Blogs from Colombia, South America - page 327

Lateinamerika - Woche 48 (Ecuador - Kolumbien)

South America » Colombia November 4th 2005

Quito - Party mit Bo, Tanya, Susana und Javier

29.10.05 Wir standen alle recht frueh auf. Wieder kam eine neue Touristin, Tanya. Wir gingen gleich alle miteinander fruehstuecken. Danach trennten sich jedoch unsere Wege wieder. Ich ging wie immer ins Internet. Ich schrieb innert Stunden etwa 50 Mails und erledigte etliche Sachen. Zur Abwechslung hatte ich um 15.00 Uhr mit Theresia abgemacht, sie lernte ich vor ein paar Wochen kennen. Wir setzten uns in ein Café und unterhielten uns super. Ploetzlich stand neben mir Daniel, den ich in Montañita kennenlernte, mit zwei Kumpels. Ich war ja echt baff. Sie setzten sich zu uns an den Tisch. Am Anfang war es ja noch lustig, aber diese Maenner werden nach einer gewissen Zeit eher anstrengend. Wir wechselten das Lokal und assen was Kleines. Danach kam Theresia noch mit ins Hostal, um sich ein paar Unterlagen ueber Kolumbien ... read more

Quito - Party mit Tanha, Tanya, Javier und einem Oesterreicher

Quito - Kuschelstunde mit Bo, Tanya und Javier :-)

Villa de Leyva

South America » Colombia October 31st 2005

Villa de Leyva

Grifter

More touristy than most places I have been, but still definitely worth checking out. It has a beautiful cobbled Plaza that is the largest in Colombia and over 400yrs old. The streets in the town have an old-world feel and some of the architecture is nice and arty. We stayed in probably the most luxurious room we have been in yet. Just forgotten the name of the hostal but it is a sister hostal to Dino´s, if that helps. The first day we did the walk to El Fossil and Infernito, both of which are a waste of time. They have constructed tourist sights around these two "attractions" and frankly they are not worth the entrance fee. Unless of course, small fallic like stones or a immaculately clean fossil floats your boat. We stayed outside the ... read more

Tunja

South America » Colombia October 31st 2005

Tunja

Grifter

Hotel Saboy is a strange place, a little shabby but quite homely in a way. It is owned by a Colombian family. All rooms are off a courtyard with the families glass dining room at one end enabling the huge dog to see whoever enters the courtyard and resulting in much barking. It was a proud moment when, on our last day, it stopped barking and jumping up at the glass windows as if it were about to rip our heads off. The family were very helpful and gave us detailed instructions of places of interest as well as providing maps. The first day we spent looking around the town. I asked a copper why a particular church I wanted to see was shut, only for him to show me around the town for the next ... read more

Colombia again

South America » Colombia October 29th 2005

Cucuta - Border Crossing

Grifter

Cucuta border crossing I really loved Venezuela, but it was good to be back in Colombia. And no sooner were we on the bus travelling to Bucarmarange were we given a stark reminder of that we had crossed over into Colombia. Get this, on bus journeys it is accepted that police checks occur. These checks largely concern the men, who are asked to get out of the bus and show their id to various armed police. These police are not looking for drugs or illegal immigrants but boys aged 18yrs to 25yrs to recruit into the army. When I say RECRUIT read KIDNAP. They actually haul them out of the bus, as they are, and put them in the nearest army barracks for two years. The boy on our bus, about 19yrs old was travelling back ... read more

Cartagena Thoughts

South America » Colombia » Cartagena October 20th 2005

Cartegena from the anchorage

farrell

Ok some last thoughts on Cartagena and Colombia and the rest of what happened in Colombia. Upon return to Cartagena from Santa Marta it was time to get ready to set sail for Panama. We had about 2 days of doing work: shopping, getting stuff cleaned, laundry, and other sundry things. We did take to time to see the Inquisition museum. ("Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition") This museum has a good history of Cartegena. We also found the time to go and tour San Felipe. Its a huge fort that overlooks the city and was built to defend the city from pirates and the English. Its a really cool fort that you can climb all over. Its built with tunnels connecting all of the different levels of fortification so the defenders can retreat farther into the ... read more

