Colombia

After a day in Leticia we said farewell to Tom (and ran away from Mr. Strange) who were continuing on down the river to Iquitos, Peru. Ian, Sinead, Rick, Nikki and I were flying out to Bogota. It was a pretty dramatic flight, with views over the rainforest until the Colombian Andes popped up out of the clouds. There was a fair bit of turbulence and a bit of a nose dive landing and all of a sudden we were in Bogota at the dizzying height of 2640m above sea level. Rick headed off to find a connecting flight to Cali and the rest of us caught a taxi to La Candeleria to find a hostel (Musicology Hostel). La Candeleria is the oldest part of Bogota, with lots of pretty cobbled streets looking down over the rest of the city.


We spent a couple of days taking it easy and wandering the streets taking in the sights. We had heard about a cathedral built into a salt mine, two hours out of the city and decided to go and investigate. We had to take the transmilenio (a bus network that is Bogota's answer to a subway system) out to the bus station where we switched to a collectivo heading to Zipaquira. We thought the driver was an aspiring rally driver as we swerved in between traffic and went up on two wheels around corners. There was a small display showing the speed that never seemed to drop below 85mph and there was much screeching of brakes as we almost ploughed into the back of a Landrover.
We arrived in Zipaquira and, after getting a little lost, found the Salt Cathedral. The Cathedral has been constructed by mining the salt, leaving large cavernous halls, a walkway showing the stations of the cross and prayer station all made of salt. One of the most interesting points in the cathedral were 3 staircases, one for sinners, one for angels and one for people somewhere in between, and we were told to choose which we thought to walk down. Although the structure itself is pretty impressive, it was slightly dissapointing that they had lit it up like a nightclub with neon lights everywhere. We also found out from our guide that it had been built as a tourist attraction that was only used as a cathedral once a week. This took away from the celestial, spiritual feeling most religious places have. It was spoilt further as the guide kept pointing out the shops and we were shown into a cinema at the end of the tour to watch a 3D film (complete with stupid glasses) about the production of salt with a big robot presenter. We headed back to Bogota and rewarded ourselves with a HUGE pizza from PizzaPoli (about 18 inches and that was a medium!)


The next day we decided to have a walk around a different area of the city and visit some museums. We wandered down to an Andy Warhol exhibition, but there was a huge queue, and as neither of us are massive fans, we skipped it. We visited the Plaza Bolivar and then decided to go and get some lunch. As we were walking down a street just outside of the old town that we had been warned about we suddenly found ourselves surrounded by people. Everything happened very quickly, but basically someone spat into the left side of my face to distract me, then unbuttoned a pocket on my right side and took my wallet. We didn't realise what had happened until we were another 10 metres down the road. We immediatly decided to get off the street and headed back to the hostel until we thought that maybe the theif had just taken the money and dropped the wallet on the ground near by where it all happened. We walked back to the area and looked around but to no avail, we headed back to the hostel wondering what we were going to do for money (our only free withdrawals bank card was lost). We told the staff at the hostel who immediatly phoned the police and helped us get things sorted, we cancelled the card and headed off to get some lunch (bought by the hostel owner) before heading down to the police station to get a statement for our insurance claim. The police, as one might expect of Colombia, were of no help at all and wouldn't even let us write down the amount of cash we lost on our claims form as well as making us write everything in Spanish. Luckily the hostel owner had come along with us and managed to translate all this and then helped us write the form. We were leant some money to last us the day and we set to work trying to get all our money into an account with a card we could use in Colombia. We got chatting to various people around the hostel and everyone we spoke to had their own horror story of being robbed which made us feel very lucky as the majority of them were a lot worse than ours - people had been held up by guns and knives and had a lot more stolen than we did. It was a definite annoyance, mostly just loosing our debit card, and has made us a lot more cautious around the big cities (which mostly involves Nikki sticking all our cash withdrawals in her bra until we get back to our hostel and the safety deposit box!)


A couple of days later we went to Villa de Leyva, a pretty town 4 hours outside of Bogota. The Lonely Plant had advised not to visit during weekends and holidays, throwing caution to the wind we arrived on a Sunday of a bank holiday weekend to a lively interesting town where everyone was relaxing and enjoying themselves. We found a hostel with ease and settled in before heading out to get some asado (various meats cooked on an open fire) that we had seen when walking to the hostel. That evening we and the couple we had travelled with called Sarah and Carl (with an Irish spelling?) sat around the plaza sipping cold beers and wine with the other Colombian holiday makers that were visiting the town for the weekend.

The next day we strolled around the town and took in the sights. The day after the four of us got a taxi out to El Infernito (or the more aptly named "Penis Park") containing lots of large stone formations to represent fertility, which had just closed for lunch. Next we walked out to see a large dinosaur skeleton, gaining two rowdy young labrador dogs on the walk. With ominous clouds looming we tried to finish our trip quickly with a visit to an ostrich farm where we got to see the chicks and feed the adults before we fed ourselves with a delicious ostrich steak and salad!



Nikki and I said goodbye to Sarah and Carl and caught an over night bus to Taganga via Santa Marta on the northern coast of Colombia. We stayed for two nights where we spent the day playing around on the beach called Playa Grande and eating delicious BBQ fish for lunch. Next stop Cartagena. We arrived and tried to check into the hostel we'd booked but they were full so were moved to another round the corner. We checked out of the 12 bed dorm we were in as soon as possible and managed to get a cheap double room for only 2000 pesos more (about 60p). We've been in the hostel for 8 nights now and have arranged with lots of ummming and ahhing to get a yacht (Fritz-the-Cat) to Panama which will stop at the San Blas archipelago for 3 days along the way. We're both really excited and looking forward to seeing the Caribbean paradise, that we've been seeing in pictures since we arrived in Colombia, in person.

There's not much to tell about Cartagena itself other than it's VERY HOT - about 32°C and about 95% humidity - which is the killer! When we first got here we met up with Ian, Sinead and Rick for an improptue night out in Boca Grande accompanied by bottles of rum and a local salsa band at a small street bar. We've enjoyed walking around the pretty old town where our hostel is situated (Casa Viena)and sampling the street foods and snowcones on offer - "maracuya y limon" all the way! (passion fruit and lemon). Now that we're finally up to date with the blog (sorry it took so long!) we're going to go sail off into the Caribbean sunset for 5 days. We'll let you know how we get on in paradise!