THIS IS NOT WHAT WE EXPECTED! - VAN LIFE MEDICAL TOURISM IN COLOMBIA
so the first little bit of the drive takes us out through the valley down along the river and through this canopy of eucalyptus trees and through the cow pastures it's really a beautiful ride you guys probably saw it in the last video on the way in but we're headed to a town for armenia it's a little bit of a chore day we've gotta get provisions we gotta top off with groceries we have to get fuel what else we gotta do snow water we need to start worrying about laundry we need to get cash there's a lot of things coming up on our list to do so we're gonna head to armenia and get it done one thing we've learned about colombia as we've been driving through the country is there are a lot of big cities now obviously you've got the huge ones like bogota medellin cartagena cali but between those there's a lot of large cities and they have high-rise buildings very modern they still kind of have that colombian culture and some of the open markets but a lot of big modern cities but i don't know where we'll park but that's what it says so the first stop along the way is to get groceries and we need some specialty items so we had to come to the big store snow's in the van it's difficult to find parking so i'm headed over here now i'm going to walk back and after i get groceries i'm going to try to find her so if you're wondering about what kind of groceries you can get here you can see the produce section and they have your typical wide variety of produce as any store in america or anywhere else in the world would have so i should say that malls are also very popular and it's not uncommon for the nicer grocery stores that have stuff like cat litter and other things face products are here in the mall so that's what brings us to this area we finished all our chores here we have to get fuel on the way out of town and then we're headed to our destination so another thing is cooler out this city we're kind of going through the main way and they have two lanes dedicated to the public transportation and then our driving lanes are the other two lanes but a lot of people in latin america and in colombia take public transportation so this is kind of the best solution because normally they're just stopping right in front of us there's the poi urea i don't think so i think it's all cooked chickens furnishings cookware electronics hardware store um one of those balls you're riding motorcycles in all right looks like they have a carnival set up and look they have one of those big balls you ride the motorcycle in i think you can do that for like three bucks for a ride and go do that the little stadium here actually it's a big stadium probably a soccer stadium i think there's a little a motorbike track out here that's what that is a motorbike drag but look at this stadium armenia i should also add that columbia is no stranger to toll roads so this right here is thirteen thousand three hundred pesos so this one's about three bucks between three and four dollars which compared the price of everything else is pretty expensive and there is a lot of them so there's loads of bamboo in colombia bananas as well you probably noticed we came through all those little stands but i love bamboo and we've seen a lot of different kinds i'm guessing and believing at this point it's native here do in 200 meters turn it's in this little left i think i saw it when i looked back where she wanted to turn originally take the next left then your destination will be on the right your destination is on the right morning everyone so we found out that snow's doctor's appointment was delayed for a big day and we both agreed that it really wasn't a big deal because we have so much work to get caught up on the unfortunate thing is the hostile slash campsite that we proved that we found looked really really awesome had super fast wi-fi hot showers as you guys can tell i need a shave and shower but unfortunately and there was instagram posts from not too long ago from people who stayed there but unfortunately it's closed we found this place just down the road a hotel villa julianne and it's got all the amenities except it's natural showers not hot showers the wi-fi is not super good but it's gonna work so we'll be here for another night getting caught up on work and the good news is there's tons of birds and there's even a pool here i should also mention that this place has this nice walking trail it has all these little spots i believe are for camping see it's random and you set your tent up there i'm not sure what the rate for that is they have some barbecue grills basically an outside kitchen and uh like i said this little walking trail is full of birds there's a little soccer field inside of it and then over there they have a pool so i didn't get in the pool just really was busy but they have a nice pull but it's worked out pretty good we actually stayed an extra day here but they do they have cut up fruit for us for breakfast and made me a little arapa and stuff and coffee and they've brought cake out to the van and the security guard here is really super cool so we've just enjoyed our time here but we definitely have been able to get some work done which is what we needed to do because snow's doctor's visit got delayed an extra day nanner's on the dash it's moving day we're headed to cali and it is a very big day yeah it's the last knee appointment before we pick who's gonna do my surgery so yeah i'm getting nervous guys so let's go get this done let's go we got an almost three hour drive to get there let's go kurt has made really good time on driving we're right on schedule we'll have plenty of time to find a good parking place by the hospital and i think we're starting to get on the outskirts of the cali area we didn't really show you all much of the drive because there wasn't much to see lots of sugarcane fields and little towns but we're almost there now guys we have made it to cali now kurt's got to negotiate the city traffic and get us to the hospital where the doctor's appointment is so cali is no different than the other cities get entertainment at each red light you can also get your windows washed and buy just about anything but this chocolate is pretty good he's a soccer player too so we're sitting here at this red light we look over to her right we see this old jeep can y'all see that license plate it's got a florida dade county license plate on it this motorcycle's carrying live chickens guys poor guys i don't want to know where they're going hopefully they're going somewhere to lay eggs as we left our kit last camp spot and pulled into cali i think we were both super excited because this is like a big decision for us and the weight is the hardest part and finally we were going to get to meet the doctor and find out what happened but as we pulled into cali we didn't have the same feeling we had as we wrote in the medellin we were both a little how would you just yeah bummed um and i think there's some parts i didn't tell you guys so the medellin doctor we found through a medical tourism website i had never met him or talked to him or communicated with any of those people when we went to that appointment the doctor here in cali came highly recommended from the first doctor we saw way back in nicaragua when we found out i needed to replace this knee and i have emailed with him and his assistant quite a bit and they've been super helpful i was super excited to meet this doctor and i really kind of thought this is where we would be getting the surgery done but when we pulled into cali it just doesn't have the warm fuzzy feeling of somewhere you would want to live for three months and we drove all around and