December 16 – Up, up, and away

Y’know that band that started up around 8:30pm as we enjoyed a campfire at the Fly Site Hostel? Well, they continued through 3am this morning. We enjoyed a respite until 5am when someone started shooting off fireworks in Bucaramanga or Florida Blanco – turns out they have 4am church mass followed by fireworks around these parts of South America. By 6am the band from the night before started up again and went until around 7am. They stopped, and the military installation down-hill from us started rifle marksmanship. We’re going to vacation on Jupiter next year!!

Fortunately, as the morning continued, things calmed down and by mid-morning the surroundings were pretty quiet. Breakfast over-looking the city was rather pleasant. Mark, who we had met the day before, said Latin America will be celebrating each of the nine days before Christmas. Oh, they need a reason!?

By late morning Richi hauled Kathleen and I down to the Jardin Botanical Gardens in Florida Blanco. Kathleen and I wandered about these gardens for a while searching for birds and other critters. The place was closed so we walked in anyway and toured about for free. We have found botanical gardens to be a nice and relatively quiet place to walk around. We noticed a number of tortoises strolling over the grounds feeding on the fruits fallen from the trees.

We then walked into town and hoped a cab after some snack shopping. The cabby took us up to the Fly Site for about $3 USD. Shortly after our arrival, Russell, Richi’s partner from Alaska, took Kathleen and I each up for a 15- 30 minute paraglide ride. We found gliding about with the Black Vultures quite exhilarating. Kathleen may have found a new hobby. She would have liked to stay up longer than 30-minutes if the up slope winds held. Each and every day the winds come from the north and up the masa where Fly Site is located. This makes for a great paragliding – parapente – location. In fact, people from around the world come here to learn paragliding as the winds are so consistent they can learn within a week and a half for less than half of what lessons would cost in the U.S. Hummmm.

After a spaghetti dinner Kathleen, Mark, and I relaxed again around the campfire. Another establishment down the road had a band going. Hey, they had a search-light casting back ‘n forth over the skies, too! Periodically we would hear what has now become a trademark firework of Colombia. A series of 6-8 small pops followed by one load bang.

We went to bed around mid-night to the thump of music down the street.