Colombia

“Ladies and gentlement, I am delighted to announce that we are flying to New York today”. It’s five o’clock in the afternoon, and the air hostess’s message is met with somewhat sarcastic but very much relieved clapping and cheering, as we had been waiting to depart since 10 o’clock that morning. Some indistinct technical issue with the brakes was eventually solved by flying in a miraculous rivet from London and we were finally allowed to go. Weary from waiting in slots of “we should know more in ten minutes” and “we’ll be back to you shortly” but all the more comforted by the thought that we were going to cross the Atlantic after all that day, the crowd shuffled around gate 301 in the by now completely deserted departure lounge. Oh no, wait. It’s six o’clock by now. The Delta staff would exceed their legally maximum of continuous working hours if we were still to leave. Flight cancelled. Please go home and come back tomorrow. We should be leaving around noon. Never mind your hotel booking in Bogota, or your booked and paid for domestic flight to the Caribbean coast. And unfortunately all hotels in Dublin are booked, so we can’t offer you a night’s lodging either. Gaelic football game tomorrow at Croke Park, you know. Hugely popular with the Irish, they flock to Dublin from all over the island. Well, see you tomorrow. And do keep you taxi receipts.

Such was the start of our three week adventure. Ill boded one might say. A day lost, that’s for sure. But now, having returned from a dynamic, memorable and above all most rewarding backpacking adventure in Colombia, I am happy to conclude that the first day of our holidays was by far the worst one. Oh well, perhaps the drive from Pereira to Neiva was the worst day. But more of that later. Let’s not rattle off the slides of the past weeks in chronological order, as this blog post is already long enough as it is. The well-tried approach of capturing different events by topic should pose a more palatable reading. What shall we start with? Food? Sure, why not, food it is!

Food

I had been warned beforehand that one should not be allured by Spanish or, more broadly, Mediterranean food, as an indicator of what to expect of the Colombian cuisine. Colombian food was supposed to be plain, unseasoned and without much variety. After three weeks in the country I can conclude that this rather drab portrayal pretty much fits the bill. Almost every meal features either rice or arepa, or, more frequently, both. Road-sided eateries display signs indicating they serve arroz con pollo, which also happens to be the specialty of many a hotel chef. It is therefore all the more ironic that the best chicken with rice that I got to enjoy over the past weeks was served on the cross-Atlantic flight from NY to Paris, while I wasn’t even hungry. On a more positive note, the absence of a rich national cuisine implies that it is the traveller’s prerogative to order whatever imported dish he or she craves at that moment, without being haunted by a conscience that insists that you should explore all the culinary richnesses a new culture has to offer. And so it was Thai curries, Western-style granola with yoghurt and North American (still American, eh?) burgers whenever we had the chance. Which still implied we had a lot of rice. With chicken. And arepas.

A few outstanding winners deserve mentioning however. First of all there is the mixed grill for two, served with a bottle of decent red wine, in a tastefully designed restaurant in Getsemani (Cartagena). A great selection of superb beef, sausages and pork made for a much relished food experience, especially since we had just returned from four days in the rain forest, with all the dietary implications you can imagine. Another winner, also from Getsemani, and a few ranks lower on the budget ladder, was the hugely tasty burger we bought from a street vendor at our favourite square in the neighbourhood. Along with a cold beer from the convenience store across the road, this meal earns a well deserved second place in the rankings of food experiences in Colombia. And to be fair to the Colombians, they do a good job with all the fresh fruits they produce and serve with every meal. Except for the road-side vendor who sprinkled his slices of mango with salt. Not good, especially when his clients are left in the unknown until their first bite.

Cities

“To get here, you’ll have to pass through Neiva, the hot sleepy capital of the Huila department. There’s nothing in Neiva of interest”. As per the Lonely Planet guidebook, which proved again to be an indispensible wealth of information and an absolute prerequisite to explore this new country. However, even the LP has it wrong at times (refer to our Goris experience in Armenia) as Neiva turned out to be one of my favourite cities in Colombia. One has to admit that the higher the expectations, the more difficult it is for a place to live up to it. And irreversibly, the opposite holds true as well, as we expected Neiva to be a conglomeration of buildings not to be lingered in. Well, truth is, we scheduled an additional day and night in Neiva on our way back from the desert, at the expense of Bogota (Bogota turned out to suck anyway, see below), that’s how much we liked it! In Neiva there are no hostels, a handful of hotels that cater mainly to Colombian business travellers, no particular sights of interest, nobody speaks English and thus, blissfully, no tourists. We didn’t spot a single backpacker in town. But what a hidden gem! The streets were full of people from early morning until about nine in the evening, with street vendors selling all sorts of stuff, market places packed with people, shop-lined squares buzzing with life and countless places to chill out with a coffee or a cold beer. On our second visit to Neiva in two days we roamed the city centre, ate a whole chicken straight from grill in a random restaurant next to a mechanic shop specialising in motors (they hadn’t bothered to put up a wall in between which made for the interesting mixed scent of grilled chicken and engine lube), and bought loads of new clothing. Boarding a bus at random in an effort to get to the bus terminal by public transport got us a scenic ride through the suburbs, which gave me the impression that the inhabitants of Neiva (and most urban Colombians) were rather well off, with neat, well maintained houses lined up close to the road. Neiva was a surprise in a nice way, defeating sombre expectations, and as such being quite the opposite of Colombia’s capital.

