Exploring Bogota

Saturday June 15, 2024

Peanut is still a bit droopy and drippy. Poor guy. He slept solidly through the night again. There were a couple moments of crying around 6:30 am but when I checked on him, his eyes were shut and he gently went back to sleep….as did I. It was wonderful! I think he slept until about 8:00. We can handle that for sure! He wakes up crying which gets more intense when you come into the room but the moment he is pulled from the crib…all smiles!

Still not a 100% but doing just fine!

He typically has his first bottle of the day, plays for a while, then gets drowsy and heads back to bed after a couple hours. Madness! What a schedule! During that second stint in bed, the kids and I went back to that “Bakery” cafe. They helped bring home some coffee & hot chocolates along with some croissants with cheese baked in them. The same as I mentioned the other day. That little cafe is excellent and if I had that outside my house, well, that would be trouble meaning for my pants size.

Claudia had another appointment with the dentist for the actual permanent repair. That appointment was at 1:30 but after breakfast, there was about a hour to kill before we needed to go. So the kids and I went to play in the park. Just down the block is the Cedro Natural Park that has basketball courts.

Looks beautiful doesn’t it. Don’t be fooled! There are land mines all over the greens!

I know what you’re thinking, basketball? Well, me too but there aren’t really any soccer fields at this park and though if you look at google images of this place, it looks very green but upon further closer review, I don’t want to walk through that grass. It seems there are a lot of people like my neighbor Gary who lets his dog roam the neighborhood if you know what I mean.

Hmm, the AirBNB site has this picture of the park with the unleashed culprits right in the picture and the Colombian version of Gary right there on the side!

So basketball it is, with a soccer ball which I think makes it harder. We’ve actually been to that park every day since getting here and have played b-ball of all things. Today, Nani was the champ winning both a game of 21 & around the world.

That was fun but it was time to get Claudia to her appointment. Driving in bogota on the weekend was “fun”. Just a little bit of traffic made us late and Claudia had to do a running dismount of the car in front of the building. Ok, not really. We were stopped in traffic and it was quicker for her to walk the rest of the way. After a bit of big city aggressive driving to find a parking ramp, we arrived safe and sound at the Hacienda Santa Barbara, a kind of historic site that now has shopping and artisans working and selling. Peanut did wonderful. He lived the stroller until he didn’t anymore if that makes any sense. We wandered quite a bit and then I thought I’d give the baby-backpack thing a try. I love irony. I used to make fun of the “poor soulless men” I would see wearing these things in public. Note the text exchange Claudia and I had regarding this device:

NOTE: Due to me using Claudia’s phone for GPS in route, we swapped phones so our roles in this text exchange are reversed…my comments on the left, her responses on the right.

Nani, my huge helper these days. She’s a rockstar for our peanut!

There were some pretty interesting artisan shops. Really nice stuff. People can be so creative! But there were a few that were just sad and disappointing. One shop sold a lot of religious material. Colombia is primarily a Catholic country so I did get excited to see some of the books and crucifixes on the wall in one shop but on the other side of the shop were wickan books (not sure of the spelling) but satanic books sold right along side Christian books. I guess I see that at home too when I go to Half Price Books but it was really over the top. I didn’t even walk in. I would never buy something from a shop like that. Another shop, same deal but had a 3foot tall statue of Jesus in a meditation pose that is common with Hindu imagery. That also bothered me, perhaps more than it should. I doubt it, I was probably the right level of disgusted.

Hacienda de Santa Barbara

Claudia eventually met up with us and we went for dinner. Andre didn’t have much interest in us eating dinner and not much interest in having his bottle either. He was starting to get a bit fussy (he still is a bit drippy after all). So we needed to eat in shifts.

Trying our best to keep him entertained but it was a mission that would fail. Lil dude was winding down pretty quick.

It worked out ok. His naps were not wonderful today (see the backpack story from earlier) and we were out for a lot longer than intended. That’s a lot for a 7-month old. We ended up getting home around 9:00 I suppose and put him to bed pretty much right away. The kids watched a Wingfeather episode and I played catchup on blogging. The WiFi really is crap in the house. I’ve had to resort to using a hotspot from my phone which is not ideal since we do NOT have unlimited data here on our phones. We’re discovering all the little annoyances with the AirBNB. It’s potentially a nice house but certainly needs a lot of attention. The pictures on AirBNB site are solid but a lot of shoddy things going on in this house. It’s beautiful though and has great potential for someone.

It’s easy to see why we chose this house. They certainly hired a photographer who did a great job of covering some of the issues.

Any way, I am all caught up now on blogging. Hoping for better wifi Sunday and a great Fathers Day. Happy Father’s Day to all of you guys!