Home from Colombia, we were hit hard with the reality of work and ignored projects. While sorting the million miles of emails, request upon request of donations and people trying to sell me something, I find an alert to send wines in to the Great American International Wine Competition. Having recently decided to participate in these International Competitions (and having won Golds at the Finger Lakes International), we thought we'd roll the dice with this one too. However, my computer decided to have a fit and I couldn't get our wine info to upload; I contacted the organization. The organizers were very helpful and I had success!
A few days later, I receive an email asking if I would like to be a judge at the Great American International Wine Competition. I'm suspicious. Why me? What kind of scam is this? Are they going to need my credit card to "reserve my tickets"? Did they need "only" 8 cases of wine to secure my seat? I had questions.
"I googled you after you contacted us with website issues and was very impressed!". Turns out all the little side projects, the articles I've written, the classes I've taught, the guest speaker engagements I've had and my Sommelier Certifications seem to have caught their attention. I was still skeptical. "Thank you" I started, "but we do not have the budget at this time to send me to NY to participate". Nice try I thought. Nothing like a little flattery to work your victim into letting down their guard right?
With a little more back and forth, it was clarified that THEY would fly me to NY and pay for the hotel ...and the meals. Well now, NOW I'm interested! But still...me??? It just didn't seem real. Surely they made a mistake and will figure out that I am not their gal, or of course there will be a hidden catch. I told Jesse (who is perhaps 1st a winemaker and 2nd my husband) who was immediately concerned that if I did judge, would we still be able to enter our wines? Turns out, they are very fastidious and make sure that the wines are tracked and sent to judges that are not involved with that particular winery. That detail out of the way, Jesse got super excited! I continued to have an eyebrow raised.
Dinner parties and events filtered through our world and I avoided telling people the "big news". I told myself I would share when I had an airline ticket in hand. This really was a big deal, this International Wine Competition touts incredible judges from around the world and to be selected as one was not only an honor, but a very exciting experience!
Then it happened. I felt my face flush as my heart beat accelerated simply seeing the email heading "flight itinerary". I opened and printed the details of my flight and hotel stay. It was actually real. I would be flying to Rochester, NY to judge the world of wines! Oh shit, I'm not sure I can do this. My nasty negative self talk kicked in big time.
I think we all have it, that nagging voice in the back of your head that sheds self doubt at the most inopportune times. The one that creeps up when you think you left it far far behind. Mine showed up and decided to yell at me at 3:00am that I was a fraud. There was no way I had what it takes to hang with this caliber of wine expert. It left me shaken and worried. My husband, my confidant and best friend, reassured me. He pointed out how I had already proven myself in various ways. He encouraged me to remember my gift for exactly this type of wine work. He even, adorably, became my excited cheerleader talking me up to friends and family. I have to say, it did help. Until the day I had to board the plane.
My palms were sweaty. I needed a glass of wine. Two different flights, two glasses of wine and hours later, I landed at the tiny Rochester airport. I made the call to summon the hotel van and stood waiting, wondering how I would make it through this experience without my cheerleader holding my hand. Amazing that at 40 years old, I still feel like I need someone to be by my side at all times. I felt like a ridiculous little girl, wide eyed on the 1st day of school.
Suddenly a raspy voice bellowed behind me, someone talking on her cell phone. This woman walked right up to me and instantly knew I was there for the competition. Was it the suit jacket and heels or the stained purple teeth that gave it away? I quickly found out that she was there to judge Spirits, (the drinking kind, not the afterlife kind. Although from her appearance she could have done either) and that she knew her stuff, BUT she was delightful and friendly and after a high five and a hug, I was immediately put at ease. If she was any indication, this would be much more fun than I thought. I released a deep breath and let my shoulders reveal the neck they had been hiding.
My room was lovely and the view of the charming, historic downtown was already whispering seductively in my ear. I was good enough, I could do this, and gosh darn people like me! I couldn't help but think of the SNL skit and recognize how ridiculous I was being.
