Last time I checked in, I was in Cartagena. While Cartagena is a vibrant, beautiful city, it is also too touristy for me. It also feels like it has a shady underside to it, which is probably true of most bigger beach cities. Spent the hot day wandering within the walled city, enjoying the brightly painted shops and looking (to no avail) for the post office to mail off these postcards. Joined a bunch of street vendors who sell their goods on a shaded block with a nice ocean breeze. Practiced my limited Spanish, as I sat on the curb with them and joined them for tinto (small coffee usually sold in a little plastic cup from a thermos). A guy that spoke English walked by after a while, and he and I started chatting. He and I ended up walking around, and eventually heading out to the beach area of Bocagrande. Turns out he had a very interesting story, as a Colombian who was adopted as a child into the States, ran into trouble with the law, and was recently deported back to Colombia (knowing no Spanish and not having lived there since he was about 7). Also met another of his friends who was a Korean War vet and ex-lawyer who was now taking money to use the restroom at a little beach stand so he could write several books on world politics. They treated me to a lovely manzana aromatica (apple tea) and then we all had a dinner of empanadas and other fried treats at their local hang out.
The next morning, I headed by bus to a smaller coastal city called Santa Marta. While there was not much to do (the beach was pretty dirty and the ocean was too rough to go out SCUBA diving), I did find plenty of decent food to eat (yummy coconut rice, fresh fruit juices, and seafood), enjoyed some much needed hammock time, and found a great bunch of people to hang out with. And I FINALLY found a place to mail the postcards! There was a memorable night spent walking the city with a guy from the Manizales area in Colombia and his friends, goofing off and trying to learn to salsa dance under the street lamps in Simon Bolivar park.
Parque Tayrona was a short bus ride from Santa Marta. And it was the perfect way to end my trip. Monkeys greeted me on my hike in to the park. I found a cheap hammock to stay in Arrecifes with what appeared to be a bunch of local guides and workers for the park. Hiking in the jungle or time on the beach during the days, total relaxation amongst the toads and bats at night, and waking to the braying mule and crowing roosters in the morning were just what I needed. Oh, and I got to see a sea turtle munching on sea grass when I was suppose to be in a swimming race with some dude from Australia (I made him give me a huge head start and use my mask and snorkel, but then he still beat me since I veered way off course to follow the turtle around). When I reluctantly had to head back to Santa Marta, I heard a noise on my hike back to the main road to catch the bus. Looking up, I saw a flash of a monkey scurry away. On closer inspection, I saw all these adorable monkey faces peeking out of the tree leaves at me. It was like they were saying goodbye! I flew from Santa Marta back to Bogota, stayed with a sweet girl from Couchsurfing and her mother for the night, and headed back to the States the next day.Now, back to the grind. My trip photos are up or you can view them as a slideshow.
Things I Learned:
- Less English is spoken in Colombia than any other place I have visited.
- When someone can't speak the native language, be patient with them. There is nothing they can do about learning the language right at that moment and it is probably ten times more frustrating for them than it is for you.
- My Spanish speaking is much like my pool playing ability. You think you are better at it when you have had more to drink, but it is most likely not true.
- While you may have your own opinions about the police in the U.S., it is nice to know that generally if you really need it, you can turn to them for help and they won't be a) drunk or b) making lewd gestures and trying to kiss you or c) asking for extra dinero. Or, all three for the hat trick!
- For some reason, no matter how many hours were spent playing in the waters of Cano Cristales, my fingertips never, ever wrinkled. I still do not know why.
- Postcards... every souvenir store will sell them to you, but no one anywhere seems to know where or how to mail them. If you gave me your address before I left, you can expect your postcard in a few months-- maybe.
- Arcteryx backpacks are amazingly comfortable and rugged.
- In a very related learning experience to the above, no matter how crowded the bus seems, on a sharp turn at 70km/hr, your backpack can somehow manage to roll off the unripened bag of plantains next to the driver's seat, roll through a crowded aisle, and out the opened bus door.
- Colombia is a very special, relatively safe place full of friendly, generous, wonderful people and beautiful scenery and sites.
- If visiting during the right time, no matter what the cost or how much of a hassle it is to get to, Cano Cristales is worth the trip.
