Archive for the 'Colombia 2009' Category

We all had a good night last night – Leanne is feeling better and Andres slept well.

Magnolia picked us up around 9:30am to take us down to Chiquitines one last time – we had to pay them some money for the translations, courier costs, medical reports and such. We also took the opportunity to have Andres weighed – he now weighs 8.3kg, up from 7.7kg about 4 weeks ago. So at least we aren’t starving him – which it seems like we are on occasions when he insists on having a bottle every 3 hours rather than every 4 like he should be. We have been trying to introduce more solids into his diet to help him last longer between bottles, with limited success – he does like banana, but tends to get bored and lose focus after a while.

Andres gets weighed

We paid the orphanage in US dollars, it is far easier to take some cash that we exchanged at home before the trip rather than trying to deal with very large sums of Colombian pesos which require three or more trips to an ATM over a period of days. The orphanage was okay with us paying in USD, but we did run into a slight problem – apparently they can have difficulty banking damaged notes, and one of the notes I gave them had been torn and taped back up. This note was given to me by our bank, so I figured it was legitimate and usable – but Magnolia confirmed that banks in Colombia are often reluctant to accept them. Fortunately I had additional funds back at the hotel, so I later arranged with one of the other families to drop off the money when they next visited (a crisp, unblemished note this time).

Andres says goodbye to Agatha

Our visit to Chiquitines was only brief and then Magnolia drove us to a nearby park which has a lake known for its Egret population and other birdlife. We wandered around the lake and parklands enjoying this little oasis of tranquility – with Magnolia pointing out interesting plants and features of the park. Apparently the kids from Chiquitines visit here frequently. Of course I didn’t have my good camera and long lens with me – the visit was a spur of the moment idea from Magnolia so we didn’t actually plan it.

Leanne, Andres and Magnolia look at the turtles

Egrets nesting

One of the signs near the lake said we could find species of birds such as: Cormorant, Anhinga (Darter), Tanager, Moorhen, Grebe, Woodpeckers and six species of Herons. We saw one species of Heron that I could recognise, plus a Moorhen and what I think was a Woodpecker. We also saw a duck, some turtles, and a squirrel.

Ecoparque Lago de las Garzas

Magnolia, Leanne and Andres out the front of Ecoparque Lago de las Garzas

We got back to the hotel just before lunch and had a chance to say goodbye to the Canadian family who had been at the hotel since well before we arrived. We had a quiet afternoon.

Brushes, mops, brooms and dusters

We have settled on a new itinerary and asked Ricky to book the new flights for us – we are now scheduled to travel back to Bogota on Thursday, then a sidetrip to Cartagena on Monday, returning to Bogota on Saturday. On Sunday we resume our original itinerary, flying to Santiago, Chile and then home to Sydney on Thursday.

Andres slept through the night again, but was quite restless at one point which kept us awake a bit.

We got a call from Magnolia this morning that she would come to the hotel around midday to pick us up and take us to get Andres a passport.

I went out for a walk to the supermarket across the river so I could buy a few supplies for Andres – we needed new nappies and formula and Leanne wanted some snacks to try and help keep her energy levels up – she still isn’t eating much, but at least is feeling a little better.

After breakfast we sat around the front porch talking to the other families and playing with the kids. The three new families had left for Chiquitines to collect their children this morning and so it was great to meet them all when they returned. The hotel is full of families and children now – and surprisingly, now that the other Australian couple have left, Andres is the only baby under 12 months old. Most of the new allocations have been for children 12 – 18 months old.

After a quick lunch, I changed Andres, packed a bag with nappies and a bottle of water plus a serving of formula and went out with Magnolia to get the passport. Again, only one of us was required and Leanne wasn’t feeling up to going out so it was me who had to take Andres.

It was a short drive into the central business district and to the passports office – we submitted our application, paid the fee and then sat down to wait. I had been told getting it done in one hour was considered quick. We were out of there in pretty much 25 minutes flat with a new passport for Andres – in Australia it takes ten working days, unless you pay for a priority processing service which still takes two working days! Admittedly, the Australian passports are far more secure and sophisticated.

So now that we have a passport for Andres, we are finished with our tasks in Cali – we could theoretically leave for Bogota tonight, but Leanne isn’t feeling great still and we want to do a few things here yet, including visiting Cali Zoo again.

Andres hangs out on the couch with the Canadian lads

Ever since we found out that we were ready to sign the sentencia more than a week ahead of schedule, we had thought of doing a sidetrip up to the coast to Cartagena. We had emailed Ricky (our travel agent) last night asking for information about flights and costs – but had forgotten that today was a public holiday in Australia and she wasn’t in the office!

This time it's the Australian and Canadian boys fighting over the Finnish girl

Our original plan had been to fly direct from Cali to Cartagena for four or five nights and then back to Bogota for a few days before flying to Santiago on our original schedule. However, this turned out to be inconvenient so we changed our plan to fly to Bogota first, complete our business there and then do a return trip to Cartagena before we leave for Chile at the end of next week. We’re waiting on pricing and flight details now – should have them tomorrow. We also need to do some research into hotels – we asked our interpreter/guide Magnolia for advice there and will look into our options.

