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Published: April 23rd 2008
Our expectations surpassed ten-fold, we ended our three week journey through Ecuador with an overland border crossing to Colombia. Yes Mom, Colombia. Colombia is a country that was not even on our radar when left the States last September, but conversations with fellow backpackers convinced us that we had to see Colombia. To most Americans ( who, let´s face it, are not the most adventurous people), Colombia is a place to avoid. But why? I guess most people think of cocaine cartels and FARC guerillas, both of which are not nearly as prominent as they were 20 years ago. Apparently President Uribe has made Colombia much safer. That said, a lot of Colombians (those who aren´t rich) still hate his guts. As we write this blog, Colombia has been in negotiations with the U.S. to work out a free trade agreement. When I hear the term ¨Free Trade,¨ I think great, after all, most things that are free are good, right? However most Colombians (those who aren´t rich, again) think this is bad and will put a lot of companies out of business and a lot of people out of jobs.
So anyway, we crossed the border into Colombia. Without
The Pilgrimage
With all our stuff, we walked the hundreds of stairs in thin air of 9000 ft.a doubt, the most straightforward and pleasant border crossing to date. From the border we would go a couple hours north to Pasto, where we would catch a flight to Bogota the following day. First, we made a quick detour to the impressive
Santuario de Las Lajas. Las Lajas is a gothic cathedral built at the bottom of a deep canyon. Its size and location distinguish it from the 3000 other churches we have seen in the last month or so. We happened to pass through on a Sunday, so it was packed full of people from all over the continent who make a pilgrimage to the sight. As I mentioned before, the cathedral is deep in the canyon and requires that you walk quite a few steep steps. This walk was made all the more enjoyable by the fact that we were each carring about 35 pounds on our backs because we had nowhere to put our backpacks. Still at an elevation of about 9000 ft., we nearly died on the way up. Our journey from the Cathedral to Pasto was uneventful except we discovered that Colombian drivers are actually crazier than Ecuadorian drivers. The highlight of our stay
Museo de Oro (Gold Museum)
This perfect golden vase dates back to 400 AD in Pasto was the hotel room; we had cable television for the first time in about a month. Although you need TV less and less the longer you are without it, we were in heaven. Who knew that ¨Keeping up with the Kardashians¨was so fascinating? We took an hour long flight to Bogota the next morning.
Bogota was one of our favorite cities in South America. The city is a very nice mixture of an old colonial city and a modern, Westernized one. We really had no idea what to expect from Bogota, but here are a few observations. The city is huge, it has roughly 8 million inhabitants. The people of Bogota are quite friendly, especially for city dwellers. The people are also attractive and well dressed, they also really like plastic surgery. The northern half of the city is modern and could pass as an American city. The southern half of the city is pleasantly colonial and has lots of nice plazas and historical buildings.
We usually avoid museums, but Bogota´s are excellent and are mostly free. The most interesting museums were the Museo de Oro (gold museum), The Police museum (where we got a very
Kissing Ass
Museo de Botero interesting tour from a young officer; the highlight was the Pablo Escobar exhibit in the basement where they have a roof shingle with his fatty cocaine-filled blood on it), and The Botero museum. Fernando Botero is Colombia´s most famous artist and you have definitely seen his work; he is known for doing portraits with exaggeratingly fat features. We also took a nice day trip to la Catedral de Sal, a huge salt mine converted into an underground cathedral. The main cathedral is 500 ft below ground. If not for lack of oxygen, more than 100,000 people could fit inside. Its size was very impressive as were the three-ton salt carvings of crucifixes.
Bogota is safer than you would think, and since there are very few tourists there, there are also very few tourist related crimes. From our conversations with Colombians, the country´s reputation of being a dangerous place is very frustrating and offensive. You'll find that within South America, Colombians are considered the friendliest people on the continent. The way media portrays Colombia in the U.S. is not a fair depiction of the people in most all areas of the country. We felt much safer here than in Brazil,
Robo-Cop
Colombian police are legit Peru, or Ecuador. Also, Bogota´s TransMilenio bus system is excellent...if only the United States were as progressive as Colombia on matters of public transportation. The Transmilenio is like an above ground subway with stops every 7-10 blocks. The buses (and there are a ton) have their own lanes, so no matter what time of day, traffic is not a factor.
We left Bogota for the countryside, as apparently many of the Bogotans do themselves.
Villa de Leyva is a beautiful colonial town (yes, another one!) with white washed buildings and cobblestone streets, and some of the houses are
baller. Most of them are owned by people from Bogota who like to spend their weekends and vacations here. It seemed like hardly anyone (that we met, at least) is actually from Villa de Leyva, they are all former Bogota residents who moved here for a little more scenery, peace and quiet. Our first night we stayed at the Colombian Highlands hostel which was a little remote in its forest location, but scenic, and coincidentally a large tour group was staying there the same night as us so we got to mooch off of them and enjoy a huge (free!) BBQ
Born to ride
Villa de Leyva and musical entertainment around a campfire, some guys playing the drums and singing traditional Colombian coastal music. Score!
