Cartagena, Santa Marta, Ciudad Perdida

Hello all,

We flew up to Cartagena and we ended up spending much more time there than we intended. It was a lovely city and the real narrow streets and the generally laid back atmosphere reminded me of Cuba an awful lot. The first 2 days we didn't get up to a whole lot bar just strolling around the streets otherwise known as bumming around. I think we might have been a small bit shattered from all the bus trips before this. After 2 days of this we reckoned we should get our act together and the following day we headed for Isla de Rosario and Playa Blanca. I didn´t think much of the tour and we probably would have been as well just heading straight for Playa Blanca. The nhext day we headed for Volcan de Tolcan which is a volcano that is filled with mud from it bubbling. It was really good surprisingly. We met a crowd on this trip from Brasil, Germany, America and Switzerland and ended up going on a Chiva bus around the town that night with them to be dropped at a nightclub later. It was a ripoff though if any other travellers are reading this. It was 25 mil for just over an hour whereas it's advertised as being 4 hours and most of this time wasn't spent on the bus. Very good sport and got a fair bit of free rum into us.

The following day post champions league final we headed for Santa Marta via Taxi to bus station via Bucaramanga (Shakiras birthplace by the way but sadly didn't get the photo of her statue) via station in Santa Marta to Taganga. Taganga is a great little coastal town just outside Santa Marta but sadly infiltrated with scores of Israelis and every restaurant seems to cater for that. I wouldn't be surprised if half the town is Israeli owned but that's pure hearsay. We only nbummed around here for 2 nights and then we did penance on the Ciudad Perdida trek.

I´d recommend the trek but you would definitely want to be in some sort of condition. I´m in the prime of my life at 29. If there´s anyone reading this blog and you´re touch and go whether you´ll actually do the trek you can post comments here and I´ll get my girfriend Caroline to get back to you on how hard the trek was as her and my opinions would differ a good bit and she read alot of blogs before she did it as she was unsure of the difficulty. The first day had a hard first hour but the other 2 hours were ok. Day 2 I think was 5 hours walking but it was easyish. We got there when we thought we had at least 1 more hour of walking left. Day 3 I think was the hardest with 8 river crossings which I did in my bare feet but you´d probably be better off if you had flip flops or sandals. After this there were 1350 steps to the top to Ciudad Perdida. We only spent 1 day in Ciudad Perdida and to be honest this is enough. Day 4 was long enough but from here on in each day was a repeat of what we´d done before. 5 was fine but 6 was tough as there was heavy rain with about an hour to go. Was very testing but I thought the hike was very good. Our guides Gabrielle and Alberto were excellent. I think magitours in Taganga was the name of the tour company we did it with.

After tonight we´ll have spent 3 nights in Taganga post tour. Just relaxed for most of it as well as catching the Ireland V Colombia match here, Ireland jersey and all. Today we went to Parque Tayrona. This was well worth a visit. It´s about an hour from Santa Marta so if you´re going you should go early as there´s a bit of walking to get to the beaches even when you get the jeep from the front gate.

Early start in the morning to head into Venezuela. The only thing we´ll see will be Angel Falls here and after that we´ll be heading for Sao Paulo followed by Iguazu falls. Hope the sunshine is lasting at home. 16 days to go.

Here are the latest photos:

Cartagena, Taganga, Ciudad Perdida

More photos to follow as they´re not loading very fast for me tonight.

Medellin, Bogota

Medellin wasn´t great at all. The city has very little to offer but I´ve heard that maybe the highlights are to be seen in the countryside outside it. Zona Rosa is the main area with nightlife but it´s like going for a drink in Cafe en Seine or Ron Blacks with a similar pricing structure. It was 5000 for a beer here compared to 1800 everywhere else and the accommodation in Casa Kiwi was 60,000 compared to 40,000 here in Bogota which is the highest we have paid. The exchange rate here is 1800 Pesos to the dollar so we generally just half and take away the 000 to convert to dollar. The dollar is generally our benchmark here to decide whether we´re paying alot. Colombia has been the dearest country we´ve encountered so far. The lonely planet doesn´t give an honest reflection at all on prices and we´ve heard rumours that the lonely planet writers weren´t even in Colombia and judging by prices and the errors I wouldn´t find that hard to believe.

Anyway we headed for Bogota after here and naturally the 9 hour trip took 12 hours but that´s to be expected. We were very pleasantly surprised by Bogota. It´s the nicest capital city we´ve encountered so far. We arrived in late the first night so didn´t see much. we stayed in Hostel Sue which was really lovely near Platypus hostel. The first day was filled with museum visiting with us seeing the Museo del Oro (or Gold museum), Museo Nacional and also Cerro de Montserrate which gave a great view of the city. Plaza Bolivar was also very nice to see. Today we headed to Cathedral Sal in the morning which is a church-cathedral built into a hollowed out salt mountain and this afternoon we headed for the Museo de Policia which was very good. The sound guides here as much as the material made it. It was really interesting talking to the guides covering a broad range of topics such as FARC and cocaine production.

