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Published: April 28th 2007
So........ my bag was stolen and we headed to the capital...Bogota, to sort out a new passport at the embassy. Expecting a dirty, sprawling city we were pleasantly suprised when we arrived at the sue hostal ( which would become the closest thing to home since we had left). Situated in the older part of the city, spanish colonial style buildings, colourful streets dotted with murals and some amazing graffiti aswell as cool places to hang out we had landed ourselves a chilled little home while we waited for my passport.
We spent a few days wandering the streets around the area, some great flee markets and art museums. We had a little taste of colombian art, when we went to the botelo museum, loads of repulsive paintings of really fat people.nice. but they seem to love it. strange.
Back at the hostal we met some really cool people,including some english, which was weird as there are very few in colombia. Everyone was so shocked that me and claire were travelling alone there. As soon as we told anytone how old we were, some kind of maternal instinct seemed to kick in and they would look after us as if
we were theyre own! ha! especially colombians. they loved us! as we did them!
One of them, our dear friend jose whom we spent several days wandering the streets of bogota with, showed us round the city, cooked all our meals for us and generally acted as a bit of a guardian for the whole of our stay in bogota. Being shown round by a native is definetley the way to see the city as it really is. One of our adventures, included a walk past the main drug strip in bogota- dont worry mum its surrounded by police and military! thats the weird thing and theyres all these crazy, crazy people on this one street. Not something you see everyday and definetley not something you read about in the lonley planet.
Our nights in bogota consisited of rum and live music. We were so lucky to have a bunch of great musicians staying there when we were. So every night would be a huge jamming session. thankyou jesse! - your flute and drum playing would never fail to entranse us.
So..... with my new passport and my card on its way we headed to the carribean coast. Our first
stop- Taganga, ah what a place, with its restaurants on the beach front blasting out music, and crazy combo juices and a general feeling of total chilled out carribeanESS!
On our first day in taganga, we met some aussie guys and and bumped into some argentinians we had met at sue. We spent the night on the beach with them and the crazy but harmless locals.... one of whom. our favourite...lewes.. bestowed upon us his knowledge of Colombia and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. He told us how he had spent a lot of time in and around Taganga and how Macondo (one hundred years of solitude) was based on the jungle of this coastline. (dad i know youll appreciate that if noone else.)
On one of our late night/ early morning swims we noticed the only yacht in the bay had a british license. After having swam up to it we found out it was owned by an english man called John who has spent the past 25 years sailing around the world. We hired some snorkelling gear and went out sailing with him for the day and my god did it show that he had spent alot of alone time.
He was full of completely unbelievably stories; an indian from Canada who he had taken to Jamaica, who got stabbed 3 times in the back but no wounds thanks to the buffalo skin jacket john had bought him, YEAH RIGHT! Spent the day sitting on the deck drinking cervezas, trying to learn the basics of sailing and seeing the tropical fish the carribean has to offer.
So..... the aussie guys persuaded us to go to "Ciudad Perdida" a lost city discovered in the 70s. It was a 6 day trek 3 days up. spend a day theyre. and two days down. Me and Claire were thinking about it but if it had been left to us im not sure it would have happened.
We headed out on a tuesday, expecting a small group of us we were face dwith 13 israelis, us, 2 aussies and another english girl. On the first day we trekked for three hours (i realise this dosent sound very hardcore) HOWEVER in the midday sun and climbing up these monstorous slopes it was pretty hard. As the aussies and english girl raced ahead we were flagging at the back with all the israeli´s. And thank
god for them man, we couldnt have done it without them. With theyre constant banter we made it through the next few days. The day we were due to reach this "lost city" it rained and rained, we offloaded our bags onto a local indian who offered to take them up for 2 quid. Best two pounds ive ever spent. It was still pretty hard and when we reached the top we were so exhausted from the last three days. That night we slept in a hut ( as appossed to hammocks) luxury huh? no, no ,no, we were sardined along with 10 israeli guys on skanky mats on the floor. Definetley an experience though.
So we spent the next day exploring the ruins, which werent spectacular but the fact that theyre was a city built at that height surrounded by steep slopes of jungle was pretty cool. We skipped out the guided tour and wandered off on our own. We left later that day and began our descent back down, it rained all day and we could hardly walk afew metres without either me or claire falling into a pile of mud. We slowly became the joke of the
The legend that is Lewes..
Tagangah seems to attract a very strange mix of people, the strangest and most interesting we met is lewes who seems to sleep on the beach every night, speak both english and hebrew fluently and continually thanked us for beleiving in columbia!group, (as it seems we are everywhere we go!) we became hysterical that day, maybe it was all the fresh air or something!?! it was fall, laugh, fall, laugh,fall and so on. Again, the only thing that kept us going was our fellow israeli trekers, Who entertained us and laughed at us at the hardest of times. Thankyou Israel!
