Day 3 -- Bogota -- Sao Paulo

We had an early breakfast and at 8:15 am a female driver picked us up to take us to la Sabana University in a small town called Chia about 40 miles north of Bogota. When we got to the car, it turn out that it wasn’t just us. She also had her mother and her daughter in this small car so it was quite cozy for a while until she dropped her daughter off in a shopping center on the outskirts of the city (she worked in a fashion store). None of the women spoke any English so I had a good Spanish workout. The university campus was very pretty – with traditional style yet modern buildings, a river, lots of greenery and with mountains all around. We had half a day of meetings with various departments and the international office. Everybody was super nice, and I have to say that the student facilities, and definitely offices are much nicer and better equipped than at many US universities I have seen. For example, director of international relations had a beautiful large office with a conference table and a huge flat screen on the wall with a teleconferencing system so she could use it with skype or some other system to conduct remote meetings. The meetings ran long so we got to the hotel late and only had enough time to close our suitcases, check out and get a cab to the airport. I had a real dilemma at the airport which passport to use to check in – Polish or American. I knew I had to use the American passport to go through immigration in Bogota and the Polish one in Sao Paulo, but check-in was iffy. I opted for the Polish one and it turned out to be the right decision. My friend who had to use her American passport (with Brazilian visa) had to run around to get some additional papers, stamps, etc so it took us quite a while before we were ready to go to the gate. Two hours turned out to be just enough to make it. The flight was about 5-6 hours and thumbs up for Avianca. The entertainment system was great – about 10 movies to watch with individual controls, they fed us twice and the plane was fairly new and nice. We arrived at midnight. Immigration was a breeze (especially compared to LAX or Houston), customs people just waved us in and their taxi system is great (you pre-pay at a taxi counter) so we got to the hotel at about 1 am. To our surprise, when we opened the door to our room, it turned out to be a two-bedroom suite with a nice living room and a kitchenette. Too bad we are only staying here 2 nights.