Some final thoughts....

When we decided to do this adventure, we had very little expectations. When we traveled before kids, our style was to live in the moment and make it up as we go. Though the situation was a little different this time, we have kids and we have a little more responsibility back home, we stuck to our "live in the moment" mentality.

At the beginning, we knew we wanted to go to Peru. So we started there. We bought a one way ticket to Lima, booked a hotel room for when we arrived in the middle of the night, and booked a flight to Cusco for the next day. That's it. Done. Trip planned. We didn't know if we'd stay a week, 3 weeks, a month, 3 months? We were determined to just go with the flow.

Would we travel to Chile and Argentina or go north to Ecuador? We didn't know. Could our kids handle long distance buses? Would we have to fly places? Would we find a place that we would just want to stay? How expensive are these countries really? Are we having fun? Team T just had find out by doing.

Early on in our trip, we kept meeting people who raved about Colombia. That seemed to be the direction to go. How did the rest fall into place? We took buses, stayed in hotels, hostels, homestays, tents, and hammocks. We tried night buses. In Ecuador, we stayed in a town we loved and rented a house. But we found ourselves itching to get back on the road after a month. We loved the Andes, but after a week or two we wanted to head to the beach. The rainforest just had to be explored! So we bused ourselves over the Andes and into the Amazon basin. Then traveled down river several hours to experience our earth's lungs! When we couldn't take the heat, bugs, and humidity we headed back up the Andes again. Then to the beach. We just made it up as we went. At some point in the trip we started thinking about going home. That's when we pulled out the map and decided what we still wanted to see and bought a ticket home.

Team T toured a corner of South America for 5 months. It was a wonderful adventure. We learned a lot about ourselves, each other, and about South America. We have a multitude of shared experiences. Our stories make us grin and laugh. The inside jokes are endless! We are very grateful to have taken this opportunity to spend 24/7 (and I mean it) with our 2 small children and explore some new territory together as a family. The question is where will we go next and when?????


Team T will be stateside for a while.... We will not be posting anymore photos or notes at this blog site. If you would like to continue to follow us check out our home blog at...
TeamTSeasonal.blogspot.com


Some general notes about our travels...

Countries visited 4 Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela
Total Hotels/hostels/homestays/campgrounds: 49
Buses (an hour and a half or longer) 41
Meals out 400+ (restaurants w/ a toddler)
Hours on buses (an hour and a half or longer) 210 hours
Flights 3 (Lima, Cuzco, LA/VT)
Currencies 3 (Ecuador uses US dollars)
Books Read 12 (including 4 Lonely planet guides)

Heading Home

Team T is packing up and heading home. This is where the road divides. Mom and the kids are taking a red eye flight to Mexico City and then onward to Los Angeles for a month. Daddy is staying an extra day in Bogota to buy a suit and then fly back to Vermont. Time to start attending to business. He's piecing things back together before the rest of us get home.

It's been a great journey and a wonderful experience traveling with our kids.

GOLD MUSEUM Bogota, Colombia

GOLD! Who doesn't love it? This was the one Colombian museum we had looked forward to visiting. It was very well done and had quite an incredible collection. With the price of gold these days, I completely understand why the Colombian SWAT team has a strong presence and the buildings around it are rigged up with all kinds of surveillance cameras.

We have to be pretty proactive before entering any kind of museum with a 3 and 5 year old. One strategy we have.... as soon as we enter the museum we head right to the gift shop.Our kids choose a couple of postcards of special items to find in the museum. Then the games begin.... it's a scavenger hunt to find the items in our postcards. The adults play too! Team T spent a good 3 hours combing the gold collections. The kids were totally into it.

There is a lot of gold here! It was quite impressive. They had quite a lot of English explanation as well. GOLD FEVER!

Photos from Bogota, Colombia

Last of the pigeon feeding. This was one of the most popular activities for the kids. They loved it!


Guard in front of the presidential palace. Apparently there is a changing of the guard ceremony.


A view of the large church on the plaza here in Bogota. We fed the pigeons and watched them fly.

