We were more than excited to get out of Florencia, get to Bogota and commune with other English speaking friends and also be able to offer a place for the children to play with other children...
Previous to our flight out, we were in a hotel in Florencia that was nice; it had A/C!!! But it wasn't necessarily kid-friendly...it had a swimming pool, but that was about it. It rained almost everyday, and the children had some cough and congestion so we stayed in the room most of the 11 days...
ICBF staff were great; our interpreter was awesome! And our lawyer even took US (now a family of 5!) out to dinner on him!
Our lawyer and interpreter escorted us to the airport where Diego for some odd reason threw a major tantrum...we got many glares from people walking by...once inside the waiting area, however, Diego was great and loved watching the planes!
The plane to Bogota was small, and Andrew sat with another senorita; she was very helpful in trying to persuade him to keep his seatbelt on...Diego fell asleep in Papi's arms while Tatiana and I flipped thru the photo album and various books.
Once we arrived to Bogota, we were taken to the Refugio Hotel. It is more like a bed and breakfast type place. It was real refreshing to see a couple still there we had met the first day in Colombia...they adopted an infant boy with CHI. They were an awesome Christian couple! The hotel also had great staff that helped with the children, had toys, DVD player with disney movies in Spanish, swingset, and more! There were also other European families there who were in the adoption process so there were lots of children for ours to play with!
Once we got to Bogota, everything was at super speed. On Thursday, that afternoon we went to take passport photos and see the Embassy doctor. The doctor said we were a first. The children were not on their very best behavior to say the least. I believe some of it was our fault and again, the communication barrier with our language differences...
The very next day, Friday, we went to apply for the children's visas. Behavior was muy bueno!!! They were very good! It took about 2-2.5 hours. The representative said we would have to come back on Monday to pick the visas up, because they would not be able to complete them that afternoon. Monday was a holiday and we had feared we would have to wait til Tuesday; so, Monday was good for us!!!
We wanted to do some souvenir shopping, but because of the holiday much of the downtown was closed...Lucia's son, David, did take us and some other families to a museum and one other shop where we learned that 65-70% of the world's emeralds come from Colombia! We bought Tatiana some emeralds for later...we also found some Colombian Soccer Jersey's for the boys...and Ben got some coffee!
Bogota was beautiful and clean. We don't have any reservations about going back there and hope to in the future.
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