Going back a 'few years', I now see where my inspiration came from to visit Colombia....
Week 13.
Monday we arrived in Cartegena and we were all very pleased to get off the boat. We checked into
Mamallena Hostel and then spent the afternoon exploring the old town.
Week 14
Tuesday. We checked out of Mamallana and made our way to El Hotel Veleros in the Bocagrande area of Cartagena, a 10 minute taxi from the old town. It was nice to stay somewhere by the beach!
After checking in we explored the area and walked back to the Old Town to see all the NYE preparations. We then relaxed on the beach to top up our tans.
For NYE we arranged to meet up with the friends we made during the boat trip from Panama to Colombia, at Mamallana. The night was full of rum, laughter, amusing the locals with our 'wierd dancing' and watching fireworks welcome in 2014 in the Old town. Fun was had by all!
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| Our Captain!! |
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| Dancing in the streets |
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| Getting friendly with the locals |
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| Happy NYE!!!! |
Wednesday. Feeling a little worse for wear from the night before, we met up with some of the 'boat gang' and chilled out on the beach until the sun went down.
Thursday. Our final day in Cartegena. We decided to spend our time exploring the Castillo San Felipe de Barajas, an old fortress built to protect the town from pirates.
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| Colombia!!!!! |
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| View from the top of the Fortress |
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| Exploring the tunnels |
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| Bang! |
After a spot of shopping, we then headed back to the old town in search of a nice cold beer!
One of the streets in the old town had some amazing graffiti. This blogger also appreciated it.. Click here
Since coming to Colombia I have fallen in love with paintings of the large lady sculpted below. You can see various paintings of her all over Cartegena. No doubt I shall buy one! Research has told me that this is the creation of the artist Fernando Botero Angulo.
Week 15
Wednesday. 4pm we finally arrived at Santa Marta, back from our lost city trek - getting clean was a priority! We checked ourselves in at Drop Bear Hostel and were shown to our room. We were both a little surprised to see that to get to our room we had to first walk through a 10 bed dorm room, filled with 18 year old Colombians (all in a major party mood with a blaring sound system). I quickly realised that I would need ear plugs to sleep as it almost felt like we were in the dorm with them - the music was that loud!! Great!
Luckily, our neighbours left about 8pm allowing us to watch a movie before falling asleep. I still used ear plugs!
Thursday. Drop Bear was a massive hostel and we latter found out that it used to be a drug cartel's villa! Following a well needed 10 hour sleep we headed out to buy our bus tickets to San Gil. Annoyingly we had to get a taxi to the bus terminal as it was located on the outskirts of the city. Ticket purchase was really easy, and to my surprise there was a direct bus to San Gil for 129,000 COP!
We took another taxi back to the beach area and wondered around searching for a place to eat. The food on the trek was really good and plentiful but I didn't want to see rice or pasta for at least a week. Luckily we stumbled across a small street which had quite a few little bars and restaurants and decided to go to Lulo. What a great choice! The food was yummy and for 40,000 COP we left feeling very satisfied!
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| Not the nicest beach in the world! |
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| Freshly made limeade! Delicious! |
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| Market |
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| Amazing!! |
We arranged to meet the trek gang in the evening at the bar in Drop Bear for a well earned post trek drinky. We all took advantage of the happy hour which led to extreme dancing, prancing around in helmets and laughing until our cheeks ached. We really did meet a great group of people and promises were made to meet some of the group when back in the UK or if we travelled to Australia.
Friday. Our last day in Santa Marta. As our night bus was not leaving until 9:30pm we made the most of our day by hanging out at one of the beaches in the Tayrona National park with our trek gang.
Today was the first day that we experienced the moto taxi. I was a little dubious about getting on the back of a motorbike, sandwiched between Roland and the driver, with no helmet, scooting through the dirt roads. However we did make it in one piece to the beach which was called Concha and is mainly used by locals.
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| Blending in with the locals |
This was a very pleasant beach. However it was a lot busier than I was expecting. We soon settled in with our own beach 'tent' (for shade), mixing in amongst all the Colombians - we stuck out like a sore thumb! We spent a lot of our time here trying to work out who had bum implants - a popular procedure in Colombia. Full pert bottoms everywhere!!
We enjoyed a very chilled out few hours here before heading back to Santa Marta in a cool looking 4 x 4.
Saturday. 11am and after a 15 hour night bus we arrived in San Gil which is know for the adventure activities that you can do around the town.
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| Good morning - on the night bus! |
However we decided that ´adventure on our first day' would be a bit too extreme as we were both tired from lack of sleep. We only managed a small walk around the town square and grabbed a bite to eat. I tried some more street food today, deep fried cheesy balls, Bunuelos. They were good! Its going to be hard to stay healthy here!
We spent the rest of the day relaxing at Sam's VIP Hostel.
Sunday. We had a very busy day today and made the most of feeling human again after a good night sleep! We climbed up to the view point to see San Gil from above and then explored the town as much as possible, stumbling across a very hectic market area and the botanical gardens.
