Traveling & Chatting with Seat Mates

We drove to Columbus the morning of the 22nd. Our suitcases were stuffed to the gills and we were ready for our adventure! Of course Mother Nature decided to interfere with our plans. We ended up being rerouted to Newark due to weather issues and plane delays in Houston. We arrived in Newark 40 minutes prior to the departure time to Bogota. A little tight to say the least. But we hoofed it and walked on the plane and the doors were shut a few minutes later. We made it just in time!

Delayed!

On the flight to Bogota I sat next to Nicole who works for the US Embassy in Colombia. Of course we chatted about the reason for our travel and I told her about Johan, Kidsave and our return visit. She was very interested in learning about our journey since she has a friend who has been trying to adopt in Colombia. Nicole is American and works in the Embassy. She has been there for almost 4 years and this will be her last. Evidently Embassy workers may only stay for 4 years at each particular Embassy. She said they want her to go to Guatemala next since she is single, it is a high risk area and she already is fluent in Spanish. She hopes to go to Toronto since it would be closer to her boyfriend who lives upstate New York. Before we landed she gave me her business card and said it was a 'get out of jail free pass' and that if we ran into any troubles we could call her for assistance. Always good to have an in at the Embassy!!

One of the challenges with flight changes is to notify the person picking you up! We had booked the trip with a company called See Colombia Travel. I called and left them a message and sent them an email that we would be an hour late. However it really wasn't necessary in the end because we arrived 45 minutes early! Which was great! Our tour guide, Lorena met us at departure and called upon our driver, Jose. It was about 10:30p.m. when we arrived. A short bit later they dropped us at our hotel - BH El Retiro. We were all pretty excited to finally arrive. At 11:15p.m. we were toasting our arrival with Cerveza, 7up, Cheeze-its & turkey sandwiches that traveled with us from Ohio!

bh El Retiro Hotel in Bogota