Leanne and Kyle start to strategize how to help Leanne’s mom starting with researching in the middle of the night and early morning when WiFi is best.  Corey is not doing well as he was up all night throwing up and could barely come up with words this morning.  We supply him with medicines and water and arrange for a doctor to come to the hotel in the afternoon.  Saffron, the concert pianist, is suffering from altitude sickness so she’s staying in today.  

Bibi takes another day off for us!  We have the concierge order a large van to take the 9 of us to Cathedral del Sal de Zipaquira which is an underground Roman Catholic church built within the tunnels of a salt mine 200 meters (~630 feet) deep.  This is also a place of pilgrimage as well as tourist attraction.

The salt mines house a beautiful main cathedral, Stations of the Cross and more places to pray than a Joel Osteen service.  Ava Maria plays beautifully in the background in one of the salt cave stations of the cross which gives Leanne some comfort as she’s really down today. 

After we enjoy the cool experience of the Cathedral and the surrounding religious art and naves and statues, we head into a 3D movie, a virtual reality show and then a light show — all about the salt mine. Wow, have they maximized this experience 200 meters underground or what?  There’s even an adjacent underground mall that will sell you any souvenir or gift you may need too. 

When we emerge back outside, we grab popsicles and head back.  Since we all have errands to run to prep for tomorrow’s concert, the rest of the day is work. Haircuts, Post office, Bakery order, getting boxes to ship stuff back, get supplies for John’s concert, etc.  Bibi is a Rockstar translator for us especially with the doctor on call that visits Corey in the late afternoon at the hotel.  Thank you Bibi! 

The plan for tonight is to meet up with Bibi and Doralis for dinner.  Since Saffron is feeling better, we make it a rare “adults only” night.  John offers to take the teens to the pizza place around the corner. Our plan is to enjoy a true Colombian meal and we head to Quinos SA a restaurant with five levels. It’s only Tuesday yet every table is taken or reserved.  Popular place!  

They tell us it will be a 1-2 hour wait and we think of leaving but it’s such a vibrant, fun scene we stick it out as we take seats at the bar. Doralis meets up with us and we order starters and drinks at the bar.  We have a great time reminiscing about when Doralis and Bibi were with us in California. Finally, a table opens up and we get seated.

Little did we know but this restaurant has a long-standing tradition of welcoming foreigners by making them get up and dance to a five piece band while wearing a crown and sash too.  Since we waited at the bar so long for a table, Leanne and Kyle are a bit tipsy by the time the band gets over to welcoming them. Let’s just say we look like two adults that don’t get out much.  

Dancing is a significant part of Colombian culture so we all spend a good part of the night dancing and looking like we are having the time of our lives.  Actually we are having the time of our lives. We giggle with our Colombian friends so hard all our stomachs started to ache. 

It is shaping up to be one of the most fun nights of our eight month journey .... being a bit goofy and remembering such good times we had when Bibi and Doralis lived with us through the Au pair program. Before we know it it’s 1am.  “What, how did that happen?” Leanne wants to know.

Sometimes when you look like you are having TOO much fun, you attract some interesting characters.  At the end of the night, a normal looking millennial guy in his mid to late 20’s approaches our table with a cute young woman wrapped on each arm. To protect his identity, we will refer to said guy as The Colombian Bullshitter or Mr BS for short. 

“I knew you were my peeps from across the room, I’d know my peeps anywhere!” Mr BS loudly exclaims as he approaches our today. We’re not sure who is peeps are but we’re pretty sure we don’t run in the same circles as this guy. “You’re Americans, right?” he says.  We’ll that’s not exactly going out on a ledge with that observation.

He is obviously not going away so we make the introductions.  He asks us what we are doing in Colombia and we tell him Kyle retiring and our year-long trip and visiting our Au Pairs. In retrospect, it might have been that he took our story as a “my ‘private part’ is bigger than yours” challenge and just launches into his story and what a story it was.

He’s from Wisconsin. He served in the marines in an elite special black ops team in the Middle East.  We wouldn’t have been surprised if he said he was the one that shot Osama Bin Laden.  He gets bored with that and leave the military and joins the FBI where he ends up running the Wisconsin office.  The FBI require a college degree so Leanne keeps asking him where he went to college but he keeps dodging the question.  Ok, he must have been about 25 years old then so his story stills seems plausible at this point. 

