PASSING THROUGH COLOMBIA, NOT COLUMBIA!

Yesterday was one of those NOT fun days when you travel! First, the day before Justin, Angie and Betty went off to meet up with Angie's Mom and siblings. I had gone earlier in the week to meet the Tias, the aunts who basically raised Angie. It was interesting to be in their home, to see what was behind some of the walls we had driven past! They look like nothing from the street but behind are sometimes lovely homes, in this case, large rooms, lots of trees and plants outside and even chickens in the back yard! I spent about 2 hours hearing all this conversation in Spanish, none of which I could understand. so I decided to pass on this family visit and stayed around the pool while they visited. Justin really wanted her family to meet some of HIS family! He has one brother, Jason, and his wife Lynne, who live in California. He does art illustrations for the movie industry. They haven't been able to get down here to visit yet. And Patti, their mother and Betty's sister, died maybe two years ago just before Betty and I did that two month trip to Asia to Qatar, Bali, Singapore, Malaysia, Myanmar, Vietnam and China. So her family had never met any of HIS family. I think he liked showing off his "Tia."

Anyway, they are a very attractive family, with one brother Pablo. So far no grandchildren. I think just one of the sisters is married. They had a nice visit for a couple of hours and then we had our last night in Manta with dinner and karaoke! (see previous entry)

At 6:15 a.m. Justin and Angie drove us across town, past all the fishermen bringing in their morning catch to sell fresh right at the docks (still remembering that delicious fish soup the other day for breakfast! Justin said that tuna had probably been swimming in the ocean a few hours earlier!) We were flying Avianca air this time, the Colombian airline based in Bogota, from Manta to Quito, then changing planes to Bogota and then San Jose, Costa Rica. Coming in to Manta we flew TAME, the Ecuadorean airlines, on a two engine propeller plane! I hadn't flown one of those since the bush flights in Botswana and Zimbabwe! This was a small jet and the airport is under construction (they had a huge earthquake here in 2016 so lots of repairs being made! I was VERY glad to leave Ecuador before we felt any tremors, being in a tall building! They had had a 4.3 one a few days before we arrived, just tremors but I didn't like Justin's description of feeling it during the night!! Angie freaks out because she was here during the 2016 one. They drove us through a downtown area where over 700 people had died! The buildings have all been replaced by "container" buildings to make new stores. This is where we went shopping a bit and where I got my mani-/pedi at that lady's house.

The airport was all I got to see of Colombia. Lots of signs in the airport kept reminding, "Colombia, NOT Columbia" Guess it's an issue!

Inside Tias' kitchen on our visit

Manta airport, you walk outside to load and unload planes. No inside ramps yet!

El Faro's tomb, surrounded by faces of many national heroes I guess who helped him, many who died with him. He was a martyr to the cause.

Chickens in Tia's backyard

I forgot to mention this El Faro, after whom the airport is named. Earlier in the week we had drive up to MonteCristo, a town up in the hills where one of their national heroes El Faro is buried. He helped, in the mid-1800s in Ecuador's independence fight. There's a picture I already posted of the four of us in front of his elaborate tomb. There was an interesting museum, albeit all in Spanish, that we went through, including outside part of a train. This guy built the first train line in Ecuador to connect the coastal towns with the interior. The monument/tomb was quite elaborate, in the shape of some kind of insect. Interesting architecture! I'm not very familiar with much S.A. history but I know that Ecuador, Venezuela, Colombia, Panama and some others maybe were once all part of Colombia, after they broke away from Spain. And all have had a pretty bloody history to become independent countries.

Anyhow, they left us there and the flight was fine into Quito. We lucked out at it wasn't too cloudy coming down (I've heard sometimes you can't land there up in the mountains when it's too thick. It's surrounded by the Andes. ) It was sunny but nice and COOL there, compared to the muggy heat of Manta! Very refreshing! This airport had just opened when we were here touring South America maybe 6 years ago! We flew then from Quito to Cusco, Peru, on the way to Macchu Picchu. I remember watching this flight arrive, with firetrucks spraying an arc of water for the plane to drive through! I think it was the first flight to land there then.

Our flight to Bogota was delayed (no idea why!), so we were going to miss our connection to San Jose. Apparently only two flights a day go there from Bogota. So I heard my name called over the intercom. The gate attendant then worked to get us on the second flight from Bogota leaving at 9 pm. We finally flew out and didn't see much as we were flying - lots of clouds and rain. We arrived about 1/2 hour before our original flights was to leave so we did a marathon FASTWALK all the way to GATE 53 just in case we might be able to hop on our original flight to San Jose, even if our lugggage came later! But we arrived maybe 10 minutes after plane had departed. We then spent about 7 hours!!!! wandering around Bogota airport, I slept on the seats for maybe an hour, had a beer (Betty) and strawberry Margarita (me!).

I wondered aloud to Betty (she didn't know answers either) as to why Colombia a few years ago was riddled with drug cartels, scary to visit, and now seems to be a thriving, safe country in S.A.  How and why that happened and Venezuela is NOW such an unsafe, crime-ridden, corrupt, crazy place - when that used to be the opposite! Have to do some research later! But we couldn't see anything of the city somewhere in the distance. Bought a few souvenirs and got a few Colombian coins for my collection. Panama and Ecuador all used American coins! I think Costa Rica uses both.

We had arranged for an OAT driver to pick us up as we were arriving so late (LONG line getting through customs!) and finally made it to the Holiday Inn in Santa Ana, where Alex, our local OAT buide was waiting to settle us in! Off to breakfast for our first day here!