The next morning, I got breakfast, consciously avoiding strong flavors and focusing on protein for a long day of tasting. I arrived at the ballroom, the hallway lined with tall banners touting the importance of this competition, and marched right up to the check in table. I informed the friendly faces that I'd gotten in late the night before and needed to pick up my name tag and check in. She looked and looked, nope not on the list. She had me check at another table, nope nothing there. Crap, bad sign. Back at table one, she scanned my outfit and said "I know you are dressed nice, but are you ok washing glasses?" I wasn't sure what to say, at our winery, even after 20 years and National publicity we still have zero attitude about doing the dirty jobs, we do what needs to be done to help our staff. I smiled and said slowly "well...sure...I'm supposed to judge wine so...I'm not sure how I will do both, but..." The collection of women behind the table stopped what they were doing and like the screetch of a record player needle, looked at me in shock. "OMG! I'm so sorry, I didn't know you were a judge! I'm so embarrassed!" The group surrounded me and repeatedly thanked me for being there, they laughed that they had asked a wine judge to wash dishes, and they escorted me to the correct check in.
I had to have been bright red by the time I reached the packet pick up for judges, the flattery seemingly misplaced and wasted on little old me. The founders of the competition greeted me warmly and showed me to my seat, introducing me to some of the phenomenal people of the wine world I would be working with. I was told the room was broken into spirits judging, amateur wine judging and commercial wine judging. Ahhhhh...I get it, I'm going to be an amateur wine judge, that makes sense. I had found the missing piece to the puzzle and my excitement dropped a little. I've done a great deal of amateur wine tasting in order to give feedback to enthusiastic winemakers trying to get into the biz, and it isn't always pleasant. New winemakers tend to make some typical errors that result in undrinkable wines. This would be 2 days of "eeewwwww".
It was time for the room to be introduced, we quickly sped through the room of 40 judges and were assigned categories. My table would be commercial wines. I would be working with the Robert Mondavi of Slovenia with multiple Doctorates of varying aspects of the wine industry, a wine writer who has written for most of the big wine magazines, the marketing person for Rodney Strong winery in Napa who is a regular judge at many other International Wine Competitions and the owner of the largest wine shop in NY who has a reputation far and wide. Across the isle was the esteemed gentleman that set up the Sommelier Certification program in Bordeaux.. he is literally a Wine God. My mouth dropped open.
Flight after flight of wine appeared, numbered and with corresponding judging sheets. Discussion after discussion ensued of why one of us had marked a wine up or down and if it should medal or not. By mid day I had people saying "oh wow Michele, I hadn't picked that up, I'm glad you pointed that out" and by day two, other judges were bringing me wines at lunch to discuss. The staff of volunteers bent over backwards to assist in any way possible, I'm pretty sure I could have asked for them to peel grapes for me and they would have done it. It was awesome!
Before I knew it, it was time to go back home. I felt like a princess as I said goodbye to people I was in awe of and staff thanked me again, and again, and again. I floated through the long day of travel and airplane changes, the two hour drive home from the airport and walked into my home ready for a mini parade of appreciation from my husband and son who I was sure had missed me and would want to hear every last detail of this extraordinary event.
Nothing. I walked in to nothing. My husband was taking a nap, heard me come in and yelled "hi" sleepily from his nap spot. My son, engrossed in reading, barely looked up. Several hours later, they remembered to ask me about my trip. I couldn't help but see the irony of this. Thank you family for keeping me humble.
Vivac WInery Great American International Wine Competition Awards:
*Sangiovese GOLD (also our new Rose is made from the same Sangiovese)
*Abbott White Wine SILVER
*Cabernet Sauvignon BRONZE
*1725 Riesling (Dry) BRONZE
-Cheers from the Vivác Winery Family!
www.VivacWinery.com
Running on Wine; from Marathons to Rafting to "Fueling" on the Patio, We are Fueled by Vivác.
