Say Hello To My Lil Friend

Hi all. Columbia was an interesting few weeks, it has some amazing scenery and some very bad roads......

We arrived in Leticia after our boat down the amazon and had a night here before a flight up to Bogota. Leticia is a bit like Iquitos, a frontier town that is always buzzing (India style moto-rickshaws instead of mototaxis) and is a bit grubby. One thing that was immediately apparent were the number of police and military on the streets - this was a feature of the entire country and not just because we were in a border town. The hotel we'd booked turned out to be good, had a great bed and a/c, which was well received after a few days of relative roughing it in the amazon. It was here that i first noticed another feature of Columbia - bad pavements - when i bust open my big toe on one.....

Leticia is in the far south east of Columbia but the flight to Bogota (which is central) only took an hour and a half. Bogota!! It's one of those places that you have to do a double take for it to sink in that you are there. Before we'd read any of the guides on Columbia we had the stereotypical picture of it as a dangerous, no-go place so it was interesting to actually get there and confirm it didn't feel like we were in the movie 'Clear and Present Danger'!! The people seemed genuinely friendly and keen to show off their country in a good way.

Bogota is a massive city, and has lots of different areas to it, we stayed in the Zona Rosa area, which was really nice and had some great restaurants and bars. The traffic there is crazy, with cars and buses everywhere, making journeys around long and drawn out. As with everywhere else in South America, Bogota has a Place De Bolivar which is the main square so after a 50 minute taxi ride, we started out here, then carried on to the Police and Gold Museum's. The Police Museum had a big gun room and a Pablo Escobar exhibition with a few dodgy dummies of him in various states which were so bad it was funny. The gold museum had some impressive stuff dating back to very early civilisations and focused on the culture that existed prior to Columbus and the Europeans arriving.

Lunch was at a little restaurant in La Candeleria which is a historic area near the main square, i had a Bandje Paisa (Beans, Chorizo, Plantain, Rice, Avocado, Pork) and Nina had the 'Ajiaco', which is a local soup dish with chicken and corn/capers.

After the museum's, another long taxi ride and some shopping we treated ourselves to a couple of beers at the 'Bogota Beer Company', then found a nice Asian fusion restaurant which served up some great sushi for dinner.

The next morning we headed off to Solenta which is in the Zona Cafateria (Coffee growing region) via a nine hour bus ride. The bus ride was almost all mountain roads so was pretty hard going, especially after lunch (Which took some concentration to keep down!). We also had a little stop for the military to get on and check every ones papers (this is apparently not uncommon in Columbia).

Solenta is a great little place in the hills where there are dudes walking around in hats and ponchos. We booked into a little B&B which took some finding and once we were settled in we popped out for some food. Nina tried the local trout, which is the speciality of the area, and said it was easily one of the nicest fish she's had, They butterflied it, filleted it and grilled it, plain but so fresh.

On our first morning we took the advice of our B&B and headed for a local organic coffee plantation, which was apparently 45 mins out of town. After walking for more than this amount of time down a track we started to wonder if we were actually going in the right direction. Then a couple of 4x4 jeeps went past and one of them stopped and said for us to 'hop on', so we sat on the grill at the back and got a ride down to the bottom of the hill!! classic. We then bumped into a local guy, and with a little bit of Spanish managed to understand that we were heading in the right direction.

So we carried on this walk and eventually found the place, more like 1 & half hours!! The coffee plantation was very small but a local lad walked us round and explained the whole process, picking beans off the bushes along the way. He then explained the process from shelling to washing to drying out to roasting and then grinding. He freshly ground some roasted beans and then made us some coffee with it .....mmmmmmmmm. After this we then had the nice walk back UP the hill!! It was also a very interesting walk as we almost stepped on a coral snake which was slithering across the track... That made Nina walk even faster to get up the hill after another encounter with a snake for her!

For our last full day we did a hike in the Valle De Cocora, which started with a jeep ride with 11 people on our jeep - apparently the record is 14! We started the walk through a valley up into the mountains, then into some deeper cloud forest to a lovely little hummingbird reserve, where we got a nice cup of coffee and watched lots of hummingbirds flitting around us. We then continued to climb to the top, which was 2500m through the cloud forest. After a short rest we had the spectacular walk down through the valley of the wax palms, which are the tallest in the world and also the national tree of Columbia! Once we reached the bottom we had another interesting jeep ride to the town for a well earned beer and bite to eat. 

After the hiddious bus journey from Bogota to Solenta, we decided to fly back on a small plane and then get a bus to our next destination, Valle De Levya. The plane journey was not too bad, but when we arrived at the bus terminal in Bogota we were told that due to a strike most of the buses were not running. After a bit of running around and some very bad Spanish we managed to find one bus leaving in an hour or so, so we booked onto it.

Valle De Leyva is a completely untouched historic town with dudes in ponchos walking about. It has the weirdest square in the middle of the town, which is massive but has nothing in the middle of it. There was some miltary action/training going on cos there were loads of armed comandoes running around everywhere. We were not that impressed with the place and it was peeing down with rain, so we had a quick whistle stop tour for one night and left the following day for San Gill.....

We thought getting to San Gil would be easy, one stop in Tunja and then a direct bus all the way to San Gil. However, we stupidly took the advice of the minibus company and went to another small village (for a more direct route!) where we were told lots of buses pass through and we just hop on any of them to San Gill. When we arrived it was tiny and we were told by many of the locals there were no buses to San Gill!! Standing in the middle of this place, we did not really know what to do, as you can imagine we were both really calm and not arguing at all!! Not, we went to have a quick juice and got chatting to the lady who kindly flagged us down a local minibus and eventually after four minibuses later and a taxi ride we got to our destination.

