Colombian Adventures with Chris - Part One

6/1/2016

Colombian Adventures with Chris - Part One

We're always happy to share reports from far off places and recently Chris sent us a whole bunch of pictures from Colombia including some of the theme parks there.

There is a LOT to get to so we're going to split this into a few updates.

Written by Christopher DeRosa

Hello, I’m Chris. I took a trip to Colombia to see some culture, ride some roller coasters, and have a good time. While I’ll be reporting on the amusement parks in the area, including Parque Del Café, I’d like to show you some of the trip besides parks as well. So here we go!

It took us all night to get down there from Los Angeles. Didn’t really sleep. The terrible chicken on board didn’t help that, either.

In Colombia, the stop signs say Pare.

It’s important to know where, and where not, to take your automatic weaponry.

This is me. That’s my friend Danny on the right. That’s the ceiling, an inch and a half from my head. I’m not tall.

This is Bogotá, as seen from our Airbnb apartment. Bogotá sits at and above elevation 8600’ or above, which made walking back up here at the end of each day a serious cardio adventure.

We checked out some night clubs and the area in general. The city didn’t seem ‘unsafe’ but it didn’t necessarily feel safe, either. One of our main goals of the trip was to go to a music festival called Estereo Picnic. One of the parks I was going to skip was way north of the city. Fortunately, the concert was also way north of the city…in fact, it was right next door to…

Multiparque! It’s mostly for families. I take that back. It’s entirely for families.

I’m not gonna lie. Part of the draw was to finally fulfill my dreams of living in The 5th Element, and get my very own MULTIPASS.

They had go-karts. The ‘normal’ track required you to wear this skin tight thing over your head as well as this huge helmet.

This is the hardcore track. It was pretty expensive, even by our standards, so we skipped it. I can’t imagine the gear they make you wear on this one. A full jumpsuit?

So here’s the first credit of the trip. “Spinning Coaster.” It appeared to be brand new.

Here it is with a person on it!

Here we can see two attractions. The Spinning Coaster, and the ‘Ride a llama around the park’ ride.

Dogs didn’t need to be on a leash because they are totally used to seeing random animals walking by.

There’s not much to the place.

A cute little midway,

Some rides for very small children,

And some miniature golf.

The bulk of the park was actually this area that you paid about $1 to get into, which was basically a huge public playground…on steroids. We didn’t go into the part of the park because my friend was not interested at ALL, and we had a busy day ahead of ourselves.

It goes way, way out of view from what you can see here. Apparently there’s a lake, a train, some random ropes stuff, and a petting zoo. I was totally down to check it out, but again, this was my friends first credit stop of his life and he was far too cool to go into that area.

The restaurant at the park was excellent. Our best meal so far (3 days in), but more importantly, Danny ordered Horse. lol. It’s not amazing, that's probably why they throw an egg and some tomato on top of it.

We spent the rest of the day and night at the music festival, Estereo Picnic. In case you didn’t catch that.

Balls

The prices in Colombia took some getting used to. Roughly, its col$3000 - usd$1.

I know you’re here for parks, so I won’t bore you with the details, but we had a great time. Colombians are beyond friendly and polite. The Policia mostly stood around and made sure nobody died.

It rained, so lots of people were dressed like happy little ghosts.

If you wanted a beer, you just asked one of these guys. No beer gardens, no lines, just..ask the dude with the crazy backpack.

This is the view from the top of this ice slide of death thing. You waited in line for an hour and a half and went down this ice ramp. Kind of terrifying. I didn’t get any pictures of it (alcohol), but here’s a super dorky video they gave me for free at the end. I had to tweet it.

So among other, mostly local artists, we saw The Flaming Lips, Kygo, Snoop Dog, and Jack U.

The Colombian drink of choice is undoubtedly Aguardiente. This stuff is not to be trusted. We had way too much. The next day was Bogotá Amusement Park Day!

The next morning, we got up with ~reasonably~ enough time to have a banana and hit the two parks for the day. One closed at 6 and one at 7:30, and we were out around 12:30. With a banana. Because Colombia.

Saltire Magico was our first ‘proper’ park of the trip, and this park was home to 4 credits. It’s a typical Latin American park, at least from what I’ve seen, resembling more of a permanent carnival than a park.