From reaching the outsets of Bogota it took at least another two hours to reach our final destination for the day, which was a lovely hostel in one of the safer neighbourhoods. A city roughly the size of London, Bogota desperately lacks proper public transport, as it fully relies on taxis and buses to get people from A to B. No trams, no trains, and, astonishingly, no metro. The “Trans millennium” bus system that was put in place to improve the city’s dire infrastructure is no doubt an improvement, yet the half a million people who use the system on a daily basis on top of its capacity make that a ride on one of these units isn’t for the claustrophobic. Apart from the struggle to get around, Bogota is cold, wet, grey and dangerous in all but a few places. After three weeks of warm and adventurous bliss, I was delighted that we had cut short our time in the capital, and was very much relieved to leave the place shortly after we had arrived.

From the depths of despair in Bogota we make another swing up to one of the country’s finer places. Explicitly heralded by the LP as Colombia’s highlight, Cartagena lived up to my high expectations. While the walled old town is pretty with all its Spanish-style balconies and alleys (it made me think a bit of Seville), and the skyline of the “new city” is visible from the centuries-old walls, the real winner to me was Getsemani, an equally old but less fancy neighbourhood bordering the walled centre. Getsemani is on the rise, with many a hip restaurant or cool bar having only recently opened its doors, combining the colonial architectural charm with the opportunities that come with a part of the city that was until recently perceived as somewhat edgy and a no-go area after dark. Nowadays more and more backpackers leave the walled city for what it is, and gather in the cheaper hostels and price-quality superior eateries here. The street vendors here aren’t selling touristy tat but rather push barrows full of bananas down the street, and among the small businesses in the narrow streets you find tailors and carpenters instead of the inner-town museums and luxurious hotels. Cheap, cheerful and upcoming, Getsemani was an absolute winner.

Fear

Irrevocably backpacking through South America leaves you in situations in which you’re worried if not scared if not fearing for your life. Well, overall the whole safety-experience was rather positive, but I wouldn’t want to withhold my top 3 of scariest moments from you.

1.    The bus ride from Armenia to Neiva. We had heard stories about buses in Latin America falling off cliffs due to mudslides and poor roads. Well, in this instance the roads were perfectly fine and there were no mudslides or avalanches to be seen. Our bus driver however would be a lethal participant in any morbid, road-staged play, as he drove our van as crazily as I’m said to ride my bike through Dublin city centre. This man took over any vehicle in front of him, regardless of whether we approached a turn in the road without visibility or if he would be able to gather enough speed to be back on his own lane in time. The first three hours of the journey featured quite a climb (and descend), as we had to cross a streak of the Andes that saw us exceed altitude levels of 3,200 meters. While going up was quite scary already (as any initially invisible, descending trucks wouldn’t have a lot of leeway breaking if they found our van on their side of the road), the speed with which we raced down was simply nauseous. Reaching the flat plains east of the Andes left us initially complacent at having crossed the mountains alive, however the fun wasn’t over yet with plenty of new lethal dangers to be exposed to on flat terrain. Seven hours of horror later I came to appreciate the small things in life again, having reaching Neiva in one piece. Now I understand why domestic flights are so popular in Colombia.

2.    Thunder and lightning in the Sierra Nevada. While our hike had commenced that afternoon with a bleak sun and the odd cloud in the sky, at around 3 pm hell broke loose. The lashing rain turned the red, sun-dried clay into an avalanche of slippery, ankle-deep mud and after an hour everything but the stuff in my dry-bag was soaked. While this was all part of the experience, the cracking thunder and blinding lighting raging straight above us wasn’t so much enjoyed. The voice in my head recalling that you should be indoors when there’s a thunderstorm grew more and more desperate, and especially the parts of the route where we had to cross bare mountaintops without trees for cover and nothing but a fence with barbed wire on our side to distract the lightning were quite scary. Rephrase, very scary.

