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.

photos...continued

Famous sculpture by Botero in Medillin
Kids in Medillin.
Farm in Salento.

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.

More photos from Pakistan

No reservations: By the numbers.

This list was compiled on some of the long and tedious travels during the 7 and a half months of travel. The numbers may not be exact, but they are careful estimates.

Accomadation
Number of beds slept in in each stage of the trip.

India-22
Nepal-35 (lots of hut to hut hiking)
Pakistan-16
Europe-14
Camping, tent, sleeping out, free, etc. 31
taking the night bus/train-11

Distance Traveled (in miles)

By foot on trails-500 (A solid guess)
By train- 2339
By Bus/van, car, rickshaw, motorcycle, donkey, grain truck, semi-truck, etc.-5483
By air-19,924
By Boat-100

Everything else

Days on the road-199
Countries visited-16 (India, Nepal, Pakistan, Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, Kosovo, Montenegro, Bosnia, Croatia, Hungary, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Germany, Holland)
Days with out a shower-16
Cups of Chai-660 (165 days x 4 cups a day)
money spent on Chai- $66
Consecutive days being a vegetarian-33
Hangovers- 1
Photos taken-5500
Cameras Broken-1
Longest bus ride- 30 hours. Gilgit to Islamabad, Pakistan. Thank you Chinese road construction crew for the 10 hour delay.
Crazy freakouts by Japanese kid on 30 hour bus ride-1
Most expensive meal in Asia-7$ (Everest Steak House, Kathmandu)
Times staying in strangers houses in Pakistan-3 (A trip highlight)
Days trekking in Nepal-36
Highest Elevation-5840m/19140ft
Money spent on Visas- $320 India-80, Nepal-100, Pakistan-120, Turkey-20
Hottest temperature- 115F/44c
Dead bodies seen washed up on the riverbank while kayaking in India-1
Times answering the question, "Which country are you from?/ Where is your village?" 64 million.
Silk Kashmir carpets and shawls bought- 3 each, and they're all for sale. They are seriously beautiful and for you, I make good price.
Times being very ill- 2
times using hand sanitizer-0
days without shaving or trim-75
World records witnessed 1. (Usain Bolt, 100m. 9.58 seconds.)
Avg daily spending in Europe- $51. And I was going on the cheap!
Estimate of dollars a day in Asia- $13
Airlines flown-5 Yeti, Air India, KLM, Qatar, Delta.
Hours sitting on a delta plane while on the tarmac-5 (Boo Delta)

Day 1: Track Meet.

Just got back from the first day of the World Track and field Championships here in Berlin, and it was amazing. I am really glad i picked up a ticket and checked out. I wasn't planning on going because I didnt think there was much to see on the first day of competition. Just really the finals of the womens 10k and mens shot put. But both turned out to have dramatic finishes.

My plan for the day was to head out to the stadium around the time of the start of the meet to pick up a ticket for Sunday's meet, and the 100 meter final, Gay vs Bolt extravaganza. I found myself talking to some scaplers about the price of tickets and it seems they are selling really good seats for like half price. I could have bought a finish line ticket for sunday's races for 100 euros, compared to face value of 160. But I didnt do it. I'll go back tomorrow and try to get it for cheaper. But for today I wasn't going to go unless I could find something for 20 euros.. The original plan was to find one for free if any spectator had and extra. I got some pretty strange looks from the Germans when I was walking around with one finger in the air asking for extra tickets. I waited around until I found a guy willing to part with a 75 euro ticket for 20 Euros. It ended up being 10th row, near the start of the 200m , so a little far from the finish, bust still agreat seat, espcilally when they held the start of the womens 200m for the heptathlon. Some nice scenery on the track!

As I was saying the day was great. The womens 10k was a show of Ethiopan and Kenyan domination, they took over the final 3k with 3 Ethiopans and 2 kenyans in the lead pack, going into the final 200 meters they were still in a pack with 2 Ethiopians in the lead and looking like they were set for a 1-2 finish. I was seated at 100 meters from the finish in the 10 row ( I had gone over to the other side of the track to watch the starts of the mens 100m) as they came around the final turn the tall, lanky 19 year old Masai Kenyan athlete stepped out out into lane two, nearly tripping over here teammmate, and set her sights on the finish and her Ethiopians rivals ahead of her. The roar of the crown grew to a Crescendo as the 19 year old kenyan galloped towards the finish, finally passing her competors in the final 10 meters to capture the gold medal. It was one of the best finishes of a race I've ever seen, especially one of such importance.

For the mens shot I took my place back on the otherside of the track, directly in front of the competition, among coaches and Russian throwing team, once again in the 10th row. I've never really payed total attention to a throwing event. Mainly becaause I was a distance runner, but this one was fairly interesting. it came down to the final 2 rounds. The Plish guy with long hair, and reigning olympic champion uncranked a throw, catapulting him into the lead over American Christian Cantwell. In the next round the Pole threw even further for a little cushion. But Caantwell respondended with a mammoth heave over 22 meters and the longest throw in the world this year to take the lead and secure the gold medal. It was great experience to be so close, I could watch the throwere strut around in between throws pumping them selves up. I could hear their grunts and see the chalk fly off their neck when they threw the shot. And it was a nice feeling to know I only paid 20 euros, especially when I glanced up at the crowd in the second deck, most of who paid 50 euros. So hopefully tomorrow I will be just as fortunate to secure an equally good seat.