- Hostal Solar in Villa de Leyva has the sweetest owner ever and the dorm is quite comfortable and affordable.
- Hostal El Casona in Cartagena is cute, clean, and in a convenient location to the sites (although the dorm leaves a bit to be desired, it is fairly cheap)
- Hotel Familiar in Santa Marta is also clean and cheap for a small single room. The fans are strong, the people are great, there is a lovely community deck to relax in hammocks, and there is a good value restaurant right across the street.
- Bring lots of money or your own food to Parque Tayrona. It is expensive and there is nowhere else to get cash and few places to get food (and it helps to make friends with the cook, as he will slip you extra treats)
Love,
Betsy
Hello from Cartagena. I have finished busing around in the Colonial towns of the Andes Oriental and arrived in Cartagena yesterday afternoon. It is lovely here, but very expensive. After walking around town, I settled on the Getsemani area, which is the old town. There are several hostels here and cheap hotels where they wanted too much money for a room with no windows next to the shared bathroom (which, not surprisingly, smelled like a urinal). I finally found a cheap dorm in a cute, clean, safe hotel. I made friends with the hotel pet, a toucan. Well, we were friends until he just stole my papaya breakfast and spilled my coffee. Walking around yesterday afternoon, the neighborhood was full of kids playing, barbers cutting hair in the middle of the street, and people sitting on their front steps chatting with the neighbors. While this area is the most touristy out of all the places I have visited, still very few speak English (except for the occasional guys who seem to have only learned how to say "I love you"). I met a guy from Bogota staying in the hotel for business, and he and I drank a few beers and walked the entire city. He speaks no English, but we were still kind of able to communicate, so my Spanish (or my hand gestures and goofy drawings) must be getting a little better. We walked the cathedrals and newer city areas and along the old fort wall. I wanted to walk the waterfront, and my great idea of sitting on a jetty got us soaked by a wave. So we ended up walking the entire length of the beach for three hours. Lots of fun. Later we met my dorm mates, who are from Russia. The conversations between the two Russians who spoke little English and no Spanish, the Colombian who spoke no English, and myself left us all a little confused, but laughing.
The route from Bogota to Bucaramanga was beautiful. So many small towns to play in. Went through Tunja and stopped in Villa de Leyva which was super crowded and colder and raining, but I wandered the cobblestone streets and enjoyed the sights. The town cleared out after Colombus Day, and I spent most of the time just hanging out with people who lived there. I walked the 6km to El Fosil, the world´s most complete marine prehistoric fossil. Nice walk, but the short tour was all in Spanish, so I didn´t get a whole lot out of it. On my way back, a family and some people from a little town outside Villa de Leyva waved me over to the roadside stand they were hanging out at. I hung out for an afternoon, talking and having an afternoon cerveza. Later that evening, I hung out with Marta (the woman who owned the hostel) and her friend Connie while they made a pear meringue torte. Connie surprised me the night before I left with a slice, and it was delicious! Then I hopped a bus through Chiquinquira, a strange religious town. Not much of interest there for me, so I headed to San Gil. That bus ride included a little girl who threw up the whole trip, so I was glad to exit the bus. 
Trying to find the right words to talk to people in Spanish is sometimes tiring and frustrating, so I wanted to pick a gringo hotel. Chose a real backpacker hostel, where my dorm room was full of a dozen people from Australian, New Zealand, the UK, and Brazil. The night I got there, we all went and played tejo, a Colombian game that is like a cross between horseshoes and darts that involves a clay pit, metal discs, and paper packets full of gun powder. Lots of fun was had. After one night, I had had my fill of backpacker hostel folks, and set off on my own again. Went to a park full of moss covered trees, ate a meal with hormigas culonas (deep fried "big assed ants"), and visited Barichara, another colorful Colonial town full of cobblestone streets to wander. It was pretty empty, and the towns were starting to all look alike. So I hopped a bus to Bucharamanga. The bus went through am amazing national park called Chicamocha. But it was raining again, so didn´t get out and play. The river was huge from all the rain, but there were still cactus. The adventure seekers from San Gil all come to this park to white water raft, absail or rappel down waterfalls, or paraglide.
