Colombia- March 2010

I slacked again, never getting around telling you about Colombia, while I was fresh out of there. Now, it will have to be Colombia from the perspective of 3 weeks in Ecuador, which has been quite awesome, too. It might sound a bit different.

We arrived on the Caribbean coast of Colombia at the end of Feb 2010 and we spent 5 days in Cartagena waiting for our car to arrive; there was an earthquake in Chile, tsunami warnings everywhere, maybe that was why our boat was running late. Or maybe not, who knows, the fact was we were stuck in town and we were in a bit of a hurry…

It sure was an intro to Colombia, arriving to Getsemani suburb of Cartagena at 10pm with its drunks, pimps, whores, potheads and bums all out on the streets, local nite life at its best. We didn’t have a room to stay at this stage. I had to laugh when we were hurrying from one hostel to the other, me limping on my freshly bruised foot (souvenir from loading our car into a container in Panama), not being able to catch up with Mick racing ahead, just to get us out of the street asap. Eventually, we got ourselves a room with a clinic-like look but it had a fan which I made the most of during our time in town ‘cause it was fucking hot. There are attractions around Cartagena- mud volcano, pretty beaches- but we didn’t do much other than checking out the old town and hanging out in cooled interiors, reading books and sampling new cuisine; and waiting for the car... when it finally arrived, we did the paper work and immediately took off towards Bogota where my mate Santiago was to be found for just one more week before returning to Oz. It took us 2 days to get there- the country is huge. It’s huge and amazingly beautiful… the landscapes, the people, the food… Unfortunately, it was also expensive. Sometimes we would spend US$30 a day in tolls just for the roads, a gallon of petrol cost more than US$4 (we got a big motor, full tank cost us more than US$100). Food and booze were pricey as for regional standards and so was entry to attractions which we were interested in. This made our stay in Colombia very modest, so to say. Nevertheless it was very cool.

Bogota was good. Old town looked really pretty and I loved the hills around the city. There, we hang out with Santiago, in the evenings drank rum and gin with his mum, whose 70 birthday we celebrated that week; we sampled food, learnt about Colombia, met new people; we even climbed in a local gym...

After Santiago left, we were back on the road again. Went to Suesca for climbing which didn’t happen, from there thru some amazing mountain roads we drove to the coast to Medellin. I have fond memories from Borbur in the mountains, where we spent the nite hanging out with the local kids. Then was the coffee region- Manizales and Sierra de Ruiz with some groovy hot springs. In Santa Rosa, again, we had a fantastic welcome from a local family, and visited beautiful hot springs. Salento was a relaxed, backpacker’s town serving trout on every corner and nearby Valle de Corcora was this pretty valley with its waxing palms and rigid hills. Cali was very busy so we stayed there short, but Popayan was kind of nice with its nearby hot springs and the cool colonial one-way streets. We had our thrill when we had to skip a visit to Tierradentro archaeological site due to security situation with guerrillas. And so our last attraction in Colombia was the Sanctuary Las Lejas (groovy church on a cliff) and a guinea pig for lunch (looks intimidating but tastes OK; mind you, I also like liver, tripe and gizzard).

Crossing over to Ecuador went smooth as. We stayed in Colombia just over a month. The highlights for me was catching up with my friend, the rigid mountains and hot springs. I would love to come back to see and do more ‘cause it is an amazingly beautiful country… maybe one day I will; when I am reach and famous… or bumming around the world again…