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Hello (again belated)! I apologize, yet again, for my inability to be responsible with this blog at the moment. I will correct this behavior starting this week, I promise. The good news is that the family that normally gets worried about our posting deadlines knows that we have been here in Cali, largely because G was with us only a few weeks ago!

G joined us in Colombia, which had been dangerously close to being on the list of countries she hadn’t been able to visit while we are on this trip. Good news is since we have been spending the majority of our trip thus far in this country, she had ample opportunity to correct this slight blemish on her travel dedication record.

G arrived after a seriously long plane ride (purchased nearly entirely using airline miles… so amazing!) and she immediately informed me that she was up for whatever we wanted to do, since I had required her to have no plans except celebrating my 29th birthday on the 29th of April with me. This was fantastic news, as conveniently H and I had just spent the previous evening at a dance party at my boyfriend‘s house, and were operating on very little sleep (and still in our salsa dresses when we arrived at the airport to collect G). We rested and ate pizza.

We also introduced our sister (and her fantastic treats that she had brought all the way from the States with her… cheese, epic chocolates, jalapeno cheetos, and fake meat!!!) to our fantastic roommates and decided to take a trip to the nearby hostel pool that we had been unable to locate before.

It was very pleasant. We spent the late afternoon, just us five girls with a pool, fries, & tropical smoothies.

But since we only had a week to work with, we packed up our bags and headed to the Caribbean coast. Flights with VivaColombia had been silly cheap so we paid only 160,000 pesos a piece round trip, both less time and less money than the busing option. We arrived in Santa Marta, and returned to the hostel where we tended the bar in October. We found that things have gotten more expensive across the entire Caribbean since we were there only 6 months ago… our hostel went from 17,000 a night to 25,000! Colombia is becoming less and less of a backpackers’ location, even in the short time that we have been here!

But it is still worth it all, even according to our stowaway, Ernesto! F had craftily sent the fun-loving Ernesto in G’s carry-on when they met up at LAX for her layover. You see, Ernesto has been sneaking into my luggage (and then back into F’s possession) since my first trip abroad. And he was the perfect stand-in for celebrating my golden birthday!

So not only did he join us in relaxing by the pool, but on our unexpected long hike into Parque Tayrona via Pueblito,

and then later to chilling on the beach at sunset,

and generally enjoying the scenery that Tayrona has to offer.

Since this was our second trip to our favorite park, we knew all the secret inexpensive camping spots, amazing chocolate bread, the most beautiful beaches, and the slightly dangerous bouldering path down into the park from Pueblito. What I didn’t know was how long all of this was going to take… because in general we have an abundance of time and no real concept of it passing. So… the hiking in and out was a bit more than expected.

But I am going to speak for all of us and say it was absolutely worth it! Hands down, Parque Tayrona is the best place I have visited in Colombia! Even if I was having such a severe skin reaction (to something, but we still have no idea) that I was covered in fairly horrific red welts from my hairline to my toes. We left the park earlier than I had planned to deal with this rather awkward monster-looking situation only to find that the doctors were closed because it was a national holiday.

So we moved on to Cartagena, possibly the most romantic city I have ever come across. We survived the sweltering heat and rambled through the colonial city and along the walls, taking breaks in the shade to enjoy the breeze.

We swam, explored, and visited friends from our first visit here in September. My skin cleared up, and all the locals we asked were quite sure I had eaten some bad shellfish, even though I assured them I am vegetarian. So maybe the horror was all just a bad allergic reaction…

Then all too soon we had a flight back to Cali where we had to take G out for adventures with salsa, running around a local water park with slides and a wave pool, and enjoying the flowers.

I am older, possibly wiser, and definitely getting to the point in our trip when I am seriously considering what it is we are doing, what I want and don’t want in my life, and how much I absolutely love to bake! We all miss our family and friend time, and we are actually setting a date to have everyone come meet up with us in Peru now. So please know that we do think of you all, even if I am not blogging; that I do want to have direction and a plan; and that I would love to see anyone who can take time to come down to visit when we have dates (looking towards October-ish time).

