Publicat: 01.01.2023
We arrived at the bus station in Bogotá at around 7:00 and thought we could move into our AirBnB and sleep right away. Unfortunately, the apartment was still occupied, but we were only informed about it after the key was not where it was supposed to be. Completely exhausted, we decided to go into the city right away. We placed our luggage in a locker in the hallway and off we went to the old town.
There, we first had a typical Colombian breakfast, beans, rice, eggs, and a piece of meat, delicious. We spent the next few hours doing some classic sightseeing, strolling through the city center, and were pleasantly surprised by how beautiful and pleasant the capital was. In the early afternoon, we visited the famous Gold Museum. Here you can see the history of Colombia's ancestors and their natural resources on three floors. A very impressive exhibition. Then finally, the long-awaited message arrived: our AirBnB is ready and we can move in. At that point, we were already struggling not to fall asleep while standing. When we arrived at the apartment, the first thing we did was claim the bed, we had to catch up on our lost sleep. After a few hours, we treated ourselves to spaghetti for dinner and prepared for the journey to Fiji.
Our day started early. Around 5:00 it was time to wake up and go to the airport. The check-in was easy and everything went according to plan. Our plane arrived on time and we took off at 9:00. We arrived in Atlanta at 02:00 (where we had to wait and transfer to a flight to San José). Now came the big moment, would we be able to enter the US without any problems or not. It should be mentioned that a few weeks before we were in Cuba and the entry requirements to the US changed again during our trip, and travelers who had previously been to Cuba were now only allowed to enter with a special visa. Luckily, we didn't get a Cuban stamp in our passports, so we hoped that nobody would notice.
And indeed, this entry went smoothly as well. Our heartbeat was probably close to 200, as we would have had to rearrange a lot and lose a lot of money otherwise. Thank goodness everything went well. After a 6-hour layover in Atlanta, we flew on to San Jose, California. This time as well, everything went well. We drove to our AirBnB around midnight, which Anna had booked a few days in advance. A room with a shared bathroom on the outskirts of the city. The journey was tiring and so we both fell victim to the Sandman, after a quick shower.
We got up early in the morning and found a classic American diner to fuel up for the day. After 3 cups of coffee, some pancakes, and eggs with bacon, we strolled back to our accommodation. We packed our things and stored them in the living room (we were staying in a house with 4-6 rooms). We went in search of a charger for Manfred's laptop, which had unfortunately died in the past few days. We visited several shops, traveled from one place to another, but unfortunately had no luck, so we went back to get our luggage. Our flight from San Francisco Airport was at 22:00, so we also had to take the train from San Jose to get there. The journey to the airport went very well and took about two hours. Now a new section of our tour started - the flight to Fiji began.
For us, there was no December 7th, it fell victim to the time change. Due to crossing the date line in the Pacific, we lost a whole day on our way to Fiji.