Manizales

On Sunday, December 7, I flew to Manizales, Colombia. Manizales is a town high in the mountains with streets on steep hills. It is somewhat reminiscent of San Francisco. The city has an interesting bull ring. I really want to go to a bull fight, but I'm missing the season in Colombia by about a month. Every country has a different bull fighting season. As much as I would like to stay here for another month, there's too many other places to see.

I went on a guided trek to Parque Nacional Los Nevados. Colombia is one of those countries where one day you can be roasting on the beach and two days later, be freezing on a snow-capped mountain. The scenery on ther ride up to the park was as spectacular as the road was curvy and bumpy. We hiked up the mountain to an altitude of 16,076 feet (the summit of Pike's Peak is 14,110 feet) . The air was pretty thin. Ascending the mountain was slow going. People could only walk about 30 seconds or so without stopping for a breather.

Not much else going on in Manizales. It was kind of quite. On Thursday, December 11, I took a bus to Bogota. It was a 10 hour bus that left at 9:00am. I took the day bus because I wanted to see the scenery on the way.