Minca, Colombia – June 27th – 29th, 2017

After several impatient hours squashed in an SUV, we made it to Santa Marta, where we grabbed some cash from an ATM before hailing several different taxis, attempting to get a decent price for the 30-minute ride to Minca. At this point, we were all exhausted and my patience with scheming scamming taxis was even lower than usual (which is seriously saying something). After several failed attempts with drivers charging over double the fair rate, we finally got a taxi and were dropped off in front of the moto-taxi station in Minca, a mountain town known for coffee and chocolate production and R&R – exactly what the Dr. ordered.

Unfortunately, the chocolate/coffee plantation B&B we had booked was several miles away leaving us the choice of hiking another hour and a half (not an option after finishing the Lost City trek that morning) or hiring exorbitantly priced moto-taxis. After failed negotiations with the drivers, we hired a motorcycle each and piled on with all of our bags. The 20-minute drive was TERRIFYING! Little did we know, that the “exorbitant” price was justified since the road (also known as a death defying trail) up to the plantation was steep, deeply rutted, and treacherous. In transit, riddled with fear and chatting with my driver, I said, “My poor mom, she’s going to kill me.” To which he replied, “I’m sorry.” The road was so steep, that at times, my motorbike was not capable of hauling the driver, me, and all of my crap up the mountain. At these moments, the only option was for me to bail from the back of the bike with my backpacks, jump over the deep rut while avoiding the cliff, and walk until the trail leveled enough to get started again. Did I mention it was terrifying?! When we finally arrived, Andy and my Mom were waiting. To my astonishment, Mom had the biggest grin on her face. She LOVED IT! Meanwhile, Andy and I were still attempting to refrain from shitting in our pants.

After regaining my composure, we hiked the last 15 minutes up to the plantation just as the sun was setting over the distant ocean. It was stunning! The plantation was also incredible! We were the only ones there, it was clean, the family was local and extremely friendly, and the outdoor toilets / showers looked out over vast green mountains to Santa Marta and the coast. The only downside was the cold showers and persistence of bugs which continued to attack our already battered bodies. Also, although wifi was available, we were not granted access to the password and instead were asked to use the owners extraordinarily slow laptop to make travel plans. This situation was easily (yet not morally) remedied by looking up the wifi password on the owners extraordinarily slow computer.   

The view from the plantation in Minca.

Over the next two days we soaked in the peaceful ambiance and recovered from the Lost City trek. We also partook in a chocolate tour, where the owner explained the process to produce chocolate. From growing the plants to picking the chocolate, extracting the nibs, roasting, and creating delectable Colombian chocolatey goodness, we learned the process and enjoyed sampling the products made by the family. At the end of the tour the owner gave each of us a chocolate facial, which was splendid until the bees discovered our tasty faces and we were forced to wash it off or risk being stung in the face.

Chilaxin' at La Candalaria B&B in Minca. The upper-right photo was taken in the shower - quite the bathroom view!

Chocolate tour. There's a bee on Andy's face in the bottom-right photo. 

We were hesitant to leave our plantation sanctuary, but nevertheless after 2-days of bliss, we forced ourselves to walk down the treacherous death defying trail (notice how we avoided the moto-taxis this time…much to Mom’s disappointment) into the town of Minca. We wandered around the cute little town for a few hours, indulged in a local bakery and tried to find a masseuse willing to rub out our sore muscles. Eventually, we gave up on the massage idea and made our way back to Santa Marta via a colectivo which dropped us off in the wrong location (which to be fair, we originally thought was the right location) to catch a bus to Riohacha.    

More from Minca including the 50+ bug bites on Mom's leg.

Ciudad Perdida Trek, Colombia – June 24th – 27th, 2017

After chowing down on some DIY breakfast at the hostel, we made our way to the Wiwa Tour office where we met our traveling companions for the Ciudad Perdida (Lost City) 4-day trek. Our group was small, consisting only of a jolly Aussie, Pete, our Wiwa guide, Luis, and a translator, Alejandro, who was added last minute and had no idea what he was getting himself into. After a long drive in the back of a Land Cruiser, we arrived in Machete Pelao, where we had a surprisingly decent lunch of lentils and rice before starting the 29-mile roundtrip trek. Between poor Alejandro huffing and puffing up the mountain trail and an incident with Pete, it took the group 4-hours to make it to the first camp. What happened with Pete you ask? Well, as you may know, chewing and brewing coca leaves is quite common throughout many countries in South America. It is used as a mild pick-me-up, to ease a headache, or in the case of the natives, chewed continually, simply because it is tradition. In the case of the Wiwa tribe, they mix the coca leaves with ground seashells to assist in activating and transporting the drug into the blood stream. While chewing the mixture, they suck on a stick and rub their saliva on the outside of the gourd they use for holding the seashell powder. They carry a gourd seashell spit vessel with them for their entire adult life and claim that every man’s gourd can be read like a book. I regress, back to the story: In steps Pete, center stage. Pete had previously been chewing coca leaves with sodium bicarbonate (aka baking soda and “bicarb” to Aussies) when Luis suggested he try some seashell powder. What nobody could have predicted was that bicarb and Wiwa seashell powder react terribly with one another. Within seconds Pete’s mouth was burning and his lips swelled, making it look like the jolly Aussie had gotten into a fight (and lost). Luckily, many many hours and a heavy dose of Benadryl later and his mouth had mostly returned to normal. First crisis averted.