Tomorrow we´re headed for Cartagena on a flight. Santa Marta is our only other planned destination in Colombia but I´m sure we might stop in between somewhere. After that we´ll head for Venezuela where Maracaiba, Caracas and Angel falls are our planned destinations. If time allows we might also head for the Orinoco delta. We´re planning on being down to Manaus in Brasil to catch a flight to Sao Paulo on the 5th of June from where we´ll head towards Iguazu falls. That´s the plan but it´s open to change.

The latest photos are here:

Salento, Medellin, Bogota

Buenas Noches from Medellin

We headed to Armenia the following day and it was another hour from here until Salento. Salento is only a snall town but it was great here. The Salsa music and dancing was really cool not that we partook much with our limited talents. We planned on spending one night here but ended up staying 3. We trekked in the Cocora valley the first day. You can catch a jeep to here from the main plaza for 3000 pesos. We headed up to the lookout at Montana here which was amazing. I'll add photos in due course. The second day we headed for 2 coffee plantations which were really different with one being a modern mechanized one with the other being very traditional with everything manually operated. These were really good. We had planned on heading back for Armenia in the evening but the weather and the atmosphere in the town we stayed on for the third night. Was great atmosphere on the plaza with it being mothers day here. They had all tents set up on the plaza for food and drink as they do every weekend but it was probably busier again due to Mothers day.

We headed to Medellin today which took the 6 hours plus the extra 2 that always seem to be added onto any transport in Colombia. Here is the home of Pablo Escobar, the drug lord but that's a long time ago now. Looks a fairly modern city. It's meant to have one of the best metros in the world. To be honest I'm looking forward to getting back out of cities again. Probably spend 2 nights here before heading for Bogota. Piping hot here. Hope the weather has remained good at home.

Update from Cali in Colombia

Puert Lopez in Ecuador was our next port of call after Montanita. Not much to there but is nice and relaxing and the scenery around it is impressive. We spent 2 days here and the first day we got a boat over to the island of Isla de la Plata. We did a 10 k walk here which was really good. The blue footed boobys are the main attraction here and we also saw 2 Albatrosses. We also snorkelled here for half an hour and I was really impressed with what we saw. We headed to Los Frailes and Laguna Blanco the following day and as the photos will show the place was really pretty. We met a Ecuadorian lad from Quito on the boat trip the previous day and I must say Mucho Gusto to him if he´s reading this for driving us to Laguna Blanco and home again.

Our next stop was Banos which was west of us but it weas really awkward getting here as due to the state of the roads we had to head back down south to Guayaquil to get here. We left at 9 in the morning and only arrived in Ambato which is an hour from Banos at 10 at night. We hit for Banos early the next morning in the Colectivo which is really just a mini bus of sorts. Banos was beautiful. It´s built in a valley with the mountains appearing to be at all sides and there´s a volcano just outside it. We did a 12 k cycle here to Aguas Verdes which was really nice with loads of waterfalls but on the down side we were covered in muck from head to toe. Bar this we took it fairly relaxed here. It´s a spot I´d definitely recommend to ther people though.

Quito was our next stop and our final stop in Ecuador. All the rest of Ecuador was amazing but Quito was very bad. We always felt that we had to watch our back here and in the evenings we really clocked up the man hours on the telly here. We stayed here 3 nights in total. The first day we went to the old town to see all the churches. It was a really nice place to walk around in. I must say that it´s the new town that has the reputation for being dangerous but maybe the old town could have been different. The second day we headed to Mitad Del Mundo or centre of the earth aka the Equator. Inti Nan Museo Solar was recommended to us here as opposed to the Mitad Del Mundo complex as it´s at the real equator whereas the other place is 300 metres off. This was really good and I enjoyed it alot better than expected. We headed back for a salsa lesson that night which again was really good once you got into it. It was run by a Cuban lad who was really good.

The following day we arrived into Popoyan in Colombia after a 16 hour bus journey from Quito. Still living the dream as you can imagine. We arrived to Tulcan at the border after 5 hours and the formalities at both sides were handy enough. Colombia was a cake walk. I was able to check Caroline through immigration without her even coming to the window. We arrived into Ipiales on the Colombian side and we then organised our bus to Cali which was meant to get in at 10. With all the delays we decided on staying in Popoyan that night as we only arrived into here at 10 with Cali being a further 3 hours away. Popoyan was lovely with all the walls very white looking. Churches are the main attraction here and after the old town in Quito I've seen enough of these but very nice to have a stroll around and very safe.

We headed for Cali the following day. Cali was meant to have super night life but it wasn´t evident last night. Maybe it´s the weekend that things get busy. We headed to the Zoo today which was absolutely amazing. There are lots of photos from here you can check out. We headed south of the Rio Cali after this to have a look around town but bar churches there wasn´t much on offer. The scenery in Colombia has been very impressive so far. Tomorrow we´ll head for Armenia and Salento and probably only spend one night here. At the moment our plan is to head for Bogota after this followed by Medellin, Santa Marta and Cartagena.

The latest photos are here:

Montanita, Puerto Lopez, Banos, Quito, Popoyan, Cali

I believe the weather is very good at home so here´s hoping it lasts till June. Hasta Luego.