Monday, May 21, 2018
Monday, May 7, 2018
The Final Test
This is the final blog post covering our adventures in Colombia. Just as the tempo of those final days, this post seems to tumble through our last adventure and leave you wondering if you really want to visit Colombia. Believe me, you do, just avoid Bogota like the Plague.
Like the back breaking trek into Rio Claro Nature Preserve, getting out was equally, if not more difficult. Piling all our luggage onto our desperately aching bodies, including our son's since the heat and humidity made walking a workout for him, we started down the road to exit the park. With incredible luck, a truck had mercy on us and agreed to toss our bags up onto their load and take them out to the gate, we however had to continue to walk. You know you are under extreme physical strain when giving all your possessions to a stranger sounds like a good idea. But, amazingly, we arrived at the gate at the same time our bags were being dropped. Now it would be the hard part; there at the side of the highway, we were given the task to "wave down" a bus.
Colombia's bus system went on strike the day we left the jungle. This meant we needed to hurry to catch a bus still en-route because when the bus got to it's destination, that would be where it would stay until the strike was over. Finding ourselves in the middle of nowhere, there was no ticket office and the nearest town was too far to walk. In order to get to Bogota, where we would be flying home from, we needed some serious luck. On the other hand, we were reticent to leave so we teasingly said that if we were stuck in Colombia, we were stuck in Colombia! Maybe that relaxed attitude is what made things seem easy.
Standing on the side of the road, the blazing heat covered our bodies in a slick coat of sweat and the humidity kept it there. Hardly any traffic was on this quite highway making the idea of snagging a bus seem unlikely. We started to toss around ideas of paying a person with a car to give us a ride, or maybe we could send my husband to the next town where he could contract a taxi and come get us. All of the options sounded faintly like the plot of a horror movie. Then suddenly, my husband stepped into the road and a bus, barreling down on him, came to a screeching halt! Quickly we grabbed our 3 huge duffel bags and 3 heavy backpacks and jumped on board. A little travel tip here, it is seriously difficult to be nimble when your bags are stupidly heavy. Thankfully we had drank all the wine we had packed into Rio Claro so we were less 36lbs now.
The buses in Colombia are really pretty nice and they get nicer as they get bigger. It is also very inexpensive so when we got to the bus station in the nearby town and transferred to the Cadillac double level bus to take us the 8 hours to Bogota, we didn't much mind where we sat. Well, some of us didn't mind where we sat. One of us (who shall remain nameless), a man that attacked every one of our insane adventure sports and experiences over the 2 months we were traveling through Colombia with ease and delight, was terrified of being on the top level of the bus as it swayed along the curvy steep roads. An additional $5 each bought us safety in the downstairs 1st class. And some amusement to me since finally I was not the one that was scared to death.
1st class on this cross-country bus was kinda like 1st class on an airplane. Huge lounge chair seats with leg rests and private TVs. I had never been on a bus like this and it made the journey through ever changing, gorgeous terrain fantastic! I started to get excited, I dreamed that our time in Bogota would be like a poem; easy and elegant with a hint of mystery. Then we drove into the outskirts of the city and my fantasy was challenged.
Many times through our travels we had seen poverty, serious slums and hardship, yet the people and areas had a glow of humanity to them. The tiny areas that one could call their own, were clean and well presented even in a falling down shack town, but as we came into Bogota, the streets looked mean. Garbage was piled everywhere and the people had hard faces. It looked like the kind of area that you don't want to go to during the day, much less at night...and it was coming into night. We pulled into the ghetto bus station and pushed past people that looked at us like fresh meat. We found a taxi and directed him to our hotel. The taxi ricocheted through the streets into the "cool old town area", the lights of downtown brightening as darkness set in. Each turn and weave gave us a new vantage point of garbage, homelessness and mass graffiti. There had been plenty of graffiti in other areas of Colombia, but always as art, something charming about it, but this graffiti was absolutely not. Care for the buildings and the city in general seemed to have long been forgotten and drug use was out in the open. Not cute marijuana joints or bottles of booze, I'm talking needles and crack pipes. I realized THIS is what people think of as 'Colombia', this chaos. That is when we sped through a crisscross of highway and there in the middle of the road, was a huge blazing fire and a homeless man ineffectively trying to put it out with his foot as two police men stood and watched.
