Colombia

This years winter escape brings Nick and I to Colombia. Mostly to the northern/Caribbean part.
First, a brief sun scorched couple days in Bogota to visit our friend Chris (who's been teaching English in Bogota for a couple years now).

We we're caught without our sunscreen when we went for a walk in the park and we paid for it. Lesson: at high altitude (Bogota is 1.5 miles high), the sun is very intense and you burn easily :)



Although only 7.3 million people (vs. Shanghai at 20 mil, Bangkok 10 mil), it sure looked and felt like a massive city. Thank goodness they've got a great bus system (best i've ever seen), which has reduced traffic to a more sane level (I can't imagine what it was like before the new TransMileneo bus system).



Made a quick stop in for a peep of the Bortero museum. Quite a hoot actually.



A quick flight up to Santa Marta, we shot straight for the sleepy fishing village of Taganga. Of course now more touristy, it was still a great escape from traffic/city craziness.
After a poor decision to stay in an over-priced room directly beneath the speakers of an outdoor bar/club,

we found a GREAT room perched right above the water (the white building all the way on the right)

with a hammock looking right over the beach....ahhhh, perfect!



Having stayed in plenty of hostels before, I knew this was just what I was looking for and we stayed for longer than anticipated. A benefit of not planning ahead ;)

These street-side arepas (grilled cornbread filled with cheese, and sauces) were pretty good,

but our favorite restaurant was this pizza place that was basically the front stoop of this guy's house, composed of a prep table he'd built himself, a pizza oven, and some chairs scattered about the rubble between his place and the street. He had opened the joint 4 days before we sat down.



With our sights set north to the Tayrona national park, we were looking to take a boat ride vs.the more circuitous taxi-bus-hike into the park. After 3 days of bartering--really--I got the guy down to the price someone of my skin color and Spanish skills would be proud of: the same price some Argentinian chicks I met got on their first pass!
Just how it is when you travel as a Gringo, off the beaten track, in a developing country. The price game...

And it was odd, Colombia turned out to be a very popular place for Argentine travelers, up north for their summer holidays. We met heaps,


So after a VERY bumpy 60min ride along the coast, we arrived at Cabo de San Juan, something of a backpacker's commune set amidst a remote national park paradise beach. Totally worth the spine crunching, ass numbing trip.


Remote as it was, the accommodations were, well, minimal...You could bring your tent,

or sleep in a hammock....CRAMMED in with others RIGHT up next to you (no swinging allowed ;).....

So, between the intimate hammock accommodations, the mosquitoes, and the farm animals lingering around, there no was sleep to be had...although I did find myself laughing at like 3am at how funny a situation it was when one of the pigs started squealing at full blast right near where we were all just hangin out....

But it was totally worth it to be around these remote beaches:





where supplies were brought in by donkey,

and you had to hike 3 hours to get out to the main road to catch the bus back to town.

South-west to Cartagena, a Caribbean city with narrow streets and an old-world charm, kinda like that of Sevilla, Spain.





Apparently emeralds are Colombia's foot into the world of jewelry, evident by the swath of shops in old-town Cartagena. We bought a couple pieces to adorn some fingers back home.


Lastly, we made our way out to La Playa Blanca (the white beach) for yet another Vitamin D infusion.



A difficult haggle of a boat ride away, the picturesque beach spanned only about a mile, inhabitied by a few loosly assembled dwellings. And for backpackers, again hammocks or tents (what more do you need? you're on a beach!):


The kitchen from which Nick and I feasted on fresh seafood,


keeping the bugs off the fruit,

Everyday an injection of day-trippers between 10am and 4pm spoiled the otherwise serene setting with the typical tourist driven fare provided by a transient host of locals from a nearby village 2 hours away. Jewelry, massages, fruit, local deserts, shrimp, lobster,
fresh coconut,

and oysters (I tried a few, my first ever),

A 360 of a spot we hung out in for a while...ah, to relax....