Low and behold, he grows bored of running the FBI and leaves to start his own company. He started a credit card processing company and it doesn’t take long for him to drop that he is making $3.5 million a year. Leanne and Kyle have a saying that smart people don’t have to tell other people how smart they are. Kind of the same thing, people who make that much money usually don’t go around announcing it to the world.

Kyle and Leanne ask him about his credit card processing business, which the surface is a straightforward concept, but the way he was explaining it and how he made his money made absolutely no sense (and that’s coming from two MBAs). We pepper him fiercely with all sorts of questions as he didn’t realize he just entered our “Question You until You Cry Uncle” zone. 

He suddenly switches the topic to telling us about his yacht docked in Mykonos and that we should all go out yachting together in Greece? “Huh?” We see through his attempt to switch topics but matter, he is on the next thing. This conversation makes the pool bar conversation in Halong Bay, Vietnam with the Polish dude who switched topics mid-sentence seem incredibly normal by comparison (see Halong Bay post).  

We can’t even blame the language barrier here because Mr BS is a full-fledged Red-White-And-Blue American from Wisconsin. Or so we think.  He starts talking about when he ran the FBI field office in New York. “Wait, I thought you said you from Wisconsin?” Kyle interjects. “No, no, I’m from New York, but I live in Wisconsin now.” 

Five minutes later, he says he’s from Colombia.  “What???  You just said you were from New York, I’m totally confused,” Kyle jumps in.  “Well, no, I was born in Colombia but moved to the US when I was 7 so I actually grew up in New York,” he responds.  Kyle says, “wait, when I asked you earlier if you had ever been to Colombia, you said no.” “Well, I meant that I had never come back to Colombia since I moved to the US.” Oh yes, his mom is Colombian but his Dad is American he says. Nothing makes sense and 1 plus 1 definitely does no equal 2 but Mr Slick here has a response for everything.

He continues standing there in our space going on and on. He is now explaining how the purpose of this trip to Bogota is to investigate setting-up a call center here because it costs $40K per month in the US but only $10K per month here and he could have set it up anywhere in Latin America but since both of his parents are Colombian, he felt he should do it here. Wait! His parents are now both Colombian, having suddenly changed nationality more fitting of his current fictional disclosure. Nothing was adding up.  

Leanne says to him, “I’ve done some nonprofit work, how do you give back with all this money you are making?” Oh boy, this gets The Most Mysterious Man Alive started on another tale of how he has already established a non-profit organization here in Bogota to help educate and feed the poor people.” But wait, this is his first time back in Colombia and he’s not even sure he’s setting up the call center here but yet he has already established and is running an entire non-profit organization down here?

It was as if he was auditioning his own version of Dos Equis’ “The Most Interesting Man Alive Commercial.” You know, the one that ends with him saying “I don’t always drink beer, but when I do, I drink Dos Equis.  Well, in this case, The Most Interesting Man Alive apparently drinks Jaegermeister as the waitress appears with 20 shots of it that he had ordered from the waitress. The 20 shots are sitting there in front of the 8 of us which translates to 2.5 shots each.  

By the way, his right arm candy girl gives us all the death stare this whole time, clearly trying to protect her “catch.”  While her supposedly “sister” (aka the left arm candy) sweetly smiles back completely unengaged in the conversation but trying hard to look interested by nodding yes every two minutes…no matter what comes out of his mouth. 

Leanne tries to divert attention away from Mr BS as maybe his companions could offer us a bit more flavor… or truth.  Or at least stop this guy from talking anymore! “What do you do?” Asks Leanne towards the woman on his right. Mr BS clearly does not like the attention being drawn away from him and curtly and rudely answers for her, “She shops at Louis Vitton and does whatever the f*** that I tell her to do.”  

Oouch!  Up to this point, he was entertaining as we easily catch him in each illogical “untruth” that is sprouting forth from his mouth.  But he has crossed the line. Saffron looks like she is going to clock him, Doralis and Bibi give us a “can we PLEASE leave now” look.  We were done.  Done with The Slick Colombian Bull Shitter and his arm ornaments. Done with this weird conversation. This is the first American (or was he even American?) we’ve met in quite a while and he’s definitely not making us homesick. 

As we are getting up to leave, he says to Kyle, “hey if you follow me on Face Book, I’ll let you message me once per quarter.” “What??? This guy is unbelievable,” Kyle thinks in disbelief, “I am supposed to be all excited because some punk 25 year-old is going to let me message him once every three months?”   

 You just can’t make this stuff up.