Bienvenidos a Colombia!

This post took me a good 12 hours+ to finish. It is monster-sized and probably a little more detailed than it needs to be. But this was a fun trip, and I wanted to make sure I did the memory justice. So proceed only if you've got some time on your hands. :)

Back in December, my brother got engaged to a beautiful girl from Colombia. They married each other on June 22 in Bogota, Colombia.


Congratulations to Mike and Lina! I went to the wedding, and it was my first real trip outside the US! It was such a cool experience--beautiful scenery, delicious food, a LOT of new faces and friends, and time with some of my favorite people on the entire planet.

I spent about 5-ish days in Colombia, and here's where we went (sorry my map isn't very readable. I'll work on it):

The trip to and from Colombia was the only yucky part of the trip. I think I can safely say I won't be flying Spirit again. Mom, Dad and I flew in at 1pm-ish on the 18th, and were picked up from the airport by Lina and her mother, Helena. We got some groceries, went to the apartment to unwind, and went to Lina's parents' apartment for dinner that night. Helena is such an amazing cook. I don't know how she managed to make so much food in such a short amount of time, but it was delightful.

Starting the next day, I broke out my camera. Naturally, I took over 500 pictures and filled up an 8GB memory card. Next time I visit a foreign country, I'll bring more memory. :) A lot of those pictures are duds, but I included some of the best ones in this post.

Lina recruited her best friend Cami to help entertain us. The first day, we went up to Cami's Aunt's vacation home in Subachoque. It was a really cool house, out of the city and surrounded by rolling green mountains. Ira especially loved it here--he started running the second his feet hit the ground, and he wouldn't (willingly) go inside the house for food or diaper changes or anything. Christie and Greg took turns chasing him around.


Towards the end of the evening, Ira got a little too friendly with the dog. If the dog was laying down, Ira walked over and fell face first on him. If the dog stood up, Ira tried to crawl under him. You can see the result of that particular game in the photo above. Don't worry, Ira's not getting mauled--just licked.

The next day, we did a whole bunch of touristy stuff--like going to La Catedral de Sal, which was pretty cool.


Also, lunch at this place called Alma Llanera. They served giant plates of meat. Katie and Brooke got really brave and ordered this fish, not realizing it would come looking like...a fish. Lina wisely asked the waitress to remove the eye when she was ordering for all of us. I think they were supposed to put some of my chicken on Lina's plate, but they didn't. So I had like 2 pounds of meat on my plate--I think I managed to eat a quarter of it...maybe. Ira was in his usual "I want to run around EVERYWHERE" kind of mood, but then Katie whipped out a cute little sticker book that she made in hopes of helping out Christie and Greg. It worked like magic!


See those gross little teeth in the fish picture? Ugh. I think this fish was called Majarra.

Next, we headed towards Lake Guatavita but stopped at this dairy place--La Cabana--on the way. Found pastries filled with dulce de leche (it's not as rich as caramel, so it wasn't all that hard eating an entire tube of the stuff. Although I'm always up for the challenge). Eating that crispy dulce de leche-filled tube was one of my favorite things this entire trip. The giant statues of cheese wheels and yogurt cups were pretty cool too.

One our way in to La Cabana, we saw this parking space among all the handicapped spots. Why don't we have those in the US?

Next we got to the lake. If we'd had more time, we would've gone on a short hike to some sites around the lake. Instead, we just took pictures, talked, and fed the stray dog leftovers from lunch (mainly mine).


Friday morning wasn't very busy. Poor Ira (and his poor parents) hadn't been sleeping great and needed some serious down time. Katie, Dad and I took a taxi to the Unicentro Mall and met Ben and Brooke there (first time in the history of forever that Dad actually wanted to go to the mall!). It was mostly similar to American malls, but it was fun. The only souvenirs I bought were earrings and candy. At the grocery store Exito in the mall, they had tubes of condensed milk in the candy aisle--kind of like go-gurt. I bought some for the cultural experience (and also because I always want to eat the stuff right out of a can but have a tiny bit more self control than that). Back at home, Greg and Mom had gone out and bought pastries and cupcakes to try. One of my favorite things about Colombia was the bakeries--they make really delicious pastries filled with things like mushrooms and beef and chicken. I really like the cheese pastries too.

Mike and Lina came over at around noon, and we all ventured out to catch a bus to downtown Bogota, where we would go see el Museo del Oro (Gold Museum) and Monserrate. We went to a yummy restaurant for lunch called "Crepes and Waffles". Not the most Colombian cuisine, but YUMMY. The coolest thing we did on Friday by far was taking a cable car up Monserrate and taking in the view. The cable car basically went STRAIGHT UP. It's hard to show the steepness of our trip up there in a picture, but know that it was amazing.


A lot of great photo-ops up there.


Also fun was squishing into the cable car to go back down the mountain--it was a lot more crowded on the way down than up. It was also a lot scarier going down than up. I kept waiting for the car to suddenly start plummeting straight down like a roller coaster.


