Bogotá to Cartagena

We arrived at Bogotá airport at 1PM, and wandered around the beautiful, cavernous, and modern airport of dark steel and living walls. There are a bunch of stalls selling hard cheese--Alex will be happy here.

We're over 8,000 ft here, so the air is thin. Cloudy, breezy, low 60's. Very nice.

In the airport we had a lunch of comida tipica: chicken soup and chicken rice, served with a giant slice of avocado. The restaurant, Katios, is full of families and solo business travelers. A German tourist next to us recommended gorse trips to coffee plantations in Salento, and she loved Ciudad Perdida, the lost city that's a 6 day trek from civilization.

On our way to our Cartagena flight, we stop for a tinto ("dark", normally means wine but means black coffee to Colombians). The café, Juan Valdez, is Colombia's answer to Starbucks, and quite a good one.

Our final flight ends up to be a 787-8, which is a very long range plane for our 1-hour flight. Still, this is my first time flying in one, and they're magically quiet and comfortable. It's a nice final leg after three other flights to get to this point

We finally made it to Cartagena, thanks to Avianca and this 787!

We arrived in the much warmer, sea level Cartagena at 5:30PM and used EasyTaxi, an international Uber-like app to grab a cab through the tiny streets of the old town to our hotel.

As the sun went down, we walked the narrow 1-way streets crowded with locals and tourists shopping, before heading through the Plaza de la Reloj and Plaza de las Coches, then walked along the fortified walls between the city and the Caribbean Sea. Squares were packed with people enjoying the cooling air, and plenty of horse-drawn carriages plodded through the alleys.  

Cartagena-old city

For dinner we headed to El Boliche Cebicheria. Alex ordered the delicious tamarind ceviche, while I tried the coconut-flavored one.  Large chunks of chewy fish made the dish seem more like unseasoned sashimi and I missed the cheap street food version.

For dessert, more people watching from Boundless, a mezcal-coffee bar overlooking Plaza de los Coches. Alex's rum, coffee, cointreau, and milk foam was good, but a little cold. My colombian gin, lime, jalapeño, cucumber was on point.

Journey to Colombia

This was initially supposed to be a New Year's trip with Alex and my Engineers Without Borders friends from Cal Poly, but costs for airfare got to be $1500-$2500 for a 5 day trip... we delayed this to a mid-January trip to get back into the lower post-holiday prices.

We booked separate tickets from Seattle-Los Angeles and LA to Cartagena, Colombia via Bogota, with only a 2 hour layover at LAX. As luck would have it, our flight out of Seattle was delayed almost 2 hours!

The LAX terminal 6 (domestic) is well-signed, but we and another couple others trying to make the same Bogota flight couldn't find upfront signage for terminals 2 or 3, just Tom Bradley terminal. No signage for buses was clearly visible in our rush either.

We ran the 1.1 miles through tunnels from one side of the LA airport to the other, fortunate that our luggage was only light carry-on backpacks. Eventually we made it to our gate...

... 3 minutes after our Bogota plane pulled away.

 I asked at the Avianca ticket counter employees, who responded without mercy that I should rebook at the airline office. Meanwhile Alex had much better luck speaking with another Avianca representative who encouraged the ticket counter workers to rebook us for free through San Salvador, Bogota, and finally Cartagena for free, leaving almost immediately! That was very nice of Avianca, especially since when we called their offices prior to leaving Seattle, the employees were adamant that any kind of rebooking would incur significant costs.

We were off! Watched parts of Revenant and Victoria & Abdul. Woke up as we touched down in San Salvador as the airport was starting up for the day. We stop over for food before our onward flight to Bogotá and then Cartagena.

 Our breakfast of pupusas in Monseñor Óscar Arnulfo Romero International San Salvador airport was a great life choice.