Caribbean Coast

and again...one of those coastal buses which lavishly blow freezing temperatures right in your face. no escape and pure bliss. at least for the first 30min. when the nose starts to get blue and your fingers get rigid, you almost yearn for the unbearable heat of the caribbean coast.

when we finally made it to santa marta, we planned our trip to parque nacional tayrona.

the hike to the national park is about 3 hours and we made it to cabo san juan del guia, were soaked and with sweat dropping off our foreheads. and it was totally worth it. it was the most breathtaking and most amazing thing I have seen in my entire life. not just the boulders rising above the turquoise water, but also the deserted beaches that just look like paradise on a postcard.

we stayed there for a night, sleeping in hammocks and woke up in the middle of the night because of a caribbean thunderstorm. try falling asleep with rain whipping in your face. not that easy.

we took the boat back to taganga and a bus further to santa marta the next morning.

besides all the wonderful little sights on the colombian coast, we also saw a lot of poverty and the terrible sight of kids sleeping on the street is just heart breaking. no matter what country you are in.. even if you put your water bottle aside of the sleeping kid, you feel helpless...and just like in other countries.. this is a city and all walk past and let it become just one of the day's memories that you try not to remember.

the next day we made it back to cartagena where we we stayed another night and then took the bus to tolú, a sleepy little fisher village right on the coast. we were pretty much the only tourists in town who weren't from colombia. we drank fresh juice, ate arepas con queso and did pretty much nothing the whole day besides being at the beach.

The next day we took a tour to the archipiélago de san bernardo... and again... the caribbean storm hit us the minute we arrived there, but just lasted a couple minutes (yes, still enough that my clothes didn't dry until the next day). but the sun came back relentlessly and we could dip in the caribbeans for another hour or so.

now we are back again in cartagena and hope we finally make our way to playa blanca tomorrow to spend the last couple days at the beach and then fly back to BOG on the 1st of october...

pictures colombia II

Cuenca - Bogotá - Medellín

After three weeks in Montañita, we went further south to Cuenca.. Beautiful little town and the capital of the Azuay Province...We stayed there for 4 nights and finally saw the sun for a couple hours. It's called the grandfather of Ecuador, with great colonial architecture and cobbled streets to walk round in.
The hostel was great with a little backyard and we had a great time together. We celebrated my birthday with sweet cake, sweeter sparkling wine and the sweetest presents. (Si, mi corazón vibra por ti. haha)...

After Cuenca we took our flight from Guayaquil to Bogotá with a bad start since someone stole Nora's rainjacket our of her backpack..
Besides that Bogotá seems safe during the day. Well, at least until sunset.
First of all you can't just flag down a cab since Scopolamine, Burundanga and other “knock out” or incapacitating drugs are used by criminals to drug and rob unwary victims.. Second night in Bogotá and we met a Colombian who ended up somewhere in the south of the city, not knowing what happened to him in the past 6 hours. The only thing he knew was that he got robbed and that they took everything.

So we are standing there trying to catch a cab to bring us to our hostel and no one wants to take us... Empty cabs just pass by and as soon as they hear our address, they refuse to take us there.
Also the nearby cafè refuses to call us a cab, so we end up flagging down a cab and the first taxidriver throws us our of his cab because we wanted to see his license (apperently it's a must for them to make them visible for everyone). Finally someone takes us and after he almost gets into a fist fight with another taxidriver who called him "a horse", we arrive safely at our hostel while releasing lots of stress hormones during the whole ride...
Since then Nora kept her little knife in her sock and we took the bus the next morning to Medellín.

We arrived in the biggest gringo hostel in town and end up sleeping in a dorm with an australian guy who is snorting cocaine 24/7... Afterwards he talks a lot of bullshit. A LOT! He keeps telling us that he is 33 and did everything in his life besides cocaine and will probably never do it again as soon as he is back in Australia (yeah right!). And he is super rich and is collecting cars back at home (who gives a fuck).
So he sits there, totally drugged on his bed in our dorm with his laptop until we come home from meeting up with some people after a couple hours and I still don't get it.. I have no clue why people are traveling to the end of the world and end up seeing the country through the blurry visions of drugs. I don't mind if you smoke up or have some happy cake, but snorting three lines in a couple minutes to sit all by yourself in a dorm while being hopped up on drugs and having nose bleeding from all the cocaine you just did?
Apparently for some people it can be fun to add a little excitement to their nights out in town but as an everyday thing it can make you a really obnoxious bastard I guess. Coke users tend to feel themselves as superior to everyone else around them and so it’s not really a drug with great personality...
I don't want to be a moralizer, but if he continues with his tripping out on drugs and bullshit talk, I will let him know how annoying he is.

Besides that, I'm looking forward to see more of the city. We met some friends of a friend of Nora who showed us some parts of the city and showed us how you don't die while crossing the street. This is one of the few countries in the world where people look actually scared before they cross the road. I read the panic in their faces and wonder why no one is selling pedestrian crossing insurance...

Besides that..never say anything bad about Medellin to a local here. They think it’s paradise on earth... but one wonders how so much violence and crime could exist in Eden. But then, every Paradise has it’s flaws.