Colombia: Day 1

Hello Everyone,

My sister, daddy, and I are safely back from our wonderful trip to Cartagena, Colombia.  I already miss it!  The Lord really blessed the trip and surrounded us with the "peace that passes all understanding" the entire time.
I wanted to try and document what happened every day we were there for myself as well as for your enjoyment.  Enjoy!

~Day 1~

Two-thirty came bright and early Monday morning.  That was the time we had to wake up in order to be at the airport by 4am.  This was the first time that Kimber and I had been on a plane so we were both excited and a little nervous!  After going through security and some TSA checkpoints we found the gate we were supposed to wait at and sat down.  It was about 4:45 at this point and none of us were really motivated to fall back asleep until we had to get on the plane at 6:15, so we dug out some books we had brought to keep ourselves occupied.  

Since our flight was so early we were able to watch the sunrise before we had to leave.  It was breathtaking!

Finally, we were able to load onto the plane.  We found our seats and settled down.

I was a little nervous about take-off and whether or not my ears were clear but the Lord blessed me during the whole ride!

The sunrise right before take-off.

Our flight left right on time (7am) and we had a gorgeous flight down to Florida where we caught our next connection at 10:45 to Cartagena, Colombia.

 The clouds were absolutely stunning when we were above them.  I didn't even realize you could go higher than clouds :)!

Enjoying some quiet reading and snack time on the plane.

Finally we arrived in Colombia around 2:00pm.  Colombia is beautiful but even from the plane we could tell how very poor the majority of the country is.

When we left VA it was around 32degrees and when we arrived in Cartagena it was a balmy 90degrees!  Talk about a major weather change in just a few hours ;).

We were able to get off the plane with no problem and passed through security fairly quickly.  As soon as we left the security checkpoints we realized that English was no longer the majority language but Spanish!  Now thankfully we knew a little bit of Spanish (enough to make ourselves fairly understood), but those around us only knew a little bit of English so together we were a pretty bad mix :).

We found a taxi and tried to sit back and relax on our way to the hotel.  Unfortunately the traffic was so horrific that we ended up being on the edge of our seats most of the time :).  It wasn't that there was a lot of cars as much as how these cars drove.  Wow- so different from the organized highways of the United States.  

We finally reached our hotel and our room where we finally had a chance to relax for a second.

 Our room.  Isn't it beautiful?!  I love all the purple!

This was the view out our window- gorgeous!

After settling in a bit we decided to go and explore.  We discovered they had a ping-pong table and tons of exotic flowers and trees (Kimber was in photographer heaven :) ).

 Daddy and I playing a bit.

The courtyard of the hotel.

 My wonderful daddy/protector and I!

 The view of our hotel from the beach.  And no, Kimber and I did not go down the water slide.  I don't think it was made for our size :).

 A coconut tree!  I wanted to take one home to show everyone but I didn't know if coconuts were allowed through customs :).

 Green banana anyone?

 The beach in front of the hotel.

My lovely sister and I!

After exploring the hotel grounds we decided to try and find the money exchange place that the manager of the hotel said was right across the street.  We ended up walking quite a ways down the street and right before we wondered if we were going the right way we found it.  We walked in and began telling him what exactly we wanted when we realized his understanding of English was minimal in the extreme!  We decided to wait for a translator to help us exchange our money tomorrow.  

It was so warm and the sandy beaches looked so inviting that we decided to walk "home" on the beach front...bad idea!  We were immediately surrounded by all of these ladies eager to sell their goods to the unsuspecting, Americans.  We tried to politely insist that we didn't need any of their goods but it was to no avail.  Soon Kimber and I had 3 or 4 Colombian women braiding our hair.  They insisted we sit down in these plastic chairs they brought over so they could do our entire heads.  Daddy also was hijacked by 3-4 women who wanted to give him a massage- yikes!  We kept saying that we didn't have any money to pay them with (in our best Spanish we could muster) but they said it didn't matter.  

 Myself and daddy in the background.... :)

Kimber...

After about 45 minutes they were finished and began to insist that we pay them.  Daddy gave one girl a $20 bill and asked her to split it with everyone else but they said they couldn't do that.  They were professionals so they had to be paid individually.  Daddy only had $20 bills on him so we couldn't pay each one separately.  I think we ended up paying 3 or 4 of the ladies $20 bills and then hurried back to the hotel.  

We were so glad to be back in our hotel!  

    Kimber and I with our new doo!

It was about time for dinner so we headed up to the executive lounge to get something to eat.  They had a beautiful spread of fresh fruits, breads, empanadas, and more.

Daddy getting some dinner :).

During dinner we enjoyed watching the crazy traffic below us :).

After we finished eating we headed to our room and settled down to watch Captain America before we fell asleep.

And so ended Day 1.  Tomorrow the real excitement began!

Learning to delight in Jesus,

Hannah