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Published: September 4th 2008
I decided to spend my first day in Medellin going to Guatape and La Piedra -a high rock (they claim it is a meteorite) that you climb stairs to the top of, which has some good views. It isn't cheap to get there and it takes the whole day, but the pictures from the top that were showed to me convinced me that it's worth it, and I even had who to go with - a couple (alemano y colombiana...) from my hostel. At the morning I had to go and change travel checks, because I was running out of cash, and, with a little bit of effort, I found a bank that changes them in great rates - higher than cash. Then the 3 of us went of to La Piedra (first time that a Colombian girl negotiates bus fare for me), and at the bus there we met a pretty big and multinational group from another hostel, and we all went up the rock together. And the view was definitely worth it! A wonderful 360 degrees view of green (trees) and blue (lakes), which reminded all the Israelis in the group the Bariloche area. We spent some time there, taking pictures, enjoying the view and talking, and eventually went down, and me and the couple from my hostel went to Guatape - the attractive town nearby. It is a very pleasant town with a lake and many colonial buildings, where we ate, walked around a little and from there got back to Medellin. At night I wanted to see the city's famous parties, but since it was still mid-week there wasn't anything open around the hostel, but in the hostel there was a goodbye party to a Canadian girl that spent a long time in Medellin, so I stayed in and we drank aguardiente (something like arak...) from a bag, and had a fun night in. The next day I went around Medellin, to see the city. It has a pretty good metro system, so it was pretty easy to get around, and in the metro there are 2 metro-cable - basically a cable car that is part of the metro system! They easily connect to the city poor neighborhoods that have little other transportation, and I went in both of them. Threy offer nice views of the city, that is built on green mountains, just like Haifa, just bigger (which made me think - metro-cable from the university/technion/carmel to the mifratz/hof-hacarmel?). Then I walked around the city's old center, that has some nice squars, and then to a hill in the middle of the city (in the way I passed through an entire area of 'musachim' - in the middle of the city - weird...), that had a reconstruction of a typical village of the area and nice views of the city. By the evening I went back to the hostel, got my things together (which took me long enough), and took a night bus to Cartagena.
Cartagena, on the Carribean coast, is famous for the beautiful colonial architecture in its historic center, but also for the wide variety of drugs and whores that it offers the tourist. I planned to go there just for one day to see the historic center, but ended up staying another one - both because I met there many cool ppl and because I got there too late, and woke up too late to leave it the next day. I only got there in the afternoon, after a very long bus ride, and me and 2 British guys I met on the bus started looking for a hostel with a cab, and after quite a lot of hostels that didn't have place he got tired of us, so we went to a restaurant to eat and think. After eating, luckily it didn't take us long to find a pretty good hostel that had a room for us. The first things you notice about Cartagena is that the weather is very hot and humid, and that the population is very black and many of them look and act quite sketchy. None of the above was surprising, but it was still very hot, humid and sketchy... So after settling down I started walking around the city - the historic center was very beautiful, full of very nice colonial buildings, with a view to the ocean and surrounded by an ancient wall. The heat, the sea and the ancient wall made me feel home (Akko?). After getting impressed from a quick look, a sound of drums attracted me to one of the plazas. There I saw a street-dance group dancing (pretty impressively) to an amazing beat of drums that reminded me of the Carnaval... So I sat down to watch, and after a while began talking to the gringa that sat near me (Molly from Alaska). After talking a little, we were both happy to discover that the other one is also a couchsurfer, and that we would've met anyway over the next weekend... By the time we had enough of the dances it was getting dark, so we went to buy groceries to make dinner in her hostel. We got to her hostel, and she made tortillas for her, me, Rachel from Australia (another couchsurfer) and Teressa from Portugal (only the 2nd Portugese that I met on the trip), and we had a pretty nice dinner. At night I went out with them and some other ppl from my and their hostel - we ended up being a huge group, and it was funny getting all the ppl to go together and to make decisions - and we first went to an electronic club, that seemed very sketchy (all the ppl there looked drugged) and was basically a waste of money, and then got to a local club that we had to take a cab to, but was free and had a good mixture of music - fun. The next day I woke up quite late (what happens when you go to sleep in the morning...), so if I wanted to go the same day to Santa Marta (which was the plan) I didn't have much time to see the city. So after walking a little in Cartagena and enjoying the beauty of the old city, I decided that I liked it there and that I will stay the night, skip Santa Marta and go the next day straight to Taganga (which is a village near Santa Marta). I spent the afternoon walking around the old city and the beach near the walls, and it was quite a nice day. Around 16:00 when I was pretty much on my way back to the hotel, I reached a street near the wall that was empty, and there some guy came to me and basically robbed me. He only wanted money (even gave me back the documents from the wallet...), so I figured money doesn't worth the risk of trying to run away. I had much more money on me than the average (about 60$), but money is just money, and while it was definitely an unpleasant experience, I didn't feel so bad about it (unlike the cameras...). So I went to the local police and then back to the hotel. After resting a little and doing some arrangements I started the night by drinking with my British roommates, and then we went to pick up my friends from last night from their hostel, than stopped by another hostel to meet some more ppl and then went out to a club, danced a little, went to another place, sat and talked a little and then went in to dance some more. Overall a pretty cool night, that I was pretty drunk most of (that what happens when you start the night by drinking with the British...).