The next day we toured the countryside on horseback with an Australian couple staying at our hostel. Pretty much every town we have been to in South America offers horseback rides and we had managed to avoid it thus far, but it seemed our time had come, and in what better location the beautiful Colombian countryside? The funny thing is that although riding a horse should seem like a piece of cake compared to some pretty adventurous stuff we've done on this trip so far, we discovered shortly after mounting our horses that we were more than a little nervous. We're putting our lives in the hands (hooves?) of these creatures! What if they just decide to buck us off?! For the first hour or so, we were definitely on a level of "high alert," so though we were having fun, our adrenaline was pumping heavily. We were eventually able to relax and be less scared when Pimienta or Coralito would break into a fast trot.
It ended up being a great day and great way to see some of
the sights in the area:
• The crystal-clear Pozos Azules dessert pools, very pretty.
• The fossil of a Kronosauraus (a creature that is a cross between a gigantic crocodile and a dolphin that lived in the area more than 100 million years ago, when the whole place was underwater, before the Andean mountain range sprung up from all that plate tectonic stuff, you know).
• Los Infiernitos, a pre-Colombian astronomical observatory and site of ancient fertility worship full of 8 ft tall penile statues made of stone, kind of like a Stonehenge, but with penises.
• A vineyard with a German owner whose eyes bulged scarily when we told him we were from the U.S. ("George...Bush...is...terrible," he growled. Surprisingly, in seven months, he was the first person to give us grief for this.). P.S. His wine wasn´t good. Colombian soil is not meant for growing grapevines apparently, maybe it´s good for growing other stuff, we don´t know.
(Just want to let you all know that as we are writing this, there is a woman in her forties at the computer next to us having cyber sex. We can actually see the guy on the other end on her
screen, rubbing himself in his underwear. Wow. Thought you´d like to know.)
Anyway, our hostel was full the next night because of the tour group, so we moved into the hospedaje of this woman, Martha, who was really sweet but possibly a little loca. She kept hugging and kissing us, cooing "Johnito" and "Sarita." We think she might have wanted to adopt us (or sleep with us, we´re not quite sure). Everyone told us Colombians were really friendly but wow, she was something else
Next we went to
San Gil, although our time there isn´t really worth talking about. It does have a pretty riverside park with a natural swimming pool. We decided to only spend one night there, though Sean, the owner of our hostel, Macando, was really cool.
We took an easy, breezy overnight bus ride (literally, the AC was on so high it was like a freezer in there) to Santa Marta on the Carribean Coast and from there headed 7 km away, straight to
Taganga. Little did we know that this poor little fishing village would end up being one of the highlights of our entire trip through South America. Afternoons spent lazing
Puffer
He looked even cooler all puffed up, obviously, but sadly we have no photographic evidence of that on the hammocks at Casa de Felipe staring at the sea were blissful, but the real magic of Taganga lay in the fact that is one of the cheapest places in the world to go scuba diving. But not just anybody can go scuba diving, you need a license for that. So in an act of spontaneity, we decided to get certified. When did we become these outdoorsy people, these trekking, mountain biking, volcano-climbing, scuba divers you ask? We´re not really sure ourselves. But it happened.
Scuba courses are run a little differently down here in South America. In the states, there is plenty of classroom time as well as learning to use your equipment in a controlled environment, like a swimming pool. Not in Taganga. We committed to the Octopus Diving school around 10 AM and by 1 PM we were 30 feet deep in the ocean. Just jumping in was probably for the best as we were pretty nervous about the whole thing. Andres, our laid back instructor who didn´t speak much English probably did not teach the course by the book, but he always made sure we were safe, knew what we were doing, and were
relaxed and having fun. After a few futile hours of instruction in English, we decided to switch to Spanish. Our Spanish has reached a level that not only can we comminicate with anyone, but we can also learn something as technical as scuba diving. Crazy.
After learning some technical aspects of diving regarding equipment and equalization (the process by which you depressurize your eardrums to keep them from rupturing), we learned the hand signals used for communicating underwater. Since at first we did not know what the hell we were doing, we just copied whatever signal Andres sent our way. After doing some exercises on the shore, we went down for our first dive. One of my favorite memories that I hope I will have forever is the three of us sitting underwater together for the first time. After testing us to make sure we´d learned the safety techniques he´d showed us, Andres started waving his arms and we mimicked him, before realizing he was doing a dance and we were dancing with him at the bottom of the ocean in celebration. All of our previous worries melted away as we realized with awe and pure joy that we
Maybe a gecko?
Parque Tayrona were dancing under the sea (life is much better, down where it´s wetter, take it from me). Amazing moment, amazing feeling.
