August 8th

The second best day that we've had yet in Colombia! Magnolia took us to the mountains and we had Spanish Tapas for lunch. Kristin and Magnolia drank Sangria and I had wine. Xander was exceptionally patient and good spirited (except for in the car).

The mountains were absolutely breathtaking. The pictures don't do any justice to the beauty of this area. Once we got to the top and reached our destination the weather was a beautiful 60-65 degrees. Down in Calí it was really hot, I'd say in the upper 80's. It was so peaceful and wonderful in the mountains. I'm so glad we went, I really felt like we were on vacation, so much so that I was having vacation type fantasies of buying a house on top of the mountain to spend summers at. There were many nice and expensive cottages in this area. Enrique told us that the poor lived in the mountains, but that certainly wasn't case here.

Silly tourist walked into my picture...

Primer restaurante del bebé. (The baby's first restaurant)

Fog coming over the mountain tops.

Mommy I'd like some Sangria por favor!

It doesn't look that steep in the pictures but I swear this was a 40 degree incline and there were cows and horses walking around on it. I couldn't believe it. I expected to see cows rolling down the mountain.

Calí down below.

Next to the parking lot for the restaurant these children were sliding down this path on half a plastic oil drum and would slam into a couple of tires at the bottom. It seemed really dangerous but they were having a blast.

Eucalyptus and Lemon trees.

The striped patterns on the mountains are pine trees. They aren't indigenous to this area but they grow so fast and so well that they are used for paper manufacturing.

You can barely see it but there are a bunch of people flying kites here.  During the whole trip we saw hundreds of people on the sides of the road doing this. There a lot of people selling kites on the street in the city. I didn't really pay much attention to it before but apparently it's a huge leisure activity here?!

We told Magnolia that Alexander was born in Yumbo which is a little town outside of Calí so after we came down the mountain she showed it to us. I didn't take many pictures but trust me, these two pictures show the nice part of town. It didn't take pictures of the slums. Not a nice place at all and Magnolia said it was really dangerous. We didn't drive through the slums but saw them from the main highway. The ironic thing is that several huge multinational corporations such as Johnson & Johnson and John Deere have manufacturing plants in Yumbo and pay huge taxes to the town but the people never see any the money. Magnolia says the politicians keep the tax revenue for themselves. It's a real tragedy that there is such greed and corruption in the world. To be perfectly honest, it's rather disgusting to me that these trusted America brands allow such a thing to occur in places where they have their manufacturing plants.

I was really glad to see where my child was from but saddened that his biological family was probably living in this horrible environment. Such a contrast of economic environments we were exposed to today. But still, like I said, the second best day in Colombia yet!