"If you have to visit this crap city, this is the best hotel in this shit place", the memory of the Bogota hotel review I had read slapped me in the face.
A series of issues lead us to wake up in a fairly modern room in a construction site of a hotel that was NOT the hotel we had booked, but by the time we were laying our heads down, we didn't care. We woke refreshed and ready to give the city a second chance with high hopes we would find that cool place we had pictured in our minds. The guide books are very clear in cautioning you to crime and danger in Bogota, unlike any other places in Colombia, so we decided to try out the best of the safe recommendations before getting wild with the "hidden gems".
The University campus was neat with fantastic cafes and restaurants lining the edges. The rumor of Bogota having great food was definitely true so we started to perk up! Maybe it was just being tired that had given us a bad intro to the city last night? We strolled down to what is considered the shopping/ restaurant district, it was literally packed with people. The noise was at rocket launch level as street vendor's music competed with the music blaring from the permanent stores and guys wanting you to eat at their restaurants literally chased you for blocks yelling about how great the food was. Among the things being sold were various oddities laid out on blankets in the street. It started out benign enough, books and dvds, then quickly books, children's dvds and porn. Then a hodge-podge of kitchen items and baby toys, then socks and socks and sock and shoelaces EVERYWHERE! I mean really, what is the deal with so many shopping carts full of shoelaces for sale? My husband remarked that back at home he can't seem to find shoelaces. He decided it was because the entire world's inventory was there, in Bogota.
The day had taken a turn for the worse and we were tired and disappointed. That was when we literally took a turn for the worse and found the streets were filled with trash being sold on these "vendor blankets". Broken toys, used household items, and even...prepare yourself...used old underpants. At that moment, just as I was about to scream over the noise of the crowd that I was done for the day, we watched a dirty (from head to bare foot) man climb out of a dumpster with an item of clothing and lay it on his blanket to sell. It was clear none of us needed to say anything, we all knew this nightmare needed to end.
Close to our ramshackle hotel was a grocery store with a great selection of wine and a strip of great take out food places. We stocked up, went to our room and hid from the crap day in that shit city. Tucked away in our homemade oasis, the 3 of us curled up on the bed and streamed movies while sipping a glass of wine. The beauty wasn't in the city, but it was certainly in our ability to make those most out of any situation.
-Cheers from the Vivác Winery Family!
www.VivacWinery.com
Like the back breaking trek into Rio Claro Nature Preserve, getting out was equally, if not more difficult. Piling all our luggage onto our desperately aching bodies, including our son's since the heat and humidity made walking a workout for him, we started down the road to exit the park. With incredible luck, a truck had mercy on us and agreed to toss our bags up onto their load and take them out to the gate, we however had to continue to walk. You know you are under extreme physical strain when giving all your possessions to a stranger sounds like a good idea. But, amazingly, we arrived at the gate at the same time our bags were being dropped. Now it would be the hard part; there at the side of the highway, we were given the task to "wave down" a bus.
Colombia's bus system went on strike the day we left the jungle. This meant we needed to hurry to catch a bus still en-route because when the bus got to it's destination, that would be where it would stay until the strike was over. Finding ourselves in the middle of nowhere, there was no ticket office and the nearest town was too far to walk. In order to get to Bogota, where we would be flying home from, we needed some serious luck. On the other hand, we were reticent to leave so we teasingly said that if we were stuck in Colombia, we were stuck in Colombia! Maybe that relaxed attitude is what made things seem easy.