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| Where the hostel was |
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| Top of the viewpoint |
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| Hmmmmmm |
In the afternoon we met up with our Aussie mates (from the Lost City trek) and went to explore the nearby town, Barichara (taxi was 37,000 COPS from San Gil) and walked 9km to Guane, a small beautiful colonial village.
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| This was the convenience store`s mascot?!?! |
To get back to Barichara, we were offered a ride in a local's Jeep (20,000 COPS) and then we caught a taxi back to San Gil.
Monday. Another adventure day! Yay! This time we hit the class 3, 4 and 5 rapids on the river Suarez with Colombia Rafting Expeditions - 125,000 COPS each. After the safety instruction, I was almost tempted to turn back and let the boys manage this one. So pleased I didn't! It was so much fun and I enjoyed every minute. We both even managed to stay in the raft this time - an improvement from before!
We ate at Gringo Mikes in the evening and had the most wonderful burger!
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The spicy gringo burger was very good!!
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Week 16
Tuesday to Friday. With our new found Auzzie friends, we all decided that we should make the 18 hour journey to El Cocuy. The first part of this trip involved catching a very comfortable bus for 5 hours (42,000 COPs, Copetran) to the former capital Tunja.
We were all not prepared for the crisp cold air when we stepped off the bus and were instantly shivering in our t-shirts and shorts (the locals were looking at us in amusement). After we found the ticket office, we booked our bus tickets to El Cocuy (35,000COPs) and changed into warmer clothes in the corner of the very small office - Roland acted as a screen to protect my modesty! We then wondered around Tunja for almost 5 hours before getting on bus number 2 for the 10 hour ride to El Cocuy.
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| Enjoying a nice hot chocolate, tea and beer |
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| Main plaza |
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| Fun on the bus! |
The sleeping pills worked a treat and when we arrived in El Cocuy at 5:30am I felt relatively normal! We needed to organise one last ride to the cabin in the mountains where we would base ourselves for our adventures. There were 2 options hitch a ride on a milk truck or hire a Jeep. The decision was an easy one - hire a Jeep.
We were very lucky to find Oscar who owned a Jeep and helped us with absolutely everything we asked of him before leaving to Cabaña Sisuma - we negotiated a price of 60,000COPs to take us there.
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| Much warmer! |
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| El Cocuy plaza |
A tip for other travellers, you need to register and pay fees in the town before leaving for the park - you can not do it at the entrance to the park. Make sure you have an itinerary for your stay in the park as you will be questioned before you receive your admission slip.
After 1 hour bumping along dirt tracks, we were dropped off in what seemed to be in the middle of nowhere - the cabin was nowhere in sight! Oscar simply pointed us in the right direction and sad it would take about 40 minutes to walk there. Now normally this would not be an issue but we were all carrying our heavy backpacks and food supplies, plus we were now at 4000m. The effects of the altitude were already making an impact on the boys and this little hike took almost an hour!
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| Where Oscar dropped us off - start of our trek to Cabaña Sisuma |
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| The boys could not walk any further! |
El Cocuy is beautiful! And luckily for us, it is relatively unknown to tourists, with most visitors (relatively small amount too) coming from Colombia. We dumped our bags in the 4 bed dorm, ate a small lunch and then headed out for our first hike to visit the lagoons. Roland and Adam were really finding this walk quite hard due to the altitude and decided to stop after a few hours.
Maddy and I decided to walk on with a Colombian and his guide to the 4400m lookout point. This was really tough and I had forgotten how hard trekking at altitude is (previously trekked to Everest base camp, 5200m in 2008).
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| Where´s Wally? |
After trekking 4 hours we were knackered, and instantly jumped into bed - it was too cold to be anywhere else!! The boys were really unwell and only moved from the bed to be sick or go to the loo.
Luckily the following day the boys were feeling a lot better but it was Maddy's turn to feel ill. However Maddy was quite comfortable to use large rocks as loo stops so we all headed out to catch some gorgeous early morning photos.
We then climbed up to Pulpito del Diablo - about 4800m above sea level! This was a really hard climb and we were all feeling the effects of the altitude. There were quite a lot of rest stops, loo breaks, panting and sweating before reaching our destination. The return journey took just under 6 hours and as you can see from the photos below, it was all worth it!
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| On the way to Pulpito Del Diablo |
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| Made it!!!! |
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| First snow experienced on our trip! |
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| The gang |
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| Topping up our water bottles - straight from the mountain water supply |
We all decided that 2 nights was enough due to the altitude and on Friday morning we made our way back to El Cocuy . During the trip we befriended a American guy, Jeff, who spoke really great Spanish (no one spoke English). He acted as our translator for most of the trip and was able to organise a place where we could have a much needed warm shower before our 10 hour bus ride to Bogota (35,000COPs).
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| Back in El Cocuy town |
I have seen some funny things on our little adventure which simply wouldn't happen back at home. While we were travelling to Bogota the bus would stop frequently to pick up or drop people off. On one occasion when the bus was completely full with passengers and luggage, I saw the driver stuff a massive box and a huge bag into the on board toilet (looked as if someone was moving house!!) - no toilet for us for 10 hours!!