In total we completed six dives in three days, each day going a little deeper. For those of you who have never dived before, the experience is almost life changing. First, the idea of breathing underwater is hard to get used to. When you first go under, there is a sense of panic, because subconsciously you know that you have no business being down there. Once you calm down, however, you experience a natural high. It is unbelievable how little of the world we actually have access to. Scuba diving makes the other 70% of the planet a little more reachable.
Apparently the diving in Taganga is decent, nothing special...but you could have fooled us. We saw barracuda, puffer fish, moray eels, and countless colorful schools of fish swimming above rainbow colored corals. If these dive site were only decent, I imagine that we have some pretty amazing dives ahead of us. Because of this course, we are already planning a Southeast Asia trip with diving in mind. Being able to scuba dive adds an entirely new
element to our travels. Our final dives were to a depth of 65 feet, I still cannot believe we were that far underwater. We also had to take a written exam to get our certification...we passed with 95%!((MISSING)seeing as the test was open-book and we could discuss answers with each other, it wasn´t too difficult and probably not too official, but hey! We´re certified).
Our ears still full of water, we made our way to
Parque Nacional Tayrona. Tayrona is an increbible piece of land where lush jungles lead to deserted beaches and some of the clearest water we have ever seen. From Taganga, an hour long bus drops you off at the park entrance. After you pay $25,000 Colombian pesos to enter (about $14 US), you hike an hour and a half to the Caribbean coast. Sprinkled along the coast are various campsites where you can either sleep in a tent or hammock. These campsites were almost all full, but the beaches seemed more or less deserted. We spent two days here roughing it in paradise, a much different kind of camping than we are used to. One thing we have discovered about Northern Colombia: there is
no hot water, which is amazing when its 100 degrees all day. I now believe that a cold shower on a hot day beats a warm shower on a cold day, I could stand under those things for hours. After 2 days on picture perfect beaches and 2 nights filling our bellies with fresh seafood, we hiked back to civilization en route to the one of the most beautiful cities in the world: Cartagena.
With our South American journey winding down,
Cartagena was our last stop on the continent. We definitely saved one of the best for last. Cartagena is, you guessed it, a colonial city on the Caribbean. The city itself is pretty big, over 1 million people, but most travelers stay in the old walled city. The old city has thick, fortified walls surrounding it because it suffered so many pirate attacks in earlier centuries. While outside the wall, one could mistake Cartagena for any South American slum, once inside visitors are treated to a city of romance and sophistication beyond imagination. While there is nothing particularly famous to see in Cartagena, the whole city is like a museum that takes you back centuries. The cobbled streets
are a colorful scene, with the buildings, flowers, and the people themselves.
Being the only Colombian city that many well-to-do foreigners would ever set foot in, Cartagena has some of the most beautiful restaurants and hotels that we have ever seen...too bad we can´t afford any of them. We did spend a little more money to upgrade to a nice boutique hotel. Our nameless hotel is available only by referral from friends of the friendly owner, Lucy. Luckily the owner of our last hostel was her friend. For only about $10 more per night we had an amazing room overlooking a lush garden. The breakfasts, full of tropical fruit, eggs, and french toast, almost justified the price alone.
Besides just strolling around the city, a memorable experience was a day trip to the Volcan de Lodo el Totumo. This 50 foot high mud volcano supposedly has medicinal properties. We didn´t really care about that, we just wanted to roll around in the mud a bit. Plopping into the volcano was a strange sensation, the mud felt like cream and it was very difficult to move around...but highly enjoyable, like everyone´s dream of bathing in chocolate pudding (you know
you have). Interestingly, a little tourist industry has developed. Three men wait in the mud volcano and will massage you, another stands outside the volcano and snaps photos of you so you dont have to get your camera all muddy, and once you have had enough mud, women in the nearby lake rinse you off. All these services require only a small tip.
With about two weeks left on our 8 month journey, we are heading to Panama to catch a flight back to San Francisco. As I mentioned in a previous blog, the only break in the Pan-American HWY between Alaska and Argentina is the Darien Gap sitting on the Colombia-Panama border. There is no direct road to enter Panama from South America, the Darien Gap is also full of FARC guerillas and drug runners...not a safe place at all. We needed another way to get to Panama. Our two choices are flying or sailing. Since a one hour flight or a 5 day sailing trip cost the same, we're opting for the sailing trip. As we´ve never been out on the open sea like that in such a small vessle (42 feet), we are a little nervous.
Mud bath
Volcan de Lodo El Totumo We hope for calm waters and a sober captain (though based on what we know about sailors, the latter is not likely). We leave Cartagena on April 24th and should arrive in Portobello, Panama on the 28th. Pray for us.
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anonymous
non-member comment
colombia and ecuador looked like lots of fun. my friend brian actually got robbed in quito too (machete/gun point). i hope you guys have fun in panama. you should take some dramamine or get some spearmint gum (its supposed to help with sea sickness a bit).