Arriving in Bucaramanga was a welcome change-- a city, but less hectic and smaller than Bogota. Found a hotel right in the middle of the city on a street lined with people yelling about their clothes, shoes, aloe, some kind of vegetable peeler, bootleg videos and CDs, etc. for sale. It was like a real live infomercial. At night, they all pack up and go home and the street is cleaned. I was nervous about my room after seeing several cockroaches climbing walls and scurrying into sewer grates nearby (and the homeless folks sleeping across the way), but it turned out to be very clean and safe. Did some much needed "sink laundry", walked the city, chatted with a sweet police security guard (who had to be about 19 years old and fidgeted with his gun in a nervous way that made me hope he never had to use it), and met a guy from Barichara that was a musician specializing in an instrument called a tiple, which had a wonderful sound. He, his son, and another 21 year old and I chatted over aguardiente (the local drink here). He also spent some time chatting with a local street kid, and gently lectured him about drugs and not giving up. Finally had to turn in (they drink and stay up til all hours here). In the morning, a stranger treated me to a coffee and pastry for breakfast and I headed to the airport to fly to Cartagena. That is just how I have found most all Colombians... kind, respectful, hospitable, and generous. It amazes me that this place could have been so violent. On a side note, everyone keeps asking me where I am from. When I say the US, they say.. "No, where are you from? Japan, China?" When I say Vietnam, several have said..."Ah, very violent". Uh... what? Something about a pot, kettle, and the color black.
Anyhoo, off on my last attempt to mail out postcards for all that gave me their address before I left. Finding post offices has proven to be nearly impossible with no Spanish, and I am afraid if I find one, buying stamps and mailing things will be just as bad, if not worse. Then, off to wander the town finding seafood and coconut rice to munch on. This will be my last email before you see me again. Probably heading to Santa Marta or Taganga tomorrow morning for some diving and then off to Tayrona National Park for some hiking and snorkeling. Back in Bogota by next Friday for my flight home in exactly one week.
Checking in after week 1 in Colombia. Still alive and unkidnapped! Just arrived in Villa de Leyva, a small colonial town in the east Andes. I finally figured out how to get to the bus terminal in Bogota and with much hand signals and writing stuff down on pieces of paper, I got a bus. We stopped in lots of small towns to pick people up and drop people off. The town is packed today but should empty out by tomorrow. Apparently, lots of people in Bogota travel away from the city on weekends, and it is a holiday weekend since they celebrate Colombus Day. Walked all over with my backpack trying to find a place to stay. A guy that had no single rooms helped me find a cute little hostel around the corner that had one open bed in a four bed dorm for $15,000 Colombian Pesos (about $7.50 US dollars). The owner seems very sweet and she keeps calling me "my love" and kissing me on the forehead. Haven't met the guys in the room yet, but hopefully they are okay. Otherwise, I should be able to find a single tomorrow. The town supposedly has lots of day hikes and a few waterfalls to explore.
Bogota was crazy-- in an organized chaos type of way! It is a HUGE city... I think the biggest one I have ever been in. It is gritty and colorful with lots of graffiti and some brightly painted places. I stayed with Carlos and his girlfriend Paula, who I met in a bar in Seattle a few months ago. They were wonderful hosts. They made me one of the specialty soup of Colombia, arepa for breakfast, and even took me to a very nice lunch on the last day. They both work in a university (Carlos has an engineering degree and a PhD in physics and teaches and specializes in some kind of solar cells). They, much like most Colombians are very hard workers, sometimes leaving for work around 8 am and returning at 10:30 or 11 pm. Traffic is horrendous, but I have learned to use the very packed TransMilenio rapid transit. Spend the days in museums, sipping coffee, exploring the city, and eating everything new I can get my hands on. So much fresh fruits, soups, roast pork, etc. Oh, and my favorite... jackfruit ice cream popsicles! Carlos says I have lots of favorites, because all the food is delicious (except the soup with cow stomach... not a huge fan). Found a woman names Nancy who teaches English and takes her students on tours to Cano Cristales. Although not a student, she was taking an Italian guy who had been working as a lawyer with an NGO to get better child rights in Colombia. It was way more affordable than the tours I had seen, and was only about $100 US dollars more than trying to hitchhike on a cargo plane (which I decided was worth it for my safety and not having to deal with the trouble of using my very limited Spanish to try to attempt it). She also let me stay at her house the day before and the day after the trip. We were to leave early on Thursday morning.