Our hangovers dictated that we were above waiting in line, so we spent a total of $67,000 pesos for admission and a fast pass. $22usd.

The first order of business was this Arrow Corkscrew called “Montaña Rusa.” That means Roller Coaster in Spanish.

It’s…an Arrow Corkscrew. Not smooth, not rough. Just Arrow.

“omg I’m totally using this for my Facebook Profile.”

Next up was this Jumbo Jet called Tornado.

It was running one train, so they only let 2 fast passes in at a time. The standby line had to be at least an hour and half. I only saw one other group of people with fast passes.

“Time to make a bunch of Americans jealous!!!”

I apologize, guys, I didn’t take the best pictures today.

The next coaster was this bizarre French thing called Doble Loop. It has two loops.

All the coasters were running one train. The lines weren’t long, but operations were slow and I’d guess this one to be an hour wait itself.

We walked right on. It was, you know, cool I guess.

This is Gusano Loco. After completely ignoring us for two cycles, I asked the ride-op if we could ride, and she said no. And she thought we were VERY funny for asking. Oh well :(

This bizarre thing was calling my name, so we checked it out. It was a walk-through with a tour guide. We learned all about prehistoric marine sea animatronics. Well I would have if I understood Spanish on that level. But I don’t. The kids were entertained by our presence.

They had a mirror maze.

As well as a giant wheel that was sponsored by Samsung before all cool kids at SFMM.

Some kind of Michael Jackson show that we very regrettably missed.

I learned in Mexico that haunted walk-throughs are a MUST. Unfortunately even with a fastness this line was not moving, so we skipped it. Here’s an overview of the midway, although clearly I’m missing something very entertaining in the opposite direction.

The next park was Mundo Aventura. At this point, my friend wasn’t feeling very good so this was just going to be a really quick credit run. They had an indoor Galaxi and some kind of large wacky worm.

The indoor Galaxi was closed, so unfortunately, no pics of that at all. However, we still had Tropical Track.

And there it goes. They didn’t even let us purchase tickets for this one. Again, we were met with utter confusion and hysteria. My coaster-whoring skills are minimal, I don’t put up much of a fight.

I really wanted to go on the malaria flume, but it was getting late and cold, and people were getting off of it soaked.

This park had several large flats, none of which we were in any position to enjoy. I’d like to come back and spend a little more time at this park, and maybe even get a credit.

Not all was lost, though. We did ride the SkyCoaster, my friends first and my 3rd.

Sadly, that’s all the pictures I have from Mundo Aventura. I promise to return someday, and maybe not down a bunch of Aguardiente the night before :)

The next day we played tourist in Bogota, and started out by riding this old school cable car to the top of a peak.

There was also a Funicular, which I was very excited about, but it turned out to be closed, just like the indoor Galaxi. Websites are not to be trusted in Colombia, as it turns out.

Nonetheless, the Cable Car was really cool, and the view up here was awesome. We were above 10,000’ at this point.

There’s a church up here. It was closed for something.

The views were amazing though, and the elevation could definitely be felt. If you look closely, you can see one of those Statue-on-a-Hill things like in Rio de Janeiro.

There were also a ton of places to learn about Jesus outside of the Church, as well as a beautiful hillside garden / oxygen free hill climb of death.

We wandered around a bit. I’m not one to stick around very long and take it in, so we took off after around an hour or so.

So that’s the Monserrat. We were told its dangerous to walk from there down to the city, but we didn’t feel any danger, so we walked. We were fine.

We ended up at the main plaza of the historic part of the city. Lots of pigeons. Oh and we got a coffee on the way. Because Colombia.

Big Church. Lots of Churches in this part of town. You can enter most, but no pictures, not even without flash. I gotta be honest, most of them were stunning.

We wrapped up our Tour-de-Church, and headed out.

So I may be slightly off on this, but apparently at some point in the past, some graffiti artists were killed by the police, which caused a riot, which caused graffiti to be legalized. And let me tell you, it was everywhere. Some was incredible, some was alright, and a lot was just chicken scratches like the ones you see on OTSRs.

And, in a very condensed nutshell, that’s Bogota! Off to Pereira!

And with that, there's the end of Part One of Christopher's trip to Colombia. Part two will feature more fun and Parque del Cafe and of course includes Montaña Rusa.

Thanks again to Christopher for the pics, we hope you enjoyed!!

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