Coffee, Cocaine and Cosmetic Surgery

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I´d heard so much great stuff about Colombia that when I arrived in Cartagena I was worried that my expectations were too high and I´d end up disappointed. Luckily, my worrying came to no fruition. Colombia was everything, and more, than I could want from a country. Great music, modern cities, colonial towns, beautiful countryside, brilliant nightlife and some of the friendliest and most welcoming people I´ve met so far.

Colombia, unjustifiably, can´t shake it´s reputation as a dangerous country (and there is no denying that ten years ago it certainly was). This means that tourism is in it´s relative infancy and in many places you can walk through a city without seeing another gringo all day. However, there is still enough infrastructure to make travelling easy and safe.

Medellin was one of my favourite cities in Colombia. It had the perfect climate, was incredibly modern and set on a backdrop of rolling hills. The city is famous for it´s cartel and drug-lord Pablo Escobar. His death coupled with the government’s hard-line approach to drugs crime has transformed the city from one of the deadliest places on the planet to the most up-and-coming city in Colombia. A right of passage for any tourist is to do the Pablo Escobar tour, which involves (a very odd) visit to his grave and the house he was killed and a chance to meet his brother (and partner in crime). The influence this one man had was incredible, he was at one point so rich that he offered to pay off Colombia´s national debt. He also had a penchant for exotic animals and so shipped animals from across the world for his own personal zoo. When he died, most of the animals also died, apart from the hippos which continued to breed and now cause a huge problem for Colombia’s ecosystem. Pablo´s brother, Roberto, was incredibly interesting. He showed no remorse for the deaths caused by the cocaine trade (claiming he´d never killed anyone - apparently making the bombs doesn´t count). He was also a little bit pervy, making sure all the girls on the tour got their chance to have a photo taken with his arm firmly round their wastes.

Medellin as a modern glamorous city has plenty modern glamorous women. Many of the women went to the supermarket better dressed than I would for a night out (although lets face it, I´m not setting the bar particularly high here as I could list one hand how many times I´ve worn makeup in the last 5 months). Most unusually of all was the number of breast and bum (yes, BUM) implants that were on show in Medellin and throughout Colombia. Coming from a country where women obsess with making their bums smaller, the idea of paying thousands to make your arse bigger was difficult to come to terms with. Some of the implants were just incredible and it was impossible to not stare. On one night out in Bogota it took all my will power to not rest my bottle of beer on one particularly shelf-like bum.

Visiting Colombia and not visiting a coffee farm would be utterly heathen and so I took it one step further my staying the night on a small, family owned finca. There is a region of Colombia known as the ´zona cafetera´ - and obviously it´s where the majority of the country´s coffee is grown. There were no other guests and so I had the house to myself with the little-old-lady owner running round after me offering me unlimited cups of coffee and hot chocolate (from their home-grown cacao beans, of course). Watching the process from planting, harvesting, drying, roasting and grinding was a lot more exciting than I´m probably making it sound and I definitely appreciate my fresh coffee even more now (which, by the way, I now take black).
The Coffee Zone is also home to some breathtaking countryside. I headed to the town of Salento to check out the Cocora Valley which is lined with wax palms - a very spectacular sight. I had friends who had done the walk the day before and ended up with sun-burn, so throwing caution to the wind I took all of my warm gear to the launderette. Of course, Colombian weather can be just as unpredictable as the UK, and I woke up to drizzle, fog and a cold wind with no chance of clean, warm clothes until later in the evening. Not undeterred I set out on the walk with a couple of other backpackers I´d bumped into on the ride up. Although for a lot of the walk you could barely see your hand in front of your face, we were rewarded with the post-card views when we finally dropped back out of the cloud on the way down. The strangest part of the day was the number of dogs - very well kept, not like usual strays - that accompanied us on different sections of the walk. They waited when we took photos and barked when we headed down the wrong path. I began to wonder if this was some sort of government sponsored initiative to ensure tourists stay safe and didn´t get lost.
I´m all too aware that this blog is getting too long, so I´ll save the stories about my dancing attempts in the home of salsa, foraging for magic mushrooms (to Mam, Dad and any old or potential bosses – I didn´t take any!), bongo playing and food festivals for the New Year.
So, in sum:
Mishaps: Getting so incredibly lost in Bogota that at one point a policeman actually made some poor civilian escort me to my desired location.
Size Zero: I stayed in an incredible hostel - Casa de Francois - in San Augustin; a beautiful countryside town surrounded by ancient ruins in southern Colombia. The hostel was (obviously) ran by a French guy, who not only cooked up the best breakfast I´ve had in Latin America but baked his own bread. A quick word on bread - like EVERYTHING here, they add so much sugar to all bread (even cheese bread) , so it all tastes sweet and has a really odd texture. So, my joy when I discovered, non sweet, freshly baked, European style bread was inexplicable. I ate 2 loaves in 5 days (and only eating two was a demonstration of huge self restraint).

Men: Come on, as if I´d have stood chance of bagging a handsome Colombian when the Colombian women all look as good as they do.

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