Day 1 along the road to the Lost City.

More Day 1 photos. If you'll notice, Mom is typically leading the guide.

Although the mattresses were very well used (it had the permanent imprint of a shorter person) and pretty much everything smelled faintly of mildew, the first camp was not so bad. After getting settled, we made our way to a waterfall pool where we jumped off of a short cliff into crystal clear cool water. It was spectacularly beautiful and the water felt incredible! After an early dinner (prepared by our potentially 17-year-old chef), some cards, and 20 minutes attempting to get a picture of a toad eating a bug, we went to bed and were all asleep by 8pm.

Home stretch of day 1 and the first (and best) camp of the trek. 

We woke up early the next day and continued hiking another 10ish hours. Apart from birds, bugs, cows, mulas (Spanish for mules and Mom’s only solid Spanish vocabulary), and horses, the wildlife scene was pretty bleak. At least the scenery was spectacular! Just as in Salento, there were massive portions of the jungle with only grass where coca plantations used to be. Up until this point, we had believed that we were mostly isolated, enjoying the quiet nature and beautiful surroundings. Our beatific backpacking bliss came to an abrupt end when we passed the hoard of people coming the other way. By hoard, I mean literally 200 people, walking and talking on OUR trail! We were even more disappointed to find out that for the rest of the trip we would be joining the approximately 200 people making the trip with us at the future camps. If you couldn’t tell, we tend to be a bit antisocial in the outdoors. Luckily, our asocial tendencies were appeased before lunch when we stopped at another swimming hole. While all the other groups went to a big waterfall, Luis brought us to a different swimming hole that was surreal beautiful and completely abandoned. Before we made it to camp that evening, we first had to endure a 2+ hour long monsoon. By the time we arrived, even our hand-made plastic trash bag jackets had soaked through!

Day 2 and the hoard of people we endured at the break spot. 

Lunch spot on day 2 and Luis with his seashell spit gourd. The yellow portion is accumulated dried seashell spit.

The Kogi village along the way.

More pics along the trail. Notice how the tourists took the bridge while the locals and their mula forded the river.

Monsoon, our trash bag raincoats, and day 2 camp.

Not only was the day 2 camp crowded with damp talkative people (including a 20-year-old that kept hitting on my mom), but there were also mosquitoes galore! I’m talking GALORE! Even with a cancer-full dose of 100% Deet and Picaridin we were still being eaten alive. To make matters worse, we were the last ones to get dinner (I guess our child chef was low on the pecking order), the showers were crowded and freezing (cold water is typical and expected, but it doesn’t make it warmer), there were no pillows, and the beds were equally worn-in and stinky. Oh well, early to bed and excitement about visiting the Lost City the next morning cured (or at least mollified) all of our discomforts.

After a quick, very early breakfast, we hurried off to be the first group at the Lost City. After 1 hour of hiking and about 1200 pre-Incan steps, Andy, Mom, and I had arrived. Too excited to delve into the awesomeness, we ditched the rest of the group and started exploring on our own. Mom took off so fast that we didn’t see her for at least 20 minutes. When she eventually returned she was red faced and laughing. Apparently, she had been stopped by an armed soldier who had spoken in Spanish at her for 10 minutes while she stood staring at him in a dazed stupor, not understanding a single word. She eventually just walked away, assuming she was in the wrong place. When Luis finally reeled us in, he explained that we were supposed to ask the gods for permission before entering the ancient city….oops. Slightly annoyed, he led us through a tribal ceremony at the entrance to the Lost City. Unfortunately, our disgrace of the gods continued when I took the instructions “blow on the coca leaves” literally and blew all of my coca leaves (which had all of my virtual belongings transferred to them) out of my hand and onto the ground. Luis just chuckled, shaking his head. At least I didn’t do what Pete did and attempt to eat the coca leaves. Apparently, the gods forgave our blatant cultural ignorance because after teaching us a little bit about the site's history (from the tribal perspective) we were finally allowed to explore the extensive ruins on our own.

Early morning trek to the Lost City on day 3.

Early bird gets the worm! - First to arrive, we had the entire place to ourselves!

