A big city, a walled city, a lost city and the beach

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Well the good times have continued to roll here in Colombia - it is quickly catching up to Argentina in the race to become my favourite country in South America!

After a great couple of weeks of volunteering it was back to travelling.....first stop was Bogota, the big city capital. Here I was lucky enough to have a friend introduce me to two Colombians, Andreas and Fabian, who quickly took me under their wing and put in a huge effort to make sure I had a great time in Bogota. This mostly involved feeding me every alcoholic beverage ever invented/drank/thought about in Colombia, although there were also some stops in Bogota´s amazing colonial sector and in its very interesting museums to keep me entertained.

Next stop was the walled city of Cartegena on Colombia´s carribean coast. This city is famous for the huge walls that surround it, which were built to keep out all those pesky pirates back in the day (arrrr!). Cartagena has managed to keep most of its colonial buildings which date back to the 1500s, making it a very pretty (although touristy) place to hang out.

After all that civilisation it was time to head bush again, so I signed up for the trek to the Ciudad Perdida, which translates as the Lost City. This is the ruins of the Tayrona people, the indigenous folk in these parts up until the Spanish arrived. The hike was an awesome experience with 6 days of trekking through mountainous jungles, crossing rivers that were chest high, climbing over boulders, swinging on vines and just generally being very wet and muddy - gold times. The highlight was reaching the City via 2000 stone stairs (talk about Stairmaster Xtreme!). The ruins themselves are spectacularly set in lush jungle and high mountains and best of all there are only a handful of people there, a welcome change after some of the other overcrowded ruins in these parts.

As a side note - the area we hiked through also used to be a major cocaine producing area so we got to go on a side excursion to a cocaine factory to see how it is produced.....needless to say there is a whole lot of chemical nastiness involved. Drugs are bad, n-kay!

But if all this seems like a bit much, never fear! I backed it up by sitting on the beach for 4 days in the National Park Tayrona, a coastal national park that has all the white beaches, clear water, palm trees and awesome gigantic boulders a girl could ask for. I spent copious amounts of time reading books and drinking passionfruit juice, delicious!! It was a very relaxing time in preparation for my next adventure.....yep, its off to Venezula to meet up with my friend Yarnie and check out what Mr Chavez has done with the place.

Hope all is well with everyone at home - only 5 weeks til I am back in Aus so I will be seeing you all soon!

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Photos

Colombian buddies
Fabian and Andreas, my Colombian friends who pulled out all stops to show me around Bogota. The alcoholic beverage featured here is a fermented corn delicacy called Chicha.

The heights of Bogota
Me checking out the big city

The walls of Cartegena
Perfect for keeping those pirates away. And yes, that is a UFO in the top left corner.

Colonial Cartagena
Cool colonial buildings and stuff

Cocaine factory
The moral is, don´t do drugs kids!

Indiana Jones eat your heart out
Crossing the river on the way to the Lost City

The Lost City
Ciudad Perdida, or the Lost City of the Tayronas.

The beach at Tayrona National Park
Travelling alone has improved my self-photo-taking abilities

Beaches, palm trees, sunshine
Plus that pesky UFO is still in the top left hand corner.