Finally, we had a "rehearsal dinner" at this restaurant not far from our apartment called La Fragata. It's one of those fancy restaurants that revolves around, so you can see the entire city as you eat. The center part of the restaurant did NOT revolve, and that was where the bar, the kitchen, and the restrooms were located. So, if you needed to pee, you could just wait until we rotated around to where the bathroom was. :) The best part was when Mom set her purse down on the ledge behind her under the window, not realizing it wasn't part of the revolving platform. Fifteen minutes later, she turns around and her purse is gone. Helena and Mom had to go chasing after it--it'd gone about a little less than a quarter of the way around. Ira's sticker book also came back out so Christie and Greg could actually enjoy the meal.


Dinner was so good! Brooke, Katie and I each ordered a different dish and shared so we could try more things. I also got strawberry juice, which is more less pureed strawberries. It was thick and wonderful.
The restaurant was really dark, so it was hard to take pictures without getting motion blue. :(

After dinner, Marco (Lina's dad) hurried Lina away back to their house, without really saying goodbye. The reason being Mike and Cami had arranged for a mariachi band to come play for Lina at her parents house at 10pm--a Colombian tradition the night before the wedding. (Lina did not know, and apparently didn't even suspect) So after they left, the rest of us piled into a van-taxi and headed to Lina's to wait for the Mariachi band to arrive. Mike was expecting maybe 4 performers, but when the van pulled up we saw rows and rows and rows of mariachi performers in full garb. Nine in all--two trumpets, a giant bass guitar, 2 violins, 2 guitars, 2 singers. It was nuts! They made a big semi-circle outside the window of Lina's parents' apartment, with Mike standing in front with flowers:


And then they started blasting music! The window had one big sheer curtain covering it, and we could see silhouettes of people clawing at it frantically for 30 seconds, trying to get it open. Finally they gave up and Lina just came outside.


It was so cool. After that first song, the entire band and all of us crammed into Marco and Helena's living room for the rest of the show, 5-6 more songs (I can't remember exactly). Mike got to wear this sweet sombrero.


After the show, Marco and Helena drove us all home, and we went to bed. The next day was the wedding! We didn't have to go anywhere until noon-ish, so the morning was spent talking, eating, practicing dancing, writing speeches, and getting all gussied up for the wedding.


This was the one night/morning that Mike was able to spend with us, and we were planning on having some kind of bachelor party for him. And by bachelor party, I mean we were going to make him a dress out of toilet paper, take lots of pictures and post them all over the Internet. HOWEVER. We didn't anticipate the mariachi serenade, we got home later than expected, and then we were too tired. Stuff like that isn't nearly as fun when you're tired. :( Anyway, at about noon we piled into our hired van and headed to the Hacienda San Rafael for the wedding.


Lina showed up with her Dad at about 2pm in this fancy car:


During those two hours of wait time, everyone rehearsed with the wedding planner what we were supposed to do and where we were supposed to sit. Ira got to run around with his little ring-bearer pillow for a few minutes before the actual wedding...


...which didn't go anything like the wedding planner had told us. I completely missed Ira going (weaving) down the aisle, and I ALMOST missed Mike and Lina walking down the aisle together. But thankfully I didn't.


Most of the wedding went like this:


And the cute little flower girls started destroying their flower baskets half way through:


But it was a beautiful wedding, especially when Mike and Lina got to say sweet things to each other:


I did record it all with my camera, but the audio is bad--you can barely hear what they're saying. I'm going to work on it a little before I distribute it to anyone.

Directly after the ceremony, we had a toast. Mike's roommate Ben commented that the sparkling grape juice they served us tasted WAY better then the traditional champagne. (However, Colin didn't really like his "martini"--water and olives)


After the toast, we milled around outside socializing and drinking juice and eating various snacks while Mike and Lina rode around in their fancy car. When they got back, we went inside for dinner which was SO GOOD.


What's a good vacation story post without food porn? I had already consumed my dessert before I remembered I wanted to take a picture of it though. Oops. After eating, Katie got up and gave a speech about Mike and Lina with Cami translating. It was really well done and I even recorded it, but I might get murdered if I put it on my blog. :P

Next was dancing! Which I managed to avoid. Sorry, Lina. I really really REALLY can't dance. It's humiliating. At this point, I had filled up my 8 GB memory card and had to go through and delete some duds/duplicates to make space for dancing videos. Unfortunately, I couldn't clear off enough to free up the video buffer thingy and my camera would only take 6-12 seconds of video at a time. I got some footage of Mike and Lina dancing, which Mike told me I could delete. Sorry, Mike, not happening. Since you didn't get toilet papered, you get this instead:



(And come on--it's not that bad of dancing!)(also, I've had that wedding song stuck in my head for two days now)

Next was CRAZY HOUR!!! Which is when we don Mardi Gras-esque hats and masks and silly noise makers and go out and jump in a Conga line.


Everyone was a good sport for this one!


And actually, this was pretty fun. For some reason, you don't feel as stupid getting in a Conga line with a goofy mask and hat on. Even Dad got into it!


Finally at about 7pm we went back to our apartment, utterly exhausted. The next day we all went our separate ways. It was such a fun, culturally-rich vacation. And, of course, I got to hang out with my family. We usually only REALLY get together at Christmas, so it was such a treat to have this bonus time with them.


Little Ira is very shy. He gradually (very very gradually) warmed up to us all throughout the trip.

By that last night, we were pals!


Thanks Mike and Lina for giving us all such a great time in Colombia! I'm ready to start planning my next international trip! :)