Cocaine

South America » Colombia » Santa Marta October 16th 2005

farrell

So as a side excursion from the trek to Cuidad Perdida you can go and visit a cocaine factory. Now I'm thinking ok its an old and busted factory no longer working. Wrong!!! Its a real, live operational place they make cocaine. Well but its not much of a factory, its really just a 15x20' hut in the jungle. Every three months they make 3 kilos of coke. What is really interesting is that Cocaine is a natural substance in the coco plant leaves but its a chemists wet dream to get it into your nose. The coco leaves grow back every 3 months, so every 3 months they go out and strip the tree of its leaves. It takes like 10 kilos of leaves for 1 kilo of pure coke. The leaves are then laid ... read more

Cuidad Perdida

South America » Colombia » Santa Marta October 16th 2005

farrell

Ok where to start this. I´m actually back in Cartegena now but I just got back from a 6 day trek into the Colombian Jungle to see Ciudad Perdida (Lost City). It´s a pre-Colombian Tayrona Indian city. Its a pretty impressive set of ruins, well what is left. Its up on top of this mountain that you hike up about 3000 stairs from the river to get to. The ruins that are left are walls and terraces with steps. Sorry since this trip is so short I'll do pics when I get home. Anyway it was quite the adventure to get to this place. Its a 3 day hike in, about 4-5 hours of hiking each day. Its its very up and down. The last day we had 9 river crossings all about soprano deep (waist ... read more

Last stop!! NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

South America » Colombia October 15th 2005

Colombian Countryside.

Jo and Mark

To say that we were worried about Colombia would have been an understatement.......Well that was true for the first 6 months or so anyway. Then we started to hear really good reports from lots of other fellow travellers, all of a sudden we were really looking forward to this leg of the trip. We weren't disappointed either, Colombia is one of the most beautiful South American countries that we have travelled through, period! Although it was another whistlestop visit, most of the time taken up travelling on buses.....(NOTHING NEW THERE THEN!) We felt really quite safe....Oh, apart from the totally crazy bus drivers here, speed isn't the word, they're speed demons and think nothing of overtaking truck after truck on blind hairpin bends on mountain roads, and, they've also got a tendency to do more than ... read more

Made it

South America » Colombia » Cartagena October 11th 2005

farrell

Wow, I didn´t realize that today was the 11th until I started typing this blog. I barely know its Tuesday and I guess I´ve been out a week. We arrived into Cartagena on Sunday AM after almost 4 days of sailing. I spent a total of 4 hours in Aruba, arrive 12:30 and leave at 4:30. Oh well. The only real exciting thing that happened on the trip is that I got a contract on my house, yeah!!!!! Other than that, last two days have been spent trying to figure out what we are going to do now that we are here. Still not sure on the trek to Ciudad Perdida. Would love to go just not sure about schedule. Other than that Cartagena is a cool city with lots of old colonial Spanish buildings. Its ... read more

These could be the best days of our lives...

South America » Colombia » Cali October 2nd 2005

The salsa capital of the world.

jamieborley

And so...I left Bogota on a bus to Medellin for reasons I now can't remember. I spent three days in Medellin with 3 friends I met on the bus - they were going to Medellin for a 10 day book fair, and have promised to show me further around Bogota upon my return there. I went to see my mate Patrick at the Casa Kiwi before he left for Quito with his bad back, and I did very little else in those three days. *** Before I forget, I have to give special mention to something here that really unhinges me about Colombia - apart from uncomfortable pillows everywhere. It's the shop assistants. Every clothes shop you enter an assistant will pounce on you immediately and follow you all around the place just staring at ... read more

Brief history of Colombia

Colombia was one of the three countries that emerged from the collapse of Gran Colombia in 1830 (the others are Ecuador and Venezuela). A 40-year insurgent campaign to overthrow the Colombian Government escalated during the 1990s, undergirded in part...more history

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