Our Trip to Colombia

Our trip to Colombia was squished in the middle of Kelsey leaving, us moving, and heading back to the jungle. 

We went by way of speed boat, which was only an 8-9 hour trip. We landed at the edge of Peru and had to take a small wooden fishing boat to Colombia. The fun started there, because Nelton has never been out of his country. Nelton had our stuff loaded in the boat and I told him he better ask and make sure that this particular boat accepted soles (Peruvian currency). Nelton, working with USD and Soles in the ministry, but never having a problem with people accepting soles, asked. When the man heard the question, he took our luggage and threw it on the dock without even verbally responding. Nelton was a bit shocked. I really didn’t think that culture shock would be an issue for Nelton, because it’s another South American culture, but he went through it. It was his first time out of Peru.

Leticia Colombia is where we had to get my stamps in my passport and pay a fee for residency. This is the point where Brazil, Peru, and Colombia all come together. You can see the other two countries from whatever countries bank you are on. The change was indeed different between the three countries. Colombia and Brazil have very developed towns/cities with electricity, concrete buildings, paved streets, cars, motorcycles, busses, businesses, hotels, etc. Leticia, especially was my favorite. They have many laws about noise and litter, so the streets are clean and tranquil. It’s almost like a sweet little town from the 1950‘s, everyone is friendly and helpful, most people walk, and there is an overall sense of hospitality and community. 


The Peruvian side, on the other hand, is a typical jungle village and feels a good 50-100 years behind the other two countries. Most buildings are huts, there is one sidewalk that runs through the middle of the village, it’s dirty with litter, and though there is electricity and running water, it’s still run by generators and both only work at certain hours of the day.

Before we even arrived, Nelton was set on staying in Peru and traveling back and forth between Colombia and Peru. In my mind, lets stay in Colombia and really experience the country (I love traveling!). I’d never been to Colombia, so to me we’d get a fuller experience if we slept, ate, played, and worked in Colombia. Plus, I had already made reservations at a mission house, recommended by other missionaries.

So back to the story, we ended up changing some soles for pesos in Peru, not even sure what the value of the money was, so we could get to Colombia. The exchange rate was something like $1,900 Colombian Pesos for $1, it made for crazy math between soles, USD, and Pesos so that we were both clear on how much stuff cost. It was even harder for me at first, because Nelton exchanged the money and couldn’t remember exactly what the rate was. Once I had a good rate in my head, I had no problem, but everything costs like $6,000 or $25,000 and stuff, so it took Nelton a while to figure it out. It was so fun! We would exchange money and he would be like “I’m so right I have THOUSANDS of pesos!” Then a taxi ride for an hour would be like $18,000 pesos. And so after one ride or one meal, we’d see ourselves getting poorer.

When we got to Colombia, we didn’t have enough pesos to get a taxi, so we walked over the whole city twice, looking for the mission house. When we couldn’t find it, we had to go to the internet to look up directions, then walked back across town and discovered, we had passed it twice, but there was no sign on the outside and it was locked up with chains. We had even knocked there once, with no answer. 

When we arrived at the same place, Nelton was ready to just go to another place, and I should have listened. But being the typical North American, I was like “No, I’ve already made arrangements, we can’t just not show up.” So I stood there knocking and yelling in the gate for like 10 minutes before a Colombian sheepishly came to the gate. Well, they knew nothing of our plans to stay. Apparently, the director was in the States, and while he said everything would be set up, he neglected to inform the staff in Colombia.

From the moment of our arrival, we felt like an inconvenience. As comical as the story goes, and as much as I enjoy telling the story, I will spare the details. In short, we had to walk between the two buildings several times, which are a few blocks apart (at which point I was EXHAUSTED and just wanted to REST!) to work out the details. They finally got a room set up for us. Throughout that time we learned that we had to observe curfew, didn’t have keys to the outside gate (meaning yelling and knocking would have been a regular occurrence), had a schedule for meal time, had to wash our own dishes after mealtime, and such. Not a problem, but along with doing all the paperwork, I was hoping to enjoy our time in Colombia.

When we finally got our room, I felt like the place would redeem itself with AC, but that ended up being broken, shattering my heart. It’s been FOREVER since I have had the relief of AC, and was looking forward to it. So I was not too happy when on top of everything else, that was broken too. The straw that broke the camels back was when the water ran out as Nelton was showering. When I told the staff we would probably look for another place, as the schedule didn’t really fit with the work we had to do (we thought we would be free to come and go as we pleased in order to get the work done), and that the water ran out. He told me I just had to go down and manually pump it, which was news to me.

Long story short, Nelton was NOT excited about Colombia. Culture shock was rapid and harsh to him. He missed Peru and was ready to pack it up and head home after 2 hours in Colombia. I just laughed, we both really laughed our way through the miscommunication with the mission house. They were gracious and understood when we did end up looking for other accommodations.

So, we set out by foot, again, to look for a new hotel. Most were full because of a Colombian holiday the following day. But we ended up finding a good one, and it only cost a few dollars more than the Mission House.

When we finally settled into our new accommodations, it was getting late, but Nelton was starting to enjoy the adventure of a new culture. So we hit the streets, Nelton’s idea. I was exhausted, but we just walked up and down main street to see what the place was like.

The following day we had to go back to Peru to stamp out at immigrations. As the small fishing boat was pulling up to Peru, Nelton looked at his country, in comparison to the beautiful town we had just come from and said, “This is so embarrassing. I hate my country! It’s so disgusting.” He started seeing all the litter and trash and was like “Why do they do that?” I laughed so hard and only said, “Reverse culture shocks 100 times worse.” Then I lovingly reminded him he wanted to stay in Peru, he was like “NO way! We are going back to Colombia as soon as we can. It was a good eye opener for him. 

I can only imagine his trip to the States.

We enjoyed the bakeries (it’s been FOREVER since I’ve had good bread!), and just the simplicity of the town. 

Running around, getting the visa stuff done went smoothly and we completed our mission for my residency in Colombia. Now, come to find out I have to go to Lima, more about that in the next post.

The big adventure is that we ran out of money, we had no idea how much Colombia would cost, and it was a little more pricey than Peru. I think because it is a more touristy place, and if not touristy, several people have to go there to complete that step for residency. I didn’t think it was a problem, because I had an ATM card, only, I ended up being locked out of my ATM in Colombia. So, yeah, mom came to the rescue via facebook (thanks those who saw our 911 and responded) and we got our money.

We didn’t go to Brazil until the last day, when all our paperwork was done, and it’s probably a good thing, because I’m sure it would have been overwhelming for Nelton. Brazil, of course, is not only a different currency, but a whole different language too. It did have a distinct feel to it, but I could still see a lot of South America in it. We only a little bit of money, and we needed to save some of it for our boat ride back to Peru, so we walked most of the town and didn’t buy anything, except for supper. By this time, Nelton was loving other cultures and surprised me when he whipped out some Portuguese, he had picked some up on TV and sounded native to me. Of course, what would I know?

It ended up being a wonderful trip. Aside from getting all the paperwork done, we enjoyed our first get-a-way as a married couple. To me, it was more of a honeymoon than our honeymoon because we were away from everyone we knew. Our after the wedding honeymoon was spent in Iquitos, and we had phone calls, Nelton ended up needing to run errends for the ministry, and we even had a few guests show up to see our honeymoon suite. Needless-to-say, it was not just us.

At least in Colombia, we knew when we could work, because Colombian Immigrations and Peruvian Consulate had hours of operation. So we worked during those times, and enjoyed ourselves the rest of the time.