2011.: Nine months in South America. COLOMBIA

So here I am, finally on the Caribbean coast of Colombia. Unbroken sunshine, 30 degree heat at 8am and far more fresh tropical fruits than I have names for.
Cartagena is an old walled city, similar to Dubrovnik in Croatia. Lovely place just to wander around, sit in cafes and bars on street corners, and take photos. This is the sort of city that I like.
I came here from Medellin on the nightbus with a few friends. It was supposed to take 13 hours, so we left Medellin at 8.30pm. At 9.30pm - 25 hours later - we arrived in Cartagena. A landslide in the middle of the night closed the road for 12 hours. Brilliant. By far the worst part of going traveling, is actually traveling. This is even more apparent when you have a large duffel bag, plus a kitesurf board, plus a 10m kite, harness, etc. Large coaches are not so bad, but heavily overloaded collectivos or combi vans are a real struggle.

I think I will be spending the next 3 weeks or so on the Caribbean coast here, split between Cartagena, Tayrona national park (perfect, unspoilt white sand beaches), Taganga (small beach, heaving with beach bars and parties), and Cabo de la Vela (about 50km from the northern-most part of South America, with decent wind for kitesurfing).

Click the pictures to enlarge.

Goodbye Ecuador kite crew. Sad to leave Santa Marianita and a cool bunch of people who became good friends. From left to right: Mary (Venezuela), Breno (Brazil/Bonaire), Me, Martin (Latvia), Sam (Colombia), Robert (Colombia). Missing: Ladina, Peer, Andreas, Christian, Julia, Angie.

Next, a 36 hour bus marathon to Colombia.
The most scared that I have been when not climbing in the past 9 months was definitely the night bus I took from Manta to Quito in Ecuador. The driver was absolutely out of control, turning off his lights to go round corners and using the opposite lane on tight bends so he could take them even faster. No chance of sleep as I couldn't stay in my seat because I was getting chucked around so bad. I have experienced and got used to some pretty ropey driving techniques in heavily overcrowded vehicles in the past nine months, but this bloke was absolutely unbelievable.
After another bus from Quito, I finally crossed the border into Colombia. I was behind schedule by a few hours due to various reasons, and this was added to by lying ticket sellers, and buses breaking down.
By the time I left Ipiales, the first town in Colombia, it was 4.45pm. Every bit of advice that I had from anyone regarding the next 7 hour bus ride was DO NOT take it at night, you will get robbed. 5 hours of delays meant that here I was, setting off on the 7 hour journey, 2 hours from darkness. I sat next to a huge Colombian guy who shared shots of Aguadiente with me (typical Colombian spirit, similar to sambuca) and got zero sleep, arriving 7 hours later in a thunderstorm to my destination, unharmed with my belongings intact. Big relief.

Sugar cane seller, with a pimped out handmade, wooden processing machine.

Cali Plaza. This is the court house I think. Cali was the first big city I got to in Colombia and was great. It has a real Latin-American feel to it. Its hot. 3rd biggest city in Colombia. Since being in Colombia, there are very few white tourists, especially compared to the gringo trail of Peru and Bolivia. People stop and stare in the supermarket.
The night after I survived the 'guaranteed to be robbed bus', a girl I was with in the hostel bar got a call from her friend. Her friend was on the night bus that evening. 3 men got up half way through the journey, pulled out guns and started shooting. They through the driver on the floor and took over control of the bus. They told everyone to start getting anything valuable out. They then cocked up, missed the turning they wanted to take and panicked, so ditched the bus, shot out the tires and ran away in the middle of the night. Nice.

I had some good nights out in Cali, although generally fairly embarrassing due to Cali being the home of Colombian Salsa dancing, and my dancing skills being similar to my astrophysics knowledge.

The fruits in Colombia are incredible. Loads of new tropical fruits I have never seen before, most of them delicious. On virtually every corner there is fresh chopped fruit for sale for next to nothing, mostly pineapple, watermelon and oranges.
For breakfast every morning I have 2 or 3 large chopped bananas with some granola, or a whole pineapple, although that starts to sting the mouth towards the end. Bananas cost 3p each, whole pineapples about 30p.

