Road Trippin'

During our visit to Cali, we took a little 3 day weekend road trip with Chris and Ana Maria to a few places around the coffee region of Colombia. The views along the trip were amazing, and a camera wouldn't even begin to do it justice. I can see why the eco-tourism is so popular here.

Rule #1 of road-tripping: Always bring plenty of snacks. 

Stephany was nice enough to share with us after she ate all of the good ones out of the bag :-) Thanks a lot!

Rule #2 of road-tripping: The driver needs coffee on demand.

This is Ana Maria by the way...

The first stop on the trip was Cocora for some white water rafting!

The rapids were fun and pretty tame because of the season, so nobody fell in...but the views along the river were beautiful!

After a short jeep ride back to the rafting company's property, we relaxed a little...

...played with the dogs...

...enjoyed the scenery...

...but not before a good ole' rock wall climb!

After another hour of driving, we arrived at a 3 bedroom finca in Quindio where we were staying for the weekend. We were ready for a nice relaxing evening after a long day of driving, paddling, and climbing. The grounds keeper was happy to heat the hot tub up for us even though we arrived late.

Stephany and I woke up to rows of coffee plants out one window...

...and a nice view of the property and banana trees out the other. 

This place was awesome and had all the amenities we needed (including hot water)! The grounds keeper even made us breakfast in the morning. 

The rooms weren't too shabby either.

Ours was the one on the right. 

This wasn't the end of our trip though. We still had a couple more things planned for the weekend adventure.

Cali (not 'fornia)

Last week we took a trip to Cali to visit Stephany's dad (Chris) and some friends in Cali. We stayed with a really nice brother and his family in the house next door to Chris. This was really a fun and exciting trip for us as you're about to discover in the upcoming blog posts.

Our trip started early in the morning by taking a taxi from our house at 4:30 AM up to the airport for our flight at 6:45 AM. We bought tickets through a "no frills" airline here called Viva Colombia. In total, our tickets cost us about $40 round trip per person, so they are a pretty economical airline to take for a weekend getaway in Colombia. We had to fit all of our clothes in two backpacks to avoid paying a luggage fee, which was as much as the price of the tickets!

One of the local malls in Cali called Chipi-Chape. There's a nice hotel connected to the mall too.

We went to a meeting with the Cali English group on Friday and went to a couple's house afterwards for empanada's and to hang out. The couple standing in the back just moved to Cali, Colombia from Pennsylvania last month, so they are just getting settled in.

They had a piano at the house that nobody plays, so I dusted off the keys a little bit for them :-) This was my second time playing the piano since we moved here, so it felt good to get back on the keys.

We made a short bus trip to Palmira to visit some old friends for a few days. Palmira is about an hour outside Cali. This is the family that Stephany and her sister Jessica stayed with for 6 months about 3 years go (check it out!). This Spanish group just started 2 weeks before our visit and most of the brother and sisters are pioneers. In this picture, we are standing outside a sister's house which they are using as their Kingdom Hall.

There are about 30 people that attend this small group. (Note: This is also a picture of the sister's Living room). Behind the curtain and podium is her kitchen.

These two little guys were hanging out in the back room. After the meeting, they like to mingle with everyone.

We had a brief meeting for service at 9:00, then...

...it's time to hit the road.

You never know what you're gonna see out there. It looks like this cow broke loose from his field, but didn't make it too far :-(

Along the road, there are Banana and Guava trees to pick a quick snack off of. I picked this fresh Guava right off the tree and took a big bite out of it only to find a worm! We did load up a bag full of  guava's though to make juice later. 

The second day in the ministry, it was raining, so we had to use other means of transportation. The territory in the mountains was so beautiful, and everything was so fresh! There were absolutely amazing views with the clouds between the mountains and banana trees and coffee plants growing everywhere.

 This was awesome!

The territory is a long way up in the mountains, but Jesus (the man in the raincoat, not the Christ) talks with just about everyone on the way up. 

Eventually it stopped raining and we could put away the rain coats and enjoy the misty mountain views.

.

What is nice in this territory is that pretty much everyone respects and will listen to the Bible's message, so all of the effort to contact these people is very rewarding. Jesus (pictured above) is conducting about 5 bible studies already in this territory.

We finished up the day with 2 Bible studies. This lady was very proud of her parrot as you can see. While on this study, the lady made us some breakfast with her chicken's egg that was big enough to feed two people! 

Over all, this was a very cool experience with the brothers in Cali and Palmira. Almost everyone in the mountains lives off the land, or has access to fresh produce. As we were walking around the territory or conducting Bible studies, it wasn't uncommon to have a chicken or rooster walk in and crow at us a few times.

El Peñól de Guatapé

We spend a lot of time in the ministry looking for English speaking extranjeros (foreigners), and sometimes we forget that we are extranjeros too. Every week we try to have an extranjero day where we visit some museum or attraction around, or outside the city. This past week we took a 2 hour road trip to El Peñón (The Rock), and the town of Guatapé. It's possible to get there by bus, but a sister was nice enough to lend us her car for the day.

After 2 months, it felt good to drive again! And it's a manual transmission at that! Somehow I always get stuck driving....

Horse.

Almost there....

And we have arrived! There was just a small parking fee 4000 pesos, and 12000 pesos to get access to the steps. We were pretty much the only ones there, but we did get to witness to several foreigners at the top!

 There are 740 steps to the top. Only the strong will make it

Here's the top of the rock, but we're not done yet. We still need to climb that little tower in the background. Still, this is a great place to have a beer, or eat some lunch since there are a couple restaurants up here. Ice cream is also a recommended option :-)

And here we are at the top! This is really an amazing view. The panoramic can only do so much. 

The glamour shot

This seemed like a Titanic moment....

Man cards are given to those who make it to the 740th step at the top of the tower. Look at the first picture of the rock, then at this one, then back at the picture of the rock. Need I say more?

Had to put this in for dramatic effect

So we ate some lunch, and drove a little ways to the town of Guatapé. It's a pretty cool old Spanish looking town surrounding a giant lake. This is kind of a dry season, so it the town was pretty quiet.

This is probably the reason why it was so quiet. When the lake is full, you can rent jet-ski's and explore the islands, do water sports, or zip-line. There are also a lot of nice little places to stay around here.

We love the architecture and the cozy little town feel that this town has.

The Panda (that's the model of the car) got us there and back with no problems!

Overall it was a pretty awesome day! We got a chance to see some of the natural sights of Colombia and get some fresh air. As a bonus, we all arrived home safely with sunburns.