Dental work in Colombia is very cheap. It is hard to get actual prices and even those could vary based on individual needs. Implants and braces are commonly advertised in the larger cities.
Even though labor is cheap here, I have seen many, many people with lower paying jobs like restaurant wait staff and store clerks with braces on so the braces must be extremely cheap. We spoke to two students when we were on the cable car who both had braces. They said that they cost 150000 Colombian pesos or about $500 for their work and that it must be paid in full up front. That is a lot of money for many people in this country so I am a bit surprised that it costs that much but it is in keeping with the odd price I have seen posted.
Looking on the internet I see mixed reviews of the dental work. Many people rave about the work while others report poor quality. I do know that the parents of the owner of my former workplace go to Guatemala to get their dental work done. They are happy with the results and spend less, including travel expenses, than they would in the US.
I tend to gravitate towards the higher end dentists because of bite issues. So while I had an excellent cleaning for $50 in Panama, I hope to not need any major work while we are traveling. I prefer to stick with my more expensive dentist who I can see whenever I am back in Durango rather than someone I only see while passing through a country.
We went on a tour that took us as far into the Los Nevados National Park as is currently allowed since there is an active volcano there (more on that later).
We were picked up very early (6:30 AM) at our apartment by taxi and taken to a central meeting point downtown. When everyone was loaded, there were 22 people on the tour which was a full bus.
We drove about 1 1/2 hours for breakfast and then to the park. It is only 30 miles or so but mountain roads are windy and slow. Along the way, we stopped and looked at the paramo which is a bit similar to tundra in Colorado but there are cactus type plants that grow much taller than typical tundra plants.
Plants in paramo area
Nevado Del Ruiz is 5,321 m (17,457 ft) high and has been active since 2016. We did get a rare glimpse of the mountain itself but from our side of the mountain we couldn’t see any activity. The point that we walked up to was about 4557 m (14,950 ft) was the highest either of us has been in the past. Walking up a long but not really steep trail to this point was work. While we were there, it started to sleet and it was snowing lightly by the time we got back on the bus.
We parked and walked a short way uphill
There is a sad and amazing story related to the the eruption in 1985. Worth the short read.
After we started back down is when the clouds cleared briefly but long enough to get pictures of the summit. We stopped at the same restaurant for lunch and then went to a natural hot spring and warmed up in the hot water before returning to town.
Chipre is a subdivision of Manizales, on one of the higher areas of town. The view of the city is wonderful and the area is busy and safe. They have wonderful holiday lights, lots of restaurants, and even a small amusement park.
One unique thing is Chipre Tower which is 131 feet high. The tower was originally just a water tower but while it remains in use for that purpose, it has creatively had a restaurant and viewing area added. You can even fasten on a safety belt and walk around on the outside ramp if you are so inclined. (We weren’t.)
Best of all, it was a 5 minute walk from our apartment.
This picture doesn’t really give you an idea of how steep the streets are in Manizales. Think STEEP for several blocks in a row!
Manizales is a town of about 400,000-500,000 people nestled in the Andes. It has many streets which could rival San Francisco for their long steep inclines. I am not particularly comfortable with them but drivers don’t seem fazed, even though most vehicles are standard transmissions.
Walking uphill is a challenge but we just rest a lot. Downhill makes me nervous since I must be careful not to slip and fall.
There are a couple of cable cars that have been in use for many years now.
Lots of traffic but it seems to move along well. We were in a cab at what I would expect to be rush hour and we kept moving at a slow but steady pace across town.
And like many other cities in Colombia, beautiful holiday lights!
All of the little white papers on the street are remains of firecrackers.
Fireworks and firecrackers are a staple ALL all over the world for celebrations and Colombia is no exception. Not only are firecrackers widely used to celebrate, apparently so is gun powder. I am not an expert on the subject but we saw 3 banners in Jardin (one in Jardin said
no apague la luz de la vida- do not turn off the light of life) and one in Manizales urging people to be careful with gunpowder.
I found a PDF online that reported in 2011, 1101 people were burned by gunpowder of which 557 of those people were children.
Last night’s New Year’s Eve celebration on the street where we are staying was interesting. Early in the evening the firecrackers started (well in reality they have been happening off and on for days). After a while I went out on the balcony to see what was happening instead of just listening to it.
A few buildings down on the corner were about a half dozen or so young adults. They were lighting one firecracker after another and tossing them. They didn’t even wait for them to go off; they didn’t even look at them. It was almost an automatic thing that they were doing: light and toss, light and toss, over and over.
One person was less active in lighting and kept his fingers in his ears. But he remained there.
They were oblivious or ignored everything around them. Lighting and tossing even as police on motorcycles went by or as car alarms were activated by the percussion of the explosions.
And as I write, there was just a HUGE explosion somewhere not far away. Not the usual firecracker loudness. Then there was an altercation on the corner. Not sure if it was related or not but my guess would be that it was.
Despite what must have been lots of alcohol consumption since yesterday, this is the first altercation that I heard in the area.
I believe that the celebrating went on all night. It was certainly going on at 3 AM and when I first woke up at 7 this morning. Somehow I rested fairly well last night. Gracias a Dios. (Thank God.)
