Eleven Hours in Columbia

Travel is a skill in addition to being an experience, and on this first leg of our journey to our starting point in Bolivia we were surely tested! Bolivia is not easy to get to, it requires at minimum two stops from the US (if you start in Denver). We'd booked a Denver --> Houston --> Bogota --> La Paz flight itinerary, and hit a snag in Houston where the captain of our flight had a family emergency, requiring a lengthy delay getting into Bogota. It's a long story involving a run through the Bogota airport, multiple flight rebookings that were made for the incorrect date and time by they airline, and a passport that didn't get returned, but in the end we got an unplanned-for passport stamp for Columbia, four hours of sleep in a hotel, and the sense that we added some travel skills to knowledge base.

Our organized tour of Bolivia started at 6 pm on Sunday, April 26 and we arrived at the hotel at 3:45 pm. Phew! We were able to join our group of 13 travelers in La Paz We're on a National Geographic Journeys tour through G Adventures, which is a new company to us.Read more