Lastly I'll talk about the shownman, the living legend Usain Bolt. You could feel the buzz as he warmed up for his heat with his hoodie over his head. You could see all the cameras focus on him. And when the race started he sprinted for about 40 meters, then shut it down as he looked to his fellow caribbean competitor to his right and jogged and chuckled their way to the finish line in roughly 10 seconds. In the replays shown on the big screen, both guys were laughing the second half of the race, while in the background, the other competitors were straining and pumping to make it to the next round.

Prague, the perfect city, if that's what you're into.

If you scroll down a little further you'll see I managed to get some photos up. They aren't the most recent shots, because those are mostly blurry, die to some recent troubles my lens has been giving me. But atleast I was able to get some pics online for everyone viewing pleasure. It helps that I am at a great hostel in Berlin with some nice computes with card readers, free Internet, fast computers, etc. The hostel also has ping pong, foose ball, bikes, 1 euro beer, movies, video games, books. And its in a huge park a few miles from the city. The staff is actually helpful, too. Which is a change from some of the recent places I've stayed.

Now I'll turn my attention back to Prague, where I have wandered around for the past few days. And after careful consideration of what to compare Prague to. I have come up the Playboy Mansion. Because everything is too perfect. You think to yourself that it cant be real. Are all this buildings really this stylish and classic? Much like you'd say while walking the grounds of the mansion, are these girls really from this planet?
It seemed like Prage was too good to be true, there was zero trash in the tourist quarter/old city. All the flowers were blossoming, all the streets were cobbled. Much like at the mansion where all the girls are bosomy and stunning...though usually not real. And I like my cities a little more real, this place just seemed to perfect, not gritty enough. It was like it was just made for tour groups to stroll through for the day and dine at overpriced restaurants and visit over priced museums.

I mainly wandered the cobbled streets in the day, looking at the free galleries, and most of all looking to find cool bars to visit later that evening. I believe I suceeded in my mission, I consumed a variety of tasty lagers and darker beers in my 3 days in town. From the standard Pilsner Urquell to some local micro brews with coffee and lime flavors. They have some very nice bars, once youget away from the main square. Even though the exchange rate has hurt the US dollar and Prague is a little more pricey than a few years ago, you're still only paying 2 dollars for a 500ml beer. You wont find that anywhere west of Prague in Europe.

If I do return someday, It won't be in August, and it will be with a student ID card. You get half off admission into all the attarctions, churches, museums, etc. And if I return, hopefully I will be a little more motivated. At the moment I can't stand the crowds and the constant shelling out of money to see some church or museum that I'm not completely interested in, or for that matter I don't know if most of the attractions are even worth the money.

PICTURES!!!

Taking the plunge in Croatia

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Blue Mosque, Istanbul


Muscle pickers on the shore of the Marmares Sea, Istanbul


Trail dog, fagaras Mountains, Romania.


Mountains of Montenegro.


Ahh, Back to the Hindu Kush, in Chitral, Pakistan.


Mostar Bridge, Bosnia.


Biking On Korcula, Croatia.

I see the light at the end of the tunnel...and I like it.

Once again I have tried to pt some photos online, and once again I have been stymied by terrible computers and internet cafes. the next time I travel i am getting one of those net books. You can have free wifi everywhere and you can avoid the debacle of power cuts and slow computers that afflict internet cafes the world over.

I have some free tome today so i have been trying unsuccessfully to upload pictures, but also using the internet to reserve and organize the rest of the trip. Believe it or not, I only have 9 days remaining of on a journey that began over 7 months ago in the cold dreariness of January.

It goes against my style and ethos of travel to make a bunch of reservations, but after suffering the consequences of showing up in a busy city at the height of tourist season I have decided to make it easier on my self, eliminate the searching and the stress and book accommodation in Prague, as well as booking a bus to and from Berlin. Some recent examples of the lack of planing backfiring were in split and in Budapest. each time I had no accommodation booked and ended up autise of town in some temporary hostels that weer actually college dorms. They weer all and, comfy beds and all, but not hostel feel where you meet other people, plus they weer a good walk or bus ride from the heart of town. And this morning I tried to geta bus to Prague, when i showed up at the bus it was full, thus giving me 7 hours of free time until the departure of the next bus which I was able to secure a ticket for. You may be wondering, why the bus, I thought everyone took trains in Europe, well I found a student bus company which is half the price of the train , and faster, therefore, I take the bus.

since I left the little slice of heaven that is Korcula Island in Croatia I have visited Ptitvice lakes in Croatia. Beautiful place, but was to many people. to walk around the boardwalks was like a shopping mall a he day before Christmas. Plus my camera battery died so i couldn't get many shots in.