guys we dropped the ball on vlogging yesterday we did get a little bit of footage which you're seeing right now and it was just a super stressful day because i was so disappointed and then we went to meet the doctor and i liked him just as much as i thought i would kind of even made it worse because she was really blown away by the doctor she liked the facilities in cali more the problem is a couple things it's really hot here and we do need to do some work on the van we lost the water pump for the shower so that needs to be changed out but more importantly it's really hard to find apartments here yeah it's it's difficult we were very frustrated yesterday we had a bad day just to be honest it was a pretty crappy day but last night we did some research um the perfect scenario would be as if this doctor was in medellin yeah but that's not the case so we have regrouped we've reset we are going to give cali another chance we did some research last night we drove out of town last night we're staying in a cute little hostel about 30 minutes outside of the city this big giant tree is full of birds jesus wants to be outside chasing him he does not want to be inside today and i don't blame him he likes all the birds and butterflies is the coffee done coffee is done all right so we're still at the hostel waiting on still some emails some quotes some pricing and see a part some apartment ideas to come in from cali so kurt decided to take full advantage of the pool here at the hostel look at this bright red bird i don't know if you can see him he's on the back of the basketball goal thing and he's bright red with black wings and a little black mask and he's cool oh he chirps too guys this campground is loaded with little birds there's a little tiny hummingbird up there it's been a nice camp maybe 30 minutes outside of cali all right they got a little friendly game going on here curtis playing basketball with some of the locals so we're gonna see if we can get any action shots i did yesterday we drove through the neighborhoods of el pinon which was the super rich area of town some really nice parks around it and an area called san antonio in the neighboring neighborhood i can't remember the name of it which are more bohemian culture filled type neighborhoods uh san antonio reminded me a little bit of 100 meters since crystal ball but but it just was so hilly and it just didn't seem like a welcoming place to try to live for three months nothing against visiting the neighborhood it would probably be nice for a weekend to scope it out and then the el pinon neighborhood just seemed maybe a little too ritzy for us what do you think about that curt maybe i mean yeah and also it's just tough to imagine yourself sort of living in this city when we don't have more information about it we only see what we see so yeah so yeah so after our research last night there are some more neighborhoods on the south side of town that we are headed to today and a little bit more spread out and maybe we could find an apartment down there where we could keep the van with us so we're gonna scope that out and also i believe to the west of town is where we're headed now a neighborhood called manga we have made it to our first suburb that we're checking out it is called manga and uh sorry you're hearing our little google lady help us maneuver the roads in the background but that's how you got to do it and this is on the north side of town probably 20 or so minutes from the hospital is that right kurt yep so but the streets look nice and there's supposed to be um kind of like some corporate apartments out here that are good for short-term rentals we're finding out that colombia is not not super happy with airbnb or uber or uber we don't i mean it's just something to do with taxes or whatever so we're thinking that's why it's been difficult to find something through airbnb so we're trying to find alternative ways and that's where we're at so we just talked to the lady from habitat apartments and we'll be getting an email from her later today with some pricings and availability but there's one glitch they only allow one pet per apartment so she's got to get with administration and see if they'd be okay with two cats so that's option one now we're headed to another part of town so we're going through granada which is a promising neighborhood except for parking may be an issue we would have to have a public parking lot but it looks like a nice area so we're gonna go check it out a little more we're sitting yes all right so we just figured out that cali has cable cars it's the first one we've seen looks like it just goes up to that neighborhood up there all right we've made it to the south side this is a neighborhood called our dean see your dad day hardeen so we're riding around it a little bit there's a couple of neighborhoods down here we're gonna ride around and we're gonna try to find some lunch and talk about what we have figured out this morning and whether cali is going to get a chance or not so this is a nice wooded area a nice park with some apartments right across the street so we'll probably try to scope these out online pretty on this road as hard as we're trying to make this not be a frustrating experience driving around the city in the van is a frustrating experience it's just tough because the van is so big but it is lunchtime kurt found a place where we can actually park the van see it right there in the background and we're about to have some sushi right kirti hungry and then i think we have toured around the city pretty good we'll probably find somewhere to park regroup do some research and then it'll be time to start making the decision but we do have a lady at the international office from the hospital here working on getting the quote for the knee surgery in cali which is important and for trying to help us find an apartment so we'll see what she comes up with as well and then i will have to compare quotes compare living options compare cities compare doctors and then make the choice so hopefully by tomorrow morning when we wake up we will know and we will be able to share it with you guys all right guys we're exploring cali a little bit more today we found some pretty cool neighborhoods and we found a park parque de gato it is cats park how cool is that and we got lucky and found a parking spot so we're walking over to check out this place we hear lots of birds it runs along the river it's really pretty and it's right in the middle of the city right in the middle of two of the neighborhoods that are showing some promise el pinon and granada well let's go see what this cat park's all about this is we're here in the cat at the cat walk and they got all these amazing birds on these signs but look at this it's actually i think it's called a walking stick but it's a bug you can see it's two little antlers its eyeballs are right here again and he's alive how cool is that look at that that is crazy yes so so far i think we've decided this is one of our favorite cats it's a little banged up it's got a banged up knee just like snow and so we're here to fix her knees oh bandage job what a beautiful park there's loads of birds flying around we don't have the big camera so we're not going to be able to show you that we're really enjoying these different uh fancy painted cat sculptures also they have big bad giant bamboo here and like i said the aves are everywhere super nice park right here in the middle of cali if you like this video be sure to subscribe to our channel and hit that notification bell so you guys know when we put out new videos and don't forget you can always follow us over on instagram to see what's going on in between videos cheers guys
2021-11-18 16:39
