Firstly, I believe a beard is too long when:
a) Amazonian bugs mistake it for habitat and take residence.
b) It is horizontally visible when walking behind the person with beard.
c) You find a chip inside it and wonder when you last had chips.
d) When crossing boarders the customs personal triple check that the foreign passport photo matches the native looking hobo in front of them.
All actual scenarios, saying that, we did make it into Colombia with Ged's beard. And I have agreed to let him keep the 'once in a lifetime beard' until London. Ruggedly good-looking, right?
So, our first stop was Popanyan. We stayed there a night to break up the journey. Got in at 3am and left at 2pm the next day so not much to say except it is a nice colonial town where every single building was painted white and there was a friendly resident llama in the main square.
Next stop Cali. Salsa capital of the world. Took a free lesson at the hostel and had fun busting out some moves. Also went to the zoo which was advertised as 'the best zoo in South America!' Was a actually a really nice zoo and we got to see a lot of the amazon animals we didn't get to see in the wild- pirañas, puma, condors and a capybara!
We then read that Lake Calima was a couple of hours out of Cali and it's claim to fame is the world's 3rd best wind! (South American's do not shy away from their superlatives!) And we decided to go there to give windsurfing a shot! Harder than it looks. A lot of laughs and bruises. Got to say lake probably did deserve its title, the surrounding mountains make a wind tunnel that gives the lake white horses 365 days a year! Was a cool place to hang out for a day.
A few more busses and we found ourselves in Salento, the coffee region. We arrived with high expectations as everyone on the backpacker trail had said it was their favourite place in Colombia. And it didn't let us down. It's a cute little town with colourful houses and billiard halls where men actually wear cowboy hats and boots, spend hours drinking beer and playing cards. Legit. Unfortunately Ged was sick the first few days, vomiting and what-not so we took it pretty easy. I did go for a horse ride one morning while Ged rested which was pretty sweet. When Ged was better we moved to La Serrana a hostel both Jamie and Kieran had recommended which was just out of town.
La Serrana is a pretty sweet place on a dairy farm with super views of mountains, yoga in the mornings and campfires at night. Our first night we made some fun friends; Anu, Sam, Alesandro, Dasha and Cat and beside the campfire we decided to do a trek to Cocorra Vally the following day.
We walked into town and we were one person shy of a full jeep when Marcel from the Netherlands rocked up! Marcel had perfect timing and the 8 of us packed into a Willy Jeep that played sweet tunes like Funky Town and Greece Lightning and had us all singing along to the start of our walk.
It was a great trek, really pretty scenery, rickety wooden suspension bridges that crossed rivers and a humming bird sanctuary but the real highlight was this crazy place where giant wax palm trees grow randomly in a valley. As some of you know I'm not big on palm trees being 'out of place' and nowhere near the sea, but I made an exception for these ones as they are Columbia's national emblem and I could admit they were pretty cool.
Anyway the day was filled with so many laughs, we took a picnic and at the end of the trek our new friend Marcel with beers in hand announced that it was his birthday, so naturally we decided to continue into the night and take him out!
Another trip in the party jeep and we found ourselves at a game hall playing the Colombian national sport Tejo. Tejo involves throwing a small heavy discuss 10m into a clay target with four gun powder bulls eyes. If you hit one, there is is an explosion! It is as hilarious as it sounds and got me thinking that most games or sports could be spiced up with a little gun powder! From what I could gather there were very few rules to this game but the most important that the Columbian cowboy in charge enforced was that you must be drinking beer whilst playing. After a few rounds we headed off for some tucker and wine and concluded the night at the hostel campfire.
After Salento we took a bus to Medellin with Dasha and Cat. Medellin is a cool city, it's gone through some intense urban renewal in the last 10 years and replaced 'the most dangerous city in the world' title for 'the most innovative city in the world'. It has cool bars, boutique little shops and international restaurants and the people are incredibly friendly and stoked that you are visiting their beloved city! Cat loved the place so much that she is planning on spending 3months here learning Spanish! We ended up staying about a week in Medellin and surrounding areas. Here were some of the things we saw and didn't see (we had some tourist fails):
- We didn't see the interactive museum, after asking directions from three people (this is the standard rule: ask three people directions and take the average) we discovered that it had shut down and been replaced by Musea de Agua which was closed because they had no water that day. This had us in stitches, what a fail!!