Views from the Lost City ruins. The top-left photo is the stone circle we stood around for the entrance ceremony.

 The city was founded around 800 AD by the Tairona tribal people. It was and continues to be a spiritual site for the native people, who believe that the circular pads, located on a series of 169 terraces, are for praying for specific entities (animals, harvest, hunters, etc.). Each year the Mamos (spiritual leaders) of each tribe meet at the site to pray and cleanse the ruins from all of the corruption that has tainted it over the past year. Interestingly, archaeologists and, particularly, the archaeologist that happened to be conducting a dig when we passed by and spoke with for 30 minutes, have a very different story to tell. He said that the circular pads represent a network of huts which housed 2,000-8,000 people before the Spanish conquest. Due to these contradictions, the rapport between the archaeologists and the tribal people is strained to say the least. Luis was not happy that we were speaking to the archaeologist and stormed off about 5 minutes into the conversation.

More views from the Lost City ruins.

1,000+ photos later, we made our way down the steep jungle steps to the camp where we had slept the night before. After lunch and another feeble attempt to dry our soaked shoes and clothes, we continued backtracking to our final camp spot. We rushed the return hike and made it just in time to avoid the next monsoon. Although the site and surrounding jungle was extraordinary and much larger than we expected, it was occupied by swarms of mosquitoes and sand flies. Mom and I counted 94 and 110 bites EACH and that was through our clothes and excessive amounts of bug repellent. Andy must be way less sweet because he escaped with only about 25.

Return trip along the trail to the Lost City.

Rather than stop for the day, the 3 of us decided to take Luis up on his offer to hike to the most ridiculously beautiful jungle waterfall imaginable. It was no kidding, beyond words incredible! Unfortunately, by the time we left it was raining substantially and we decided to hike the whole thing in swimsuits and sandals, leaving the camera behind (hence the lack of photographs - use your imagination, it was implausibly stunning). Right when we arrived and were busy gawking at the waterfall, Luis abruptly stopped and put his hand up, signaling me to stop dead in my tracks. He pointed at the ground, at which point all 3 of us started gawking at the ground instead, oblivious to the fact that there was a deadly camouflaged snake one step in front of us. Luis, like a superhero, bent down, grabbed a stick, and thwacked the snake dead in one strike. Later, he told us that if you get bit by that snake you have about 2 hours to live. Um… terrifying! Another crisis averted (not sure death is a crisis, but the 2 hours before imminent demise would be full of crisis for sure). After taking a very quick dip in the cold pool below the falls, we made our way back to camp, and settled into the most disgusting sleeping arrangements yet. Mom’s bed was actually crusty with mold and the pillows were visibly covered with mildew.

With all of the excitement over and thoroughly disgusted by the living conditions (not to mention being dirty and itchy), we were more than ready to get out of the jungle on day 4. We essentially raced back to the starting point where we ended up waiting over an hour for the rest of our group to arrive. Impatient to be on our way, we scarfed down some grub, licked our wounds, and tried to relax when we were forced to wait for another ride because our Land Cruiser broke down. It was an incredible trip, but we were more than ready for a shower and some bite relief ointment.

Blisters, bug bits, exhaustion, jungle flowers, and views!

Santa Marta, Colombia – June 22nd – 24th, 2017

Leave it to Mom to make friends with some locals on the bus to Santa Marta. With the extent of her Spanish being, “Vaamooos” (meant to mean “we go,” but said with a Texas drawl... why, with a Texas drawl? No idea.) the conversation was hilarious for both us and the local kids. Unfortunately, our new friends got off the bus at the mid-way town and our free entertainment was over, leaving us to listen to the same Colombian dance music CD on repeat for the next 3 hours. For the record (pun intended), the Colombian music is actually quite good in comparison to the music in Asia, but anything on repeat will get old after a while and it’s not difficult to compete with screeching ear bleeding horribleness.

Once in Santa Marta, we settled in, got some grub (with delicious smoothies), and spent the rest of the afternoon walking around the vibrant city. We visited the ATM, Museo del Oro, a handicraft market, and the local beach. At the Museo del Oro (gold museum), we saw gold (obviously) and learned about indigenous history, the suffering of the indigenous people thanks to the Spanish, and Simon Bolivar – the guy that has a park and statue in essentially every city in South America. Back at the hotel, we cooled off in the pool, relaxed in the hammocks, and eventually dragged ourselves next door for some delicious Arabian food. While Indian food is readily available in Asia, Arabian food can be found most everywhere throughout Colombia. YAY falafel!

Santa Marta! We wore Mom out! 

The coast at Santa Marta where a friendly local helped Mom out of the ocean.

