First vacation for Rick in over 3 years...

 I am going to start at the beginning.

Our family has done small trips to the beach or a day off here and there, but my husband has not been out of the country since we moved to Panama. 2018 was a very busy year for us and we decided to take a 5 day trip to Colombia. We have heard many wonderful things about Colombia and have some friends that have actually moved there. So, we finally made some time to go have some fun and explore. However, there is still a ton of work to do around the farm, so it had to be a short trip.

The first thing we noticed as we got seated in the plane was that the safety instruction sheet has been modified. This made me feel much safer. :)

Next, our hotel room was spacious, clean and came with a hot tub. The bed was very hard and kind of felt like we were sleeping directly on plywood. However, the food at the hotel restaurant was very good.

We then made time to go to the local zoo which was very close to the store where we found vinyl that we needed to buy. The zoo was clean and it was hard to believe it was in the middle of a city with a population of 2.5 million people. We felt like we had left the city and were truly out in the wilderness. We met one of the zoo workers who started giving us a personal tour and even made us some origami animals. :) I think he liked practicing his English on us.

My husband has not been to a real mall or anywhere with serious shopping options in a long time. It was fun to see him at all of the malls, it was even like watching a little kid at times. He loves lighting and at the Home Store, he was so excited that he could turn light switches on and off and they actually worked! Each mall we went to, had some sort of inside park area where people were gathered and hanging out. We had never seen something like that....and we went to ALOT of malls. :)

It was great seeing displays and stores that were completely new to us. :) The Beer Store logo looked like Starbucks from far away....haha.

One of the malls had an amusement park on the top floor. We had to go in there and have some fun too. :) Rick and I vowed to destroy each other on the bumper cars, but before we knew what was happening this teenage boy was ramming each of us.....and hard! Haha. Then it was off to the ferris wheel and other activities. 

The city was very, very clean. It was also fun to walk around and see all of the graffiti art. Everywhere we went, there was graffiti art on all of the walls. We saw that they even offered tours for this.

There were exercise parks everywhere! These were free parks with equipment there for people to keep in shape. It must be working, because most people that we saw appeared healthy and seemed active.

The traffic in this city was crazy! There were taxis everywhere and streets with no stop lights, but everyone understood how to navigate it. Hardly any of the cars had dents in them (not like where we live :) and it was fascinating to watch! There were scooters, motorcycles and mopeds everywhere.....they drove between lanes, in lanes...it was insane! There were even bicyclists hanging on to the backs of buses and trucks getting a free ride and no one seemed to care.

While we were away, we get a message from Hector saying that there is a fire on the hill. With it being the dry season, things can burn easily here. Thankfully, after the firefighters found our hill (they did not even know our road existed) and with the help of Melvin and maybe others, the fire was contained.

(Message from Hector: ​Bomberos are working with mochilas/back pack and Melvin is a volunteer. Don't worry)  Eeek!

All in all, we had a great time and it was great to get away for a few days, but we were glad when we were home and sleeping in our bed. It is now time for us to catch-up and get back to work!

Coming up:
One of Rick's best friends since he was a kid is coming to visit us with his wife. We can't wait until they get here! They actually have been here once - it was before we moved down here though.