The next day for some reason I managed to wake up at a normal hour, but until I made all of my arrangements (went to the tourist police, and on the way I saw some of the beach area where most of the hotels are, it looked pretty nice, but very touristic, a little like Eilat) it wasn't early anymore. I got on the bus to Santa Marta, which was slow and very hot, but at least I sat next to a very hot Colombian and we passed the ride bitching about the heat. She got off at Baranquilla, where I had to change a bus (at least it was to a better one), and between the buses I noticed my wallet was gone - I was probably pickpocketed - 2nd time in 2 days! The damage - some money (probably less than 20$), my student ID and driver's license and some other useless cards. The other bus took quite a long time to leave, and I got to Santa Marta only after 20:00, when appearantly the public transportation to Taganga doesn't run anymore! So I had to take a quite expensive taxi, and the first thing that I found was a moto taxi - at least it was an interesting experience trying to fit the bags on it... I finally got to Taganga really tired, put down my stuff at the hostel, and when I didn't see anything especially interesting in it, I went down to the beach to walk around and look for food. I didn't find anything interesting open, but the beach looked quite nice, and the area was full of Israelis and other tourists, artesanos and other hippies, and fruit juice stands. I went back to the hostel, met a couple of cool guys, but they were going down to the beach area so I just went to sleep. The next day I spent the morning on the beach in Taganga - very nice (better than at night...), it's a fishermen's village, so the beach was also full with small fishing boats, relaxed with nothing especially interesting. At the afternoon I took my small bag and went to Parque Tayrona, which suppose to have some of the prettiest Carribean beaches in Colombia. On the short bus ride to Santa Marta there was a great view from above of Taganga (and the beach) and then of Santa Marta, and from there it was another 1 hour bus to the park entrance.
The policeman at the entrance to the park wasn't very welcoming and looked inside every single plastic bag in my bag and felt me up quite well, probably looking for something that will have to make me bribe him, but had to let me in after he didn't find anything. Then I took a van to the parking lot, and started walking until the area of the beaches that everybody stay in. The walk was nice and quite easy - inside a forest, but not muddy at all, and before the end I even saw monkeys jumping in the tree-tops. I arrived to the first beach, where you can camp but not bath (crazy waves!), and it really justified its reputation - a picture-perfect tropical beach with the clearest blue water, white sand and behind you - the never-ending green forest that you came from... I met there a really cool Swedish couple that I knew from the Panatanal (Brazil), and I started walking to the 2nd camping beach, where you can also bath and where I thought that I will sleep, a little more than half an hour walk along the beach. It wasn't easy to walk on the sand (part of the way), but it was definitely beautiful. I stopped to eat a mango that I brought from Taganga, which maybe was the sweetest mango I have ever ate. Then I arrived to another beach in the middle, which wasn't as impressive, but it was nice and you could bath and snorkel there, and I met there 2 Americans that I knew from Cartagena. I kept walking, before the 2nd beach there were lots of crabs that ran to their holes as soon as they saw you, and the beach was just as nice as the 1st one - 2 half-circles of white sand and cristal-clear water and a rock in the middle... But sleeping there, appearantly, cost almost double as much as the first beach, so I just made the short walk back. I got there, got a hammock and settled in. I spent the evening talking with the Americans and the Swedish, and in the end I met through the Swedes a group of about 30 Colombian university art students that were there on a school tour (I wish the Hebrew U would make such field trips...), and we sat with them for the rest of the night. The next day I woke up slowly, like you should in a tropical beach, and was planning to go until El Pueblito - a not-too-difficult hike to a tiny indigenous village inside the park, that suppose to have nice views too. I went until the next beach, where I met the Swedish couple, and went snorkeling with them - the water were good, I saw some fish and even a coral. Then I moved on to the 2nd beach, and decided that it is too late and I am too lazy to go hiking, and prefer just to chill on the beach. I went in the water with the 2 Americans, and then they left and I met the Colombian students again. They just got back from their early-morning hike to El Pueblito, and we played in the water and jumped from a rock - I got to know them a little more, and many of them turned out to be really cool and I had a lot of fun with them. I spent the evening sitting with them too, it was their last night there as well and we found out that on the weekend I am going to be on a CouchSurfing weekend in Villa de Leiva, which is a colonial town that is located just an hour from their city, Tunja, so I took phone numbers from 2 of the girls and we scheduled to talk and meet over the weekend.
