Santa Marta to Curaçao

Another morning I'd rather forget, one where you are wrecked before the alarm goes off.

Once in the taxi we noticed everyone was wearing yellow shirts, the yellow Colombia football team shirts. Around 80-90% of people on the street and in other cars were wearing the shirts, it was impressive. At 3:30pm Colombia were playing Ecuador one city over, in the World Cup qualifier. If Colombia win they are through to the World Cup in Brazil! This is a huge World Cup for all the South American countries and it will be on the right time zones. On top of this, Colombia missed out on the last World Cup and chances are, someone died because of it.

We checked in where again everyone wore the team shirts. The only people who weren't wearing them was security guards and some tourists.

Our first flight was uneventful as we arrived at Bogota and got the usual bus from the domestic terminal to the international airport. We found out that our tickets included a tax only for the locals. We are entitled to 70000 pesos ($40) each. We tried to get the money back onto my credit card, we work hard to run ourselves out of currency before leaving a country. They explain they don't have the facilities to do that, and have to give us cash instead. We tried to ask them why they would charge too much and then give pesos to leaving passengers, but they told us its the way it is and to just come back soon.

The main international airport for Colombia has an extensive food court, Burger King, Colombian Burger King and Italian fast food.... Hmmm.

We boarded our plane with an interesting pilot. He accelerated around the corner onto the runway and snaked up the start of the runway while he straightened up. It was as if he tried to slide the wheels out around the corner.
When we came to land he banked very hard and dropped into a steep decent, steep enough to feel yourself pushed forward. This guy was not our favourite pilot.

We arrived hoping to see our bags again, and I was happy to see mine through and safe. After many blank periods, a long time and Sarah starting to worry (and telling me its not funny), her bag came through.

The lady doing our transfer to the apartment started speaking to us in German as she knew our next flight in a few days was to Germany. After our stunned looks she offered Dutch, Spanish, English or the local tongue. We can't even get Spanish worked out. We arrived at a ladies house and were shown the granny flat behind which was our apartment.

We were dropped down to the beach for dinner with a nice walk home after. While looking for a place to dine we walked along an amazing beach setup. This area had bars with seating all the way to the water, even steps in at one place off wooden decking. Instead we found a Dutch supermarket with real cheese and bread and chose to eat in. This place is a little hot, I wish we had aircon or fly screens.