On our way back down we kept the image of a cold beer and a bed in our minds and made it back to the safety of Taganga.......
We splashed out and treated ourselves to a 2 bedroom apprtement with cable TV and beach view balconys.
Semana santa then hit Columbia and all the families headed up to the coast and Taganga was transformed into a mad place with columbian comedians, incresed prices and children everywhere! Us, two english girls stood out like sore thumbs and children have no shame in out right staring and thats exactly what they did. We were glad once the weekend was over and Taganga returned to the tranquil little bay it had once been. Our stay here had now reached the 3 week period and we realised it was time to leave when even the
local policemen knew our names.
Tayrona is a national park about 2 hours bus ride from Taganga which is lined with golden sandy bays and hardly any people. Armed with a tent we had borrowed from our friend in Bogota we set about trying to put the thing up with no luck and ended up hiring out hammocks in a hut out on a jetty in the middle of the ocean. The whole place is like something out of an idyllic postcard, palm trees, jungle behind you and sparklingly clean blue water. Waking up to the sunrising over the sea and spending the days relaxin on the beach, heaven. By this point in our travels we felt we needed a few days of complete relaxation which Tayrona was perfect for. Leaving Tayrona we jumped straight on a bus to Bogota, time to say goodbye to the carribean coast, til next time.
In Bogota we went our seperate ways for a few days and i (Claire) hopped on a night bus with two irish girls to Perreira, a city in the centre of columbias coffee region. We had been recomended a villa to stay in but only had the name and
getting on down!
we bumped into the owners of the local fish restaurant in one of the live music bars in Santa marta, jess had a lesson in how to boogie columbian style. no address, so half past 6 in the morning just stepped off a very bumpy bus ride with practically no sleep and we asked about 50 taxi drivers none of whom had ever heard of the place. Ended up in a taxi with a guy who insisted he knew exactly where we were looking for, after driving around for over an hour it was time to admit defeat. The taxi driver had to be home so insisted on taking us back to his while we waited for an internet cafe to open. Here we met all his family and ended up watching simpsons and falling asleep on his couch, random! Finally got the address and made it to the villa which is surrounded by the lushest, greenest countryside i have ever seen. After an eventful morning we were very thankful for the for the lazy hammocks, leather couches and lunch prepared for us. Later in the day we were joined by two guys from new Zealand and an english couple who were at the end of a year long trip where they had travelled overland through central asia, so lots of very entertaining travel stories on their part. The villa
was like something out of the movies with huge outside decking, incredible views, a swimming pool and 2 lovely horses that we took off riding into the mountains. There was also a very small coffee factory on the site where we were shown how the coffee is made.
Meanwhile, I (jess) went camping in the colombian wilderness with a colombian guy and a chilean guy who both worked at the sue. Loaded with just the absolute essentials- sleeping bags, tent, saucepan we headed two hours out of Bogota to a small town villa de levya.
We arrived at five thirty and had missed the last bus to the place we were going so they decided we would hike for a while and find somewhere to pitch up for the night, this didnt prove as easy as we had thought and it was getting dark.
We ended up walking for about three hours, finally bumping into a farmer who allowed us to sleep in one of his fields for the night. Early the next morning we set off and walked for another few hours, stopping on the way to buy our food for the next few days off the local farmers!
they were all so friendly and really interested that they had chosen to bring a "gringo" here.
We found a place to camp in a field under a giant rock, we went out early each morning to buy milk from the locals for our breakfast and spent the days wandering round the area, surrounded by mountains and waterfalls. amazing place. We cooked on a fire that we made under our little home! proper hardcore camping!Was such a relaxing time, and definetley saw a completley different part of colombia that would not have been possible without them as my guides! so thank you guys.....amazing...one of the highlights of my trip so far...
Both returned to Bogota, nearly didnt recognise each other in the bar, 5 days is a long time when u have spent two and a half months together. spent our last few days relaxing at the sue and i went off to visit a salt cathedral 2 hours out of the city. Its a huge cathedral built inside a mountain where salt mining takes place and they found all these huge crosses carved into the stone inside the mountain, the whole place is pitch black with UV lights so
the white salt showed up, pretty eerie actually.
Unfortunately it was time to say goodbye to columbia so we cooked a meal for all the staff at sue, packed our bags, shed a few tears and jumped on the bus from hell, which was to take us all the way from Bogota to lima in 3 days.........
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Rich/Dad (poor Dad...
non-member comment
.. stuck in Bristol whilst you have this amaaaaazing adventure
Great effort,girls. Fantastic to read so much about what you've been up to these last few weeks in Colombia - and the pictures bring it all alive. You seem to have met so many interesting people and made some good friends. Can't believe this is only half of it, either, Watch out Peru, Boliviar.... here they come! Continue to look after each other and have fun. Lots of Love xxxxxx