Colombian school children in uniform, http://www.colombiainfo.org/en-us/colombia/education.aspx
In Colombia, although education is supposedly mandatory according to this website (I can’t tell you anything more about this website), our guide told us it isn’t so it must not be enforced. The drop out rate is fairly high as the students reach the upper grades.
Students start school at age 5 in Kindergarten. They go through grade 11. Like many Latin American countries, the “high school” is called colegio. The public university is tough to get into and private university is very expensive.
In recent years, there are some trade subjects taught in colegios.
Unlike in Nicaragua, the teachers are fairly well educated.
Both public and private schools wear uniforms here.
Students must buy their own textbooks; they are not provided by the schools.
Typical nativity scene with a village; crèche is in upper left of photo; most of the sheep have real wool on them
I’m not sure what a traditional Christmas is in Colombia. Certainly the lights in the parks (especially Medellin) and decorations on some houses and lots of nativity scenes in public spaces and homes.
Nativity scenes aren’t just a crèche with the baby Jesus and Mary and Joseph. They were almost always very elaborate, even having sheep skin on the small plastic sheep in the scenes. The nativity scene in the church in Jardin is about 50’ long…I couldn’t even get the entire scene in a photo in panorama mode! Scenes show an entire village with houses, animals, sometimes people, and of course the Wise Men and the crèche scene.
The family we are living with for 12 days is probably lower middle class. The almost 3 year old boy is really intelligent and well mannered. They have a small artificial tree with decorations and lights and lights around the door and window outside but no gifts under it.
While Santa Claus is discussed in passing, there was no attempt that I could see/understand that he would bring gifts. The little boy fell asleep earlier than usual and slept through the firecrackers, drums, etc. in the street.
This morning he received a gift or two, no wrapping paper. We gave him a set of 6 small plastic construction trucks (cost less than $4 total) which he seemed to enjoy. He also received a remote controlled car and a scooter and a plastic truck. Again, no wrapping paper.
There were people in and out all day which is not much different from usual but maybe a few more people than usual. The family left a couple of times for an hour or so. I had understood someone was barbecuing a pig but I never saw any evidence of it and they ate a modest meal here.
We also gave the parents a small box of local chocolate and $100,000 pesos (about $33) to help towards a new pair of glasses for the mom (her frames are broken and the lenses seem to be delaminating or something odd so she gets headaches wearing them).
Dan and I don’t normally exchange gifts so we didn’t this year. We did go for a walk for about an hour through an area with coffee, plantain, and bananas and amazingly ended up at a place where we knew that had a homemade cable car between the town and the mountain. l will be doing a blog on that soon.
Mostly catching up on blogging. Internet is just slow enough that uploading images is an ordeal and very slow but I am making progress, am now writing and about to post early December!
All in all, it was a nice quiet day. I was surprised that many stores and restaurants were open, something about a “store day” and everything will be closed on Wednesday. The mom also said that everything in Medellin is closed today and people come here to shop.
Since I had no expectations, it was a nice day. Much quieter than yours although the boy did get rowdy from time to time.
Mary’s tree in Marizales
The place we stayed with in Marizales after we left Jardin still had the house decorated with a 6-7′ artificial tree with ornaments and ribbons and other decorations on the walls. My guess is that they had a Christmas more like what you would see in the USA.
Jardin plaza dominated by church made mid 20th century using hand carved stones
By the time we left Medellin, we were ready for small laid back towns. We’d heard good things about Jardin and they were true. Primarily an agriculture area, there is some tourism. Very few expats live here, about 30-40 according to our guide. Compare that to Boquete which is about the same size and has 1000-2000 expats! We got lots of chances to practice our Spanish, especially since we staying in an Airbnb home of a young couple and an almost 3 year old who spoke very, very little English.
We spent 12 days in Jardin, a small town with a population of under 10,000 and during that time we did a lot of walking, a horse back ride, rode the Gurracha and saw the Cock of the Rock birds.
Jardin is a very vibrant town with a good sized plaza and a large church built early in the 20th century. It doesn’t seem to matter what day or the time of day, there are almost always tons of people in the plaza…sitting, walking, talking, drinking. We quite enjoyed just walking around the town. There is a very laid back feeling of times long gone in most US cities and towns; people standing outside chatting in the evenings. Very community oriented.
Horse waiting for its rider
The altitude of Jardin is about one mile above sea level. This town has a very busy plaza, no stop signs/stop lights, and it is not uncommon to see horses walking or being led down the street.
The horse back ride in the mountains was amazing and very scary for me. The horses were well trained and it was just Dan, myself, and the guide. But the trail was sometimes muddy up to the horses’ knees, uneven, and often along the very edge of the mountain which dropped off at about 160 degree angle.
The views were amazing! Coffee and bananas and plantains are grown on these steep mountains and everything is green, green, green. And we saw a lot of butterflies, even more than we saw when we went to butterfly exhibits in different towns!
Our ride, 100,000 pesos each ($33 each) included a lunch. We had opted for the vegetarian lunch which was carried in the saddlebags. It was rice, avocado, fried plantain, and a hard boiled egg, all wrapped in a fresh plantain leaf, and tied with string. It was very tasty and I am sure that the leaves were composted or fed to some animal that night.