The next day, we woke up early and arranged a boat tour to Playa Cristal in Tayrona National Park (to be fair, I should say Mom arranged our tour with Anna, her new receptionist friend, to whom she asked every question imaginable – I’m surprised she didn’t come back to the room knowing the meaning of life). With a few hours to spare before the tour, we attempted to find a place to drop off laundry. What we found instead was some random person’s living room on the 4^th floor of a residential building with a woman who’s Spanish we did not understand. Needless to say, we did not feel comfortable leaving over half of our worldly possessions with this random person who muddled all of her words together, so after grabbing some groceries, we returned to the hotel and grudgingly paid the premium for laundry service.

Our tour to Playa Cristal started with a taxi ride and then an amusement park-esque boat ride! There were so many waves, that the fiberglass boat full of tourists performed a series of jumps and belly flops over the rough seas. It was exhilarating! Unlike some of our other theme park-esque public transportation experiences (see Nepal bus ride from hell), this one actually ended in a timely manner, and after about 45 minutes we were chilaxin’ in paradise… well paradise crawling with tourists (but at least most of the tourists were Colombian). We spent the next few hours eating our packed lunch full of exotic Colombian fruits, swimming, and snorkeling. The fish and coral life was surprisingly decent (minus the crappy snorkel masks) and we were able to put our inadequate fish ID skills to good use to recognize trumpet fish, parrot fish, angel fish, and damsel fish. Back at the port in the afternoon, we spent 15 minutes attempting to convince the tour company that our return taxi transportation was included (go figure… taxis are my arch nemesis). After adequately pestering the tour company, they agreed to pay the return taxi fare and we arrived in Santa Marta just in time to find every restaurant closed at 5pm. After being in Colombia for over 3-weeks, we are still completely oblivious to typical opening hours, all we know is they are very limited! Now famished at 6pm, we settled on an ex-pat owned restaurant where we chatted with the young Canadian owner while waiting for our delicious tacos!     

Playa Cristal at Tayrona National Park. The avocado was the size of Andy's head... meaning the pit was the size of his brain???

Cartagena, Colombia – June 18th – 22nd, 2017

Well, what do you know, we took another crooked taxi to our hotel in Cartagena. He was a pleasant enough driver until we asked for change when paying and he became quite angry – he said he didn’t have any change, but, miraculously, once Dani went inside the hotel to get exact change from the receptionist, he conjured the money from thin air! Not only a taxi driver, but a magician with an attitude! How fantastic!

Some of our first sights in Cartagena including our group of soccer friends.

Since our hotel room seemed to take inspiration from a prison cell, we spent most of our time out and about the beautiful old city of Cartagena. Surprisingly, the architecture reminded us of elements we saw in some old Asian port towns. We made sure we spent plenty of time walking along the old city’s walls, through the very photogenic streets, and through the plentiful plazas. Most buildings seemed to be well taken care of and had very colorful paint schemes with elaborate old doors to. We also found an AMAZING gelato shop in town that we continued to visit each day we were in the city – it was really hot out!

Walking around the old city of Cartagena. 

One night happened to be the Colombian league’s soccer final so we wandered around and found a local bar where we enjoyed the game with some locals. With a beer in one hand, a pretty decent slice of pizza in the other, and surrounded by exuberant and enthusiastic locals (and travelers), we thoroughly enjoyed the game. The resulting 5-2 score in favor of Atletico Nacional made quite an impact on the group, especially since their previous game a few days prior was absolutely dismal. It really was like watching two different teams play.

Some more beautiful sights around Cartagena. There's so much incredible street art!

While in Cartagena, we also learned that all of our past two weeks of Spanish-speaking experience was for naught. The coastal language was technically Spanish, but it was spoken extremely fast, with other indigenous words thrown in, and without any gaps whatsoever between words. It honestly sounded like gibberish. The locals were also very different from the locals in Medellin and Salento in that they didn’t seem to care that we were trying to speak their language, and when asked to speak more slowly, they simply wouldn’t. Over time, it did get a little easier to understand them, but we never felt as confident as we did in the other regions of Colombia.

Some more sights around Cartagena including the Castillo San Felipe de Barajas, some garbage, and impressive wildlife.

A couple of days into our stay in Cartagena, Dani’s mom joined us for a two-week trip on the Caribbean coast of Colombia. For her stay in Cartagena, we decided to move to the beach area of town for a bit of relaxation to start off her vacation. Our hostel was nice enough (though more homestay than hostel since there was someone’s clothes in the closet and it looked like a very lived in room) and the beach was a two-minute walk away which we enjoyed for a few swims and beach walks. However, it turned out that we were not in a very good part of town. It began with the receptionist asking if we were going to go out for dinner or not so he could plan his evening around locking up the big gate to the hostel. It continued with us walking around the area looking for dinner restaurants and finding absolutely nothing except weird and intimidating looks from the locals. It ended with a kite school staff member seeing us, running over and telling us we shouldn’t be walking around the neighborhood at night as it is extremely dangerous. So, our dinners were simply homemade sandwiches and fruit in our safely locked-up hostel. We spent one day back in the old city in order to show Momacita around the beautiful area and to get some decent grub – we also felt a bit safer and more comfortable there, especially with that gelato in our bellies!

