always seems to be in a state of chaos, but for some reason I like chaotic airports, and this one fills the bill. What I had not counted on was that in order to change to Avianca, we both had to clear immigration and customs in Mexico City, and then had to stand in line for 2 hours at the Avianca counter just to be told the only seats left were the “dreaded” middle seats. What started out as a comfortable 3.5 hour layover in Mexico City turned into a race for the gate to make our flight.

Once on the plane, I was ready to start practicing my Spanish, so I introduced myself to my seatmates. Seated on my left was Marino, a lace salesman from Bogotá whose biggest client was Victoria’s Secret and no, I did not ask him any personal questions about his work!! Marino spoke very little English, but he did help me modify our Bogotá itinerary by giving suggestions on how to maximize the 23 hours that Jay and I planned to spend there. My other seat mate was Samantha, a beautiful girl from Peru who spent the better part of the 4 hr. 20 min. trip trying to convince me that she was not guilty of the visa fraud that she had been charged with by the U.S. govt . She had apparently been living in Miami and left the U.S. briefly to return to Peru to finalize her divorce and was told by U.S. officials that she was suspected of visa fraud and could not return to the U.S. She blamed it all on her ex-husband. Her story seemed pretty flaky, but since she was a “knockout”, I decided to believe her. My wife says it was very shallow thinking on my part.

We landed in Bogotá in a heavy rain.  The Avianca pilot bounced the 757 on the runway 3 times before he finally came to a stop.  By the third bounce I was wondering what the headlines might say about the crash of Avianca flight #73 from Mexico City!!!!

We had been advised by the language school in Cartagena that we should take advantage of the hotel’s private car service in Bogotá for security purposes. Since we didn’t know the city, and it would be our first time to visit, we thought the private car was a good idea. The rain and chaos of the Bogotá airport made for a real mess so we were very glad that we had a driver there to meet us.  

Our driver, named Vladamir, was a law student who spoke fluent English (thank goodness).  He was able to give us a quick summary of the city without us having to labor through Spanish that we probably would not have been able to translate correctly, especially since we aren’t real fluent.

Vladamir took us on one of the fastest, wildest rides that I have ever been on.  He almost hit two guys that were standing in the middle of the road trying to flag us down.  Finally I asked him why in the world he was driving so fast.  He said because we were in a dangerous area, and he was afraid of being stopped by anyone like the two guys we had just seen standing in the middle of the road, so he was driving fast to get through the area.  We weren’t sure that we believed him, but it made for a fun adventure. 

Have to admit, when we finally drove up to our hotel in the dark, the area looked a little dodgy. A lot of security on the streets. Vladimir told us there was so much security because the Presidential palace was nearby. The Hotel de la Opera was beautiful and very Latin. Small, 24 rooms. The hotel employees were extremely nice to us and very protective. They advised us about what security precautions to take when on the streets. Their suggestions incuded: not flashing cash or expensive watches  and to be sure to leave our original passports in the room safe. They also said they would call taxis for us. Nice touch!

Here is a pic of the front entrance of the Hotel de la Opera.   Nice, huh?

For dinner we took a taxi from the hotel to the Gato Negro (black cat) restaurant in Parque 93 on the recommendation of Marino my seatmate on the Avianca flight.  Bogotá seemed very much alive as we took the 25 minute taxi ride through the city to the restaurant. When we arrived it was raining, but two big bouncer-looking types in suits and wired with security earpieces came out to the taxi with umbrellas to keep us out of the rain.  For a minute we were wondering what we were getting into.

Once inside it was obvious why Marino recommended it. This joint was jumping!! The restaurant walls were vibrating from the sound of the Colombian band that was entertaining the diners.

The beat from the band was electrifying. Every now and then, a couple would just jump up from their table and start dancing to the Latin rhythm right in the middle of the restaurant, while the rest of the crowd sat in their seats swaying to the music.  Holy cow!! 24 hours earlier we were packing our suitcases in Oklahoma City and now we were in the middle of the Latin beat on a Friday Night in Bogotá, Colombia!!

It was a great restaurant with white tablecloths and extremely polite waiters moving around at a quick pace.  Jay ordered a fried cheese plate, and based on the waiter”s recommendation, I had the seafood special. 