Here is photo of the Plitvice lakes. it is very similar geologically to Havasupai falls and Semuc Champay in Guatemala. A collection of travertine lakes and turquoise water.

After Plitvice it was quick stop in Zagreb to catch a train to Budapest. I thought I would have to wait 3 hours for the 1 am bus, but I was mistaken and I would have to wait 7 hours for the train that departed at the charming time of 5am. A sane person actually would have found a hotel or abed and booked the 10am train, but m a little nuts at the moment. I booked the 5am train, then promptly bought a liter of beer and headed for the park. I decided the park was little sketchy, so I wandered the empty streets until i found A dark spot between the road, the rail tracks and the building where the railway workers took their place. i snuck in the back through a busted fence. I knew I would be safe their, since there was a guard at the from entrance, though I think he was keeping an eye on the government building next door. I was able to catch a few Z.s before the train departed and was undisturbed by security or vagabond Croatian street walkers. I'm glad i chose the spot because the train ride was an oven. Ill never under stand public transport the world over, they crank up the heat for no reason, then when its cold, they will turn on the AC. Rarely is the AC on when its need and vice versa for the heat.

As I mentioned earlier, I'm in Budapest, Hungary at the moment. Sleeping in the University dorms. Not all bad, only one roommate, and he was a cool fella from Denmark that I met on the train. And the dorm was across the street from a outdoor club that played music till 6am. We stayed until 5am, when the sun was on its way up. We spent the last couple of days wandering and hiking the streets of Budapest. Taking in all the amazing architecture and culture of this city. Id love to show pictures, but as mentioned before, no dice. But a quick description would be... A huge palace on one side of the Danube, as well as some museums and more of the old city. This is the Buda side, while across the river, on the Pest side is the parliament building, more of the bars shops and hotels. We checked out some top notch museums here. Especially the terror museum, talking about the Russian and Communist regime that had a hold of Hungary from the second world war, until 1990.


Royal Palace, Budapest.

Budapest is a great city, but a little difficult for the traveler and much different from the other European cities I have visited. It is pretty big, with a great transit system. and it spread out. so you really have to know where to go, as far as night life and culture. All the Local people take public transport everywhere so you rarely see people walking. There is an amazing open air bar and hangout spot right down town where you can order beers, wine and coffee and sit in the park or on the benches with your friends. its super relaxed. It something you would never see in America. A bunch people buying cheap beers, siting down and relaxing, all of it legal and with out problems and police supervision. I the center of the park there is stair case down to an open pavilion with tables, art work and chill music.

There is a lot to see on foot though, just wandering the city near the river, comparing all the old building with their rich details to the mono looking buildings you see in most cities. Ive never seen so many huge statues in a city either. So Budapest is definitively a hot spot and worth a few days. Maybe next time ill rent a bike to see all the sights.

On my way to Prague now, and only one more stop after that. Looking forward to a break in travel when I get home in a couple weeks.

Croatia, Loving it.

That is a photo of the main town on the island of Korcula, where i spent the last week swimming in the Adriatic, camping 5 seconds from the beach, dining on delicious home made food and enjoying myself to the highest extent.

I was only planning on spending a couple days on the island, then hopping to another island or two, but I ended up enjoying myself so much that I extended it to almost a week. I had a great campsite in the shade, right on the water and opnly a 20 minute walk to town. The whole island was super chill. It didnt have the feeling that it was over ran by tourists at all. Even though it started to get busy by the time I departed. I was expecting more noise and sleaze, but it was just peace. One Austrian I met while having a beer at the beach in Lumbarda said it like this. This is paradise, pointing to the ground, and that is Europe, pointing to the mainland. Even though it was wealthier than normal Croatia it didnt seem condescending or pretentious. Us bums and backpackers could wander relax with the rest of the locals.

After almost 7 months of pretty rough travel, this was the first time that I felt like I was on vacation. This came to me when I was drinking a beer with some local guys at a small beach a few kilometers from town, with some Bob marley playing in the background. These guys I met also had a restaurant in the town of Pupnat which they said I should check out. It was little hard to get to since it was 10k from camp, but I made it after one scary ride in a VW rabbit that i hitched a ride from. It was definitially worth the trip. I went on a saturday, which happened to be the celebration of the year in Pupnat, complete with local folk dancing with the whole clothes get up of wool socks pulled up to the knee, black trousers, red vest and big swords. The dancing was followed by copious amounts of drinking by all the locals and dining on a cow that had been roasted all day over hot coals. I didnt dine on the beef, I ate at the restaurant i was invited too. All the food their was locally grown, from the sage and cheese in the ravioli to the tomatoes and onions in the salad. And besides food, they make all their own wines and liquors which they are constantly hoisting onto your table free of charge. It was one of the pricier meals of the trip, but it was delicious and worth the treat.

The next few days were spent with some friendly Croats i met while hitchhiking to the beach. Ante and Narcissa are their names. We explored the island in their car, did some swimming, had a few beers in town and just enjoyed being on island time.