Category: Colombia

Day Thirty-Two – Bogotá, Colombia

I have arrived in Bogotá, which is a sprawling 1,775 square-kilometres of high-altitude, stinking garbage and wasted concrete, and also the capital city of Colombia.

I said goodbye to Leonie in Medellín, having spent a week wandering around the city with her. She was heading north to the Caribbean coast to check out the carnival in Barranquilla. On our last night together in Medellín, we attended the Colombian cup final to watch the local Atlético Nacional face up against Bogotá’s Millonarios. The atmosphere in the stadium was quite volcanic, with manic chanting, fire works, and a percussion-band rattling on throughout the duration of the game. Some quality goals were scored. However, for some reason there were no away fans (to prevent some sort of hideous riot I presume), and so when the Bogotá team won the cup, the air around the 45,000 capacity stadium was thoroughly underwhelming. No beers were served after half time either, which was disappointing, as I had felt like getting a little rowdy.

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Day Twenty-Seven – Medellín, Colombia

I took the morning bus back to Medellín. A fascinating city with a dark past but bright future, Medellín is a brilliant destination nestled in the verdant mountains of Antioquia. Whilst two decades ago it was regarded as the most dangerous metropolis in the world, it is now considered one of the safest and most innovative in Latin America.

The city sits in a vast and deep valley, with the buildings seeming to spill down from the surrounding mountains. It is as if some greater being dropped a city from the sky and parts of it ricocheted upon collision, travelling up the mountainsides with a concrete splash.

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Day Twenty-Five – Guatapé, Colombia

I left Salento exceptionally hungover on the 10am bus to Medellín. The journey took around eight hours and was incredibly scenic, the bus twisting and turning along the mountainous terrain, hugging a wide brown river that tore through the valleys.

The night before I had met up with a friend from back in Swansea, who was out in Colombia to visit his native girlfriend. They came over to Salento for a few days and we visited a local coffee farm together and then drank far too much aguardiente (the menacing local booze) in the town square the night before I was to leave for Medellín.

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Day Sixteen – Santa Marta, Colombia

I have arrived back from La Ciudad Perdida, exhausted and covered in blisters.

I picked my bag up from the previous hostel in Taganga and then moved over the mountain into Santa Marta, where there is a nearby airport for the next leg of my journey.

The group of people I completed the trek with were all a great bunch of individuals. There were Mark and Diane, a Canadian couple in their late-fifties, who own and run a large cattle farm in the grizzly-riddled Canadian wilderness. There was Phillippe, a sixty year-old French chap who runs a fish restaurant in Switzerland, and is able to spend half of the year travelling, and the other half working. Such is his knowledge of food and the area of Switzerland he resides in, that if you felt inclined to eat dog (as supposedly the malnourished Swiss did during the war, some of whom apparently never lost their taste for a bit of cooked pooch), he can “get you some dog”. There were also Laura and David, a German-Swiss couple, Andreas, a German estate-agent, Chantel, a Dutch software designer, and Emilio, an Italian whose profession I did not learn.

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Day Eleven – Taganga, Colombia

I am growing quite sick of this town. I have been here six days now, in the same hostel throughout, and would have left long ago were it not for the places of interest in relatively close proximity.

In what seems like a miracle, the power went out across the area for a few hours today, ridding me finally of the nauseating Soca music that emanates offensively from every bar and restaurant in the town, culminating together in a hideous soup of monotonous Hispanic drivel.

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A Boat Trip, Part II – Tayrona, Colombia

We arrived in calm waters to a tranquil bay with much fewer people around. As we awkwardly disembarked into the shallows, we were instructed to rendezvous back at the same spot at 4pm to begin the return journey.

I walked along the beach until I found a fallen tree to perch myself upon and remove my flip-flops, replacing them with the walking boots I had tied to the back of my rucksack. Lifting myself up, I took a conservative swig of water and entered the thick jungle that stood hauntingly behind the beach like some timeless and mystical realm of unknown wonders.

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A Boat Trip, Part I – Tayrona, Colombia

Today has been a long and strenuous day.

I wake up at quarter-to-six as I have organised to go over to Tayrona National Park by bus at seven. Having already coughed up the cash, I am then told that there is no space on the bus. At least I think I am. I am told something anyway, and soon find myself on the back of a moped, hurtling down towards the shoreline. I am going to go by boat, and for only 10,000COP (£2.60) extra.

There is a large group of us heading to Tayrona, all of them but myself Colombian or of some other Hispanic nationality. After observing some gigantic pelicans bothering the fishermen on the beach, we are ushered onto a small boat and shortly thereafter begin pulling out of the calm bay.

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Day Five – Taganga, Colombia

I woke up to the sound of the Canadian leaving the room, and felt inclined to ask him why he had a harpoon gun nestled under his arm. He was hunting parrot fish. I wonder how long it will take me to come across somebody with a harpoon gun who isn’t hunting parrot fish. Based on my primary analysis of this town, I doubt it’ll be too long. There is almost certainly a good reason why the only ATM in this pit is right next door to the police station, and why all of the police officers here wear body armour, designed, I assume, to withstand harpoons.

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