I took this photo through some railings outside the Military museum in Bogota. In case you cannot read what it says on that little helicopter that looks like it is made of Mechano, it says 'Presidential Helicopter'. Not quite Air Force One...

Bogota, lots of 'nice' looking building and architecture if that is what you are into.

Gold shell, in the gold museum, Bogota. I went here because lots of people said there was some good stuff in there, and it was free to get in. It was OK, but dragged on a bit. Only so much gold you can look at... I then made the mistake of guilting myself into visiting another museum the next day, as I thought that was what I should do as I was in a city full of 'interesting' museums. Big mistake, and I remembered why museums have no interest to me, especially when everything is written in Spanish. No more museums.

As you can see, I picked a cracking day to go up the cable car to a viewpoint of Bogota. No idea why I thought the cloud and following rain would be nice, but it turned out I wasn't the only idiot up there.

Not sure what this is all about... Apart from the baby clutching the large penis, Colombians don't seem to bother taking down Christmas decorations. Everywhere I have been I have seen them left up, in mid September. If the Daily Mail got wind of this there would be headlines for weeks.

Coming back down from the 'viewpoint' on the miserable Sunday afternoon, I saw this beast cruising through Bogota.

Unleashing water cannons on seemingly innocent random people following a student protest about 25 minutes before.

In come the riot police. These are the first police/security people I have seen in Colombia without guns.

I took a day trip to a nice sleepy town out in the hills 'near' to Bogota. My friend Cedrik had to be back for a flight the next day so we decided to leave early and just go for the day. As usual, the bus took far longer than thought. 5 hours there, 4 back. We wandered around for a little bit, had an good lunch, and a few beers in the largest plaza in South America as seen above. It was pretty big.
On the way back, I realized it was similar to taking the bus to Liverpool for the day to have lunch and a beer and coming home...

Typical Colombian breakfast of Arepa (flavour-less maize? based pancake thing, grilled) with scrambled eggs and fresh juice. This juice looks like thick milk, but is pretty good. Called Guyavana I think. All cost £1.

Woman loading up her donkey in the middle of Bogota, close to the financial centre. Very South America.

Thanks to drug laws, anything being posted abroad has more administration connected to it than could be imagined. To send two letters, one to Marshall in Canada (headphones broke, the world may as well end) and one to my Grandparents in England, I needed to get 3 photocopies of my passport and fill out 4 forms. The forms were all in Spanish (obviously) so I managed to cock them up and have to fill them all in again. Time spent in post office for two letters: 50 minutes.

Parking is $47 a minute in Bogota. This is due to the exchange rate being $2800COP (colombian pesos) to the pound. Everytime you go out you have a fat wadge of notes in your pocket. The novelty soon wares off.

Currently my favorite fruit. Pitahaya

My new phone. £7.50 with charger and sim. I had to get this so I had a Colombian phone number for my Puerto Rico visa. Its a real drag carrying it around so think I will get rid of it again.

Salento, in the coffee region. This place is absolutely awesome, amazing scenery and great coffee for dirt cheap. I stayed on a coffee plantation for a few days.

Every security guard has a gun in Colombia and Ecuador. This guy is protecting a tiny pharmacy, 2 doors down from the police station in the small sleepy village plaza. Is a shotgun really necessary?

The plaza. The jeeps are the taxis as when it rains, all the dirt roads turn into swamps.

Typical looking local, minus the woven poncho.

The plantation I stayed on was owned by this eccentric old British guy who had married a Colombian and bought a coffee farm some years ago. He was exactly like Richard Attenborough in Jurassic Park.

I didn't know that pineapples grew on little bushes like this.

Coffee beans just picked

Scenery 30 seconds from my room.

Sunset from my room

I got a ride in a jeep at first light at 5.45 to get to a reserve about half an hour away and go for a run. 10k in hilly, muddy terrain probably wasn't the best after 2 months of zero cardio.
This guy above is carrying fresh milk on horses to god knows where.