April 28, 2019
WARNING: Gory picture included towards the end of this post.
Columbia is FABULOUS!!
Bogota is impressive right off the bat, immediately as you leave the airport it’s obvious that is well organized, super clean, with fruits and vegetables stores everywhere, tons of fantastic restaurants, has protected bike lines, people are really warm and helpful (and good looking too 🙂) and they not only recycle but compost too 😀!!!
I was feeling a bit high in the first few hours of our stay here, constantly repeating how Bogota has a fantastic vibe, how much more sophisticated, beautiful, orderly and modern it is than what I’ve expected.
We spent the day with our Karem, former nanny to our kids. We explored our neighborhood but then we decided to go up to a look out point called Monserrate where we could see most of the city from one spot.
That’s when our evening turned adventurous.
Maksim fell and cut his head. He was standing on a rock and slipped and hit his head on it. He is so darn active at all times that it’s wonder he doesn’t get hurt more often.
As soon as he screamed and we saw all the blood coming down his face, I picked him up and was holding him when 4 security guards ran over with a nurse. They had a First Aid backpack with them and the nurse checked Maksim, cleaned his wound up and they ushered us to a priority line to get back down the hill and go to the hospital. They seriously showed up within 2 minutes from the moment he fell.
Impressive!!!
Then a sweet young man offered to help guide us to a nearby children’s hospital. He spoke great English even though he has never spent any time in an English speaking country.
Petra, Maksim and I took a taxi with Ivan to the closest hospital (5-10 min away) while Karem, Nikola and Pedja went back to apartment (going to the hospital with Nina is no picnic).
This young man translated for us at the children’s hospital but it turned out that we had to go to another hospital since this one didn’t have a plastic surgeon on staff at all times. Ivan went home and Maksim, Petra and I took another crazy taxi ride (30 minutes away) to the second hospital called Clinica Colombia.
There he got checked in and examined within 30-45 min of our arrival, his wound was cleaned and covered but they couldn’t do the stitches until the morning when a plastic surgeon was on schedule. We were out of the hospital in little over an hour.
Simply impressive!!!
This morning, we went to see the surgeon at 9am (per last night’s instructions) and Maki got 3 internal and 6 external stitches by an English speaking plastic surgeon called Dr Ferrer.
We were out of there by 10:03am.
The whole ordeal cost $210 in total ($60 for last night +$150 for stitches this morning).
Unbelievably great experience fit my good first impression of this beautiful country.
Maksim is doing well. He was lucky he only got a cut and no concussion or any other bigger issues.
He asked us if he could go play basketball as soon as we got back from the hospital. We told him that even though he was ready for more action, we were exhausted and needed some down time. That kid is tireless.
Refresh Journey 