Colombia without the Kids

My three month visa in colombia expires on thursday, and as of yet ive written nothing about this country. Im in the city of Popayan sort of in the south. Its another one of south americas white cities with its all white colonial centre, pretty nice although ive spent only about half an hour looking around in daylight. ill be leaving here early tomorrow morning in order to get down to the border with ecuador.
So, Colombia started three months ago when i crossed the border into Leticia in the extreme south east of the country. Leticia is colombia´s gateway to the amazon and is a surprisingly pleasant little city, although it´s said that most, if not all, of its development can be attributed to its location as the major trafficking point for colombian cocaine into the brazilian market. Anyway from Leticia, Laura, Fiona and I took a 2 hour flight to Bogota as it is pretty much impossible to pass overland between the two cities because of Guerilla activity. explanation: the guerillas are the rebel armies engaged in a decades old civil conflict with the colmbian army and goverment. They effectively control large parts of the country and are in constant skirmishes with the army and other rebel forces in attempts to extend or defend the areas they hold. Supposedly, Colombia now is a much safer place than it was 5 -10 years ago, as, largely thanks to the current administration, these skirmishes have been moved away from the cities and are now mostly concentrated in rural areas. Furthermore, travel between cities in Colombia was extremely dangerous with buses and trucks regularly being attacked by Guerillas. Now overland travel in the most populated areas of Colombia is regarded as safe. There are regular army checkpoints, where soldiers board buses and walk up and down waving machine guns in peoples faces. Yesterday, i had to get off the bus I was travelling on and was given a good frisk by one of these machine gun wavers. Despite his stern efforts, he failed to find my coke stash or my rebel documents so i got back on the bus without problem. Stupid jokes aside, Colombia feels like, and i guess is, as safe as any other south american country.
Anyway, Bogota. The city itself is a huge, and quite spectacular to look at its climbs up the surrounding mountains. It is also a city which some people like and some hate. A big factor must be where in the city you are, and as we stayed in the historical centre of the city, la candelaria, which is close to all of the major attractions, and we didnt get involved in the madness of bogota´s traffic congestion problems, we ended up really liking the city. I think also the fact that we had spent such along time without any of the amenities of a big city, like cinemas, hot showers and the like, had a big bareing on our feelings towards the place. After two or three days of city living and also washing literally everything we had to ensure we weren´t carrying any tropical plagues with us, we headed north to colombia´s caribbean coast. Our first stop was Parque Tayrona, a national park where the jungley sierra nevada mountain range meets the caribbean. It is, like it must sound, amazing. Our three days there were spent chilling out in hammocks, walking through rainforest, avoiding the customary aftenoon downpour and bathing in the caribbean. On our second day i had to return back to the nearby city of Santa Marta to get some cash out as we were all short. On my way back, i got caught in the afternoon downpour. Which meant i had to spend about an hour walking through a temporary river in order to get back to the camp. After accepting i was gonna be soaked through it was a fun experience and probably the time where i felt most like i was in the real jungle.
When we had eventually tired of this blissful life by the caribbean we headed further along the coast to the city of Cartagena. During the Spanish colonial period Cartagena was the major port on the caribbean coast and was thus the entry port for the spanish to much of the continent. As a result, the spanish built loads of swanky residences and churches which to this day stand in much their original condition. making the old city supposedly the most beautiful in all of South America (the film Love in the time of Cholera was filmed there). It really is a pretty place and while we were there we spent many hours just walking around the city takings in its sights and sounds. Our first night there was spent in a really nice hotel, so nice in fact that we felt guilty about being there and therfore spent the next night in probably the shabbiest hostel in Cartagena, it had shower somehow operated by a piece of string, the owner had lost the key so every time we went back there we had to break in with a spoon (or fork) and outside the room there was loads of weird looking mannekins that kept moving places apparently by themselves. It did however have a balcony but even then there was no door to the balcony so it was like being outside all the time. I am not sure why or how we actually came to the decision of staying there. Anyway that was how i spent my last night in Cartagena and my last night with Fiona and Laura. The next day I said goodbye to my travel buddies for the last month or so and headed back south to Bogota.
I spent two nights in Bogota where by chance i bumped into Rob, a friend from the park and a fellow jaguar walker. We then passed the day discussing jaguars, pumas, monkeys and pigs. After my second night in Bogotat i took a four a hour bus ride to the city of Ibague in order to start volunteering in a children´s centre there.

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