Epic Escapades South of the Border

A few days before we headed to Panama from Colombia I got a call from my mother warning me that she had heard about anti-American riots in Panama, and suggesting we may want to change our travel plans.  It may just be me, but it does seem like these kind of headlines have been following us around Latin America this trip…. Luckily, the “riots” were no big deal, and the biggest effect of The Big Orange Baby’s threats seems to just be lots more Panamanian flags flying - especially in the neighborhood around the US embassy.  The first leg of our stay in Panama was a week at an off-the-grid eco-scuba lodge, Ark Divers, located in Chiriqui province near a marine reserve known as Coiba National Park.   I am thrilled to report that one day shy of the 11-month anniversary of Melanie’s heart attack while scuba diving with bull sharks in Costa Rica last year, and  armed with a complete medical clearance from her cardiologist  (and a printout of her baseline ECG as rec...

 We arrived in Medellin early last Saturday morning.  The last leg of our journey from Bolivia was an Avianca flight from Bogota to Medellin, the 13th flight of our trip so far.  It was not the flight I was most looking forward to - not because I suffer from triskaidekaphobia (I have plenty of phobias, just not that one) - but for reasons that Colombian history buffs (and fans of the Netflix series Narcos) will be well aware of (others should read on).  In light of the US State Department’s Colombia travel advisory (“reconsider travel due to crime and terrorism”), and recent headlines (“more than 32,000 displaced as violence spirals in Colombian drug trafficking region”), one might ask - and fairly so - why Medellin?  So before I get into the highlights of our visit - which was a blast (as in fun, not as in a bomb) - just a little bit of the backstory for our visit. This time last year Melanie and I took a 2 week hiking trip to Colombia (don’t worry, you didn’t ...