7. Viva Colombia

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Hola folks...Time for another essay... hope you´re being inspired for some future travels in this part of the world...can´t tell you enough how great it is!!

Cartagena
Absolutely stunning city, like a film set almost, horse drawn carriages, thick-set city walls, multi coloured buildings. Restoring a city like this makes it a tourist destination and here was the Hilton, the cruise ships and the American hordes. The city was the main Spanish port for exporting gold and was once held siege to by Francis Drake. The pock-marks of cannon balls still mark the walls today. There’s no escaping the history and sense of timelessness that’s steeped in this place. If anyone has read Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera, then the sense of magic evoked here is still in place today. Beautiful as it was I decided to move on to see some more authentic parts of Colombia and post pone the Spanish classes.

Bogota
Nothing like you would imagine, a capital city but no where near as crazy as London or as congested as Bangkok. From the last e-mail, I discovered that by chance I was staying in the same hotel as a girl I met in Venezuela. We joined the Sunday pilgrims up Cerro de Montserrat, which is a church on a mountain overlooking Bogotá. If you’re into holy suffering you may walk up the hill in the hot sunshine.. instead we took the funicular railway up and slid back down on the cable car! There’s a little plaza in the Candelaria district, where the city was supposed to be founded in the days of Simon Bolívar. We enjoyed some lovely drinks that tasted of Christmas in a cool cafe that looked like an old lady’s parlour. Almost home and polishing off one last vino caliente (hot red wine) in another bar when Andy the scouser made himself unnoticeable. Hilarious, he helped us ward off the unwanted friendship of Tam the jock dole-waller by doing his "party boy" routine. For those of you not in the know, this involves dancing like a crazy lunatic with a lot of pelvic thrusting and getting very close to the victim! Oh, so funny...he "party boyed" many a person there...I could see people looking on in amazement and muttering "so embarrassing" as I howled with laughter! Next up, he decided that his George at Asda safari shorts would never be worn again and promptly took them off and burnt them! Not wanting to miss the show, we joined Andy and Sam for a spot of nightclubbing..well it was a small bar at the other end of town with about 10 other people in. A small audience was obviously no put off and Andy was soon compering and karaokeing on the dance floor and later on, humping it... perhaps his childhood fame as "Bobby" from Brookside made him act like this or perhaps his sensible job as an undercover drug squad agent in the Manchester police force????

Zipaquira’s salt cathedral
This is a 2 hr bus ride north. The Indians first discovered the salt in the mountain here and it was first mined commercially in the 1800´s. Because of the superstition of the miners, they used to bring statues of the virgin into the mines to protect them. It was then decided to build a cathedral as a place of worship. The cathedral you can visit today is actually the second model, due to the shifting quality of the rock salt due to water flow; the original became unstable and was closed. I was imagining an actual hollow "normal" cathedral structure but it was actually a series of tunnels that had been mined and an "artist" had created some stone crosses depicting the 12 stages of Christ, it was much more modern than I expected and all lit up with blue fluorescent tubes giving it a ghostly appearance.

A taste of Thailand
Amazing...north Bogota is a totally suburban district, all high rise apartments and classy bars and restaurants. ´WOK´ is my favourite...it serves Asian fusion food and I had the most tasty Thai green tofu curry!!! Food can make me so happy!! Next up was the Scottish bar and ACTUAL PINTS of LAGER!! But at 2 quid a pop they certainly weren’t the 25 pence bottle I have become accustomed to paying for!

Villya de Lleyva
If you're in Colombia now you really must make the detour to visit some of these little villages between Bogotá and Bucaramanga, they really are so traditional and untouched. So safe and friendly aswell, they had just installed a security speaker system throughout the centre and the armed police were testing it in the square and pretending to arrest people as part of their emergency drill. According to the locals though there is never any trouble and they are just doing it to ensure they keep the tourism they rely on. Helen and I hired bikes for the day and went in search of El Fossil and Infiernito. The latter is an ancient Muisca Indian site consisting of two rows of stone monoliths from which they could tell the time and the seasons. Though the best bit (for funny photographs) were the giant phallic shaped stones...these were stood in the sun to absorb the energy, then tipped upside-down into mother earth to promote fertility...fascinating. This area used to be sea and they have found a whole fossilised prehistoric sea creature here...the museum is hilarious especially the "artists depiction" a crap pen drawing with the eye coloured in blue. There are so many fossils here that people have set them in concrete to make doorsteps.

