Stew bumbs, beaches and lots of beans: Colombia

We had a fun 3 weeks in Colombia, with the highlight being the 5-day Ciudad Perdida trek out of Taganga. We'll have to save that for a secong blog, since we have so many pictures to upload!

Bogota

Bogota is among our least favorite cities in South America. It´s dirty, expensive, has mediocre food, drizzly wet weather and is home to a substantial population of irate local stewbumbs that constantly shout at us because we are foreigners. One hobo grabbed Jake's arm and another accused us of discriminating against the indigenous people for not giving him money. Lots of 'colorful' characters here, especially in the Candelaria neighborhood. We chose to stay in Bogota only one night after entering the country and one night before our outbound flight. That was plenty of time to get a sense of the local 'flavor'!

Our flight from Lima got in at 3AM, so we crashed at the airport for a few hours, then took a cab to Candelaria, the backpacker neighborhood. When we arrived on Sunday, the only street activity consisted of homeless, crazy people ripping up garbage. Candelaria is actually the dirtiest neighborhood we have seen in South America; garbage is strewn all over the streets and no street sweepers are ever in sight. Sunday is especially dead here, with only one Internet cafe open and many restaurants closed.

Apparently Colombians wake up a lot later than Peruvians, because several of the hostel workers were still sleeping when we knocked on their doors around 7:30. Many of the hostels were booked since no one had checked out yet, so we had to walk around for 15 minutes looking at different places. Candelaria is a pretty grimy area and the hostels are all in shabby old buildings. There aren´t any of the clean, new budget hotels that we usually seek out. A basic private room with shared bath in a hostel goes for 45,000 pesos (about US$22)-- pretty expensive considering what you get. When we finally checked into a hostel, we discovered they had ´push´showers where you have to press and hold down a button in order for any water to come out, and then it was freezing cold. Obviously we kept our shower time to a minimum ;) On our return to Bogota, we spent a night at the Sue II hostel on Carrera 3, which had a friendly vibe and normal showers. It was a big improvement over the 1st place.

Our timing was perfect for visiting local museums, since they waive the entry fee on the last Sunday of each month. We couldn´t find the Museo del Oro (turns out it is in the middle of a block, with an entrance near a small plaza instead of on the street), but we stumbled on the Military Museum. Its courtyard contained historic weapons and its exhibits included military uniforms, a weapons room with classic machine guns (including a scary machine gun/bayonette combo) and other interesting war-related oddities.

We also checked out the Botero Museum, which contains some paintings and sculpture by the Colombian artist. You have probably seen his work before-- his subjects are all super-obese and two of his sculptures are in the lobby of the Time Warner Center in NYC. It seems that he is very prolific, since there are exhibits of his work in just about every Colombian city. If you miss the museum in Bogota, you'll have plenty of other chance sto see his work in Cartagena and Medellin.

We weren't impressed by the local cuisine, but did have a good experience at a Candelaria tapas restaurant on Carrera 3 that was cozy, sophisticated and surprisingly inexpensive (which made up for the bland food). The culinary highlight was the Crepes y Waffles chain restaurant in the Bogota airport, which is extremely popular with locals (the crowds recalled the wait for the Cheesecake Factory in Long Island!).

Cartagena

We had planned on taking some long distance buses in Colombian, but realized that the airfares were almost as cheap as the buses (for example, a flight from Bogota to Cartagena cost just US$53.75 per person). Apparently Avianca and Aero Republica were in a price war during the holiday season build-up. That meant we flew throughout Colombia and were able to cover more ground in our 3 week stay than we had planned... plus we avoided the hassle of overnight buses and their constant 'no poopies' speeches. Yay!

Our Avianca flight was nearly empty, so we had a good shot at winning a prize in the in-air lottery. The flight attendant spun a cardboard wheel with all of the seat combinations listed, and the occupant of the selected seat would get a free return ticket or other prizes. We didn't win, but it was a fun diversion on the flight. Guess it is the air version of bus bingo.

We stopped at the tourist info desk at the Cartagena airport and got a recommendation from the agent for a cheap hostal in the historic old city. When we got to the hostal, we discovered they were charging 120,000 pesos (about US$60) for a small room with no windows, instead of the 50,000 pesos we were told at the info desk. We proceeded to walk around super-humid Cartagena with our packs trying to find cheaper lodging. Not too easy since there was no single street with a cluster of budget hostels. After seeing some seriously expensive places, we found the Hostal Viajero (LP-listed) and got an AC room with cable TV and bath for 70,000 pesos. It was a comfy place, and worth the higher rate, since the neighboring hostales were really dingy and doubled as shady sex motels. We switched to the Hostal Las Vegas one night to save 10,000 pesos (just US$5) but it was horrible... extremely loud street noise and an underage hooker asking us to change some US dollars. We declined!

Cartagena's historic neighborhood has beautiful, crumbling colonial buildings painted in pastel colors. It reminded us a lot of Salvador de Bahia in Brazil, with some Southeast Asian elements thrown in (e.g. a woman judging the quality of a whole raw fish in the supermarket by sticking her finger in the guts, and people drinking liquids out of plastic bags with straws). Cartagena is a comfortable place to spend a few days, with its parks, open air cafes and giant Exito supermarket, and we ended up spending three nights in the city.

