![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.thebluevan.us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/cab.jpg\" "\\"cab\\"")
<\/a>Leaving the hotel in Cartagena was as complicated as we thought it would be.\u00a0 Mark had moved the van and camper to a parqueadero near the port, which was a half an hour cab ride away.\u00a0 He had to go get propane tanks and hook them up so we could run the fridge and the stove.\u00a0 He had to get mandatory Colombian car insurance.\u00a0 He had to take many cab rides on the back of the motorcycle taxis.\u00a0 We had to get the dogs.\u00a0 And we could not drive in the dark.\u00a0 By 4pm, the dogs, the kids, the bags and the propane tanks were at the parqueadaro.\u00a0 Mark noticed someone had stolen the camper license plate.\u00a0\u00a0 We thought we might spend the night there and leave early the next morning but it became clear that we could not do that. The camper had been in the sun since it left Florida.\u00a0 The inside of the camper was 123 degrees.\u00a0 Even with all the windows open we could not be inside for more than a few minutes.\u00a0 The dogs were frantic \u2013 they had another cab ride (this time Trek rode on top) and they had been kenneled at a great vet office with a dog courtyard and other dogs but they were just literally freaking out.\u00a0 The heat did not help the dogs either.\u00a0 We had to move and get some air circulating into the camper and van and get the dogs and kids out of the sun.\u00a0 So we piled in and plunged into the Cartagena traffic. \u00a0 We are following the Pan American highway the entire time.\u00a0 All we had to do was find another parqueadero before dark.\u00a0 A parqueadero is a lot where you pay a small fee to park overnight and it has a guard that keeps an eye on your vehicle and sometimes services.\u00a0 Parqueaderos are everywhere.<\/p>\n<\/a>The drive was fine.\u00a0 The van cooled down and the dogs relaxed and all was going well.\u00a0 Until it appeared the road had divided and we might be going the wrong way down a one\u00a0 way road so Mark pulled into a gas station and we realized we were right on course so he had to go around the block to turn around.\u00a0\u00a0 Around the block was through a small town and it was a little tricky.\u00a0 Busses, cars, people, donkeys \u2013 and motorcycles are everywhere, literally tens of thousands of motorcycles weaving in and out of traffic. \u00a0We drove through h the small town and at one point a buss passed us going in the other direction.\u00a0 At that exact moment, a motorcycle decided to try to pass us on the left and squeeze between the bus and our vehicle.\u00a0 It did not work.\u00a0 The motorcycle got stuck.\u00a0 No one could move \u2013 the bus, the motorcycle and Team DeCorso were frozen there and people were yelling and gathering and then there was a loud THUNK (did someone hit the camper?) and the motorcycle was free and we could all move.\u00a0 We moved about 100 feet and we came to where we had to turn left.\u00a0 A policeman was standing there with a whistle and he stopped the traffic so we could make our turn \u2013 and then noticed we had a crack in the windshield.\u00a0 We turned, he pulled us over and began explaining how we needed to get the windshield fixed.\u00a0 Right then.\u00a0 Except it was Friday at 5pm so we would need to stop driving immediately and get a hotel for the next three days.\u00a0 He had Mark\u2019s passport, driver\u2019s license and vehicle paperwork.\u00a0 The van, he said, was immobilized.\u00a0 It was 93 degrees and the sun was setting.\u00a0\u00a0 A hotel meant the dogs would go where?\u00a0 How would this work?\u00a0 So I resorted to a lesson learned in the classic book A People\u2019s Guide to Mexico.\u00a0 I begged him.\u00a0 And it worked!!\u00a0 He smiled and gave Mark back his passport, wished us a merry Christmas and waved us on.<\/p>\n
But now it was nearly dark and we were nowhere near the parqueadaro.\u00a0 \u00a0We drove on, nervously, because YOU ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO DRIVE IN COLOMBIA IN THE DARK!<\/p>\n
The next town we came to was Arjona and it had a gas station so Mark pulled in but it was closed and we couldn\u2019t get in and we couldn\u2019t turn around so we had to head down the narrow the road until we could go around the block.\u00a0 The road where we could turn had a metal blockade at it and we were stuck.\u00a0 The only option was to back up about a mile through the donkeys and motorcycles and children.\u00a0 We were near a little store and a man there came to check us out and he said he knew a place where we could park overnight, we could follow him.\u00a0 A bunch of guys moved the metal blockade and we headed off following the guy on a motorcycle.\u00a0 He took us to a field ringed with small houses and told us to park.\u00a0 Then he went and told some people in a house that we were staying.\u00a0 He asked for 5000 pesos, about\u00a0 $2.75, and he left.<\/p>\n
We got out.\u00a0 It was even hotter here than in Cartagena.\u00a0 The air was so thick with moisture we could almost not breathe.\u00a0 The camper had cooled down to about 100 degrees and we had to make dinner.\u00a0 We had some food in the cupboard but the fridge had not cooled down yet so we made some pasta.\u00a0 We sat in the camper, sweating and hot and feeling kind of overwhelmed and down. \u00a0Our license plate was stolen. \u00a0We had a motorcycle stuck on us. \u00a0We had gotten stuck twice. \u00a0The police had nearly immobilized the van. \u00a0And we had not even gone 35 miles. \u00a0It was suffocatingly hot and we were just literally dripping with sweat.<\/p>\n
