Colombia

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Cartagena was a beautiful colonial city with plenty to see and do. Our first night was spent partying with our fellow boat members, listening to lots of accordion music, playing maracas and dancing to salsa. We enjoyed a visit to Totumo volcano - the highest mud volcano in Colombia, where we got covered in warm mud bubbling around us!

Next stop was further North along the Caribbean coast to the beach resort of Taganga near the beautiful Tayrona National Park. Here we did 2 amazing dives and saw plenty of lionfish, moray eels, water spiders and huge shoals of fish. One night out ended up at an Israeli hostel where we were invited to a party, around a swimming pool with a Star of David in the middle! Another day we trekked through the muddy jungle to some stunning beaches until we got to Cabo San Juan, Tayrona's most spectacular spot where you can stay in a hammock overlooking the ocean..paradise.

A short flight South to Bogota (saving us 20 hours on a bus, and it was cheaper to fly!) we were shocked by the temperature drop. We really enjoyed visiting the Gold Museum and the Botero art gallery, an amazing art gallery exhibiting plenty of Botero's paintings and sculptures of fat people as well as works by Picasso, Henry Moore... We also took a bus out of the city to the salt cathedral, built inside a gigantic salt mine. Colombians know how to party, especially in Bogota! We had a great night out in La Zona Rosa where we danced with the locals and had our photo taken with a topless model dancing on a podium.

In Salento, we stayed in a gorgeous coffee plantation with stunning views of the luscious mountains. Here we enjoyed walking through the valleys, sampled the local specialty of 'trucha patacones' (trout served on a thin plantain layer - delicious!) and went on an interesting coffee tour of our coffee plantation.

Our last stop in Colombia was Medellin, where we had heard rumours of beautiful women and copious amounts of plastic surgery! We took a cable car up above the city, saw lots of Botero sculptures and went on the Pablo Escobar tour of the city which was hilarious, especially meeting his brother in his own home with fresh bullet holes in his walls from a few days earlier.

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