Today at 6:30 am we stood up and made our way to the south of Columbia. It was sad to say goodbye to Patricia and her family. The ride of about 4 hours was the most comfortable so far. We had a taxi for 8 persons in a brand new car (at least well serviced), all switches worked, all windows closed.....
The countryside we saw from the car was stunning, and to be honest we both agreed that columbia is the nicest country so far.
Why?
- first of all the roads are in excellent conditions
- the country goes up and down, like at home ;-)
- the people here do not litter their enviroment, not just in tourist places even on the countryside it is clean.
- houses are more well beautyfull on average
- people are more friendly and very helpfull
why? i only can guess, they are not used to tourists, you can tell by the looks you get here by just walking in the streets and there is no DOLLAR price tags everywhere. But if this county is progressing further in secrity and economy it will outrun costa rica and other wealth countrys.
In Manizales we were hosted and picked up by Frederico a friend of Patricia.
As written above it seems to us (friendlyness) that you only have to know one person from Columbia and you hardly need your guidebook anymore.
We were driven to his apartement and were welcomed to feel at home while he went to work. In the evening we went with him and his wife to the "Thermales" we had lots of rum
and maria ruined all her silverchains because of the sulfur (water from the volcano).
The next day we took a lazy one because of a hangover. And the next day we went to climb an volcano which we did until 5.100 meteres. And I have to say it wasn't so hard, you can feel how slow you get but we did not get headache or other symtoms of altitude sickness.
The same evening we went for more Aquardiente (a kind of anis schnaps) and had the joy of meeting fredericos family. Next day we planned to drive to the coffee region but frederico and his wife took a day off and drove us there. We were really impressed by the beauty of the countryside. And the Coffeepark was great. We learned all about coffee!
To say goodbye to them was sad but we promissed to come back in 1 or the next years for only Columbia for some weeks. And maybe we see some of the Columbians we met in Lindau!
Sorry for beeing so short in my stories but we are just got only today access to the internet.
More with the fotocomments when i can download them sometime!
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Manizales Hotels
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