Columbia – Medellin June 7, 2014 What a lovely city! This city, although it is the second largest in Columbia with 3.5 Million inhabitants if you include the surrounding municipalities, was completely unknown to us before we planned this trip. We have since learned that the city was completely under the thumb of drug lord …
Columbia – Bogota
Columbia, Bogota June 1, 2014 Bogota, cool, beautiful, interesting, mountainous. At 8,612 ft., Bogota seems to be in a completely different climate than the rest of Columbia and we got a break from the hot and extremely humid weather we had been experiencing in the Amazon. Unfortunately, we only had one day in Bogota, but …
Columbia – Leticia
Columbia – Leticia May 31, 2013 We flew to the little airport in Tabatinga, Columbia and then drove the kilometer or so across the border into Leticia, Columbia. We arrived on a Saturday night and the small town was absolutely hopping. The town was on the a river and we went down to the riverfront …
Brazil – Manaus and the Amazon
Brazil – Manaus and the Amazon May 27, 2014 The trip to Brazil would not have seemed complete without a visit to the Amazon rain forest. We decided to fly to Manaus and then stay at a lodge on the Amazon river, from whence to do day excursions to see the Amazon’s varied wildlife and …
Brazil – Rio de Janeiro
Brazil – Rio de Janeiro May 22, 2014 Rio! A place that has seemed so crazy, exotic and far away for my whole life! We were excited to finally get to Rio. We rented an apartment from which we could see the statue of Christ the Redeemer right from our deck…this made it somehow seem …
Brazil – Morro du Sao Paulo
Brazil – Morro du Sao Paulo May 18, 2014 We had decided it would be time to head out to the beach at this point, and had booked four nights in a palmy beach resort on Morro du Sao Paulo, north of Salvador. It was a bit of a long day getting there, requiring a …
Brazil – Salvador
Brazil – Salvador May 15, 2014 Salvador has the most flavor and color of the Brazilian cities we have seen. It was at one time a big slave port, and the African culture has been maintained here potentially as well if not better than anywhere in the Americas. Salvador is famously dangerous, however, the wold …
Brazil – Brasilia
Brazil – Brasilia May 12, 2014 Brasilia was completely conceived of and constructed in the 1950’s to replace Rio as the capital and act as a uniting factor for the different regions of Brazil. This was the brain child of President Juscelino Kubitschek de Oliveira (Generally referred to as JK for obvious reasons) and architect …
Brazil – Miranda
Brazil, Miranda (Fazeda Bahai Grande) May 8, 2014 Fazenda means farm in Portuguese and in the Pantenal, farm means cattle. During the rainy season, much of the land is flooded and there is much less area for grazing cattle. Awhile back, after tourists had become intersted in the area for its abundant wildlife and bird …
Brazil – Bonito
Brazil – Bonito May 5, 2014 Bonito is our first stop in the Pantenal, a large wetlands area in the interior of Brazil famous for cattle farming and wildlife viewing. Bonito is a partcular stopover because of the abundance of very clear rivers that flow through this area. There are limestone caves to boot, so …