Turns out we didn't take many pictures of the beach, but here's some pictures of our beach hostel along with one of the beach!

Though it turned out that the coastal locals were not as friendly as their mountainous compatriots, the city’s beauty helped make our time in Cartagena special nonetheless.

Medellin, Colombia – June 11th – 18th, 2017

Though uneventful, the 8-hours bus-ride on a windy mountain road was, as usual, not our favorite. Fair to say, our tolerance for buses, even quality buses, has dwindled over the past year. In good news, our homestay turned out to be walking distance from the bus station (BONUS – taxi evaded!) and the airport! How lucky for us, that’ll be an easy commute for our flight next week… WRONG! SO WRONG! As it turned out, the airport was only for regional prop planes, the real airport was an hour and a half away by bus (great… just great), and said prop planes woke up and ran up their engines right outside our bedroom window at 6 am every morning. Even better, was that once all the planes took off we were serenaded by the music of a jackhammer hard at work destroying the sidewalk outside the homestay to replace it with slippery tile (which, for the record, looks better, but is a serious slip hazard!).

Once settled in, our host walked us to a nearby restaurant for some long overdue grub. We avoided the food at the quality road-side bus-stop establishment, thinking we’d have a better chance of quality food and avoiding chorro (the Spanish word for the Hershey squirts) in Medellin. Unfortunately, the only “vegetarian” option that the local restaurant could accommodate was beans (made with animal lard), rice (my favorite), and a salad (the most dangerous food available). I hope you’re picking up on the sarcasm here. Also as an added source of protein, they threw in a live earthworm free of charge! No shit, there was a worm in my salad! - which, by the way, I only discovered after eating half of the salad. Knowing complaining would get me nowhere, I chose to be done eating and surrendered to praying that it was indeed an earthworm and not a parasite on steroids - especially since only half of the worm remained… you do the math.

So, although I’ve started out by outlining all of the terrible things about our homestay, it was actually really great. The family was incredibly warm, helpful, and patient with our limited Spanish. We also had free reign of the washing machine and kitchen, allowing us to do our own laundry and cook for ourselves – what a luxury!!! Granted, the homestay was about a 30-minute walk from the main tourist area, but with readily available Ubers for about $1, the location turned out to be no big deal (minus the relentless airport and jackhammer noise).

Our homestay family, the live worm in my salad, and a local bakery selling balls of fried bready cheesy goodness.

We spent our week in Medellin exploring the city in the morning and taking Spanish lessons in the afternoon. Unlike our teacher in Salento, Carlos, our Medellin teacher, was awesome! Not only did we progress a lot in one week, but we had a good time doing it! Like us, Carlos is a soccer fan, and since the Medellin team, Atletico Nacional, had just earned themselves a spot in the Colombian finals, we had plenty to talk about. With our conversations being only in Spanish though, the content was quite basic. “They play not good,” was about all I could muster to describe the result of the first game.   

For one of our morning city excursions, we did a Pablo Escobar tour. Although it quickly became obvious that the locals wanted no part in remembering Pablo and the pain inflicted by the drug war, the tour was phenomenal! The tour was run by a new hostel which is owned and operated by a few local young people who went to school with Escobar’s son. Their mission is to share not only the truth about the decades of drug warfare, but also the revival of Medellin in the recent years of peace, with the hope of changing the Hollywood stereotype that many foreigners have about Colombia and the drug trade (they all hate the Netflix series Narcos by the way). Although the girls running the tour had a healthy appreciation for remembering and learning from the past, the majority of Colombians do not take the same stance (at least not yet… the wounds are still very fresh). In fact, all of the Escobar related buildings that we visited, have either been abandoned or turned into something else. For example, the prison that Escobar built for himself is now an old folks home (which, side note, is a free service to all elderly Colombian citizens), while his mansion in the city is abandoned with policeman stationed to shoo people away. Even the house where he was eventually killed has been turned into a language school. If not for the tour, a lay person would walk right past any of these buildings thinking nothing of them. After learning about the brutal history, the tour took us to Comuna 13, a portion of the city that was notorious for drug violence. In 2010, Comuna 13 was still the most violent neighborhood in Medellin, with a staggering 243 of the city’s 2,019 murders (although this number went down significantly from the 6,349 homicides that occurred in Medellin in 1991). The resurgence of the area is nothing short of astounding. From the colorful street art to the uplifting enthusiasm and optimism of the locals, Comuna 13 encompasses the true essence of Colombia.

