Advertisement
Published: September 21st 2009
Just a few days short of spending six whole months in Central America I took a flight from Panama City to Cartagena, Colombia. Easily the most famous and most important location on the Caribbean that helped Spain become the most powerful empire in the world in the 16th century, as well as conquer and forever alter the future of the Americas. Today it is an over-crowded touristy town with plenty of beautiful old Spanish Colonial architecture to admire. Not to sound overly jaded, but on this trip I have had enough of that.
After spending a few days in Cartagena I decided I needed to find a little more tranquil location. I headed up the coast a ways towards Venezuela to a town called Taganga, just outside another fairly touristy town called Santa Marta. Taganga is a little touristy, but fairly small and tucked into a little bay. Scuba diving is pretty popular here and there are a couple decent beaches. I spent five or six days there. I had some very good fresh fish, grouper was the best, and a couple nice dives. My dive buddy on one of the trips was a German guy that shipped
his car over the Atlantic to Buenos Aires. He first drove south to Ushuaia, Argentina the southern most city in the world where the Pan-American Highway either ends or begins, it depends how you look at it. From there he has driven the length of the continent to Colombia. A pretty amazing journey and fun to hear about. The most intriguing thing he told me was that he expected to find a truly untouched middle-of-nowhere place, but he never did. I guess he was not counting parts of the Amazon that you cannot get to by any means of transportation except your own two feet or a canoe, but either way an interesting guy.
From Taganga I headed to Bogota. This turned out to be a real surprise because I never imagined myself visiting this city. I had never heard great things about it, but recently I met people that were headed there that made it sound intriguing. I also read about it in my guide book and that made it sound more appealing. I flew direct from Santa Marta. Flying into Bogota is pretty impressive because it is surrounded by lush green mountains. I found a decent
place within walking distance of all the good museums and plazas. The Gold Museum is known for being the most important one of its kind in the world. It was extremely well done and talked about the history of metallurgy dating all the way back to when humans first started working with metals. From there I headed to the Fernando Botero museum. This was really good. His work was pretty interesting and I knew I had seen his work before, but never knew he was Colombian. The museum also had a lot of other famous artists that I can't remember except for a few Pablo Picasso paintings and a Monet. They also had an Andy Warhol exhibit set up called "Mr. America." When the sun came out I took a cable car up a small peak to get a good view of the city. The place was called Cerro de Monserrate. Bogota turned out to be a decently clean city, at least in the center of town, and no more dangerous than plenty of other big cities in Latin America.
I cannot remember the passage verbatim, but in a book I read about the hunt for Pablo Escobar
it mentioned an old saying the Colombians have about the country their country. It was more or less about how Colombia is arguably the most beautiful place in the entire world, but with all its beauty there is an unending curse that also plagues the land with constant turmoil. Many Colombians believe this to be true. In the book this of course applied to the war Pablo Escobar created against the government of Colombia when they finally tried to crack down on the distribution of drugs in the country. It literally was a war. Pablo was actually winning for some time. This is only the most recent turmoil I am referring to, but Colombians that believe in this curse know the history of the country and know that it goes much further back in time than just the 80's and 90's. In my recent visit the country seems to be headed in the right direction. I felt no less comfortable in Colombia than I have in any other country I have visited. Obviously when traveling it is not a place to let your guard down, but it is also no place to avoid going either.
After Bogota I
headed to another town further southwest called Popayán. It was a nice place where most of the buildings were white with red Spanish tile roofs. It was also pretty boring so I headed to Ecuador. The best part about southwest Colombia was the drive to Ecuador. Enormous mountains throughout made the drive not so bad and I even got some decent pictures from inside the bus.
My first stop in Ecuador was Quito. This turned out to be the best city I have visited so far. Also in the mountains, this is a long narrow city tucked into a valley. Since it is surrounded by mountains there are a number of places to get a spectacular view of the city. My two favorite where the Teleferico(cable car) and a large church in town that had a very tall bell tower. The Teleferico was great because it took you up about 7,500 ft to over 13,000 ft. altitude.
The sites of Quito were almost unending and I visited many more than what I just mentioned, but my experience there was truly enhanced by a local family I met through a close family friend back in OKC. German
Lasso and his family showed me around the old town (colonial part of the city) one afternoon and also took me up another great lookout of the city called, El Panecillo. The next day I was invited over to their home for a birthday dinner. The birthday was for German's wife, Cherita. Their youngest daughter Cati and her boyfriend were there as well as a few Aunts and Uncles. Everyone was extremely nice and outgoing, my Spanish just over the course of 3 or 4 days with these people noticeably improved. After dinner the Uncle pulled out the guitar and sang some Ecuadorian folk songs that were very good. A day or two later German also took me to "Mitad del Mundo" or the Equator. There was a nice museum there and you can get your picture there with one foot in either hemisphere. On top of the hospitality, Cati also works in tourism and is very knowledgeable about her country. She had given me tons of great advice about how to spend my time there. I had about a month to spend in the country before I flew out of Guayaquil to the Galapagos. Even though this is a
small country, a month is a bare minimum to spend hear if you truly want to see everything. They have the Amazon, the mountains and the coast, not to mention the Galapagos. I'm not even making it to the Amazon, but that is because I hope to do it in Peru or Brazil.