The next morning I woke up, and basically started walking towards the exit I entered through, which took a few hours. On the way I stopped by a couple of other nice beaches, and a short trail that included a mirador with great views of a large part of the park (green mountains, white sand, blue water, you know...). Near the exit I saw another monkey, that wasn't afraid when I got near it... Then I took the 2 buses back to Taganga (on the way, in the market in Santa Marta, I bought lots of fruit for the long bus ride to Bogota), and during 5 minutes on the beach there I met about 4 different ppl that I know from 4 different places, including the 2 Swedes that finally found their 3rd friend (that I also knew from the Panatanal) that they were waiting for in Tayrona, and a Slovenian girl that I met before in Cartagena and before only in Buenos-Aires in my first hostel - it was funny to meet her in my first week in the continent and in my couple of last ones, and nowhere in the almost 7 months between... I ate and had a last fruit juice, and went back to the hostel to get my things. There I saw Andrea, a girl that I saw in Tayrona too, and she turned out to be a Colombian-Israeli (born in Colombia, lives in Tel-Aviv) and going to Bogota too, and we decided that it is much better to go on this long bus ride (should've been around 17 hours, and turned out to be 23!) together (second time that a Colombian girl negotiates bus fare for me). The bus ride was very long and annoying, and we even stopped for 3 hours because the road was for a bicycle race (when they passed us they were only about 10 racers - we waited for that?!), but Andrea, the 5 year old girl that sat in front of me and her mother kept me from going crazy - it was nice to talk to Andrea and the mother, and the girl was super-cute and not even a little shy - she just started playing and talking with me (a random conversation: Andrea: "Villa de Leiva is really nice". me:"what did you do there for so long?". Andrea:"mushrooms"...).
We finally got to Bogota, and I started making my way to Luis' house, learning on the way how annoying is the public transportation in Bogota. It was really nice to see a familiar face, and having the same host in BsAs and Bogota, and going with him on a CS weekend again - I knew it would be fun. But we had another day in Bogota first - at night, after I got to him, we went out for dinner with some other couchsurfers, and then to a bar that had a karaoke night, where I met for the first time Bogota's cool couchsurfers, with whom I was about to go to the weekend in Villa de Leiva (a nice colonial town in the mountains). A fun night out with fun ppl. We were about to go with a rented bus the next evening, so I had a day to walk around Bogota. I saw the national museum that was located inside an old prison, where I learnt a little about Colombia history (but didn't read so much because it was all in Spanish), a little (very little) of the city's historic center (nice), and an exhibition from the famous Gold Museum (it was closed and only had a small exhibition at the Casa de Moneda) that included very impressive pre-hispanic gold artifacts. There I went to the meeting point to meet the guys from CouchSurfing and to get on the bus we rented to go for the weekend (yes, we were enough ppl to rent a party-bus...).