The Canadian invasion - Andres is nice enough to share Leanne's lap

Before dinner, the Finnish couple who collected their child the same day that we did, held a little party out on the front porch to celebrate them signing their sentencia. With all the new kids there, it was a busy and noisy affair – it was great to see so many families at once. I brought the laptop and set it up to show a slideshow of all the photos I’d taken of the families over the past few days – I ended up with requests from most of the families for copies of some of the photos.

I’m really pleased with the quality of the photos I’m getting from the camera with my 24-105mm lens. When we did our trip to Chile and Argentina at the beginning of last year, I took all three lenses (wide angle 10-22mm, standard 24-105mm, and long zoom 100-300mm). The 24-105mm was my best lens at the time, it had the best quality, was the fastest (F4), and had the quickest focus. It was also the heaviest of the three. However, I think I took no more than 1 or 2 photos with that lens the entire 6 weeks we were away – it was simply not the ideal lens for most of the photos I was taking.

The best environment for this lens I find is for taking photos of people, and we didn’t do that much of that type of photography on our trip last year. However, this trip I’ve been taking mostly people shots – and so this lens has seen the bulk of the action. I’m now glad to have spent the money on that lens – the photos have been great.

In other news, Leanne is starting to feel much better now – although she’s still not quite feeling 100% yet.

Another restless night – Leanne is still not feeling great.

With a bunch of new families arriving at the hotel in the past few days ready to collect children tomorrow, there is quite a buzz at the hotel again. With a few older kids around, Enrique had planned to take everyone up to the Rio Pance again – only us and the Italian family (who left on Friday) went last week, so it would be a new experience for everyone else. Enrique asked me if that was okay that we go again, and I explained that Leanne still wasn’t feeling well, so wouldn’t want to come anyway. I told him we really enjoyed the visit to the river last time, so I would take Andres by myself this time to give Leanne more time to herself.

So around mid-morning I headed out with Andres to join the other families for the trip – our first outing on our own. Andres likes riding in cars – he goes very quiet and just looks around, watching things – which makes him very easy to manage on trips like this. He also tends to fall asleep which helps.

He needed changing and demanded a feed right after we got there, so I was busy for a while – but eventually he settled down and even had a nap. I sat around talking to the other adoptive parents – and the new parents who are due to collect their children tomorrow.

It was a fairly relaxing day – although I was kept busy looking after Andres on my own.

Andres enjoyed the car trip home – and fell asleep again, but he taught me a valuable lesson – change nappies more regularly, they only hold so much liquid! I didn’t notice until I got out of the car, but his nappy had leaked all over my top on the trip home. Only liquid fortunately – but still a lesson worth heeding I feel.

Leanne was feeling a little better this evening and joined us for dinner, but requested just soup rather than the meal everyone else was being served.

Leanne was still not feeling well today, so we didn’t do much. I went down to breakfast on my own and fed Andres some banana – spent some time out on the front porch to give Leanne a bit of time to sleep some more back in the room.

Andres on the front porch

Lunch was the same – Leanne got some soup sent to the room while I looked after Andres on my own.

Leanne crawls out of bed to spend some time with us

After lunch, the other Australian couple who had been staying here headed to the airport to catch their flight to Bogota – we managed to get some photos of everyone before they left.

The aussie boys, Steve and Andres both make a move on Finnish lass, Karen

Adoptive families at Pension Stein

Later in the afternoon, Leanne felt well enough to come out with us to the art and craft markets up the road (Loma de Cruz) – Magnolia came and picked us up and drove us there – some great views of the city and mountains from this hill-top marketplace.

Views from Loma de Cruz

We wandered around for a while and bought a few bits and pieces for Andres and some souvenirs to take home with us. Because Leanne still wasn’t feeling 100%, I carried Andres in the Ergo for the first time. It was a bit squeezy, but we managed.

Markets at Loma de Cruz

Simon and Andres at Loma de Cruz

Very early start for me this morning after a restless night. Andres woke up a couple of times and Leanne has come down with some gastro, so nobody had much sleep.

Even so, I had to get up around 5:30am – Magnolia was picking me up just after 6:30am to drive me and our lawyer down to the town of Santander de Quilichao. As part of the adoption process, we get new birth certificates issued showing us as the parents of Andres – the problem is that we needed to go to the registration office in the town that he was born in!

Andres was born in a hospital in Santander de Quilichao and was subsequently brought to Chiquitines in Cali, where he lived up until we collected him a couple of weeks back.

It was a damp morning – it had been raining all night, but it only drizzled a little on our drive south. The town we were heading to is about an hour or from Cali – it is actually in a different state, but the state border is a river not that far from Cali.

Heading south to Santander de Quilichao

Heading south to Santander de Quilichao - the town is visible at the base of the mountains

Only I came with, the lawyer was quite insistent that we not bring Andres – given it was a relatively small town, she didn’t want any issues with anyone recognising Andres (the registrations office is not exactly private!). As it turned out Leanne was quite unwell, so wasn’t up to travelling anyway.

