San Andres

Jeff has been traveling a lot for work, and I've been busy with my job as well, so we decided to make time to hang out together.  One of the places he had to go for work was San Andres which is an island in the middle of the Caribbean.  It's technically part of Colombia, although it's actually closer to Nicaragua than Colombia, but all I needed to hear was Caribbean island.

Vivian had a two night Girl Scout camp out, and Piedad was happy to stay with Elena for one night, so we sent Vivian off,

and left Elena in good hands,

to go and find a slice of paradise.

While San Andres is beautiful, it's still finding its tourism legs.  The beaches are all public, so that dissuades any major chains from setting up shop, and the hotels they do have are small, expensive, and with mixed reviews.  After an extensive search, I settled on Hotel Casablanca.  It looked nice, got generally good reviews, and had a great location.  This was the view from our room.

The bed was big and comfortable, but the bathroom kept leaking water, so we had to keep towels on the floor.  It was easy to see where the mixed reviews came from.

It was about lunch time when we got there, and one of the other advantages of the hotel was that it had a series of restaurants in front of it including an international, an Italian, a "Thai", and a coffee shop.  We asked the receptionist which one had the best seafood, and she said the one called simply Casablanca.

We were the first ones there, and we picked a table with a peekaboo view of the water.

We decided on a seafood feast, a shrimp appetizer followed by the mixed seafood for two, yum!

The skillet was still sizzling when they delivered it to our table, so we removed a little of everything to our plates to cool.

We took our time and did our best, but it really could have been mixed seafood for four.  We decided to walk it off along the water.  San Andres is a coral island, and just a bit off the coast you can see the water darken with what's under the surface.

All along the beach, entrepreneurs have set up chairs and umbrellas.  

We walked back towards our hotel and got two chairs and an umbrella.  Agostino, who was in charge of that stretch of beach, offered to get us beverages.  I can never resist anything in a coconut, especially when rum is involved.

The drink itself was not great, but the lime in the coconut was irresistible.  We sat there for a couple hours until our room was ready, then went in and changed to bathing suits to try out the hotel pool.

I was thrilled to discover I'd picked the right color for my nails.

After pool time, we went for another walk.  There were tons of shops full of copyright violations and all kinds of little decorative touches around the town.

We found Italian food advertised in Hebrew and a full on Christmas store.

For dinner we decided to try the hotel's Italian restaurant.  They were setting up live music, so the restaurant area was quite full, but we discovered that it didn't matter where we sat, we could order from any of the three menus.  

The music and food were good, but our drinks took 45 minutes to arrive.  They actually came after our main course.  Again, easy to see why no place on the island has really stellar reviews.  There are lots of good things about the island, but they can't seem to get it quite right.  We wanted dessert too, but decided to just walk over to the coffee shop and get it ourselves instead of trusting the wait staff.

The next morning we woke up to wind and rain, so we slept in a bit more.

But eventually we needed coffee, so we ventured out to the hotel's breakfast.  It was served near their bar area.  We could see the rain through the windows.

Eventually the rain let up, and we set up camp on the beach.

I had discovered cuba libre in a can with set alcohol limits and a price just 1000 pesos more than Jeff's beer, sold!

Around lunch time, the guy taking care of us for the day asked if we were hungry for lunch.  He listed off a few things he could bring us, and we picked more shrimp which he happily brought to us.

It was the most lovely way to spend the day, but eventually I had to change out of my bathing suit and get ready to fly home.  Jeff had to stay for work the next day, and it was hard to say goodbye and leave him there enjoying the beach.  My reward though was a full tour of all of Elena and Piedad's marvelous creations when I got home.

I'm so glad that we made those 24 hours on the beach happen.  Vivian and Elena both had a great time with their activities as well, so it was a perfect weekend for everyone.

International Day and Halloween

After the October break, we jumped right back into the daily craziness of life here in Bogotá.  I was busy getting ready for the school's production of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and the girls had their full round of birthday parties, Girl Scouts, and football.

We also had a lot of fun at school prepping for International Day.  Elena's new teacher is from the U.S., and she's a dance instructor, so she really upped our game for the "parade" part of the day.  There are not strict rules about which country you have to present with.  You just have to have a connection to it, so we acquired a lot of extra participants who had been to the U.S. and wanted to dance.  I got a picture of Elena representing how international the day was.

One of Vivian's best friends is from The Netherlands, and they were face painting the flag at their tent, so Elena got the flag on her cheeks.  Then, one of Elena's best friends is from Israel, and they were handing out stickers, so she got one of those too.  I don't have a picture of Vivian from International Day, because she was so busy running around with her friends, but both girls agreed that they had a great day.  One of the other parents sent us a video of the U.S. performance.

It was a fun day.  Jeff couldn't make it, but we had a lovely family lunch at La Brasserie on Saturday to celebrate some of our favorite international food.  Jeff has been travelling a lot lately, trying to check on everything before the holiday season starts.  The following week he was back in Cartagena for work.  He stayed at one of the hotels along the "beach", which we haven't done before.  He sent me a picture from the room and said the view was great, but he preferred staying in the old quarter the way we've been doing.

While he was in Cartagena, Viv got an award for placing second in a math competition.  She has come such a long way in math.

The rest of the week, we were getting ready for Halloween.  My homeroom students did a great job decorating my classroom door.

Even though Halloween fell on a Thursday this year, the school and the embassy wisely decided to celebrate on the Friday.  The students were allowed to come to school in costumes.  One of my favorites was one of my high school students who came dressed as a Rappi delivery person.  He even had the highly recognizable bag that they carry around.

 

It translates to, if you have Rappi, you have everything, which we have found to be very true here.  I was so excited to be able to take a proper picture, because I've never been able to ask the regular Rappi delivery people.  I figured they would think I was nuts.  My student, on the other hand, thought it was great.

Elena chose to dress up as Jasmine, because she loves the new live action Aladdin, and Mom got her a great costume at Costco.  Vivian was torn between being the Grim Reaper and being a flapper, go figure.  She ended up choosing the Grim Reaper, but I had the hardest time getting a good picture of the two of them.

Of course, once we got into the insanity that is the embassy Halloween, Elena was all smiles.

The first section we went to had gone full on Avengers.  It was incredible.

The hammer was foam, but still unwieldy.  Elena was like, "How do you land this??"  She was also thrilled to discover Spider Kid on the way out.

Viv also wanted her picture with Thanos.  Elena was less sure about having a picture with the bad guy.

There were lots of other smaller offices giving out candy, but the next major decoration effort was Toy Story themed.  There was a huge long corridor lined with pictures.  Vivian got a kick out of the Buzz Lightyear box.

At the end, instead of candy, they gave each kind their own Forky, which I thought was brilliant.

We were also very excited to find an Aladdin themed office, where our Jasmine fit right in.

After an hour, the kids were happy with their candy levels, and I was ready to keel over.  Luckily, Jeff was back at the office by then, and he took us all home.  They put on an incredible party at the embassy here, but it is overwhelming and exhausting.  I'm glad we went, but I will not miss it.  Happy Halloween :-)