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The Holiday In Colombia Blog Entry That You've All Been Clammering For
Jeez! It’s been weeks since we’ve wrote anything! So much has happened. So much has been seen and done and savored without giving you the slightest idea of how amazing it has all been. I am sorry. Christie is sorry. I will work to make this the best blog entry of all time…
OK. So we spent 10 days at Christie’s parent’s house in LA. We did very little other than consume movies and food. I think I gained about 10 pounds during that time. And then day finally arrived for us to set sail to the sunny coast of Colombia.
We packed light - bring only a small backpack each - we’ve gotten quite good at knowing what we need, really need, and really really need. The flight from LA to Houston was uneventful. When we landed in Houston there was snow on the ground and sub-zero temperatures. Needless to say, we finally left the tarmack at 4am - 6 hours late, and arrived in Bogota around 10am. After some driving, walking, and finding and getting into Platypus hostel, we joined forces with my very good friend, Senor Fred Bertsch - http://blogs.bootsnall.com/dirtcricket/
After much chatting, catching up, and eating some new foods, we all decided to head out to the Police Museum in Bogota, where they keep a detailed and reportedly gruesome collection of artifacts from the Pablo Escobar-controlled, ultra-violent, ultra-profitable 70’s and 80’s in Colombia. What does no sleep, little food, 1600m of altitude, getting soaked by a torrential downpour in an otherwise cool climate, and a collection of grafic images of dead druglords do to a 28 year old Chinese American female? Faint, that’s what. Twice. With a police man (much to my chagrin) having to pick her up and set her on a bench. Mortified, we left. She slept for, like, 18 hours. And Fred and I stayed up drinking beers, playing cards, drinking rum from a box, and eating weird street foods with other travellers. Not a good first day.
We left the next day and took our first, longest, and most uncomfortable night bus ride North to the Caribbean coastal city of Santa Marta. 21 hours. Seriously. It went from close-to-zero while the aircon was on to the inside of a tumble dryer when the aircon went off in the middle of the night. I had (and have been) experiencing from “stomach problems” here (nothing major). And I stepped into the bathroom at the rear of the bus at the exact moment we entered 4km of road construction for a bumpy toilet ride…
We went straight to a small town outside Santa Marta called Taganga. Smart move. Santa Marta was later determined to be a total armpit. Taganga was OK, but not great. Set in a small bay amongst arid rocky peaks, this little fishing village is dusty, with a beach that’s more like a gravel driveway next to the ocean. But Tagagnga was the jumping off point for Tayrona National Park, where we headed 2 days later.
Tayrona is spectacular! It’s sandy beachs with tall palm trees bowing out over the water are worth the 2 hour hike to the only area of accomodation, Cabo San Juan. We spent 3 days sleeping in hammocks (never done that before - awesome, but a little cold), lying on the beach, eating and drinking, and trekking up into the surrounding mountains to see a tribal settlement of the Arhuaco Indians, who were very nice and wear cool outfits - http://www.chekov.org/anarcho/attachments/oct2006/arhuaco.jpg We saw resus-like monkeys in the trees twice on the trek out - a huge bonus for me.
We spent another night in Taganga and then headed out early on a 5 hour bus ride to Cartagena, a perfectly preserved Spanish Colonial fort city on the Caribbean from which all the gold plundered from Peru was shipped back to Spain. The old (and expensive and very high-end-touristy) old part of the city is walled and has cobble-stone streets and beautiful and vibrantly colored buildings. We spent 3 nights there, enjoying the museums during the day and drinking with other travellers at the salsa bars at night. We visited the Inquisition Musem and saw all the creative and insanely cruel torture methods that the catholic church used to extract confessions from witches and heretics - not disturbing at all. We also finally got see a little of the famed Afro-Colombian influence - the decendents of African slaves that had escaped their masters and started a settlement in the jungles near Cartagena have a very distinct way of dressing and dancing. Think Chiquito banana lady with the basket on her head and the brightly colored frock - so cool. The weather while we were up there was always hot in the afternoon, but not very humid due to a sea breeze.
And then we came to Medellin. Oh, Medellin. How we love you. We know you were almost entirely made what you are today through the world’s insatiable appetite for cocaine (this was Pablo Escobar’s home town), but you are awesome. It’ always spring weather here. The Zona Rosa neighborhood, with it’s up-scale bars and restaurants, is like a little slice of South Beach, Miami. The middle-class is exploding - and buying expensive retail goods at brand-new shopping malls. And the crime rates are comparable to American cities. And above all, one of Chrsitie’s old workmates from Wells Fargo has a college buddy - Paul Thoreson - who stopped through here 5 years ago on a motorcycle tour from Alaska down to Agentina, fell in love with the place, and started the coolest hostel in town, Casa Kiwi, and has been kind enough to not only welcome us into his super fun social life, but has given us an apartment of our own near the hostel for a ridiculously low rate! We planned on being here for Xmas, and then going on to Cali. But I am sitting here in Casa Kiwi writing this on New Year’s Day. We couldn’t resist. This place is amazing. 90% of electricty used in Medellin is hydro-electric, 40% of the tax base goes to education, and they have a spotless and efficient metro system in the city including 2 gondolas that fly you 50 feet over the rooftops of the gritty neighborhoods that have grown up the mountainsides.
While we’ve been here, we’ve taken 2 day trips. One to a small town lower in elevation than here, Santa Fe de Antioquia, where we saw locals taunt a bull in a non-gory bullfight. And one to a 600ft boulder that you can climb to the top off and survey a system of man-mad lakes - pretty cool.
The food here is so-so. That’s been largely the case everywhere here. Vegetables are almost non-existent. And if it’s cheap, it’s usually fried. But the people are not just friendly, but curteous.
We leave here tomorrow and head to the Zona Cafeteria - the cofee-growing region. The expect to be surveying a plantation on horseback, seeing bullfights, and enjoying our last few days with Fred before heading back to Bogota…
