Valle de Cocora and Salento

Parque Tayrona

Too bad I don't have more long weekends to spend here! Parque Tayrona is east of Santa Marta on the Atlantic coast of Colombia. I spent the night in a hammock where I could hear the waves...

Semana santa travels- Part I

So, the plans to go to the Amazon unfortunately didn't pan out. Saturday and Sunday were spent with Heather in Parque Tayrona. I liked Tayrona a lot, especially since you can't really be outdoors and do outdoors kinds of things in Barranquilla. Now I'm convinced that I need to buy camping equipment so I can do these kinds of things more often. Sunday night I flew out of Santa Marta to my present location. At the moment, I'm here in Bogota, which isn't all that bad, but it is cold and rainy and has ginormous traffic jams. All of this leads up to the fact that I haven't really seen or done that much here. Yesterday was walking around the Candelaria area, feeling a little sick, and then to the Escaleras, where it started pouring and took over 2 hours to get back to where I'd left from. Today was Monserrate and the Museo de Oro. So, not much achieved here. Not even any good, cheap shopping. Oh well. Tomorrow I'm headed to Manizales, in the eje cafetero. It's somewhere between 6 and 8 hours from here on bus, depending on who you talk to. I hope (rather pessimistically) that it won't be as cold as Bogota!

Thank you, immigrants

In light of all of the discussions concerning immigration in the US right now, please take a minute to listen to Richard Rodriguez of NPR's All Things Considered thanks immigrants for the many, many jobs that they do.

The Shakira Statue

This made international news! I've yet to see the statue, which is supposedly here someplace, but I think I'd be happier if I never do. It's not as bad as I thought it would be. I'd imagined one of those bronze-like statues (Simon Bolivar, Benito Juarez, los niños heroes, etc.), all traditional and old-style. I still hold that there must be other people who do good work in this city that deserve a statue before Shakira, though. Too bad when I asked people, they couldn't think of names. This is the kind of statue that goes in an amusement park or something like that, not out on the street in front of a university (unless she went there, which she didn't), which is what they want to happen here.