Our First Stop is in Bogota...

Being the man of the house, it was up to me to decide on where we would be headed for the family vacation. After much discussion with my wife and 2 1/2 year old daughter it came down to Disneyland or Bogota. I was haunted by my mother's voice, begging me not to take my family to Colombia as I waited in the queue at immigration.
 
Maybe they were right. Maybe I was about to enter a land of kidnappings, drugs and killings. In a sick way, it sounded rather fun, but with my daughter fast asleep in my arms I was beginning to regret my decision to drag the tribe down to Bogota.  It is not like we were not prepared. We had practiced diligently in the weeks leading up to our departure.  Nightly, we had family quiet time and played the balloon game. By the time of our departure, we were well skilled in the art of staying calm while handcuffed and blindfolded. I was also subtly surprised at the natural talent my young daughter possessed in swallowing balloons.  My wife and I were never able to get past ten, but my daughter could easily gulp down over twenty and pass them a few hours later with ease.  With that kind of talent, she would be able to cover the cost of the family vacation.

We were there and there was nothing more to do than load up the family in the Colombian cab and head out. Thank God my wife speaks no Spanish because the cabbie greeted us with the reassurance that he was not going to kidnap us.  That did wonders for my confidence as I saw my wife struggling to hook up the car seat in a car with no seat belts. It was not going to happen, so I threw the car seat in the trunk and used the good old fashioned and highly practical method of the third world seat beat.  With my daughter on my lap and my arm as the restraint, a gold toothed cab driver led us into the early hours of our first day in Bogota.

Being too cheap to splurge on a proper hotel, I found a gem of an apartment on Craig's List. While it wasn't exactly in the declared safe zone of Bogota, it was just a "few blocks away" - think Manhattan Beach and Compton. I explained to my wife it was safer than a hotel because kidnappers would never look for a target amongst the locals.  They'd be too busy scouting the overpriced hotels catering to people with money - not us.  But when we pulled up, I discovered that once again Craig's List got the better of me. Similar to the time I arranged for a Russian beauty to come over only to have a tweeker from the 909 show up! This apartment did not match the pictures and a feeling of panic and despair crept over me.

...stay tuned for part II from our new lifestyle contributor, coming soon! He's writing for us so he obviously survived-- but how?