San Gil is supposed to be the 'adventure capital', but I guess after having been to New Zealand we were a bit spoilt and so none of the activities really grabbed us, so after a long journey to get to this place, we left the next day!! That kinda says it all for us for San Gill, and both of us were now looking forward to some much needed down time on the caribbean coast.

We knew that the bus journey to Santa Marta was going to be a long one, around 12 hours, but it left around 7pm and was supposed to arrive 7am, so after a few beers at the bus terminal and a sandwich all packed in for our dinner, we thought a sleep and we would be there. How wrong we could be!! The journey was pretty horrific, it started with the driver overtaking everything on the small mountain roads in bad weather. Then we stopped around midnight and no one really knew why, there where massive mud slides and at times the bus seemed to be slipping but it was too dark to see, then we thought it might have broken down, but afterwards someone said it was due to some of the other buses striking and blocking the roads..In the end the bus was at a standstill for around 6hrs, so eventually when we got moving again, we stopped at a local restaurant around 11am and still had another 6hrs or so to go, then we got transferred to another bus about 45 mins out of Santa Marta and then dropped at a taxi rank to finish the journey, we eventually arrived at our accommodation at around 7pm!! So all in all around 24hrs!! Columbian buses - not so great!

We booked into a cool little guest house called Casa Verde in the historic quarter of Santa Marta. It had a juice bar attached to it and this is where we learned about the number of different fruits which Columbia has that you do not come across elsewhere (at least not without looking for them specifically), like Guanabana and Lulo. Santa Marta itself isn't much to look at but the surrounding area has some stunning spots - Taganga & Tyrona National Park (AMAZING!).

The following day we went to Taganga and hopped in a little boat round to a smaller beach where we spent the day chilling and eating some of the delicious local fish with coconut rice.

After chatting with the guest house owners we decided to take a boat the following day round to Tyrona National Park, specifically the beach of Cabo San Juan and then take a walk through the national park and the bus back to Santa Marta. The boat journey was interesting to say the least, the ocean is extremely dangerous around the national park and people are advised not to swim, we even saw signs explaining how people die here each year due to the conditions. This should have sent alarm bells ringing but no we still opted for the boat, and it was a very bumpy and unpleasant journey, with the boat at times feeling like it was going to tip over. Luckily the guy driving was very good and so we did make it to the beach, only to be greeted by the park rangers (and accompianing soldier who was going through everyone's bags and confiscating any alcohol etc he found) requesting us to pay the entrance fee...Oops thats where the problem arose, we only took a bit of cash with us for the day and completely forgot about having to pay the entrance fee, so we were way short of the cash we needed!! After a bit of pleading ignorance, certainly not wanting to get back on that boat and head home, the nice ranger agreed for us to just pay one fee and let us into the park. He even left us with the exact money we needed to get the bus back to Santa Marta, although not the shuttle bus to the main road, so that did add another 4kms onto our walk, with no money for food or anything more to drink!!

After the ranger let us go, we just looked around us and realised we had landed on one of the most amazing beaches either of us had ever seen. It really was absolutely stunning and the rest of the park was amazing, and in hignsight had we known this we would have probably camped here for a couple of days rather than staying in santa marta. We had a great walk through the park and out the other end back to Santa Marta and onto our next destination - Cartegena.

We had to encounter another rather strange experience for our transport to Cartegena as there were no more direct buses, so we took a taxi to some random place on the side of the main road in order to wait for a bus to Barrenquilla. We first of all jump in this beefed up SUV thing with mega tyres and then realised very quickly it was very dodgy so got out as quick as we got in!! Then we waited for one of the other more mainstream minivans and that took us to Barrenquilla, where we then changed onto another bus direct to Cartegena and then a taxi to our hostel.

Our hostel was in the old quarter of the city, which was supposed to be a little dodgy at night, but not too bad (it is the old red light district and there are still a fair few 'workers' out at night when you walk around). It was fairly near the walled city and so on the first day we headed to there to have a look around. We passed a park on the way and noticed lots of rather large iguanas wandering around, and a couple of which were having a fight. A pretty strange sight in the middle of a city.. The walled city was nice to stroll through and take in the atmosphere, but there was not loads to see, so that afternoon we jumped in a taxi and headed to the fort where we looked around and walked through the tunnels.

Out of everywhere we'd been in Columbia this was by far the most touristy (mostly Americans) which probably explains why we were approached by Johnny 'Walker Blue' Kay when sitting outside a bar at lunch. We weren't sure what he wanted at first but it soon became clear that when he said he organised 'the best quality parties' and 'did we underdestand him?' that he was actually trying to sell us some of Columbia's finest, cocaine!! We declined but not before buying some dodgy cohiba cigars off what turned out to be his mate.

After spending a couple of nights in Cartagena we flew to a Columbian island that is actually off the coast of Nicaragua (the dispute over sovereignty still goes on apprently) for a few days of beach action. We stayed for four days and just relaxed on the beach, drove around the island in a golf buggy we hired and ate some great fresh fish. The best meal we had by far was at a restaurant called Regatta in the marina where I had three lobster tails each cooked differently and Neen had Langoustines. The only bad thing about the night, pretty much our last day in Columbia, was that i busted open the same toe as i had done on our first day when we arrived in Leticia.....fricking Columbian pavements...

Leaving San Andres we flew to Panama City and in doing so said goodbye to South America and hello to Central America. South America had been bloody excellent and we will definately be going back. Our lasting impression of Columbia was of friendly people, great scenery and dodgy bus rides!!