Pablo Escabar's house (now abandoned), "prison" (now an old folks home), and place of death (now a language school). At the "prison" overlooking Medellin, there are some reconstructions of the original building and guard towers including a sign that says, "Quien no conoce su historia esta condenado a repetirla (Whoever does not know their history is doomed to repeat it)." 

In Comuna 13, escalators were installed to facilitate the assimilation of the violent hillside neighborhood to the rest of Medellin.

Having heard rave reviews, we also decided to do a city tour while in Medellin. As with the Escobar tour, the knowledge and eagerness of the guide blew us away. He truly wanted to share his country’s tumultuous past and hopeful present with visiting tourists – again with the hope of altering the negative stereotypes. When speaking about Pablo Escobar or the drug trade in general, the guide was conscientious to keep his voice down, even going so far as to referring to Escobar as Colombia’s “He who shall not be named.” The one notable exception that we saw to Colombian’s aversion to the past, was a sculpture in Plaza de San Antonio, where a bomb killed 23 people attending a public concert in 1995 (coincidently, our host family had left the concert only minutes before the bomb went off). When the local authorities attempted to remove the shrapnel-torn sculpture, the famous artist, Botero, insisted that it should stay as a memorial, and even provided an identical intact statue as symbolism for the rebirth of Colombia. In addition to learning about Colombian history, current events, and the buildings, churches, plazas, and parks of downtown Medellin, we also learned about some interesting cultural quirks. For example, “love providers” and porn can be found for sale around the churches in the city. The rationale is that by having your priest close by for confession, your sins can be forgiven, and you can get back out there to sin again in a timely manner, all without the fear of going to hell.   

City tour around Medellin.

For our final excursion in Medellin, we made our way via the metro and metro-cable (aka public gondola!) to Parque Arvi, a park on the plateau above the city. I have to admit, it was an odd experience to get on a gondola without skis, but for a city which is overflowing the valley, a gondola is a perfect solution for public transportation. As an added bonus, the views were incredible! Unfortunately, the park was less of a city overlook and more of a “wilderness” area with hiking trails. We did about an hour hike before heading back to the homestay for our afternoon mind-mushing Spanish class.   

Parque Arvi and the views from the metro cable car.

Although we wanted to visit Guatape, a picturesque village a few hours from Medellin, we ended up bailing in order to get caught up on computer errands. After a full day of organizing information for the rental turnover at our house in Seattle, trip planning, buying flights, calling airlines (after credit card and website problems), and resisting the urge to chuck the laptop out the window, Andy spent most of the night (not an exaggeration) applying for a job and perfecting his cover letter. Although we were bummed to hear from the fellow tourist at our homestay that Guatape was incredible, we were glad to be caught up and ready for my mom’s trip a few days later.

Salento, Colombia – June 5th – 11th, 2017

In a feeble attempt to slow the pace, we decided to spend a week in Salento, a small town in the coffee growing region of Colombia. The problem with our approach is that although we did stay in one place for an entire week, we also took over 10 hours of private Spanish lessons, did 2 hours of Spanish homework per day, went on a coffee plantation tour, worked on the coffee farm picking kilos and kilos of coffee beans, went on a full day mountain biking trip in La Carbonera, and made our way to the Cocora Valley for an afternoon of hiking through the famous wax palms. Needless to say, we failed miserably at slowing down.

As in Asia, outside of the tourist areas, many locals struggle with the concept of being a vegetarian. For example, on our way to Salento, the bus stopped at yet another quality highway food establishment. Hungry, we decided to risk the back-door trots, and ordered a seemingly safe dish: huevos rancheros. When it arrived, we were surprised to find out that apparently huevos rancheros is not a delectable mixture of eggs, salsa, and tortillas, but scrambled eggs with cut up hot dog and a rock hard arepa (corn cake). Since when are hot dogs vegetarian? So, although Salento is quite touristy, we thoroughly enjoyed the convenience of good local and international food. We even stumbled upon a local restaurant which served 3 course set veg menus for around $4 – we went back 3x!

Our guesthouse and food around Salento.

A food thief was at large at our hotel! After our peanut butter brownie was stolen, we left this note in the refrigerator. Unsurprisingly, the thief never returned our treat.

As I mentioned, Salento was a whirlwind of physical and mental exercise. On day 1, we did a half day coffee tour with the plantation / guesthouse owner’s daughter and a handful of local dogs. We learned all about the coffee growing process and how the local farmers are being screwed over by the “Fair Trade” Colombian Coffee Federation. Essentially, coffee growers in Colombia are forced to sell their quality crop at meager prices to the federation, who then turn around and sell the coffee at top dollar to Starbucks and other western coffee brands. Apart from the lucky few farmers that are able to acquire a local roaster who pays fair prices for the beans, Colombian coffee farmers live in extreme poverty thanks to the greed and corruption of the federation. Nice, right?