And now for my now funny, at the time terrifying, Bogota experience. I read in my guidebook that on Wednesdays, you could watch the changing of the guard at the Presidential Palace. I heard it was really nice to watch, so after meeting Carlos and Paula for lunch, I headed to check it out. When I tried to get to the area to watch, the guard said no. We went back and forth with my translation dictionary, and I got out of him that it wasn't going to happen that day, due to some student thing. Okay, that would explain the extra military out and about, but there was always so many police and military people everywhere that it was hard to tell something was up. The guard suggested I take a longer way back to the TransMilenio station to avoid the growing number of students. I took his advice, but could tell I needed to move fast. As I rounded the corner for the station, I saw them slam the gates down, and all the shop owners around me did the same. I could hear loud bangs heading my way. Tried to ask people what was going on and what to do, but apparently, the Lonely Planet translation guide doesn't include a "riot" section. Finally, one guy just points in a direction and says "GO!" I turn around, see hundreds of students running towards me followed by tanks and police, and take off running. I try to head towards another TransMilineo station, but get caught up in the protest again. And that is when I got tear gassed. There were tanks spraying water on one side so I took off away from that, but ran into another bunch of students who were followed by tanks dropping gas bombs. Don't know which came first, tears from the tear gas or tears from the frustration of wanting to get out of the situation and not being able to, but thankfully a sweet woman grabbed me and another scared pregnant girl and whisked us around the corner, where she convinced the shop owners of a bakery to open the gates and let us in. We all hunkered down until it passed (yes, I was scared, but did consider that if I had to be stuck somewhere, a bakery was a pretty brilliant place to be). Anyway, got out okay. Took three hours to get home. And now, if ever I play the game "I Never" and someone says "Get gassed by the Colombian Police", I will have to take a drink.
I couldn't have been more glad to leave Bogota in the morning. Nancy, Mario, and I took the bus to Villavicencio and then a small 5 person Cessna to La Macarena. I was told by several people not to say too much when visiting Cano Cristales, as it was technically guerrilla area. Luckily, I can't understand anyone or communicate with them, so that was not a problem! It was was really strange to a Wanted poster in the airport with rewards for certain people. And La Macarena seems to have more military than civilians (and they pop out of nowhere). At one point while enjoying my fruit juice, I was surrounded by nine military guys with big guns. Despite this, La Macarena is beautiful. It is part of the Llanos savannah plains but also the entrance of the Amazonas. So it is full of ranchers with a few hills and lots of green. After about an hour, I wanted to live there. Stayed at a beautiful campsite under a full moon right by the river and played Tejo for the first time (a game kind of like horseshoes, involving little packets of gun powder and metal discs, and often copious amounts of cervezas). I had my butt whooped by a 5 year old (he wasn't drinking) who then talked to me in Spanish for 45 minutes, even after everyone explained that I didn't understand him. 
The next day was maybe the best day ever. Woke up early (okay, was woken up early by a pig and roosters) around 4:30am. Couldn't get back to sleep, so walked the town and watched the sun rise from the top of the military hill. The horses roam around all night, so the ranchers all come out with a rope and look for their horse, which is often down the road in a neighbor's yard. Then we met up with our guides and got in the motorized dugout canoe to head to Cano Cristales. River to a jeep and then an hour walk brought us to the military checkpoint. And then I saw the red river. Seriously, words can't describe it. I have lots of pictures, but I don't think they capture how amazing the place is. We spent all day hiking the river, swimming in pools, playing in waterfalls, and jumping off rock ledges into the water. I am sunburned, but it was incredible. I kept begging for just a few more minutes, but finally it was time to go. Went back to town, had a lovely dinner, and then the guides came back later to take me and another solo traveler to a bar for Friday night music and dancing. Days like this are the reason I travel. Oh, and I want to retire in La Macarena.