Christmas in Bogota, Colombia

Yup, that's right... Christmas in Bogotá, Colombia. Why? When you're single and you want to spend the holidays with family, well, that means you travel. Since Mom and Papasan are in frigid (and I do mean frigid) Saskatoon, Canada, a trip to visit Deb, who is posted at the embassy in Bogotá seemed like a once in a lifetime opportunity - so bring it on!!

This is only about 10% of the pictures I have, I'm hoping there's something for everyone...

Kirk, Luci and the boys on the plane ride over - we left SLC at 8 am (many thanks to Caroline for the 5 am pick-up time - now that's a true friend!!). We flew from SLC to Houston to Panama City to Bogotá... LONG day!

Deb picked us up and we went straight to her apartment, amazingly enough with all of our luggage - our two layovers were really, really short - literally off one plane right on to the next one. The next day was recovery... Bogotá sits at about 8500 ft, and the elevation after a long day was tiring. LoveBug wasted no time in finding a car racing buddy...

And some things don't change - little boys are enchanted by construction at home and abroad!

Our outing Monday was a trip to the park where we played American style football, and then to another park where we became part of the Nativity (there were Nativities and Christmas trees everywhere and lights galore... the only thing I've seen that compares is Temple Square during Christmas, but this was all over the city!!

We did our best to cook... super high altitude makes things interesting. These chocolate muffins turned out not too bad...

The next day Kirk, Luci, LoveBug and myself spent the day with Nestor, who took us all over the city. We spent some time at the main city plaza downtown (again, notice the Christmas decorations):

One of the oldest cathedrals in Bogotá:

And the pigeons (I think that there were more here than at St. Marks in Venice!)

By this main square is the the Colombian version of the US White House - it's heavily guarded... lots of guards, military and big guns!

The day also included a stop at the Gold Museum. It was impressive - I don't know how else to describe it. LoveBug was the hit of the museum though - there was a group of about 5 little kids who followed him around - they don't see many blond, blue-eyed kids! They would gather around and listen to him talk and then giggle and chatter on for a few minutes and then wait and listen for him to say something again. Nestor said they thought it was pretty amazing that he could speak English!! Good thing they didn't hear us speak Spanish!

And here we're at the best empanada stand in Bogotá (Nestor's claim and after experiencing a couple other places we were in full agreement - muy delicioso!!)

The next day was filled with sugar cookie baking and decorating. Not the best sugar cookies I've ever made (back to the altitude thing I think), but they tasted good and isn't the point really just the decorating??!

Sara arrived the next morning (and her bags arrived a few hours after her... and she only had one LONG layover... still shocked that all our bags made it!). We spent Christmas Eve with Debby's good friends the Mendenhalls - they are AWESOME people, and it was so much fun to be with them. They go all out for Christmas Eve - a wonderful ham dinner, the Christmas story re-enactment (complete with scripts, costumes, scripture readings, Christmas carols, etc.), followed by cards and more eating and fun. A few pictures from our version of the Christmas Story:

The two Sara(h)s as angels:

Joseph, the donkey and Mary

The innkeeper, who was also Herod's high priest(ess):

The narrator (yeah, wish I knew... Kirk said his job as Narrator was to help the rest of us get into character so he needed a little bit of all of us... and a little of everything he is!)

The shepherd and a reluctant sheep:

The most reluctant sheep:

The star:

The wiseman (in the background - sorry Isaac - didn't get a good picture of you!!) and me as King Herrod (the parsley is leftover from my role as Caesar Augustus!!)

Christmas Morning:

And once again - somethings don't change!! Z-boy getting into anything not locked up!!

Look at this fabulous turkey!! Not bad for a bunch that's never done a turkey (and let me tell you, it was really, really, really good!!)

After eating, we followed the Robinson tradition of "watching movies" (code for some serious napping!!), playing games, eating... more movies...

The next day brought our trip to Guatavita - widely believed to be the source of the legend of El Dorado - which we gringos wrongly believe to mean a city of gold. In reality it was the Europeans came and thought the lake must hold huge amounts of gold because of ceremonies performed by the ancient peoples who lived here. Anyway, we packed into the Mendenhalls car:

And we were off!! I was very grateful to have the front seat - narrow, windy roads are not my friend! Guatavita has a great religious significance to the local people there - the trip to the lake is seen as a spiritual journey. I found the countryside to be beautiful:

Guessing potato fields, but don't know for sure!

And the lake itself - so interesting (science geek peeking out!!) because it looks like a nice round crater lake, but it's not believed to be volcanic in nature. It's hard to see from this picture, but there's a little tail of the lake going to the left which is the remnants of many attempts to drain it to get the fabled treasures. Sarah told me that it's believed that the water level was once up to the top of the rocks above the tail.

And here we are... notice the matching Christmas in Colombia t-shirts that Santa brought all of us!! Santa, you ROCK!!

We went back to the village and did a little shopping - OK, Luci did most of the shopping!! I have found that I'm not really a shopper, at home in the US or in other countries!

And one more picture of us being all matchy-matchy...

Yet again - somethings don't change!! Z-boy LOVES to drive!!

On our way back to Bogotá we hit a slow-down - coming up the mountain was a truck blaring music followed by a huge number of people on horses! Not sure of the significance, but it was kind of funny!

Sunday afternoon we took part in a holiday and Sunday tradition in Bogotá - ciclovir. They basically shut down many of the streets, including the major ones, so they are open for pedestrians and bicyclists. The number of people out was amazing!!

Another square decorated for Christmas!!

We also made a trip to the Bogotá, Colombia temple. It was beautiful and huge!! It wasn't open when we were there, but the guard let us on to the grounds anyways.

One of our favorite road signs... does it mean watch out for car crashes or ... amazingly, despite the CRAZY driving, we never saw an accident.

A building decorated for Christmas... I think there were about 5 Santa's in this display!!

Monday morning we hiked up a mountain (I don't remember if it had a name, but it was high and we hiked through the serpent's belly and the stairway to heaven and the death march... it was exhausting!!) Here we are at the top of the death march - I think Kirk has the best form...

A view of the northern part of the city. I was amazed at just how enormous Bogotá was, even from our vantage point, you couldn't see the edge of the city... it just went on and on and on. I guess for city to be home to about 8 million people, it has to be huge!!

And looking down at where we started... way, way down there...

That afternoon we visited the Embassy and sat in Deb's office and felt important, then it was off to Monserrate. We took the aerial tram up:

Another market:

A view of southern Bogotá:

And the boys "sharing" a popsicle!!

Many thought we were crazy for going to Bogota for Christmas or any other reason! But the people were so nice, even though it was obvious that we were gringos and never once did I feel threatened or unsafe. What an incredible opportunity!! Deb, you are the hostess with the mostess!! Thank you so much for letting us come - it was just awesome.

The only bad part? Coming back to Salt Lake (snow!! brrr....) and real life (really? I have to go to work on Monday?? no fair!!)