Summer in Colombia

Here's a little taste of Central Colombia:
In July, my husband and I travelled to Miami to visit Alex's parents and then to Colombia to visit former bandmates Hector and Claudia in Medellin and another friend's family in Bogota.  We started our trip with a 3 hour flight delay in RDU, slept in the Miami airport on the floor for about 2 hours, boarded an easy flight to Bogota where our friends met us to take us to the bus station, then slept on and off on a 9 hour bus ride deep into the central tropical mountains of Colombia.  We were dropped off by the bus in the dark across from a roadside restaurant, tired, hungry, and me with a bit of motion sickness. The bus driver said, "This SHOULD be it, this is the only Rio Claro, but I don't know this place you are staying."  Luckily, yes, we were in the right place and saw the sign Refugio Rio Claro.  We put on our headlamps and headed down a 1 km dirt road to the main office, greeted by cicadas, frogs, trickling water from the river, and of course, lots of flying insects.  It felt good to be walking on firm ground!

 

Li-lan doing Qi gong in a stalactite cave in Rio Claro

Wild-looking tropical flower! Each step/groove you
see is a repository of water for bees and insects and
a gray flower grows out from it.  In front of our room

 

A Honda Fit hatchback jam packed with fruit for sale

Alex playing bongos on the plaza in Villa de Leyva

Our friends in Medellin.  Hector and Claudia (in black) used to play with our band Different Drum and we also had a Latin Band called Son Libre.

Hand molded stucco house by Octavio Mendoza in Villa de Leyva, everything inside was hand sculpted

 

Click here to watch a Video of Rio Claro, Alex plays the trumpet.  We are upriver about 2 miles from the main office.