Colombia

In December we went to an amusement park - the biggest amusement park in Colombia. We had to ride a cable car to get to the amusement park.  From the top of the dropping tower, we saw wild capybaras. We went on a ferris wheel and you could spin yourself while it was going around.  The rides and the roller coasters didn't have so many extra seatbelts, but they were still safe. They were really strict about height. Only my younger brother and I could go on the carousal. The rest were too tall.   Food wasn't expensive like it is in the United States. We ate hot dogs and in this region they put mini crispy french fries on their hot dogs and hamburgers.  Most rides and rollercoasters were the same types as in America, but the rides ran for a longer amount of time, and that was nice. I went on all the rollercoasters.  It was more spread out than amusement parks in the United States. There were three different sections and you had to have a train to get from secti...

On New Years Eve, we went on a motorcycle up a mountain, and it was my first time ever going on a motorcycle. It was fun.  After we took the motorcycles up, we had to hike back down the other side for two and a half hours. It was steep and rocky.  We saw lots of big spiders.    When we arrived at the beach, we saw a lot of crabs and big toads. We found another kid from Spain and we played with him a lot. He showed us how to catch the crabs. He knew four languages and he was only ten!  Look at this HUGE toad and all the tadpoles.  This is where we slept the first night. I never slept in a hammock before and it was comfortable but I did wake up a lot.  This was my favorite part. We played cards with two other families. They were both from Europe. We taught them some games, but we taught them the games in Spanish because it was the only language we all had in common, even though it wasn't anyone's native language. It was very fun to do that. It was cool t...

    I went on a four day hike that was supposed to be five days that we changed because we thought we could do it a little faster. We climbed seven ridges in four days. To get to the hike, we had to ride in a super bumpy van and we had to sit in the back with other people that weren't in our group, but were also doing the hike.   We had a hiking group with two other families. The two other families were from The U.S. like us so we could speak English. The groups were so nice. We also had a translator. Two of the four days were half days of hiking. The other two days we hiked the entire day. We stopped to eat lunch in the middle. They had very good food.  We would sleep pretty much outside with a roof over us, and we had a bug net and you would normally stay in a twin bunkbed, but sometimes a hammock.  There were other hiking groups that stayed at the same places as us as night. We found some other people who k...

We drove to a new region. We are in the desert next to the ocean. Here there are not really roads so when you are in the car you go back and forth, back and forth. And there are kids that sit on the ground and when cars come by, they beg for candy. They put their hands out for the candy or they put a rope out. They do it every day that they don't have school and they sit there every day begging for candy. It is kind of like a parade but they do it every day. And we throw them candy. I think it is fun throwing them candy.  We're not keeping track and I'm forgetting the days of the week! On Friday, we went to the beach twice. They were beaches next to cliffs and the cliffs were kind of over you. At the beaches we played in the sand and swam in the ocean.  We climbed a big hill that was super windy.  In the morning we went to a place that we got to see huge waves come and the waves are so big that they make rainbows when they s...

 These are some of the types of ice cream we have had here. They put mora on top of it. It is blackberry stuff.  Dad got a sundae tonight.   There was a lot of fruit in it and it had alien eggs (well at least that's what we call them; it's really maracuya - passion fruit), and he also has a lot of other fruit. There was even cheese on it!  Brownie Mandarin Dad's fancy fruit and cheese sundae We go to the fruit store a lot. One day I ate six bananas.  This is us at the fruit store.  Here lunch is the biggest meal, dinner is the smallest, and breakfast is in the middle.  For breakfast we eat fruit, eggs, crackers and we drink sugar water but they call it panela, but then they changed to hot chocolate. Two days I also had ham and cheese sandwiches and the outside looked like waffles.  The orange juice in the picture is freshly squeezed from hand.  Lots of fruit every morning We get a lot of soda here, but we have no pictures of it, so here is a ...

None of the kids wanted to write about this hike, so since it was one of my favorites, I decided to throw a quick entry together for it.  On Saturday, we crossed an item off my bucket list for this region. We hiked the iconic Cocora Valley.  This hike took us through all sorts of terrains and mini adventures: crazy jeep ride, cow pastures, jungle complete with Indiana Jones style bridges, a hummingbird sanctuary, mountain (tall hill?) peaks, and then finally ended with a magnificent view of the towering palm trees that are hundreds of years old speckled across the smooth terrain. First, to get to this valley, you catch a "Willy". A Willy is a Jeep that transports large groups of people around. They wait until they are full, and then they take off... Full means that two people have to stand on the backside. Since we were the first people to hop in ours, we got to take some pics!  View of the inside of a "Willy" View out the back of the Willy  Coming from the dairy in...