On the ride to Villa de Leiva, that turned out quite long (5 hours), I got to know some of the ppl that I was going to spend the weekend with. We got there to the hospedaje where we were going to spend the weekend, and the too-nice landlady welcomed us all with kisses, like we were her children, and basically gave us the same treatment throughout the whole weekend. We unloaded our stuff, set the tents in the backyard, said hi to the ppl that were already there, and started the party. We drank quite a lot (most ppl had beers, I had to settle for rum/aguardiente from a cardboard box, but it was definitely a good cultural experience 😊, chatted a danced to the music (very little). We only got there at 23something, so you can imagine that we didn't go to sleep very early, but eventually most of us passed out in a tent. I woke up pretty early and after not nearly enough sleep to the sounds of ppl talking and to the feeling that the tent became a sauna - after 9am it was almost impossible to keep sleeping in it because of the sun... I tried to call my friends from Tunja throughout the day, but their phones were closed. After everybody woke up and got themselves together (which took some time), we got on a bus and went to the periquera, an area nearby that has some waterfalls. Like most of Colombia, it was very green and beautiful, the waterfalls were nice (I like waterfalls), but beyond the first one the road was very muddy and narrow and hard to pass, so some of us struggled to get until the 3rd one (which wasn't easy), and then headed back. When we got back we met some other couchsurfers that arrived late (including Rachel from Cartagena that surprisingly made it. Molly was there since the way in the party-bus, and it was nice seeing her again), and not long after started our second wild night. At one point, when we were sitting in the hospedaje, we noticed that too many ppl were in the main square. When we checked it out, we saw that there was a band that were playing dancing music with typical instruments that sounded good, and everybody were dancing. So after getting a little angry about the others that didn't call us, we joined the dancing, that was a lot of fun. We danced in the square until the band stopped playing, and then went back to the hospedaje, and sat there until we went to sleep. The next morning I woke up again from the sun burning the tent (outside it even wasn't really hot...), and most ppl went horse-riding (appearantly it's quite popular in Colombia). I was feeling lazy and I'm not a big fan of horses, so I stayed in, rested with the others that stayed and then went to walk around the Villa (finally I was properly seeing the place that we stayed in) - it's a pretty small town and it doesn't take long to see the whole canter, and it's really nice, full of nice colonial buildings and surrounded with green mountains. I also went up one of the mountains, to a mirador that overlooks the whole town, or at least halfway up, because it is the same view and I was feeling lazy... My last weekend on the trip was full of fun, alcohol and couchsurfers, and was definitely a proper ending and (after a long time that I wanted to already go back home) left me wanting more and wishing I could stay a little more in Colombia.
During the weekend I also tried to get a hold of my new friends from Tunja, and I only managed to talk to one of them (Alexa) on Sunday. So I decided that I have nothing special to do another day in Bogota, which was too big and noisy for me anyway, and that I will have more fun just going for the evening to Tunja to meet the guys. I wasn't really ready for another day in term of things and money that I had on me, so I read about Tunja in one of the couchsurfers' guidebook and hoped for the best. And everything indeed worked out pretty well, at least until the next day. When all of the couchsurfers went on the party bus to go back to Bogota, I said goodbye to everybody (which was pretty emotional) and got on the bus to Tunja. There I met Alexa, and we met another 3 of the students, and had a very good night out around the city (especially with one of them, Maria). I ended up sleeping at a guest students' dorms, which was great. The next day I wanted to stay a little longer in Tunja and meet everybody again, but I didn't manage to do any of the arrangements I had to do before the flight (reconfirm the flight, change money...) in Tunja (I hate arrangements, so frustrating!), so I had to go back to Bogota on business hours. I tried to reach the guys, at least to say goodbye properly, but it wasn't that easy, and I ended up meeting Maria on the street by co-incidence. She wasn't really able to help me with the arrangements, so we went together to the bus station, and I at least got to say goodbye to her before having to get on the bus to Bogota (third time that a Colombian girl negotiates bus fare for me).
This was my last (intermunicipal) bus ride in South America, which offered some more nice views, and I got to Bogota just in time to find an exchange agency, go to the continental office and grab something to eat in the middle. I was relieved to easily arrange in an hour what I just couldn't do in Tunja. Then I walked back to Luis', he wasn't home, so I talked a little with the other 2 guests that I knew from the weekend, and when Luis got back we got to a conclusion that nobody really has the energy to go out after the weekend (there were a couple of ppl from Venezuela that were suppose to arrive but never showed up), so I had to actually sleep for part of my last night in South America. I only went out to look for some late dinner, and the next morning woke up really early to get to the airport by buses. Again, I was really frustrated to discover that none of the buses to the airport wanted to stop for me because of my big backpack, but in the end I got on one that stopped for another passenger...
To sum up Colombia, as you might understand from the rest of this long post, it was great. I really enjoyed my time there (it was the 2nd country I enjoyed the most, after Argentina, and actually only the 2nd country I was really sad to leave), the views, the people and such. In the end I felt like I wish I could spend some more time there and that there are quite a lot of things I still wanna do and see there (but also really missed Israel by then), and the last couple of weeks left a great taste in my mouth regarding the whole journey.
Back to the chronology, I spent my last pesos in the airport, buying some food and some useless stuff, and got on the flight. I spent some of the flight to Newark talking to the Finnish girl that sat next to me and her cute little kid, and when I landed (from Colombia, beard, hair and all) I somehow got through costumes with no inspection whatsoever, and then I had a 7 hour lay-over... I walked around the duty-free, ate out of boredom, and then just sat to wait with another Israeli that was in the same situation... The flight home was nice, we had an endless amount of movies and TV shows on the plane, which was nice after a year with very little television, so I wasn't bored. At Ben-Gurion my family was waiting for me, and with this emotional reunion, my almost-1-year-long journey was over, and I came back home to my beloved Israel.
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