Standing on the side of the road, the blazing heat covered our bodies in a slick coat of sweat and the humidity kept it there. Hardly any traffic was on this quite highway making the idea of snagging a bus seem unlikely. We started to toss around ideas of paying a person with a car to give us a ride, or maybe we could send my husband to the next town where he could contract a taxi and come get us. All of the options sounded faintly like the plot of a horror movie. Then suddenly, my husband stepped into the road and a bus, barreling down on him, came to a screeching halt! Quickly we grabbed our 3 huge duffel bags and 3 heavy backpacks and jumped on board. A little travel tip here, it is seriously difficult to be nimble when your bags are stupidly heavy. Thankfully we had drank all the wine we had packed into Rio Claro so we were less 36lbs now.
The buses in Colombia are really pretty nice and they get nicer as they get bigger. It is also very inexpensive so when we got to the bus station in the nearby town and transferred to the Cadillac double level bus to take us the 8 hours to Bogota, we didn't much mind where we sat. Well, some of us didn't mind where we sat. One of us (who shall remain nameless), a man that attacked every one of our insane adventure sports and experiences over the 2 months we were traveling through Colombia with ease and delight, was terrified of being on the top level of the bus as it swayed along the curvy steep roads. An additional $5 each bought us safety in the downstairs 1st class. And some amusement to me since finally I was not the one that was scared to death.
1st class on this cross-country bus was kinda like 1st class on an airplane. Huge lounge chair seats with leg rests and private TVs. I had never been on a bus like this and it made the journey through ever changing, gorgeous terrain fantastic! I started to get excited, I dreamed that our time in Bogota would be like a poem; easy and elegant with a hint of mystery. Then we drove into the outskirts of the city and my fantasy was challenged.
Many times through our travels we had seen poverty, serious slums and hardship, yet the people and areas had a glow of humanity to them. The tiny areas that one could call their own, were clean and well presented even in a falling down shack town, but as we came into Bogota, the streets looked mean. Garbage was piled everywhere and the people had hard faces. It looked like the kind of area that you don't want to go to during the day, much less at night...and it was coming into night. We pulled into the ghetto bus station and pushed past people that looked at us like fresh meat. We found a taxi and directed him to our hotel. The taxi ricocheted through the streets into the "cool old town area", the lights of downtown brightening as darkness set in. Each turn and weave gave us a new vantage point of garbage, homelessness and mass graffiti. There had been plenty of graffiti in other areas of Colombia, but always as art, something charming about it, but this graffiti was absolutely not. Care for the buildings and the city in general seemed to have long been forgotten and drug use was out in the open. Not cute marijuana joints or bottles of booze, I'm talking needles and crack pipes. I realized THIS is what people think of as 'Colombia', this chaos. That is when we sped through a crisscross of highway and there in the middle of the road, was a huge blazing fire and a homeless man ineffectively trying to put it out with his foot as two police men stood and watched.
"If you have to visit this crap city, this is the best hotel in this shit place", the memory of the Bogota hotel review I had read slapped me in the face.
A series of issues lead us to wake up in a fairly modern room in a construction site of a hotel that was NOT the hotel we had booked, but by the time we were laying our heads down, we didn't care. We woke refreshed and ready to give the city a second chance with high hopes we would find that cool place we had pictured in our minds. The guide books are very clear in cautioning you to crime and danger in Bogota, unlike any other places in Colombia, so we decided to try out the best of the safe recommendations before getting wild with the "hidden gems".
The University campus was neat with fantastic cafes and restaurants lining the edges. The rumor of Bogota having great food was definitely true so we started to perk up! Maybe it was just being tired that had given us a bad intro to the city last night? We strolled down to what is considered the shopping/ restaurant district, it was literally packed with people. The noise was at rocket launch level as street vendor's music competed with the music blaring from the permanent stores and guys wanting you to eat at their restaurants literally chased you for blocks yelling about how great the food was. Among the things being sold were various oddities laid out on blankets in the street. It started out benign enough, books and dvds, then quickly books, children's dvds and porn. Then a hodge-podge of kitchen items and baby toys, then socks and socks and sock and shoelaces EVERYWHERE! I mean really, what is the deal with so many shopping carts full of shoelaces for sale? My husband remarked that back at home he can't seem to find shoelaces. He decided it was because the entire world's inventory was there, in Bogota.