Saturday. 4:00am we arrived in Bogota and caught a taxi to TipTop hostel. Luckily there was some dorm beds available so we all managed to get a few more hours of much needed sleep.
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| First of many ´band´ photos ... |
We were staying in the old area of the city which is called La Candelaria and has a cool grungy vibe to it and lots of graffiti walls.
We did manage to visit the Botero art museum and purchased a few prints ready to hang up on the walls back home.
We then headed out to grab something to eat and chilled out back at the hostel before heading out in the evening to meet Jeff at the Bogota Beer Company - we wanted some pints!!
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| Nice hat! |
We were all hoping to have a good Saturday night in Bogotá but it seemed to be quite difficult on a travellers budget! We ended up eating pizza slices in the street and riding round in taxi's for a lot of the evening. The pints of beer were very good though (the first pints in over 3 months!!)!
Sunday to Wednesday. Strangely some flight tickets are cheaper than bus tickets here in Colombia. The thought of another night bus didn't really fill us with joy so we all arranged to fly from Bogotá to Medellin. This was possibly the shortest plane ride I have ever been on and it was all over in less than 1 hour (saving over 10 hours on a bus!!!) - in fact the taxi from Medellin airport to our hostel took more time!
As this was Maddy's and Adam last few days in Colombia before they flew home we decided to stay at the very lovely Urban Buddha hostel. This was a great hostel and we all enjoyed our stay here - I think the 'pour your own' draft beer had something to do with it! And finally it was warm again!!!
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| Funky art in the hostel |
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| Hostel garden |
During the trek we had been dreaming of eating decent food - there is only so many tortilla bean wraps you can eat! On the first night we found a great Mexican (weirdly had a shrine in it) and on Monday we found the only Indian restaurant in Medellin.
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| Decisions, decisions ... |
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| A shrine in the restaurant!!! |
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| Yummy curry!! |
We did mange to do a !little bit of sight seeing while in Medellin. We explored downtown, took the gondolas to the national park and visited the Botanical gardens.
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| A Botero cat |
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| Orchids in the Botanical garden |
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| Car outside our hostel selling fruit to the locals |
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| Another band pose ... |
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| View from the gondola |
For Maddy and Adam's last night we went to a salsa bar (the first one we have been to after almost 4 months of travelling in Latin America!!) as recommended by the hostel. We had a great evening and the night was spent dancing with the locals drinking copious amounts of booze. A good farewell for sure!!
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| Pre evening drinkies - Roland trying to cheat! |
Week 17
Wednesday
and Thursday. Wednesday we left Medellin and said goodbye to Maddy and
Adam who were flying back to Australia. With numerous people saying that
we should go to Salento next, we decided that this should be our next
stop.
It
took a little longer than expected to get there and when we where
dropped off in the middle of nowhere in the pouring rain to catch a
passing Collective bus, I was relieved that we made it to our Hostel
just before dark. Total journey time was just over 7 hours! We thought
it would be less than 4!
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| Roland in charge of opening and closing the door - much to his delight! |
Salento
is a really lovely sleepy village all geared up for foreign and local
tourists - without loosing its charm. There were lots of lovely
boutiques selling gorgeous artisan handicrafts and cute little
restaurants dotted about the main tourist street.
One of the main activities while staying in Salento is to hike around the Valle Del Cocora
national park. It is characterised by beautiful scenery which has very
high palm trees scattered on the mountain sides which are also the
Colombian national symbol. To get here we had to take a 'Willey' which
is an old 1950's American army vehicle, from the main square. Amazingly 1
vehicle can carry 12 people (3 hanging off the back!)! Roland and I
squashed ourselves in the back for the 20 minute ride to the start of
the 5 hour circular trek.
This
was a really lovely walk, taking you through farmland, forests and
mountain tops. We were both pleased to have made the effort to come
here.
For
dinner, both evenings, we found a really good cheap restaurant. Trout
seemed to be a popular dish and we both sampled trout soup and steamed
trout for less than £6 each!
We stayed at Posada Martha Tolima
during our time here and would holey recommend the B&B if you were
to come here (130,000 COPs for 2 nights). Good breakfast, very clean
rooms and friendly host made our stay an enjoyable one.
Friday and Saturday. We had another long 9 hour bus ride to take us to Popayan
- our last stop in Colombia. We really didn't do much here except
wonder around the town and prepare ourselves to leave to go to Ecuador.
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| Our hostel was right next door to this Cathedral |
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| Roland ate tripe soup! I had chicken - thank god! |
Sunday.
Border Crossing, the easiest one so far! We got up at 6:00am to catch
the 7:00am bus to Ipiales - the Colombian border town. Reading several
blogs we decided that this was the latest we should leave Popayan to
make our way to Otavalo in Ecuador.
The
bus dropped us at Ipiales at 4pm, where we caught a 5 minute taxi to
the Colombian border to get our exit stamp. We then walked over a bridge
to Ecuador to get our entry stamp and then jumped in a taxi for a 10
minute journey to Tulcan. Here we caught the bus to Otalavo. This
journey took us 14 hours in total and by the time we had reached our
hostel, we were both knackered!
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