Bogota, Colombia

Welcome to the city! We took what was supposed to be a 2 1/2 hour bus ride to the heart of the Colombian capital. The reality was a four hour ride. 2 1/2 hours to the city and an additional 2 hour ride to the bus station! Thank god it was the last bus ride in South America.

We settled into a rather large hotel room.... quite a luxury for Team T for the night. The kids had quite a lot of "galloping" room. "Hee haw," how happy the youngsters were! Our big plan for this city was to see GOLD. We also did a little shopping and sight seeing while we could. It was raining on and off.

Dinosaur Fossil In Colombia

So this is a dinosaur fossil that was found about 6 km. from the town of Villa de Leyva, Colombia. We went to check it out.

Villa De Leyva, Colombia

We took a little side trip from the city of Tunja to do some fossil hunting. This little town was once part of an ancient sea. The conditions were just right.... it's full of fossils! Even the building materials are old fossils. Very cool! Villa de leyva was exactly the small town we were looking to spend our last few days in South America.

Back in Colombia

After a week in Venezuela, we entered back into Colombia. Crossing the border was kind of unique. We happened to be on a bus that just drove across and didn't stop for any formalities. We ended up having to back track back across the river (back to Venezuela) and locating the so called border office (that was back in town, no where near the border, mind you) to pay our exit fees and get our exit stamp. After killing about 1 1/2 hours we were back in Colombia. We continued on a 6 hour bus that was supposed to be one of the worst roads in Colombia (altitude gains and road conditions). I must say, we had quite a luxurious bus. We dreaded the ride for little Nootch's sake, since she often has bouts of motion sickness. But I am happy to report, it wasn't bad. The bus was pretty empty so the kids had their own seats. It seems to be better for us all when we can spread out!

Boa's in Venezuela

Cool!! Brave kids!

GUINESS BOOK OF WORLD RECORD HELD IN MERIDA VENEZUELA

We found the the record holder of ice cream shops with the most flavors. Over 900 different flavors have been created in this shop. Boy are some of them gross! First imagine every flavor you can think of and then turn your mind to every savory item you can imagine and then think of it as an ice cream flavor...fish, calamari, pork, mustard, etc.

We each sampled four scoops. 3/4 of Team T stuck to sweet ice cream and Daddy T stepped out of the box to try rice, tomato, onion, and beef. It was pretty bad.

Merida, Venezuela

After Maracaibo, we left the Caribbean coast and headed back to the Andes. We spent a few nights checking out Valera and headed to Merida.

Here is a glimpse of the mountain city. It was mostly socked in with clouds and mist while we were here. Merida was much more picturesque and modern than Maracaibo.

First Impressions of Venezuela

OLD CARS, HUGO, & OIL

When you cross over into Venezuela, you travel back to the mid seventies. Almost every car is an old imported American car. That is, a relic of the mid seventies. Chevy Caprice Classics, Chevy Novas, Plymouth Dusters, and Cutless Sierras rule the road. Our first taxi was an old beat up Caprice that drove us 3 1/2 hours to Maracaibo. We rode in some pretty snazzy old beasts...royal blues, ruby reds, and perhaps even a purple one. Why???

Cheap Gas! These gross polluters dominate the roads in western Venezuela, but at 100L for a dollar locals keep them going. Minus the fumes, it was fun to have a ride from the past and share these mobile couch experiences with the kids.

Oil is big business in Venezuela. It's there and its real. We caught many glimpses of the industry as we passed through small towns on the bus.

Finally, smiling Hugo Chavez is everywhere! His socialist programs are plastered all over every town and billboard.

Team T Heads To Venezuela

After a few weeks on Colombia's Caribbean Coast, Team T heads to Venezuela. We took a look at a map and decided to head south back towards Bogata with a side trip through the western part of Venezuela.

Venezuela??? Why Not? After all, we made this trip up day to day. That is the beauty of living in the moment.

CARNAVAL 2011

We timed our trip just right for Carnaval. After Tayrona National Park, we returned to Santa Marta to make our preparations for Carnaval.