The day had taken a turn for the worse and we were tired and disappointed. That was when we literally took a turn for the worse and found the streets were filled with trash being sold on these "vendor blankets". Broken toys, used household items, and even...prepare yourself...used old underpants. At that moment, just as I was about to scream over the noise of the crowd that I was done for the day, we watched a dirty (from head to bare foot) man climb out of a dumpster with an item of clothing and lay it on his blanket to sell. It was clear none of us needed to say anything, we all knew this nightmare needed to end.
Close to our ramshackle hotel was a grocery store with a great selection of wine and a strip of great take out food places. We stocked up, went to our room and hid from the crap day in that shit city. Tucked away in our homemade oasis, the 3 of us curled up on the bed and streamed movies while sipping a glass of wine. The beauty wasn't in the city, but it was certainly in our ability to make those most out of any situation.
-Cheers from the Vivác Winery Family!
www.VivacWinery.com
Thursday, May 3, 2018
One Last Cheap Thrill
Finishing blogging about Colombia has felt like a small death, as if completing the story would cement the fact that we are in fact back. Like acknowledging that fact would make Colombia evaporate into a dream and would disappear having never happened. But, at this point it is just silly to avoid writing about it since new and amazing adventures welcomed us home and I look forward to sharing those too. So suck it up buttercup and get on with it right?!?
Only an hour or so after surviving the Cave of Death (see previous blog post), we were flying through the jungle trees and zig-zaging over the beautiful Rio Claro. Neither myself, my son, nor my husband had ever gone zip lining before, but here we were, doing yet another crazy adventure sport. Like the others, this one started with a terrorizing moment (or 5) before you'd let go and swing off the cliff side. Even my eyelids were sweating out of fear, but it was my sweet baby boy that had been so brave in the cave and on the mountain top when we went paragliding, that was truly distraught. Somehow this combination of elements blew his mind. So, standing in all his gear, clipped to the line, he stood, white faced and trembling.
Now, I am not the suck-it-up style parent (I save that kind of abuse for myself). Between the various things that make up the cocktail that is my young brilliant son, pressure never, ever results in the action you are hoping to get from him. Ask his dad, he has had to learn through trial and much error that this kid MUST make the decision for himself, and no amount of demanding will sway him.
So there I am in a tight perch over the river, trying to talk my son into letting go. Hmmm...that sentence right there just said so much, kinda sums up our relationship. His dad wasn't with me, he had gone 1st to show us that everything was going to be ok (damn, I'm coming up with some great psychological parallels here) so I was on my own. Sorta amusing to think that the 2 people in the family that would be content to never leave the house (der, where do you think he got this "cocktail" of issues from? They are genetic), would be the ones talking each other into jumping off cliffs to fly at lightening speed into the mouths of jaguars on the other side. What? It could happen! It was a Jaguar preserve originally and now it was our "summer camp" style adventure park. Pretty sure there are still jaguars hiding out there. And pretty sure if they are, they would want to attack the cat toy that is a small human dangling helplessly above them.
Needless to say, after some fast talking and the assistance of a Colombian guide that didn't speak any English, our little trouper was flying! I have to admit, there was some element that the other activities hadn't had that made this one challenge the perceptions of fear and fill you with adrenaline. It also was one of the biggest payoffs because it turned out it wasn't scary at all! It was simply a lovely way to see the jungle!
I have no idea how a family that would rather curl up together on the sofa and watch a great movie while sipping a glass of wine, or snuggle under the covers reading a brilliant book...with a glass of wine, or lay on a beach somewhere...with a nice glass of wine (what did you expect? We do own a winery after all. It's called research!) would end up being the Adventure Family of Colombia, but that corny idea to 'embrace life while you can' was being put to the test in a huge way, and we were loving every minute of it. Even, looking back, the moment I swallowed a giant gulp of bird infested cave water had its own glory.