After the farm tour, we roasted, brewed, and drank our own fresh organic Colombian coffee. Andy was in coffee heaven! Now thoroughly caffeinated (since I don’t like coffee, Andy grudgingly drank double the coffee), we returned to the guesthouse where we had an hour of downtime before our first Spanish lesson. It only took about 15 minutes into the lesson to realize that the Spanish teacher we hired was not going to be a good fit. She was a complete grammar snob and insisted on “teaching” us 9 verb tenses in the first 2 hours! We didn’t even know the names of the tenses in English, let alone Spanish! Also problematic, was that she only spoke in Spanish and only at or above Andy’s comprehension level (side note: Andy took 6 years of Spanish in school, while I know how to count to 10). I was completely lost and more than a little frustrated. We were under the impression that the point of language classes was to develop enough skills to practice and converse with the locals, not utterly destroy any language confidence (in my case, counting confidence) we may have previously had. My mistake.

Views from the coffee plantation. 

The process of growing coffee to sell to the Colombian Coffee Federation.  

Roasting fresh coffee!

The dogs that joined us on the coffee tour.

On day 2, we paid to work. It’s true, we actually paid for what they dubbed a “coffee experience.” To be fair, it wasn’t expensive, and lunch was included, but it did not take us long to discover that working on a coffee farm is back breaking work! After collecting the sun-dried coffee beans, we were both given a bucket and sent off to pick coffee beans in the pouring rain – the local workers were convinced that the rain made it a more authentic experience. Authentic or not, after about 3 hours, we were exhausted, soaked, and had each collected about 30 pounds of coffee beans (which was nothing in comparison to the locals who had collected at least 3x more). Although it was hard work, we enjoyed hanging out with the friendly workers, who laughed a lot about who know what (we were only able to pick up on about 1/10^th of what they said). One worker had a hilarious laugh though, so we joined in on the hilarity regardless. After our vegetarian lunch of fish with the workers, we made our way back to the guesthouse to get ready for our 2^nd Spanish class. Yet again, the class was completely grammar crazed, and we vowed to have a serious talk about expectations before the next class. As much as our teacher seemed to be trying to make me quit, I was not deterred, and everyone had a good laugh when I told a restaurant owner that we would come back “manzana (apple)” instead of “mañana (tomorrow).”

Would you believe that on day 3 we took the morning off? More accurately, we hung out in the room and planned, studied, blogged, exercised, washed clothes, oh... and shaved Andy's head. Later, after a stern talk about how intensive grammar destroys confidence, our “teacher” eased up some and we spend our 3^rd lesson at a cafe and walking through town speaking Spanish. It wasn’t a tremendous improvement since I still had no clue what anybody was talking about, but at least we weren’t learning the future conditional, present perfect, or imperfect subjunctive tense of irregular verbs (don’t ask me what any of those mean, I still have no idea).

The progression of shaving Andy's head!

On day 4, we went mountain biking! Lucky for us, we were the only 2 people to sign up that day and we had the entire mountain (possibly mountain range) to ourselves. With steep mountainsides covered in large grassy meadows and dense groves of wax palm trees, the scenery was absolutely stunning beautiful! La Carbonera region is situated on private land that was largely deserted until about 5 years ago when the government regained control of the area from the FARC. After our guide pointed it out, it became obvious that the “large grassy meadows” were actually old cocaine plantations that had been chemically destroyed after the FARC withdrew. 

La Carbonera region about an hour outside of Salento.

After enjoying a packed lunch, walking through a wax palm grove, and riding down the main mountain road, we turned off onto the Alegrias single track. Our groomed and regularly graded mountain bike tracks in the US looked like child’s play after riding the slippery and treacherous Colombian single track. Apparently, we passed the mountain biking experience test though because our guide was eager to extend our trip off-road to show us the route he was planning for a new single-track trail. Admittedly, the route needs work, since at one point we were forced to traverse a steep grassy cliffside in order to make it down to the road. All was going well until I lost balance and attempted to step down on what looked like a tuff of grass. The tuff of grass turned out to be at least 2 feet tall and I abruptly went endo (over the handlebars) and fell headfirst down the cliff with my bike chasing after me. Lucky for me, I did not tumble, the landing was as soft as falling in snow, and the bike rolled over top of me causing only a small puncture in my shoe. Andy witnessed the whole thing and almost had a heart attack, but was relieved and surprised when I emerged from the cliffside unscathed and laughing. Even the truck driver was nervous when we finally emerged from the trip about two hours behind schedule. After such an epic (and exhausting) day, we were glad to have the evening off to enjoy some shawarma and crepes before bed.

Mountain biking with Salento Cycling.

