The past few days I have been up on the Caribbean coast in Cartegena. I was pleasently suprised to learn on my arrival that wednesday was the start of Carnival cartegena, a five day party building upto the crowning of Miss Colombia. There was a great energy in the air of this old Spanish colonial city as the reverly was building. Wednesdays festivities started with a parade of dancing groups, similar to what you would see in Rio for their carnival. Here in Cartegena they like to celebarte by cwowding the streets, drinking and spariying each other with foam and throwing colored powder on anyone within reach, especially a foreigners. It was great to finally arrive in a place where the party was just beginning. it seems over the past months I usually arrived a day or 2 after the party ended. Except for Holi in India, which is similar, with the powder throwing and heavy drinking.
The parade on day 1 was big, but the day 2 was twice the size, with floats of all the enhanced women vying for the prize of Miss Colombia. day 2 was fun, but a little scary, with mobs of teenagers running arouns with foam and powder attacking everyone. I actually thought it would have been nice to have a money belt to protect my camera. I have heard many stories of tourists geting robbed by groups. Their tactic is to spray you in the face with foam, so while you´re protecting yourself, they´ll stick their hands in your pockets and take anything they can get. After a few minutes in the chaos, I decided to retire to the top of the wall surrounding the city and take in the parade from safer distance.
After 2 days of partying I met up with my friends from salento and Medillin, Kevin, Simon, Chris and Regina and we headed out to a place called Playa Blanca, famous for its white sand beaches and clear water. It was fantastic. We slept in hammocks, relaxed, wandered the beach and just chilled out for 3 days. One bummer was I forgot to charge my camera and there´s no electricy on Playa Blanca , so didn´t get may pictures. saturday on Playa Blanca was amazing compared to Sunday. On saturday there are no tours, or atleast there weren´t any this week, as it is a holiday, so we had the whole place to ourselve more or less. When we walked down the beach to catch our boat back to Cartegena on Sunday, there must have been a thousdand people swimming and lounging. it looked more like a beach in Rio or Waikiki.
They were still partying in Cartegena when we returned, just as before, with a people covered in blue and white powder, and most people carrying bottle of rum. All of us weren´t as excited for the reverly as we were the first couple days.
I am now headed up for Tayrona National Park for some more beautifl coastal scenery and camping before I start my return journey back through Colombia.
Monday, November 16, 2009
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Welcome to Colombia.
Hola Amigos! (I believe it´s compulsary to begin any blog post or email from a latin country with some sort of spanish greeting, even if it´s half of your total spanish vocabulary.)
You may be wondering why I decided to visit Colombia. A country supposedly filled with narco traffickers, kidnappers and FARC guerrillas. Well, these are the places I like to go. A little danger and adventure adds a little spice to the standard vacation. But actually Colombia has been breaking out of it´s old drug trafficking stereotype and becoming a traveler hotspot, and I wanted to get down here and check it out before it turns into the next Costa Rica. I have heard from friends and read online about what a gem this country is, and from my first week I can concur with all the general opinion that this a fantastic place to visit.
My trip started out in Bogota, the obligitory landing spot. I arrived on a holiday, when everything was closed for 2 days and all the other people at the hostel were recoving from the Halloween festivities. The hostel I stayed at seemed to be quite the party place. some guys has been there for 2 or 3 weeeks and seemed to be trying to see how many notches on the bed post they could rack up from the beautiful Bogata ladies. My craziest story happened when I accompanied a few fellas drom the hostel to a Tuesday night hotspot. After a few hours there I was ready to head back, I spotted a guy I recognized as he was hopping into a taxi and I joined home for a ride. After a few seconds the very drunk British guy asked the taxi driver if he could get him some coke...and not the soda. The taxi driver said it was no problem and drove down a little side street. I was like, Oh boy, we´re gonna get robbed for sure. The place we went was a little plaza full of 30 mariache band members, the taxi driver hopped out and returned 30 seconds later with a little baggy for a drunken British fella, who immediatly opened it up and began snorting, right in the taxi- We did make it home with no problems, but the driver charged us 3 times the normal rate, which I made the British fella pay for, since he seemed to have plenty of money.
The other couple days I just cruised around the city checking out some of the museums, including the police museum which has a bunch of info on how they tracked down Pablo Escobar in the early 90´s. Including his guns, motorcycle and clothing.
Next, I headed over to the coffee region in central Colombia, which was great. I stayed in this little town called Salento that is near the Cocora valley that has some amazing scenery of rolling green hills and an area of very tall wax palm trees. There are a couple photos of you scroll down. I arrived on the same day as about 10 other backpackers and we all stayed at the same place and did some hiking in the valley. but the highlight was playing the local game of Tejo. It is similar to horseshoes/washers/cornhole. How it works is you throw a metal disc onto a slanted board full of mud, in the middle you plave 2 little paper triangles full of gunpowder, that is placed on a metal ring. If you get a direct hit into the triangle there is an exlposion from the metal on metal contact with the gunpowder in the middle. it doesn´t happen very often, especially with the foreigners who had never played such a game. but once in a while we would get lucky and get the exposion we were looking for. The locals play on a court about 30 yards long and they hit the mud like 99% of the time. When we started playing our group was only hitting the mud about half the time on a court a third the length. But we improved steadily and by the end of the night I convinced some of my fellow players to move up to the big boy court, which was more fun and a little more dangerous, as some of our throws were liable to end up on another court. I think my experience of playing washers, bowling, cornhole and throwing rocks at signs while waiting for cars to pick me up while hichhiking helped tremedously and I was the winner of most of the games.