Tags: Cali, Cartagena, Colombia, late... but not dead, Parque Tayrona, Santa Marta, travel blog

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Categories Colombia, Our Travel Stories
Author R:

Romancing the Stone does take place in Cartagena

28 Sep

We fell in love with/in Cartagena my friends. I am not sure if I can truly convey all of the magic that is trapped up in between the walls of the old city there, but I will do my best to at least give you a glimpse of what I am talking about.

In order to even get to Cartagena we had to first cross a large portion of the Caribbean coast of Colombia. People, this country is huge. So large, in fact, that getting from our little hidden cove by the border with Panama half way across the coast to where Cartagena is nestled took us an entire day. We had started out as a group of 7 (3 English, 2 Spanish, and 2 Americans) and then we slowly lost more and more people along the way. We made a valiant effort to hitch a ride for the last leg to the city, but with no luck. We did gather a whole grip of local people around us who were all very confused as to what exactly we were up to.

In the end, we turned up at a hostel randomly recommended to us by our taxi driver (the buses had taken us so long that by the time we arrived the local city buses were no longer running) in the middle of the red light district, Getsamani. As humorous as it may have been, this was not a judgement on our character but rather where all of the backpackers stay due to the lower cost of accommodation. Backpackers are all a little whore-ish when it comes right down to it… Conveniently, this neighborhood is also where all of the salsa bars were, 2 blocks away from our hostel, Mama Waldy.

Mama Waldy’s happens to be not only the least expensive hostel in town (since they have only been open since the first of the year) but also an adorable little family’s home where the mother cooks breakfast for everyone each day, there is fresh juices available in the afternoons when it is too hot to be outside, and they loan their bikes out to guests at no charge. The family itself is wonderful and definitely claimed a bit of our hearts.

We spent most of our time inside the old walls of Cartagena, where we rambled through streets lined with beautiful restored colonial buildings and small corner parks. The locals were excellent company, pointing out their favorite foods at the local bakery or sweet shops, offering cups of tinto (Colombia’s coffee of choice: a rich, strong, coffee-flavored sugar drink) or juice, singing by the local arts university, playing trumpet from old balconies at sunset, and often asking tourists how they can make their city better for visitors. There is beautiful graffiti on many of the unrestored walls and buildings sitting perfectly next to hanging plants from the renovated building next door. The most common way to refer to one another, whether arguing in public or just meeting someone, is mi amor and whether they mean it or not it gives an air of romance to their speech.

Colombians are hopelessly romantic. They frequently will play or sing songs we may have heard a hundred times, but insist we truly listen to the lyrics (and once you do, it does make quite the difference). They will be excited by a certain song and take up the nearest partner to salsa across the floor (it doesn’t matter if you are at home, in the street, or in a club). We talked about love and commitment as easily as we discussed the weather, and all of our Colombian friends were genuinely interested in open discussions on racism and culture. We were invited up for a cup of coffee to a local musician’s house where we sipped our drinks in an old theater while he serenaded us with his most recent songs for an upcoming concert in Medellin as the sun slowly set behind his shoulder.

Our time in the city was spent visiting the same adorable gang member serving fried cheese fingers twice a day, relaxing in the park with fresh fruit, swimming at the nearby beaches, discussing art and photography in the evenings, strolling about town while H captured the magic with her camera, salsa music and lessons at the hostel at night, a perfect date that ended with gentle goodnight kiss in an old stairwell, quite a few bottles of rum, sweating in the day so much I was unsure my body could ever hold that much water, being caught in an epic street-flooding deluge, sunsets over the Caribbean, and often laughing into the evening.

However, I did not get much sleep. At all, really. Something about the heat and the energy of the city would conspire to keep me restless at night, and we couldn’t stay in bed past 9 am once the city started to heat up again. So after 5 days we packed up and headed toward Tayrona national park, knowing that if we didn’t move on we may never have been able to leave the city. And it is breathtaking in Tayrona. So perfect we actually considered taking the hostel owner up on his offer to let us live there indefinitely!