If you are to believe everything that you see in the movies or read in the news then Colombia is ravaged by the FARCS or Guerillas, everyone is a Cocaine trafficer and tourists are kidnapped weekly....by the dozen. Thank Googleness it isn´t at all like that. In fact we found Colombia to be beautiful and peaceful with friendly people whose only crime is that they speak rubbish Spanish!
We did decide to play on the side of caution to start with though and were only taking day buses and staying in non Guerilla type places (funnily enough big hairy monkeys with bananas and big hairy men with bazookas both like hanging out in the jungle). Our first ride into Colombia took us through spectacular green mountains, deep rivers, far off forests and the smells of coffee. We journeyed to Popoyan that day a beautiful Colonial town with whitewashed walls, clock towers, green parks and the sounds of Afro beats every..... Oh did we mention how excited we were to see black people again? It was like coming home for a mini break, unfortunately nobody responds to ¨Sawubona¨. We only stayed in Popoyan for a day but managed to walk the place flat and suck in some old Spanish style culture and architecture.
Next up was a rather long ride to the Capital Bogota which was suprisingly cold compared to the rest of the countries normal hot and humid nature. The people also looked different, better dressed, like a New York meets Melville chic´ and much paler than their country and coastal cuzzies. Our Hostel was great too (Platypus) with German (ponounced Herman) the owner being full of helpful hints and free beers, it was also good to cook again and not be subjected to heaps of rice and potatos! We didnt really do much in Bogota but it was a great base to sort out our next steps including the ball ache of getting the transient visa for the States which we would have to go to Costa Rica for an interview for....sigh....$131 per person!
Our hearts where panging for the beach though and they would get their wish soon as we headed for Taganga near Santa Marta. A small fishing village with more scuba operators than stray dogs and more hammocks than scuba operators. Our Hostel overlooked the beach and the caribean tunes floated up to us on the heat waves emanating off the beach. Our little white bodies took a little shock from the sun (gringo alert) but it was great to be too hot rather than too cold for the first time in a long time and nothing beats a cold beer and a fresh fish next to the beach!
Having done some walkies round the town we signed up to do our Scuba course with Calipso Scuba away from town in the nature reserve of Tayrona. This meant that we got some pretty exclusive treatment, our OWN dive instructor, classes on the beach, our OWN beach, our OWN chef and a choice of hammocks right on the beach to sleep in! Paradise regained!
We did 6 dives in total over 3 days here while working on our tans, snorkeling and dozing in the hammocks inbetween. Its a hard life but we knew what we signed up for when we left!
So after having enjoyed some we time (cause we dont see each other enough already) we headed to ¨South Americas most beautiful and romantic city¨ according to the Daily Planet ...Lonely Planet. Cartagena is really beautiful if you stick to the old town, its been restored to a high level of splendor that pulls in the cruise boats and American camera snappers in their droves. Still its really pretty! We also like Getsemani the area that we were staying in which also has beautiful old buildings, but without the refurbishment and with some rum stained hobos and dirty barefoot kids playing ball. Our real mission in Cartagena however was to find passage on a sailboat to Panama through the San Blas islands, we thought it would be hard to find someone to go with, but we ended up having choices to make and settled on Captain Frederico whose boat was called something strange in Portugese that meant ¨Dirty sexual attitude¨, how could we go wrong?!?
But we had a few days to kill before then so we went to a Mud Volcano outside of town where you bob around clumsily covered from tip to toe in mud before washing it off in the lagoon below. Tons of good ¨clean¨ fun. Hilarious moments of note, which have to be the fatties trying to get out the volcano and their pants falling down behind them....ok that almost happened to us too but its funnier with them.
We would then spend our days just hanging around Cartagena till the boat was ready to rock and sail with some lucky days in the park watching 50 or more kites in the sky on the National Kite day and some not so lucky days when it rained when we went to the beach.
Fun off the topic extra..Our favorite Spanish class is the Taxi ride where the first question the taxi driver normally asks after ¨where are you going?¨ is ¨where are you from?¨ , however in Colombia many of them found it hard to believe and funny too that we were from Africa and yet we were White...they all seem to know that we have the World Cup 2010 though.
Next time, San Blas Islands and Panama City.
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