- We did get to see a football game between Medellin and Patriotos Boyaca- was really epic the crowd was nuts constantly jumping, singing and cheering and we were lucky enough to score free tickets from some friendly Colombian mates we made outside the stadium! They had season passes they weren't using so I became Maria Jose and Ged became Juan and we cheered our new team to a 3-1 victory! There is no alcohol allowed in the stadium and only home team fans are allowed in the stadium because of how wild it gets. It was so weird when the opposition scored and there was no cheering, only silence. Anyway after the game we took our new friends for some beers to say thanks for the tickets! Was a really great night.
- We stayed in an awesome hostel 'Galleria' that had been open less than 2 weeks. Everything was new and clean and it had a great kitchen. We made lots of friends with Ged's amazing cooking (after the Lebanese cuisine night someone suggested he write a cooking blog instead of a travel blog). The hostel also had kittens and a balcony with gin and tonics, so it was an all round win.
- One sunny morning we decided to go to the park for a picnic and have a relaxing day reading our books. We didn't make it to Avri park as planned however because when we arrived at the second cable car it was closed for matinence. A friendly local suggested Parque de Norte however when we made it there we found it was closed every Monday (and it was Monday). So we went to the Botanical Gardens however just as we walked in the heavens opened- there was thunder, lightning and the down-pour started! Ged and I were determined though and we ate our sandwiches and read our books in the rain and laughed at our situation till we were quite drenched and headed home!
- We did make it to Guatape to climb a big rock and get some sweet views of an artificial lake! Also spent some time exploring the cute colourful streets and eating some yummy trout!
- We went to Jardin a town 3hrs out of Medellin and stayed a night. Jardin is beautiful, it's a quiet colonial town, off the tourist track and it's nestled in a valley of green hills. I had heard about a nice day hike there that took you to Cuave del Esplendour (cave of splendours) and my curiosity with the name drew me in! Loved the hike and the cave did not disappoint! It has a waterfall that crashes through a hole in the top of the cave! It looks very mystical and we had it all to ourselves!
- After 3 attempts we finally made it onto a walking tour which was really interesting and I'll let Ged give you the history low-down...
So currently I'm writing this post on an overnight bus trip from Medellin to Bogota. Roads are windy and slow and the 9hr trip has already taken close to 11hrs. We are hoping to make a cycling tour of the city but we'll have to see how we go*. We only have one night in Bogota before we fly to Costa Rica to meet Bec! So excited!!
*we didn't make tour
It is really hard to talk about the history of Coloumbia for two reasons, firstly it is ridiculously complicated and because there are so many involved parties with different vested interests it is hard to simplify and secondly Columbians do not like to talk about the darker parts of their history and when they do they will almost invariably put a positive spin on things. So in COlumbian style, rather than focusing on the internal wars that were a reality in Columbian for several decades, I will instead talk about the changes that were made throughout Columbia to make it the welcoming place it is today.
One of the first successful steps towards making Columbia a safer safe is the developement of a security platform that involved the improvement of the police force through training, better conditions for officers and education of how police forces accross globe operate. While they continue to have some corruption and human rights abuse claims that have become significantly more professional and successful. While the drug cartels and other players still exist, successive govvernments have succssfully managed to remove much of the fighting off the streets of the cities and away from populated areas. This means that over the last two decades, Columbians (and tourists) have been able to travel in relative safety accross the country, something that was difficult or impossible in the 80s.
Having made Columbia safer the next step was to try to heal the country of its fear. Two major and succesful strategies were education and urban renewal. The first was simply injecting significant amounts of cash into the education system to improve it drastically. The second though was interesting because the local governments started intentional taking spaces that were violent and dangerous areas and building safe attractive locations for public use. These places are cause of significant pride amoung the Colombians as they are physical evidence of the change that they have wanted for so long. This pride is perhaps most obvious on the Metro of Medillin where there is no evidence of any grafiti, scratches, rubbish or bad behaviour of any kind, certainly a far cry from the condition of Sydney trains!!!
In short, while the country still has its political and major crime issues, it has felt to be one of the safer countries that we have travelled in and we are certainly looking forward to exploring it more with Bec!!