The next few paragraphs should in many respects be the last ones of my blog because there is no worldly way I will top this experience for the rest of my trip. The Galapagos Islands, mostly know for being the birthplace for the theory of Evolution, also happens to be one of the greatest places in the world to go scuba diving, if not the greatest. I planned this trip back in July. I have wanted to visit the Galapagos for quite some time and really didn't even know there was diving there until recently. When I started researching it and saw pictures of the things I could see there it quickly became the top activity to do on my list. The only unfortunate thing about the islands is the expense of getting there and doing want you want when you arrive. Each year there
A huge crater behind me
Very close to the Equatorare more restrictions on what you can do as well as the number of people allowed to visit. The price also gets higher annually. This was by far the biggest expenditure of my trip, but I am happy to say it lived up to absolutely everything that I hoped it would.
I signed up for a 7-day cruise on a 16 person yacht to do about 17 different dives throughout the islands. Just by coincidence on my part it was also the perfect time of year to see Whale Sharks while diving. Everybody else on the boat were pretty experienced divers and chose this time of year on purpose to see the largest FISH in the world. These are actually sharks and not whales so that is why it is a fish.(That's my marine biology lesson for this blog) Anyway it is like swimming with a fish the size of a school bus 60-70ft. underwater. In addition to Whale Sharks, the Galapagos is also known for good numbers of Hammerheads and other sharks and rays. We got it all. Our first dive of the trip was just a 15ft. check-out dive to make sure all our gear was
working properly. In most places that would be done just off shore in a patch of sand without much marine life. Here they brought us to a place called Sea Lion Island and we sat in the water for about 30 minutes and let dozens of Sea Lions twirl around us while we just watched. I had one that was playing with the bubbles coming out of my regulator. He was above me for a while and when I finally noticed he was chomping at my bubbles. I was on the ground sitting on my knees looking straight up. A number of times he would slowly drift down and get face to face with me. We would be just a few inches from each other’s faces looking eye to eye. They were like big playful dogs that could swim around underwater. Even after the check out dive most of us were pretty floored by the experience.
The real reason we were all there was to dive at Wolf and Darwin Island. Wolf was where we saw plenty of sharks and rays, but Darwin was the place to catch the Whale Shark. Over the course of three days we
Latitude: 0-0'-0''
Germán and I standing on the Equator saw hundreds upon hundreds of hammerheads. Many times they were in large schools. They usually do not get too close to divers because they hate bubbles. When one was headed in our direction we would try and hold our breath to a get a little closer to it, but when you let out a little air they would turn the other direction. For the most part our dives consisted of finding a spot underwater and just sitting there for most of the dive while you look out into the Blue and let nature put on a show. Our dives at Wolf were great because we saw a few different kinds of sharks and some amazing sightings of Eagle Rays. A family of about 4 or 5 Eagles Rays would swim by and then make another pass because they were normally curious. One time I think 5 just hung in the current in front of us for about 15 minutes. They hardly moved and were just 10 to 15 feet away. Over the course of the trip we saw Silky Sharks, White-tipped Sharks, Galapagos Sharks and of course hundreds of Scalloped Hammerheads. I saw seven Whale Sharks in all. Some sightings
were better than others, but each one was extremely exciting. The best one I caught came from behind me. I was right next to our dive master; he spotted it and shook his shaker to alert us. I turned around and about 20 yards in front of me was a Whale Shark swimming directly towards me. It was exhilarating to put it mildly. We were right at eye-level with each other and when he got close I moved to the side just a few feet and let him slowly go by. I could have reached out and held on to his fin I was so close, but they frown on that quite a bit. It was all one huge amazing experience that I will never forget.
On top of the diving we were pretty well taken care of above water. The boat was great and we lucked out on the group of people because everyone was interesting and fun to talk with. We had an eclectic group of people from all over the globe. There were Americas, English, Aussies, Spanish, South African, Swiss and French on board. Pretty much all were more experienced divers than myself. Many had
done some incredible diving in the Red Sea and parts of Asia that sounds spectacular as well. The food on board was delicious, the crew was helpful and after each dive there were hot showers, hot towels, hot drinks, and a snack on the dive deck. The water was cold and every one used thick wet suits, which were very much necessary. I was hoping to rent an underwater camera on this trip, but plenty of other divers had brought some so all the underwater pictures you see are courtesy of Brendon Gill. Thanks Brendon!!!! When the trip ended everyone exchanged emails, so a number of people have forwarded on some remarkable photos. Wish I could put them all up here.
As I have already mentioned, this was a truly unforgettable adventure. I could say that about each place I visit because what I am doing is unusual and lucky, but the Galapagos will remain in a special place in my overall thoughts of this trip. I hope Ecuador can preserve that place for generations to come.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.093s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 10; qc: 47; dbt: 0.0444s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