San Gil
Not as nice as the other places but famous for its beautiful park. All the trees are bedecked with long strands of old-mans-beard, which creates a really surreal "lost in Narnia" effect. The river is diverted here to form a natural pool for swimming in the cool shade of the trees. This is also the centre for outdoor activities, we chose rappelling and at only £7.50 for the trip we shouldn't have expected much...but did expect the instructor to be older than 17 and there to be an actual waterfall as we were led to believe! Anyway, if you're there give that one a miss...the rafting is supposed to be pretty good but there were not enough tourists in town to make up a group. Joined the locals in the evening for my first bottle of Aguadiente (the local firewater) kind of like Ouzo but not quite as harsh...the park culture is great; everyone hangs out there, young and old alike, there's drinks from the corner shop, a band playing on the corner, "boy racers" doing the drive-by in their suped-up motors and a great friendly atmosphere...about 11pm most people head off to a club but the parks are still alive until 3ish.

Barichara and the kindness of strangers...
This truly is the most beautiful village in Colombia, giant flagstones pave the streets and wobbly single storey whitewashed houses with red-tile roofs line the streets. Everyone you meet will say hello and ask how you are, there's some great craft shops, tasty restaurants, sculpture park, outdoor swimming pool and open air theatre. The hotel was amazingly clean with the best bed I've slept in so far, bathroom and TV for only a fiver a night, it was so safe that they didn't even have locks for the door. From Barichara you can take a path 10k to a tiny village called Guane, built on old guane indian territory. Walking along a stoney path through Colombian countryside might not initially appear a wise thing to do but really, there was no risk, nice old farmer gave me an orange on the way. A sign states that this is the village without time and it was even quieter than Barichara, like walking onto an empty film set..a few old guys were sat on a park bench and a couple of shops were open, restaurants only open at weekends so the nice lady in the artesian shop made me chips, salad and chorizo for lunch!

Giron
Pretty place but miss this one out there is literally no where to eat! The only restaurant (v expensive too) shut at 8 and refused to serve me at ten-to the buggers, ended up with pizza slice again! Had my hair dyed the next morning and blow-dried in a Princess Diane stylee before setting off on the night bus to Barranquilla for carnival.

Carnival.....trannies, chalk and Boney M in Barranquilla
This is the home Gabriel Garcia Marquez (famous Colombian author, 100 years of solitude a fantastic book if you haven't read it), he used to hang out at 'La Cueva' with his literary buddies, so thinking it was an arty bar we went for a look. Actually now a really expensive restaurant but we managed a salad and a bottle of red, a little over budget but lucky we had some veggies when we could.
There was only one half decent restaurant in the whole of the centre...I'm afraid Ronald called and the sin of the golden gates followed out of sheer desperation for edible grub...obviously many people here love Mondongo (tripe stew)...yuk! Traditional music was being played in the plaza from 6, though true to form it was two hours late, still the supermarket sold rum and we sat on the steps watching the crowd to pass the time. Imagined there to be dancing in the streets and fiestas all over the place, sadly no one knew where this might be let alone give us directions to get there! Found a locals bar near the hotel and had great fun dancing with some girls (By the rivers of Babylon) and getting chalked (packets of talc emptied on our heads) whilst one of them tried to set Rebecca up with her Dad!
Saturday's 'carnaval de flores' was supposed to be the best procession, but really lacked any organisation, perhaps they all posed for photo's at the beginning and lost energy on the way down and managed to create 15 minute gaps between the floats...still got chalked and foamed and blagged plenty of free rum! Imagined it to be similar to Notting Hill, but where was the music and the dancing? V. odd, Barnard Castle Meet is better! What was hilarious were the trannies in the bar afterwards...the macho men were so scared of catching 'gayness' that a young lad stood between us and refused to look whilst an old man fell off a wall trying to get away! The trannies thought it great fun to shake their booty's and pull up their mini skirts at them, some even carried dolls with strap-on willies attached...hilarious!!
Ordered breakfast at the only decent place, only for them to have a powercut...so forced to commit another sin, en route to bus terminal the taxi got a puncture and swerved accross the road, but he bravely continued after the spare also blew!