3.  Bogota. I wouldn’t describe the prickling feeling in your neck or the involuntary quivers as an altogether fearsome experience, yet Bogota isn’t the place to feel at ease. A worthy number three.

Nature

Wow! Colombia combines some of the coolest and most diverse landscapes you can imagine in a single country. From bone-dry deserts to lush green and moist Caribbean coasts to snow-covered Andean peaks; Colombia has it all. And it was up to us to explore all of these treasures in a three week window.

One of the absolute highlights of the trip –come to think of it, perhaps the highlight – was our four day trek through the Sierra Nevada rain forest, back and forth to Ciudad Perdida, aka the lost city. While our destination was kind of cool, being a (way) less spectacular version of Machu Picchu, the trip was really about getting there. The remnants of what was once a thriving civilisation can only be reached on foot (or by helicopter, as that’s how the Colombian military get their soldiers in), and involves wading through rivers, climbing rocks and a lot of hiking through dense rain forest. This is my thing. I got to walk from early morning to late afternoon, gazing at valleys full of lush green tropical forest, jumping from rock to rock crossing rivers, breathing the thick, moist air… eating, sleeping and hiking through the most magical of landscapes; what more can you wish for? Being in the middle of nowhere we went to sleep not long after dark (around 8pm) and woke up as the sun was about to rise (5am), took cold showers or bathed in the river, and ate the fruits and food that the mules carried for us. The Sierra Nevada made a lasting impression on me and definitely ranks among the cooler landscapes I have been privileged to experience close hand.

It was around noon and the temperature had risen to well above 40 C. At least, going by Bo’s once-solid stick of sunscreen that was now melting, and the water in our bottles that was getting hot (not warm, hot), it must have been that warm. The Tatacoa desert is very close to the equator and as such I didn’t have any shadow beyond what was straight beneath me, and, for that matter, there was no shadow at all to be found except for the roofed viewpoint that we had just reached. Drinking chilled ice-tea and gazing out over a spectacular landscape of red rock formations, parch-dry patches of earth and loads of cactuses, I couldn’t resist the urge to go out and explore. While Bo opted out of the rather mental idea of going for a hike in these conditions, I folded my waterproof scarf around my head to protect me from the sun, filled my water container to the rim, and set off to find a trail that the LP described as the beginning of a 45 minute walk that would eventually bring me back to the main road. I had the time of my life, following what I thought was the trail, inspecting cactuses at close range, marvelling at scenery I wasn’t used to at all, and meanwhile bearing the heat surprisingly well. It was only after an hour or so that my gnawing doubts about the “trail” I was following led me to stop and trace back my steps all the way to where I had started. With the hills, cactuses and dead trees looking all alike and the sun at its peak I didn’t dare rely on my sense of direction, and I was by then quite sure that I wasn’t following the route the LP had talked about. That night I realised a simple wrong interpretation at the beginning of the description had led me astray and that I hadn’t even been close to the described route, yet being in the middle of nowhere with little water left and no phone as a reassuring back-up I somewhat feverishly reversed my steps until the familiar sight of the viewpoint popped up again. The right trail or not, I experienced the desert close hand in an exciting enough way!

People

Lodging

…

The best and the worst of our trip:

·         Coolest city / neighbourhood (1): Getsemani

·         Coolest city / neighbourhood (2): Neiva

·         Worst city: Bogota

·         Favourite pre-historic animal: armadillo

·         Warmest shower: “cold” water in the desert

·         Coldest shower: day 1 in the Sierra Nevada

·         Best driver: bus driver Neiva – Bogota

·         Worst driver: bus driver Armenia – Neiva

·         Person who should never be allowed to drive again: bus driver Armenia – Neiva

·         Best food: Getsemani

·         Best hostel: La Guaca in Santa Marta

·         Ugliest airport: Pereira

·         Coolest dog (1): I-pod

·         Coolest dog (2): Scarface

·         Coolest dog (3): hostel dog in Bogota

·         Most futile two hours: on a boat in Cartagena

·         Coolest bus drive: from Santa Marta airport to the city centre

·         Hottest girl (1): British on the Ciudad Perdida

·         Hottest girl (2): British in La Guaca

·         Best beach: Tayrona National Park

·         Worst weather (1): general climate in Bogota

·         Worst weather (2): downpour in the lost city trek

·         Worst weather (3): surprise storm in Tayrona National Park

·         Highest palm tree: wax palm in Valle de Cocoa

·         Worst mood on a bike: Bo