We arrived a bit after 8am and wound our way through the back-streets of the town looking for the registrations office – towns in Colombia are generally laid out fairly logically in a grid with numeric street names, so you can usually find your way around pretty easily.

Santander de Quilichao is a lovely little town, set up against the mountains at the southern end of the valley. The Andes split into three ranges in southern Colombia, with the western and central ranges forming the valley where Cali is located. Santander de Quilichao is where the ranges split to form the valley, and there is a pass through the mountains there which allow you to travel further south, down to the main towns of this state.

Santander de Quilichao

Santander de Quilichao

The town is quite old with simple architecture – the downtown area we were in consisted mostly of small row-cottages facing the street. There was a very nice park running along a creek, with well established old trees, and the town square was also filled with trees and provided a nice shaded area to sit and chat. Magnolia tells me that the surrounding rural area is almost exclusively populated by people of African descent, and while I was there I don’t think I saw anyone else white (other than a policeman who looked very out of place – I asked Magnolia and she confirmed he was likely not from around here!).

Santander de Quilichao

Once we found the registrations office, we went in and waited around while the lawyer found the correct forms and got the information we needed. Next, Magnolia and I walked around to the bank to pay the fees for the birth certificates. While Magnolia filled out the form (and helped a few other people with their forms – literacy is quite poor in the regional areas), I queued up with everyone else waiting to do their banking. Over 45 minutes later we made it to the front of the queue – by which time I was feeling very white and very tall. The people in this area are mostly all African or South American Indian – and generally aren’t that tall. I got a lot of attention, but the people were quite friendly, if I looked back at them staring at me, they would usually smile. I wish I could have stood there taking photos of everyone in the bank – a real mixture of people and colours.

Registro Civil - where we spent most of the time waiting

It didn’t take long to do our business once we got to the front of the queue, and then we headed back to the registrations office to lodge the form. Once that was done, we waited around some more. There were a few people there with very young babies come to register the birth and apply for a birth certificate, plus lots of others waiting for ID cards for travel purposes – school holidays are coming up in a few weeks. We walked down the street and stopped at a small cafe to have a snack and a drink – and to sit down for a while (there were only a few chairs at the registrations office).

Eventually our form got processed and they produced a new birth certificate for us to check – there was a mistake on it (Leanny), so we had to get them to change it. Once that was done, I signed the forms and the birth certificates and then applied my fingerprint next to the signature – as they do here in Colombia.

I thought at this point we would be just about done – only to be informed by Magnolia that “now we wait”. I wondered – what was it we had been doing for the past 90 minutes?

We stood around and talked (our lawyer doesn’t speak any English, so Magnolia would natter to her in Spanish for a while before talking to me in English for a bit). After another half our or so we finally got the finished forms (I think they had to be authorised or notorised or something like that, which was why it took a while).

So after more than two hours of waiting, we were finally done, and headed out to the car. The only problem was – it wouldn’t start! Magnolia had accidentally left the lights on and the battery was flat. Eventually we found someone who was able to help – he sped off on his bicycle and summoned someone from a nearby car maintenance shop, who then drove back on his motorbike, a colleague perched on the back with a battery and a couple of jump-leads on his lap. They got the car started and operational in short order and we were on our way.

Flat battery!

We wanted to do a quick tour of the town to try and find the hospital where we think Andres was born – but we were running a bit late so we weren’t able to see as much of the town as I would have liked. After driving around in circles a few times (too many one-way streets), we eventually got some meaningful directions and found the hospital – it turned out to be just around the corner from where we had been waiting all morning.

Hospital where Andres was born?

On the way out of town, we accidentally turned down the wrong street – and being Friday of course it was market day, with everyone out selling their fresh fruit and vegetables along the street. We were worried that Magnolia’s car wouldn’t fit down the crowded street, but nobody seemed overly upset by our presence there and they moved their carts out of the way for us as we passed without too much drama. I wish I had time to stop and wander around and take photos – it was a lively and interesting place.

Market day!

Old church in the centre of town

The drive back was uneventful and it started drizzling again, so I wasn’t able to get many more good photos of the area. After dropping the lawyer back home, we got back to the hotel in time for lunch.

Sugar cane road train

Leanne had not had a good morning and was still feeling really unwell when I arrived back. I took Andres down for lunch and fed him some banana while I ate my lunch – he’s quite enthusiastic about eating now, and leans forward with mouth open when we bring the spoon near. Now that he seems to have worked out how eating works, we have to get more organised with trying other foods.

I spent the afternoon with Andres to give Leanne a bit of a break and some rest – we sat out on the front porch and watched the rain and talked to some of the other families. Dinner was also just the two of us – although I did sit with the other Australian couple who are leaving for Bogota tomorrow.

It was a long exhausting day – I hope everyone sleeps well tonight.

Cali to Santander de Quilichao - GPS track