Back to Bogota
Friends I met in Barichara had offered a tour of Bogota and kindly drove us to the Botanical gardens and small pretty suburbs that they don't put in the guide book..thanks Vladimir and Louise!
Here's a strange thing...to reduce traffic congestion they have put a ban on driving at peak periods for registration plates ending in a certain number eg: 0,3,5,7 and 9 are not allowed to drive between 7 and 10 am and 4 -7 pm and it's a $100 fine if you get caught..which you will because the police are very vigilant!

San Augustin
Took the night bus here from Bogota and unpleasant journey made better by the screening of 'Paying it Forward' (cheesy but great film!) and a bottle of Aguardiente. Great little place famous for the stone sculptures that litter the countryside, horse seemed the best way to travel (until 5 hrs later when the pain kicked in!) to see 5 sites in spectacular countryside.
This area's renowned for Geurrilla activity and due to the upcoming elections they had blocked the road to Popayan with burnt buses! You'd better leave advised the locals, there's no buses tomorrow they said... so we rushed to pack without even spending one night here and was then told that the 6.30pm bus was not actually going till 5.30 am the next morning...damn and blast! Anyway had a great meal at an unassuming family restaurant..they all rallied round to garnish things, serve and open the wine...really sweet and very cheap.
To avoid the road blocks was a 12 hour journey on a dirt road through the most amazing country, gigantic steep-sided hills plunged down to sharp valleys, houses clung to the edge and campesino's farmed the almost vertical faces.

Popayan
There’s not really much happening here, it is colonial but feel like I've seen enough of that and even got the t-shirt (fact!). Tried to visit some churches but they were all closed, got woken up this morning by some sort of carnival outside the window, apparently all the students celebrating the start of semester, the nurses had made balloon skeletons hooked up to drips etc! Taking a stroll up to the bus station to check times we couldn't resist a sneaky peek at the fire station...and a very kind bombero offered us a tour! They actually had some Uniforms from the Devon fire service and an engine from China. Well, what a hoot, we tried the full kit on and posed with the lovely muscley men, and then they made us a cup of coffeee whilst we waited for the thunder storm to pass!
Well, no partying for last night in Colombia, we were all set for the 6 am bus to the border town of Ipiales in 6 hours, only the damn thing broke down and it took 9 hours after all.

Sanctuarias de Las Lajas
Ipiales is nowhere you want to stay, great setting but poor town. Except in the 17th century an image of the virgin appeared on a rock 45m above the river. Last century they built an elaborate gothic cathedral across the river gorge to celebrate the miracle. It's certainly a feat of engineering and looks amazing, pilgrims flock here and send plaques in thanks for their own personal miracles; thousands of them line the path leading to the church accompanied by lots of cotton wool stuffed in the cracks (signifying I don't know what).

ECUADOR!!
Had a last beer to say "goodbye Colombia" which slightly went to our heads...changed money but found a 1mil note in my pocket, thought the border police man could do with a drink so made a donation and he gladly posed with us for photo's...had been dying to get a picture of one of them but it's not wise to start merrily snapping at men with machine guns! No problems at border, our first stop is Ibarra, 2 hours over the border. Already things are much cheaper despite the dollarisation but people lack that Colombian sparkle!

Well, should be time for bed now folks... have got some more photo's available shortly and will prepare a slide show and lecture upon return! Can't believe how quickly time flies out here! Have now booked into Spanish classes in Quito for definite! (This was a lie).

Keep the news coming, always keen to here what's going on at home, any interesting news snippets too, never hear anything out here.

Hasta luego....love from Zoe (the fireman fan) xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

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