Now Santa Marta is only 2 hours from the city of Barranquilla. What is the significance, you wonder? Well, Barranquilla has the second largest Carnaval celebration in South America (2nd to Rio of course). We debated bussing into ground zero to experience this craziness. We bought Tshirts, masks, mohawk wigs, and of course SPRAY FOAM.

The kids were ready all day to spray this foam and wear their special outfits. But after gathering a lot of advice, we opted to stay put in Santa Marta and celebrate locally. Boy were we glad we stayed in Santa Marta. It really ended up being a family friendly affair (unlike what we heard Barran. would be like) . There was this huge parade and everyone was doused in spray foam. We got targeted big time. Little T loved spraying the car tires (those were at his level). The cans of foam were bigger than half his size! We also had bottles of baby powder at our disposal for retaliation purposes. It was wild and crazy but a lot of fun. Sorry no pictures of the results.

Message in a Bottle

It would not be a complete TeamTAdventure without writing a message in a bottle. Dad and the kids took this project on. It took two tries to toss it out into the Caribbean sea.

Now we just wait and see......

Tayrona National Park

Can you say gorgeous? We made a 3 night trek out to this Colombian treasure. We did a little more jungle trekking than we had planned but it was totally worth it. The first night we had this huge beach to ourself. We stayed on the grounds of an old narco estate. We slept in a tent right on the beach. The next morning we explored the grounds. We can only imagine what the place must of been like back in its hey day!

We hiked several kilometers to Arrefices beach. Here we stayed and slept in hammocks for a 2 nights. That was a big hit for the kids. But two nights were about all the adults could take. We had some time for MORE jungle trekking, a trail ride for Anika, and even some swimming. Most of the beaches had currents deemed unsafe for swimming. We had an adventurous hike (we don't need to talk anymore about this one) to the one safe swimming area.

Park Tayrona was beautiful. We walked a little more than we would have liked, but it was well worth it. Probably some of the most beautiful scenery of the trip!

Taganga, Santa Marta, Beach Time!!!

We traveled up toward the city of Santa Marta on the north coast. We opted to stay a few nights in Taganga, once a small fishing village, but now a haven for tourists. We hiked over to Playa Grande a couple of times for some snorkeling and beach fun.

Adios Cartagena!

What a great ending to a wonderful day. We watched kite surfers and had a drink on the wall of the old city. This is a great spot to see the sunset.

Strolling the City- Cartagena

Just a fun beautiful city to explore. Perhaps we will visit again sometime soon. The street food was awesome. We had meat on a stick, mangos, chicken, empanadas, and lots of fresh juice!

EXPLORING THE FORT IN CARTAGENA

Can you say.... plan another future trip to Cartagena! We loved Cartagena. Yes it was hot, but a nice caribbean breeze kept it quite comfortable. We explored the spanish fort, designed to keep the pirates out. We went deep into the tunnels of the fort until the sea water started to creep up our ankles!

Cartagena

After 20 hours of bus rides....we have arrived on the Caribbean Coast... Cartagena and it is awesome!!

Teja

Throwing rocks at gun powder....yep thats what we are doing!

Coffee Country

We traveled to the small town in the hills of central Colombia. We stayed at the Plantation House (an awesome hostel where we had a fireplace in our room). The owners also have a Finca or a coffee farm near the property. Due to heavy rains, most of Team T stayed behind and played with toys. Daddy went on a hike (he was equipped with his rain gear pants and all) through the mud and learned in depth all about the coffee plantation. He gained quite an appreciation of what goes into coffee.
Yummy!

Solento was a great little town to chill out for a few days. Unfortunately it was a little wetter than we had hoped but we were able to rest up and enjoy having a fireplace in our room to keep down the chill.

3rd Birthday!

While we were in Solento (Coffee country) Little Man T celebrated his third birthday. Nootch makes some great castle birthday wrapping paper. Spray snow, slime, and the glowing helicopter arrow were some of his favorite gifts.