¡Hola amigos! Marty here, Shelley has informed me it is my turn to contribute to the blog - it has taken me 15 minutes to write this sentence! This is gonna be tough.
Bogota
So long Europe, hello South America. Our first stop in South America was in Bogota, Colombia. Getting into the taxi from the airport the first thing we realised was we're not going to be able to get by with English or our level of Spanish…even with Shelley's 29 levels of Duolingo! We rocked up to the hostel at about 9pm and the music was cranking. We realised it was a party hostel and a Friday night, not really what we were chasing after 25 hours of traveling.
Our 4 days in Bogota were pretty quiet overall. We enjoyed a few nice restaurants, and enjoyed the fact we could now indulge in a few beers without being concerned with the price. Average beer price was about $3000-$4000 COP (about $1.50 - $2.00) for the local Club Colombia beer. Bogota also had a craft beer company (called Bogota Beer Company) which had a good variety of beers for a slightly higher price - similar to the James Squires range in Aus. Yep, you could say beer consumption has increased 100 fold since Norway. But enough about beer. After we had gotten over the jet lag we wandered the streets of La Candelaria - the "old town" of Bogota. The neighbourhood consisted of brightly coloured Spanish colonial type buildings. Walking around we noticed we were getting a little puffed out - put that down to being at 2600m!
Villa de Leyver
Next stop was Villa de Leyver. A small colonial town about 4 hours bus ride north of Bogota. It's famous for having one of the largest town squares in South America. We wandered the streets, did a short hike up the neighbouring hill and continued to indulge in cheap beers (they were now only $2000 COP). This was the first place we tried empanadas - deep fried corn-based pastry filled with meat. Delicious, but probably not the most healthy snack.
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| Jesus having a gander at Villa de Leyver |
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| Ice-cream in the largest square |
San Gil
Wandering colonial towns was nice but I was starting to feel like a little more adventure. So onwards to San Gil it was. San Gil is located next to the Chicamocha canyon and is the "adventure capital" of Colombia. There was rafting, canyoning, abseiling through waterfalls and paragliding to name a few. I opted for the paragliding. After watching a short safety video on paragliding we were wizzed up to one of many peaks around the Chicamocha canyon. Within a minute of getting off the bus I was told to hurry up and get strapped up to my guide. Before I knew it I was running furiously (as instructed) off the cliff. I was anticipating some sort of wild adrenaline rush, but in reality it was very tranquil and spent the next 30 minutes hovering around with the birds and catching thermals soaring us higher and higher. The descent was a different story; after requesting "mas acrobatica por favor" (more acrobatics please) my wish was granted. With a few tugs on the strings we were looping around and my stomach was turned upside down. And that was that, parapente en la canon de Chicamocha.
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| Snacking on fried Big Ass Ants (they taste like peanuts with legs!) |
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| "Okay, so now, you run off the cliff" |
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| Safe landing |
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Cruisin' with the birds |
San Gil itself wasn't particularly alluring, but Barichara, a short bus ride away, was another example of a white washed Spanish colonial town. We did the "Camino Real", a nice 10km walk from Barichara to Guane. That night a group of us from the hostel went and played Tejo. Similar to Bocce/Lawn bowls. The aim of the game is to get closest to the "jack" which in this case is a small container of gunpowder. So if you hit the jack everybody knows about it! Naturally, I was the first in the group to hit the jack. After Tejo, we continued to a bar/club where I got the first taste of Colombia's Salsa nightlife. It appeared that all the locals were professional dancers. Our dance moves aren't going to cut it…even the shoulder roll.
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Streets of Barichara |
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| View from the Camino Real |
Cartagena
We had booked in two weeks of Spanish lessons so it was time to make our way to Cartagena. We boarded the night bus for the 17 hour bus ride from San Gil. We were dreading it, however the bus turned out to be pretty empty and we managed to get comfy and had a decent nights sleep. Not such a bad experience at all. We checked into our airbnb house in the suburb of Getsemani and got acquainted with our hosts - Alberto, his mum and a cool Rhodesian Ridgeback named Shemsa.
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| Home sweet home (for two weeks) |
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| Colourful houses on our street in Cartagena |
The first week of school was tough - early mornings (up at 7am) and trying to pay attention for 4 hours proved very difficult. We got into a bit of a routine, which was a nice change from the hostel/airbnb hopping of the last few months. School from 8-12, lunch at our favourite cafe, afternoon siesta, homework and then beers with some of the other students. There were also some activities arranged by the school including Salsa lessons, a cooking class where we made our own empanadas and a group trip to the beach. The second week I signed up for kitesurfing lessons which was awesome.
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"Marge! The rains are 'ere!" |
Cartagena was hot. Hot and humid. During the day the streets were somewhat deserted apart from the occasional merchant pushing his cart around yelling "papaya, mango, aguacarte!?" - "no thanks, yes please, yes please". No one likes papaya. Shelley was loving the juicy mangoes, and I was loving the giant avocados. As the sun began to fall the streets became more lively, especially Plaza de Trinidad, where we spent many nights with many other backpackers and locals enjoying beers, surrounding restaurants, street food and street entertainers. The shady characters also emerge and all of a sudden I'm being asked, "You Australiano, si? Do you know Ben Cousins?"
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| Aguacarte grande! $1.50 each |
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| Streets of the old city |
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| Trinidad Plaza by the night |
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Cheese and crackers on the wall of the old city |
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| Brushing up on some basics at the gold museum |
To finish off Cartagena we went out to Playa Blanca for a night, a white sandy beach 45 minute boat ride from the mainland. After lazing around on the beach for a while I was ready to take to the jet skis. It was about that time we realised we left the majority of our money back in Cartagena, and there were no ATMs. For the next 24 hours we had trouble budgeting food and water let alone jet ski rides. So shared meals were on the cards for the remainder of the time.
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| Our hostel at Playa Blanca |
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| Watch tan is coming along nicely! |
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| Caribbean sunset |
Santa Marta
Next destination was Santa Marta. The main purpose here was to complete the Ciudad Perdida (Lost City) hike. The hike was a 4 day, 45km round trip to the ruins of an ancient indigenous city. Many say its more about the journey than the destination. This is because of the intense heat and humidity, the relentless mozzies, many steep ascents and descents, river crossings and the jungle down pours. We experienced all those things but still thought the destination was equally as impressive. Shelley was selling the hike as a "detox" - sweating out all the toxins through the day, followed by refreshing afternoon jungle rains to wash away all the toxins and then fresh exotic jungle juices to re-energise, before connecting with the ancient energy of the lost city. Forget Bikram yoga - sign up for Ciudad Perdida! (There was no exotic jungle juices by the way, just a warm can of beer!)
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| Day one - feeling fresh |
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| Indian village |
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| Fresh water swims were the best |
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| We found pyrite! (does this make the trip tax deductible?) |
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| Big ol' fat jungle rain |
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| Feisty little fella |
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Shelley making the river crossing look harder than it was |
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| More river crossings |
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| Mozzie proof beds are a necessity |
All jokes aside, the hike was amazing. There were heaps of beautiful natural swimming pools, we had a good hiking group, the mozzies weren't that bad and the heavy rain was very refreshing!
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| Steps to Ciudad Perdida |
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Views of the lost city terraces |
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| Taking in the view with the locals |
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| Prune foot! The result of three days of hiking in wet boots |
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| Happy hikers in the troopy home |
We are now in Medellin and our budget, which was suffering a little after our Scandinavian adventures, will be back on track as of tomorrow (thanks to cheap beers and mojitos!)