We needed water (sold in bags here) so Mark and Jack headed off to find water and returned to tell us that there were a bunch of kids outside.\u00a0 I peeked out and there were about 20 kids looking at me.\u00a0 So naturally I asked them if they wanted to come inside.\u00a0 And of course they did.\u00a0 And then their parents came over and came inside.\u00a0 We talked and they said there was a man in the town that spoke English so they dispersed some children to get him.\u00a0 He came over and we all began to talk.\u00a0 It was clear we were about to eat so the English-speaking man, whose name was Hilo, said we should finish eating and then come outside and sit in a circle with them.\u00a0 We agreed.\u00a0 As we finished our pasta, we could see them bringing chairs and chairs over and setting up a circle 2 feet from our door.\u00a0\u00a0 We went outside and there were more than 50 people smiling at us.\u00a0 They had brought eight chairs for us.\u00a0 We sat down.\u00a0 And then the best Solstice Party ever began.\u00a0 They brought us gifts and snacks, using English \/ Spanish phrase books to ask us how to say things.\u00a0 Jack and Ryan were flanked by girls each.\u00a0 Girls were putting earrings on Jennah.\u00a0 Laptops appeared with Google Translate and Facebook. \u00a0We tried to ask if avocados grew there – we had seen these gigantic ones in Cartagena.\u00a0 The word for avocado did not translate with the phrase book or Google Translate and in the process they brought us a bunch of exotic fruit we had never even heard of. One had skin like an avocado but was hollow inside except for a\u00a0 blob of jelly with some seeds and it was delicious!\u00a0 Tangy and sweet.\u00a0 There were berries with hard skins and seeds that Sylvia loved. \u00a0And then at one point, we had a group realization about avocados and it was a beautiful moment. \u00a0They gave Sylvia a teddy bear and at one point Annabelle asked for the Spanish word for tag and when she learned it, all the kids took off to play.\u00a0 Annabelle and Sylvia went off to play inside a house.\u00a0 Several times, the girls began chanting beso (kiss). Many, many photos were taken.\u00a0 We had 59 people inside the camper.\u00a0 They asked us to stay for Christmas.\u00a0 Many times.\u00a0 We stayed up until midnight.\u00a0 One woman wanted to make us breakfast and we tried to decline because we did not have any breakfast food to offer at all.\u00a0 The woman who made us breakfast gave us 15 beautiful peacock feathers.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n We woke up in the morning and one of our new friends brought us a pot of strong, sweet coffee. \u00a0Then they brought us to see a toucan!<\/p>\n We headed to a house where they presented us with the best breakfast I have ever had \u2013 bacon that was thick and tasty, bollos, fresh homemade cheese, a HUGE amount of the best guacamole ever and fresh ice cold juice made from the sweet & tart unknown fruit.\u00a0 After breakfast, Hilo cut Ryan\u2019s hair.\u00a0 Hilo was a really neat and interesting person.\u00a0 He had learned to speak English himself, some from American music.\u00a0 He was a hair stylist and he did a great job on Ryan\u2019s hair.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n We wished we had some things to give them because we had been given so much from the people of the town.\u00a0 We had been kind of bummed and feeling like maybe the trip was a mistake and the people of Arjona completely turned our day around.\u00a0 We didn\u2019t have very much with us, most of the stuff we had was not so cool (like spoons) but I dropped a penny on the ground and the kids were amazed at the penny so we handed out a bunch of American change and there was a lot of explaining what the English word was and how many pesos each coin was worth.\u00a0 We were able to fill up our water tank from someone\u2019s house.\u00a0 We left to a waving crowd of people. \u00a0It is impossible to describe how wonderful our short stay in Arjono was.\u00a0 This had truly been one of the most amazing experiences of our lives!<\/p>\n Before I begin this story, I have to explain the heat of Cartagena.\u00a0 We have been to plenty of hot places.\u00a0 We camped and hiked in Death Valley twice.\u00a0 We have been to North Africa and the Sahara, Central America and Mexico. We had had plenty of time acclimate from Alaska, a month in south… Continue reading Arjona, Bolivar, Colombia<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[195],"tags":[201,202,348,203],"class_list":["post-1269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-colombia","tag-arjona","tag-coffee","tag-colombia","tag-toucan","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebluevan.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebluevan.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebluevan.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebluevan.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebluevan.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1269"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebluevan.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1269\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1281,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebluevan.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1269\/revisions\/1281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebluevan.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebluevan.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebluevan.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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