Bogota, Columbia (9 August 2010)

Landing in Bogota was good, the mountains surrounding the city gave it a nice glow. Once off the plane it was a mad dash to immigration...it was odd to see all the people pratically running to the queue. Once i arrived, i could easily see why they wanted to make it quickly. The line were awful, and moved very slow, slower than the US to be honest. Once up to the counter the immigration officer was talking very fast of course in spanish, i am in colombia after all. Once out it was a b-line to the taxi queue where i gave them the hotel address and jumped in a cab and was off.

Check in at the hotel was smooth, a quick questionnaire regarding my personal info, and of course a complimentary cervasa, nice for just getting off a couple planes and sitting for so long.

The hotel room was nice, soft bed, fell asleep watching the stepford wives in English, thats always a nice start.

Was up at 7, wide awake and ready to go, got around, went down and got breakfast and was off to the US embassy at 9. a quick cab ride and i was there. I've only been to one embassy overseas before, and that was the one in Saigon. Very easy to navigate, and quite efficient...bogota on the other hand was a bit confusing. Once in the signage pretty much disappears, so i queued into the first line i saw, it looked like the one i needed, but alas it was not. The majority of the people there were doing visa applications to come to the US. And that was the line i was in. after 25 minutes, a nice lady in a red vest approached me and asked me what i was waiting for, and after identifying that i was in fact not there for a visa to come to the US, she guided me along to the place i needed to go. of course there were no signs stating that that was in fact the way i needed to go.

Once inside i got my paperwork all filled out and submitted for my additional pages, once i was done i found out that the US has changed all of there fee's, to be precise, they are now charging for additional passport pages, 80 dollars to be exact. When did we become such greedy bastards? .

the pisser of it all is that the visit to the embassy has now shot my day, cause i have to go back to the embassy to retrieve my passport at 3, so after 2 hours to start. I needed the pages so it was a necessary evil, but i'm disappointed i didn't get to see more of Colombia.

Next Stop Caracas and Nelson's Place...