We weren't excited by the restaurant options at first; there are very expensive tourist restaurants and very cheap local places that aren't vegetarian friendly. Too bad my vegetarianism held Jake back, because he could have eaten 'broasted' chicken (that's the actual word the Colombians use) every day for pennies! We discovered a cute, cheap pizza place in Parque Fernandez de Madrid, appropriately named 'Pizza en el Parque', and ate there several times. There was also a cafe by the Museo de Oro serving tasty crepes, and of course we had coffee in the morning at Juan Valdez, the Colombian equivalent of Starbucks (but about half the cost). We tried the Colombian staple, arepas, at a food cart but it didn't resemble the salty arepas we have eaten in New York City. This arepa was white, with butter and pungent cheese sprinkled on top. Definitely an acquired taste! (We later had arepas for breakfast on our Ciudad Perdida trek, which were breaded and fried with an egg. That was much tastier). We found a local restaurant in the gritty Getsemani neighborhood serving lunch specials for 4,000 pesos (under US$2). The dishes were typically Colombian, with rice, beans, fried platanos, a mini shredded salad, and meat (or in my case fried eggs). This is the standard set meal served everywhere in Colombia, and is usually pretty tasty, although it does get very repetitive having it every day for a week or more. It is often the only option is smaller, more provincial cities like Santa Marta.

We checked out Cartagena's Museo de Oro, which was free. A security guard followed us around the entire gold exhibit... they are not taking any chances. We paid 11,000 pesos (about US$5) each to enter the Inquisition Museum, and it was worth the fee. The exhibits relate to the persecution of witches and heretics in Cartagena during the years of Spanish colonial rule, and there are horrific torture devices on display. The most gruesome ones were clamps attached to nursing mother's breasts, and a sharp double-edged fork jutting into a persons chin and chest whenever they moved. Plus, we got to pose for pics with mannequins dressed like executioners. The top floor of the museum was dedicated to local history and contained some very interesting paintings depicting scary looking town fathers. One painting caught our eye because it appeared to unintentionally depict a pedophile priest. Overall, the museum was a fun stop and provided many amusing photo ops.

We walked along a busy highway from the old city to the San Felipe de Barajas Fort, where there were surprisingly few tourists. We paid the 14,000 peso cover (about US$7), refused a pesky guide, and spent a few hours walking around the giant stone fort on our own. There were great views of the city and harbor from the top, and it was fun exploring the cave system. The tunnels are very dark and have no signage, but we managed to find our way out again.

Boat Trip to Playa Blanca

After asking around about the prices and negotiating with the sales agent, we booked a day trip to Play Blanca, a beautiful beach about 3 hours boat ride from Cartagena. (We paid 25,000 pesos each and skipped the lunch). The other passengers were mostly Colombian, and there was an MC playing loud salsa and reggaeton for the whole trip. He talked about the islands (in Spanish) and gave out prized for answering trivia... I won a free popsicle. Score one for the extranjeros! ;)

The ride to and from Playa Blanca seemed endless, but it was worth it for the crystal clear water and long stretches of empty beach. There were occasional hawkers selling massages and food, but they weren't very persistent (after Cambodia, we are prepared for almost anything). For some reason 99% of our fellow daytrippers walk 10 feet from the boat launch to swim, so we found our own deserted patch of sand by walking 10 minutes down the beach.

The boat made a stop at Rosario, a small island town where the company pushes tickets to the aquarium or snorkeling. We skipped the activities and hung out in the tiny swimming area off a boat dock. We'd have preferred not to stop there, but its a built-in stop on all of the boats.

Onward to Santa Marta, Taganga and the Ciudad Perdida

Three nights was plenty to explore Cartagena, so we set out for the beach town of Taganga. We caught a local bus by the Indio statue (warning: the Lonely Planet lists the wrong street) that took us to the Cartagena bus station for 1,700 pesos (about 80 US cents). When we got off at the station, touts ran to greet us and get us to take their buses. We ignored them and walked to the biggest bus company booth, which happened to have a direct bus to Santa Marta leaving at that very moment. So for 20,000 pesos per person we had front seats on a relatively plush, AC bus and didn't have to wait around the station.

At the Santa Marta bus station we took a cab to Taganga, a small beach community known as a budding international backpacker destination. It had the requisite hippie jewelry sellers and huge Israeli population that mark most South American beach destinations, but the actual beach was not very nice. Dark water, tons of people and gritty sand, plus piles of garbage in the vicinity. We took the walking trail over some cliffs to a nearby beach and it was definitely a step up, but still nowhere near as nice as the Brazilian beaches.

Taganga grew on us after a day or two. Despite the mediocre beaches, there are several good tourist-friendly restaurants and a great ice cream shop. We went to a little restaurant-shack on the second beach and when we asked for the menu, the owner brought our a platter of whole fish for Jake to select from! For about 5 bucks he got a platter with an entire fish and sides.

Taganga is also a good place to book the Ciudad Perdida trek, since there are several tour agencies in town making the trip.

More to come on Ciudad Perdida and our hike through the Colombian jungle in our next blog...

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Part of trip: Round-the-world Trip

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