I departed salento with a few of my new friends and headed up to Medillin for a saturday night of partying in the city. We travelled north on the Panamerican highway, which was one of the most beautiful drives I´ve ever been on. The road was never flat and the views were amazing. Just non stop mountains and valleys. it reminded me of Costa Rica, expcet the valleys were deeper and the mountains higher, and the road smoother. I also came up with Colombia´s new tourism slogan. ¨Like Costa Rica, but with a tenth of the tourists and ten times the beauty.¨
We arrived in Medillin last night and sorted out our accomadation at the hostel, tehn heade up to one of the party areas where there must of ben about 40 bars in a 5 block radius. There was 6 of us, all teh same pople who I met in Salento. We decided that each person would pick a bar and we would go in fora drink. It ended up being a great night, full of beer, rum and the local drink, aguadiente. The last bar was the best, we were simultaneously dancing with some of the beautiful local girls while fights were breaking out at the bar and glass was being broken, this wasn´t in any ay related to our dancing with the girls though. We all ended up returning around 4 am. Great night.
You may be wondering why I decided to visit Colombia. A country supposedly filled with narco traffickers, kidnappers and FARC guerrillas. Well, these are the places I like to go. A little danger and adventure adds a little spice to the standard vacation. But actually Colombia has been breaking out of it´s old drug trafficking stereotype and becoming a traveler hotspot, and I wanted to get down here and check it out before it turns into the next Costa Rica. I have heard from friends and read online about what a gem this country is, and from my first week I can concur with all the general opinion that this a fantastic place to visit.
My trip started out in Bogota, the obligitory landing spot. I arrived on a holiday, when everything was closed for 2 days and all the other people at the hostel were recoving from the Halloween festivities. The hostel I stayed at seemed to be quite the party place. some guys has been there for 2 or 3 weeeks and seemed to be trying to see how many notches on the bed post they could rack up from the beautiful Bogata ladies. My craziest story happened when I accompanied a few fellas drom the hostel to a Tuesday night hotspot. After a few hours there I was ready to head back, I spotted a guy I recognized as he was hopping into a taxi and I joined home for a ride. After a few seconds the very drunk British guy asked the taxi driver if he could get him some coke...and not the soda. The taxi driver said it was no problem and drove down a little side street. I was like, Oh boy, we´re gonna get robbed for sure. The place we went was a little plaza full of 30 mariache band members, the taxi driver hopped out and returned 30 seconds later with a little baggy for a drunken British fella, who immediatly opened it up and began snorting, right in the taxi- We did make it home with no problems, but the driver charged us 3 times the normal rate, which I made the British fella pay for, since he seemed to have plenty of money.
The other couple days I just cruised around the city checking out some of the museums, including the police museum which has a bunch of info on how they tracked down Pablo Escobar in the early 90´s. Including his guns, motorcycle and clothing.
Next, I headed over to the coffee region in central Colombia, which was great. I stayed in this little town called Salento that is near the Cocora valley that has some amazing scenery of rolling green hills and an area of very tall wax palm trees. There are a couple photos of you scroll down. I arrived on the same day as about 10 other backpackers and we all stayed at the same place and did some hiking in the valley. but the highlight was playing the local game of Tejo. It is similar to horseshoes/washers/cornhole. How it works is you throw a metal disc onto a slanted board full of mud, in the middle you plave 2 little paper triangles full of gunpowder, that is placed on a metal ring. If you get a direct hit into the triangle there is an exlposion from the metal on metal contact with the gunpowder in the middle. it doesn´t happen very often, especially with the foreigners who had never played such a game. but once in a while we would get lucky and get the exposion we were looking for. The locals play on a court about 30 yards long and they hit the mud like 99% of the time. When we started playing our group was only hitting the mud about half the time on a court a third the length. But we improved steadily and by the end of the night I convinced some of my fellow players to move up to the big boy court, which was more fun and a little more dangerous, as some of our throws were liable to end up on another court. I think my experience of playing washers, bowling, cornhole and throwing rocks at signs while waiting for cars to pick me up while hichhiking helped tremedously and I was the winner of most of the games.
I departed salento with a few of my new friends and headed up to Medillin for a saturday night of partying in the city. We travelled north on the Panamerican highway, which was one of the most beautiful drives I´ve ever been on. The road was never flat and the views were amazing. Just non stop mountains and valleys. it reminded me of Costa Rica, expcet the valleys were deeper and the mountains higher, and the road smoother. I also came up with Colombia´s new tourism slogan. ¨Like Costa Rica, but with a tenth of the tourists and ten times the beauty.¨
We arrived in Medillin last night and sorted out our accomadation at the hostel, tehn heade up to one of the party areas where there must of ben about 40 bars in a 5 block radius. There was 6 of us, all teh same pople who I met in Salento. We decided that each person would pick a bar and we would go in fora drink. It ended up being a great night, full of beer, rum and the local drink, aguadiente. The last bar was the best, we were simultaneously dancing with some of the beautiful local girls while fights were breaking out at the bar and glass was being broken, this wasn´t in any ay related to our dancing with the girls though. We all ended up returning around 4 am. Great night.
Photos de Colombia
Playing Tejo in Salento. It is the national game, similar to horseshoes, except with a little gunpowder mixed in.
Trekking though Cocora Park.
A view of some very tall wax palm trees in Cocora.
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