The zipline finished out our time in this miraculous place. If you plan a trip to Colombia, make sure you include Rio Claro Nature Preserve, it is amazing. Now we needed to prepare for our final stop; the very end of our days in Colombia would be in the city of Bogota. We had a couple precious days to explore the bohemian, artistic, University town before we would fly home. Pangs of pain set in fast as we packed to leave the jungle in the morning. How did 2 months go by so fast? Determined to enjoy the last fleeting days in the most amazing country we've ever been to, we started to look forward to the places we'd explore in Bogota and I pushed the hotel review out of my mind that had read:
-Cheers from the Vivác Winery Family!
www.VivacWinery.com
Only an hour or so after surviving the Cave of Death (see previous blog post), we were flying through the jungle trees and zig-zaging over the beautiful Rio Claro. Neither myself, my son, nor my husband had ever gone zip lining before, but here we were, doing yet another crazy adventure sport. Like the others, this one started with a terrorizing moment (or 5) before you'd let go and swing off the cliff side. Even my eyelids were sweating out of fear, but it was my sweet baby boy that had been so brave in the cave and on the mountain top when we went paragliding, that was truly distraught. Somehow this combination of elements blew his mind. So, standing in all his gear, clipped to the line, he stood, white faced and trembling.
Now, I am not the suck-it-up style parent (I save that kind of abuse for myself). Between the various things that make up the cocktail that is my young brilliant son, pressure never, ever results in the action you are hoping to get from him. Ask his dad, he has had to learn through trial and much error that this kid MUST make the decision for himself, and no amount of demanding will sway him.
So there I am in a tight perch over the river, trying to talk my son into letting go. Hmmm...that sentence right there just said so much, kinda sums up our relationship. His dad wasn't with me, he had gone 1st to show us that everything was going to be ok (damn, I'm coming up with some great psychological parallels here) so I was on my own. Sorta amusing to think that the 2 people in the family that would be content to never leave the house (der, where do you think he got this "cocktail" of issues from? They are genetic), would be the ones talking each other into jumping off cliffs to fly at lightening speed into the mouths of jaguars on the other side. What? It could happen! It was a Jaguar preserve originally and now it was our "summer camp" style adventure park. Pretty sure there are still jaguars hiding out there. And pretty sure if they are, they would want to attack the cat toy that is a small human dangling helplessly above them.
Needless to say, after some fast talking and the assistance of a Colombian guide that didn't speak any English, our little trouper was flying! I have to admit, there was some element that the other activities hadn't had that made this one challenge the perceptions of fear and fill you with adrenaline. It also was one of the biggest payoffs because it turned out it wasn't scary at all! It was simply a lovely way to see the jungle!
I have no idea how a family that would rather curl up together on the sofa and watch a great movie while sipping a glass of wine, or snuggle under the covers reading a brilliant book...with a glass of wine, or lay on a beach somewhere...with a nice glass of wine (what did you expect? We do own a winery after all. It's called research!) would end up being the Adventure Family of Colombia, but that corny idea to 'embrace life while you can' was being put to the test in a huge way, and we were loving every minute of it. Even, looking back, the moment I swallowed a giant gulp of bird infested cave water had its own glory.
The zipline finished out our time in this miraculous place. If you plan a trip to Colombia, make sure you include Rio Claro Nature Preserve, it is amazing. Now we needed to prepare for our final stop; the very end of our days in Colombia would be in the city of Bogota. We had a couple precious days to explore the bohemian, artistic, University town before we would fly home. Pangs of pain set in fast as we packed to leave the jungle in the morning. How did 2 months go by so fast? Determined to enjoy the last fleeting days in the most amazing country we've ever been to, we started to look forward to the places we'd explore in Bogota and I pushed the hotel review out of my mind that had read:
"if you have to visit this crap city, this is the best hotel in this shit place"
www.VivacWinery.com
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