Viva Colombia

Well... We're doing another South America trip. Seems like just yesterday that we were hiking on the Inca trail (because it really wasn't that long ago). And now we're going to a close neighbor to Peru. 

The Inca trail trip was a quick decision where we found really affordable tickets and when the world looked like it might be emerging safely from the pandemic. We kept the trip short because we had planned to do a longer trip to hopefully Vietnam or somewhere in Southeast Asia over the winter. That was always the dream anyway. Of course, the pandemic is still going on and Southeast Asia is completely closed.

We are vaccinated and boosted up now so we feel comfortable traveling to countries that will take us. We'll also take the necessary precautions of testing before we leave, wearing masks as much as possible, and socially distancing when possible. Anywaysssss, that's enough about a pandemic that will never end until more people get vaccinated/boosted. 

Basically, as soon as we got back from Peru, we started looking up flights to other parts of the world. We tracked flights to lots of places including Mexico, Colombia, Eastern Europe, Italy, and many other places. 

Mexico would have been fun because my step-sister has a family there in Guanajuato and my mom and stepdad (pre-pandemic) would go down there for a month in the winter. Unfortunately, the schedule didn't line up and my mom is not going down there. 

Italy would have been great! Lacey took Italian in college. Both she and I have always had an affinity for Italian culture (food, architecture, people, etc.). But Italy in winter is fairly cold. Plus, I've been to most of the places in Italy that we wanted to visit. Of course, I would be happy to visit Italy again, but not this time. 

Eastern Europe would be good too. Lacey has been to Budapest and loved it. We know we would love the food, the culture, the sights. We would have prioritized visiting Poland where we both have some family history. The only problem? Winter. We were not excited about spending time sightseeing in similar weather to what Minneapolis experiences.

That leaves Colombia. We've looked into the country many times before when thinking about trips. It's a relatively newer destination in the travel world. The crime that was so pervasive in the country 20-ish years ago has definitely calmed down considerably. There are neighborhoods we will not and cannot walk through but that's true in many countries. We plan to do more tours than we have in the past so we have the local angle and trust that that affords. 

The three boxes that Colombia easily checks for us are: warmth (it'll be 85 in some areas), food (the street food and food, in general, is out of this world), and variety of views (mountains, ocean, forest, cities, etc.). Plus it's incredibly cheap. We got 4 or 5 star hotels for less than $70 a night. 

So here's the general plan with a map: 

1. Start in the capital city of Bogota. That's where we fly into and out of. 
2. Fly to Periera (yellow). We will do a hike in a cloud forest and visit coffee farms.
3. Fly to Medellin (red). Culture, mountains, etc.
4. Fly to Cartagena (blue). Beach vibes, Caribbean Sea, etc.
5. Bus to Santa Marta (orange). More small town beach vibes. There's also a national park here that's a jungle that leads right up to sandy beaches.
6. Fly back to Bogota late (green) and immediately fly back to the US. 

One funny thing about this whole trip planning thing is that I create Google Docs for each trip idea. So I had 2 week trips planned out for all the ideas I talked about earlier. So we could have pulled the trigger on any of them and immediately had a pretty good idea of what we would be doing. When we found the Colombia flights that were ridiculously cheap, we pretty much knew what we wanted to do already. 

So yeah, we're keeping the tradition of flying over New Year's night alive! We flew to Thailand Dec 31, 2017. We flew to London Dec 31, 2019. And now, we're flying to Bogota Dec 31, 2021.