When it came time to leave, the restaurant insisted on calling a taxi for us as opposed to letting us hail one on the streets. Seems to be a little bit of a security issue.
We finally returned to the hotel around 12:30 a.m. Bogotá was still jumping but we weren’t. We were done.

Next time—Bogotá, the city—it’s what we came to see, but how do we do it in 10 daylight hours?

I will start out by sharing a little of my most recent journey to Colombia. Here goes:

A couple of months ago, my friend Jay and I were eating lunch at our favorite Mexican restaurant, when I looked up from my food and said “Jay, I’m going to Colombia—I hear its still undiscovered as a tourist destination and I think now is the time to go”. Jay just looked at me and said, “Are you crazy? It’s too dangerous!” 3 weeks later he was signed on to go with me.

“There is a peculiar pleasure in riding out into the unknown. A pleasure which no second journey on the same trail ever affords.”

–Edith Durham

So began the plans of a trip I had been dreaming about for a long time–Colombia!! Have to admit, it was a struggle to get it off the ground because my wife, Carol, and the rest of the family didn’t want me to go. Carol was concerned about safety issues. I had been trying to convince her for over a year that Colombia would be a fantastic place to visit.

Since I had been studying Spanish for a couple of years, I thought it sounded like a perfectly reasonable idea to do a language immersion program at the Nueva Lengua School in Cartagena and live with a non-English speaking Colombian family that the school would arrange. Carol finally gave in, but said she wanted no part of the trip even after I showed her a travel magazine story and a report from a friend who visited last year that said, “Cartagena on the northern coast is a great place to visit”. Knowing that I sometimes like to wander off the beaten path, Carol stipulated that as long as I went STRAIGHT to Cartagena and BACK, with NO traveling around the country, she MIGHT be OK with the idea of me going. Keeping the promise would prove to be easier said than done.

The next night, while I was planning the trip and looking at fares on the internet, I discovered an obscure fare combining American Airlines with Avianca (the Colombian airline) routing us through Mexico City and returning through Miami. As I began to read the small print on the booking restrictions (I know, no one ever does that), I noticed that it allowed unlimited stopovers in Colombia as long as the stopovers were 24 hours or less. I experimented by adding stopovers in dream cities (Bogotá and Medellin) and the fare remained exactly the same. Too good to be true!! I could fly to Bogotá-spend 23 hours, then on to Medellin for another 23-hour stopover, then on to Cartagena for 5 days in the language immersion program.

I couldn’t book the fare on-line so I called AA just to test price the routing and see if they could ticket it all the way through for me. The AA res agent was skeptical she could make it work, but after 40 minutes on the phone with her, she finally got it to price correctly! I booked it at that instant! Unfortunately I had been so caught up in the excitement with the success of booking the ticket that I forgot the promise to Carol that I would ONLY go STRAIGHT to Cartagena and back with NO DETOURS! I had lots of selling to do but finally convinced her I would be extra careful and stay in a very nice, SAFE hotel (4-5 stars) in a very nice area in both cities (Bogotá and Medellin). Plus, Jay was going with me.

As I researched hotels in the chic, upscale, and safe Zona Rosa area of Bogotá, I saw plenty of the standard top-notch names such as The Intercontinental, El Presidente, etc, etc that would all fulfill my promise to Carol. But, I felt I was betraying myself by taking the more comfortable way out. After all, this would probably be my only chance to get to Bogotá, and I wanted the “real” Bogotá! Why would I sell my travel soul by staying at some “brass and glass” place when the “real” Bogotá awaits me?

I bought a map and tour book (hard to find) and discovered an area called “Old Bogotá” and a neighborhood called “La Candelaria” 6-7 miles south of the Zona Rosa in the oldest part of the city referred to as the “heart and soul of Bogotá”. I knew instantly this was the neighborhood for us! To make Carol feel better, I searched for the nicest hotel in La Candelaria and came across the Hotel de la Opera in the center of the neighborhood. From there it would be easy walking to the many sites of interest even though it is not advisable to walk the narrow streets of this neighborhood at night.

So as not to bore you, I will stop here and pick up the story in a few days—stay awake, it gets better.

–Steve