Dan walked through a cave and behind a waterfall but I opted to rest instead. While we were sitting for lunch, there was a cow that was VERY friendly. We kept shooing her away but she wanted to be with us. Maybe she was lonely.
It was about a 3-4 hour ride plus transportation to and from the town to the place up the mountain with the horses. We got our money’s worth for sure!
The Garrucha is a hand made cart that goes from one end of town up the mountain via a cable. Built in 1995, the round trip is just over $2 per person and you can spend as much time on the mountain as you want. The views from the mountain are incredible although you can’t see a lot through the slots as you go up or down in the Garrucha. It is obvious that the person translating or printing the signs is not an English speaker. Check out the views and signs here.
The Andean Cock-of-the-Rock or Tunki is an impressive, odd looking bird, widely considered the national bird of Peru. It has a rounded crest on the head of the male and is bright red on the upper part of the body with grey and black on the lower half. We went to a private reserve where we saw at least 3 males (no females) who were very territorial and loud. Here are some pictures of the Tunki as well as some other birds we saw at the reserve. There is also a short video so you can hear them.
We did another tour in Jardin, this one by car where we went to various places near Jardin. It was a laid back tour with just us and the guide.
The Andes Mountains are spectacular. Higher than much of the Rockies and deeper valleys. But they are so much greener; green top to bottom with a wide variety of plants and trees.
Bus rides are beautiful but scary. The bus drivers are very aggressive, passing where mere mortals wouldn’t even think about passing. No passing signs and double yellow stripes are apparently not something that they pay attention to.
So far the roads that we have been on have been fairly good. Our friends the Thompsons took one trip from Jardin to Riosucio (Dirty River and apparently the town is as exciting as it sounds; they only stayed a couple of hours even though they had paid for one night in a “hotel”). Riosucio is 50 KM away (about 31 miles) and the trip is 3 hours long. They had quite the adventure because part way through the trip they came on an area that had had a landslide. It was being cleared but they had to get off the bus, take their luggage across the landslide and board a different bus to go the rest of the way!
I know this sounds really scary but we have to trust that we will be safe in our travels. There isn’t an alternative unless we just left the area and even then, how would we get out of the area? There are few airports around here.
And speaking of bus rides, when we bought our tickets from Jardin to Riosucio (we got a bus to Manizales from there) and I asked if the road was open, the clerk said, “Maybe it is open, maybe it is closed. Maybe it will be a bus, maybe it will be a Chiva.” A Chiva is basically a flat bed truck that has had (usually) wooden bench seats (luckily ours were padded since we took the chiva the entire way) and a tarp or roof added to the seating area. It was better than I expected since it has to go so slow on the pot holed road at an average of about 10 mph.
So just keep us in your prayers as we travel from place to place.
We took the train almost everywhere we didn’t walk to in Medellin. Taxis are cheap and we used them occasionally but mostly the train since the closest station was only about 10 minutes away. These electric trains are used a lot in this area. They could be very crowded and we kept our backpacks on our fronts instead of our backs in the crowds. Often a young person would offer me (and sometimes Lesia) their seat. I appreciated that since standing a long time can be an issue for me. The trains were clean and everyone was polite on them.
There are also a couple of cable cars as part of the train system and one set of 6 outdoor escalators in Comuna 13, more on that in another blog.
One cable car route takes you to Arvi Park. It is delightfully cool up there and literally a breath of fresh air in this smoggy city. The park is mostly untouched with a couple of buildings and some vendors for things like bathrooms, shelter, etc. The 4 of us spent several hours walking around there and Dan went back on his own another day.
Comuna 13 used to be a very dangerous, not well accessed area but over the years, that has changed dramatically. Built on the side of a mountain, the streets are steep and the houses very basic. The escalators were added in 2011 and is now a model for other cities around the world.
We took the free tour (donations at the end) with a woman who grew up in Comuna 13. As a child she was embarrassed to say she was from this area of town. Now with the violence and drugs under fairly good control, she is proud to say this is her home. You can see a very nice story about the area and the escalators here.
Our guide explained some of the beautiful graffiti art (art as opposed to “gang tags”), took us through a quick tour of her house in Comuna 13, and even provided entertainment compliments of some young students (school holiday) doing some break dancing and another man doing a rap song. The students were moderately skilled but I really liked that they were putting their energy into learning to dance rather than other less savory efforts.
Pueblito Paisa (Little Town) is located on the top of Nutibarra Hill (Cerro Nutibarra) in Medellin. It is a replica of a typical turn of the century Antioquia town with a traditional stone fountain in the middle of the town square, a church and other buildings. The view of the city and surrounding mountains and valleys is lovely and there is a small museum with old photos that is interesting.
I found the most interesting part was information on silleteros. These are hand made art that is carried on the person’s back during a parade. The art is very intricate floral designs, done the night before the parade. The work that goes into the designs is amazing. Like a parade float, much of it is last minute. Unlike a parade float, it is carried on the person’s back! Would have loved to actually see a parade. You can get a sense of one here and here.