On our last full day in Salento, we had one last Spanish class before taking a colectivo (shared taxi) to the Cocora Valley. Although not as spectacular as La Carbonera region, we enjoyed wandering the hiking trails which overlooked dispersed forests of wax palm trees and meandered through the dense jungle. Although the wax palms are protected, grazing cattle prevent the growth of new palms (baby palm trees are tasty apparently), making the forests around the Cocora Valley much less dense than those in the Carbonera region. Though caused by human interference, the dispersed wax palms surrounded by lush grassy mountains had an undeniable beauty.

Hiking in the Cocora Valley.

Around Salento. Keep calm and be a prince$$!

Bogota, Colombia – June 2nd – 5th, 2017

Our flight itinerary from London to Bogota took us through Orlando, which was an odd and eye-opening experience. No offense to any readers which an affliction from… I mean affiliation to… Florida, but it seemed to us that the Orlando airport is overflowing with the stereotypical American. Obese parents half-tending to spoiled screaming children decked out in Disney Land gear and plump unfriendly staff seemed to be the norm. Also, typical, was the inedible slop they called food. We literally walked around for an hour trying to find food that wasn’t fried or swimming in waxy half-dried fake cheese. The scene might have been out of a spoof on American excess, but no, it was reality. To top it all off, once we were on the plane we looked down onto the tarmac to discover our bags sitting out during a heavy Florida rain shower while several overweight baggage attendants stood around staring blankly at the soaked luggage – I guess the concept of moving the bags out of the rain was too much for them. Needless to say, the reverse culture shock was not a pleasant experience.  

   

Once we arrived in Bogota, I was abruptly reminded of why I hate taxis. Although we knew what the price should be to our hotel, Andy got a bit overzealous with his Spanish and asked, “Cuanto cuesta?” (How much?). A few minutes later, it became clear that we had somehow, unknowingly, agreed to pay over double the actual cost. When we got out at our hotel, we attempted to argue with him about the price, all while he kept our bags ransom in the taxi trunk. In the end, I recruited the hotel attendant to sort it out for us. The taxi driver grudgingly drove away with only 50% more than he should have been paid – I HATE TAXIS! In good news, the hotel turned out to be super nice!

We woke in the morning, more than a little cold – who knew it was cold in Bogota? Aren’t we near the equator? Also, why am I so exhausted?.... probably just the whirlwind trip to London… but, why do I have a splitting headache? Shamefully, the answer to these questions took us almost 48 hours to work out. It was only after dragging ourselves up almost 2,000 ft of stairs to an overlook (the whole time thinking we were extremely out of shape) followed by a timely comment from my Grandma, that we realized that the elevation of Bogota is over 8,600 ft! Besides the elevation taking us by surprise, Bogota, and specifically the Candelaria area of Bogota, really amazed us. The city is charming, lively, and clean(-ish), with really good food and friendly locals (minus the taxi drivers – oh, side note, taxi problem solved with readily available Ubers!). We also felt super safe – caveat being that you don’t stay out past dark.

Our hotel lobby and food in Bogota. 

The charming streets of the Candelaria area.

The 2000 ft. ascent up Monserrate. Since we went on a Sunday morning, the trail was jam packed with locals making their weekly pilgrimage to the catholic church at the top. We could have paid a few dollars to take a tram to the top, but where's the fun in that? 

While in Bogota, we went on two really good tours – a graffiti tour and a city tour. Both guides were passionate about what they do and whole-heartedly wanted to share their city and country with foreigners. With graffiti being “legal” in Colombia, many artists have used art as a political platform throughout the city. Most walls in the Candelaria area are covered with either traditional graffiti or street art, where the wall owner has hired the artist to create a mural. The effect is overwhelmingly beautiful (as long as you can look past the tagging which also covers most surfaces). On the city tour, we walked around the main historical buildings and learned about the politics and corruption that lead to the drug war which has plagued Colombia for the last 3 decades. Although the majority of citizens have lived through extraordinary hardship, they seem eager to move on and transform foreign stereotypes. With such an energetic and optimistic atmosphere, it was impossible not to be sucked into the liveliness of the city.

Graffiti tour in the Candelaria area.

City Tour of the Candelaria area.

The one thing we were not able to figure out in Bogota was the opening hours for stores and restaurants. Apart from the mid-day siesta which does not appear to be at any scheduled time, dinner hours are all over the map (or perhaps the plate in this case). The first night we were too early for dinner at 7pm, then by 5pm the following day, we were too late. Granted, the 2^nd night was a Sunday, and many of the locals are devoutly Catholic, but what are tourists supposed to eat in the tourist part of the city on a Sunday evening? I posed this question to the hotel staff only to receive the response that most people eat at home on Sundays. The obvious problem with this system is that in the tourist part of the city, there are tourists, and tourists have no home.