Day 2 - the flight from Paris to Bogotá

The weather was cold but dry when we landed Sunday evening, but Monday morning after a good night's sleep we woke up to fresh snow on the ground. The first photo shows the view from our hotel room window. The second photo shows the buttons in the ceiling of the shuttle bus. We interpreted them to mean "cough" and "stop coughing" in French. (As you may have guessed, neither of us speaks a word of French.)






By mid-morning the weather had turned quite mild and the snow had started to melt, so we thought the snow wouldn't cause much delay for our flight, but we were wrong.

Because of the snow, we had to wait two hours on the ground for de-icing after boarding the plane. But once we were airborne, the rest of the trip across the Altantic Ocean was uneventful — but long!





We ate, we watched a movie, we played video games,we got bored, we listened to music, we slept some, we read some, we watched another movie, and we ate some more. Finally, after 11 hours at 32,000 feet, we landed in Bogotá, the capital of Colombia (8,660 ft, or 2,640 m, above sea level), where we were met by a smiling taxi driver who was sent by the adoption agency to pick us up. His name was Reinaldo, and to our surprise he spoke fairly good Norwegian!

Unfortunately, we can't rely on most people in Colombia being able to understand Norwegian. Many speak only Spanish, but many also speak English better than we speak Spanish, and when everybody wants to, we can always communicate somehow. You can get far with a smile and simple body language!