Crazy Jake

Crazeee Jake

One of the Three Young Americans' most repeated pieces of banter related to an idea that one of them had, to take lots of video clips of them dancing at various locations in the jungle to Jungle Boogie (see how they did that?), which they were going to have to sing to keep time. They had been talking about this incessantly throughout the trek so far, and often singing little snippets of the song, yet by day three they hadn't yet taken one single movie clip; they just kept talking about it. At one point I told them I would be very disappointed if they didn't actually go through with it, after having to put up with listening to them go on about it so much. Jamie had said that he would kill them if they sang it one more time, but he never did. But during the third day, near the top of Ciudad Perdida, they finally took a couple of little clips, though it was still nowhere near enough to fill three minutes or so of the song.

So green

After a couple of hours we stopped at an old traditional mill, which was used to grind grain, much of which would be made into aguardiente, Castro explained. I asked if we would be able to try some, or at least buy some, but he said that they don't bother making it any more because, with the tourist money, the men just get the bus to Santa Marta, where they go drinking in the bars, as well as spending the money on gambling and prostitutes. He moaned about them losing their traditional way of life again for a bit, but it was becoming clear he did not have a very high opinion of the Kogui.

Old mill

The next bit of the trek, he told us, would entail several river crossings. I wasn't looking forward to this bit at all because, although I had been enjoying getting into the rivers and swimming, my new boots were more substantial than most people's footwear so took longer to put on and take off; also I was finding the stones very uncomfortable on my bare feet, which clearly needed hardened up. I really should have been walking around with bare feet as much as possible while I was away to combat this foot sensitivity, but because of flip-flops I probably had bare feet less than at home. I tried one river crossing with flip-flops on, but my remaining pair aren't very easy to keep on in a powerful current, and I had to react fast to stop one from washing away. The shallower parts of the river tended to be rapids of varying intensity, which was fun when swimming, but makes crossing a bit harder. I had to give up on the flip-flops and take every river crossing with bare feet, cursing the whole way across to help cope with the pain. Meanwhile Ali's feet had become so blistered and painful that Castro was carrying her on his back over every crossing.

Start of the steps

Finally after loads of uncomfortable, hassley, river crossings (I think there were nine in quick succession) we reached the infamous 1200 stone steps up to The Lost City. All the way along the route there had been sections paved with large stones, where Castro always stopped to draw our attention to the original piece of Tayrona road. The entire track used to be like that, he explained, but most of the stones have been taken out so that mulas can use it more easily. The higher up we had got, though, the fewer mules we saw and the more original road there was. Castro told us that there is a large network (I think he said thousands of kilometres) of road like this, built over a large area of the north of Colombia, which was the Tayrona kingdom. But now at the steps, it was going to be paved the whole way.

Alex near the top of the steps

Everyone was moaning about how difficult it was going to be, but I was just relieved the lumpy river stones weren't going to be driving into my soles any more. Anyway, climbing steps is much easier than climbing a hill, so I didn't understand why everyone was complaining. Matt suggested we count the steps to check the number was right, but that was the last thing I wanted to do. It was over in a flash and sure enough everyone started to make remarks that it was much easier than they had been expecting and so on.

More steps

As we approached the top of the steps we started to come across some stone walls and stone platforms alongside the steps. It was very different from Machu Picchu in that the stone was really dirty and covered in green moss, whereas Machu Picchu's stones look like they are regularly washed down. Someone since told me that, in fact, Machu Picchu is mostly reconstruction, though they have done a good job of it, whereas this Ciudad Perdida is all original, except that they have removed the overgrown undergrowth. All around though, it's still thick jungle and it really does look like a lost jungle city: it's easy to see why it survived for centuries without being discovered.

Near the top of the Ciudad

I've been asked which I preferred. Well, it's a very different type of ruin to Machu Picchu, but like it, the location is incredible: where Machu Picchu is mountains, Ciudad Perdida is jungle – but it's also in the mountains, though not as spectacularly near the top. The major difference in Cuidad Perdida's favour is the journey. I really love walking, especially up (and down) hills, and the scenery and swimming spots were fantastic. I think the location and the remoteness of Cuidad Perdida edges it in front as far as I'm concerned, though the ruins themselves are more impressive at Machu Picchu (reconstructed though they apparently are). Still, the ruins of Ciudad Perdida are lovely in that all of the impressively done stonework is really old-looking and covered in this nice green fur. Maybe it just reminded me of Glasgow, which is so damp that everything goes green eventually: all the Victorian sandstone buildings have a green tinge to them, no matter what the original colour of the stone. However nice and green, though, the ruins are only platforms on which they built their wooden buildings, of which nothing remains, of course. The scale of the development is really quite impressive though, even though there are no buildings per se, and to wander around the hundreds of old platforms on old stone paths on a mountainside deep in the jungle is amazing.

Green I tell you!

Alex and his halo

Castro pointed out to use that all of the paths were clean, and free from the green fur growing on the platforms, because the Tayrona people were such clever architects that they built all of the paths to be waterways as well, which sounds daft at first, but they are designed so that the water doesn't pool anywhere and just washes down the paths then off the side of the mountain. So not only does it prevent flooding, but it also keeps the paths clean and prevent moss from building up and destroying the stonework, which is part of the reason the site is still in such good condition, he claimed. In some places, there are steps to nowhere, which start off down a very steep hill, then just end. These steps were built just to act as drainage and were not even intended to be walked on. Next Castro pointed at the soldiers who were stationed everywhere and told us that they were there for two reasons: the first was to protect us, the tourists; and the second was to prevent the site from guaqueros.

Holy sapo statue

GREEN!

Next we were taken to our accommodation, which is just off from the main ceremonial platform; a shack with a corrugated steel roof, but perfectly OK for us, since there were mosquito nets. Our group was put on the top floor, where all eleven of us were going to have to squeeze onto seven foam mattresses under one giant mosquito net. I hadn't been having a great sleep on the hammocks we had been given up until then (because we didn't get to tie our own, so I wasn't able to use the skills I learned in the Peruvian jungle), so I was looking forward to a proper sleep.

This is now closed apparently

I was the first to take my luggage up and, when I got there a girl not of our group was already lying down there. I realised immediately it was the one we had come to refer to simply as "crazy girl", who I forget to mention in previous entries. We found her on the first evening, when she asked if she could join us because she had lost her group. She said she had gone for coffee while waiting for her group to leave, but when she returned they had set off without her, meaning that she had to hitch and make her own way. Her group had been at the accommodation at lunch time she said, so she would probably catch up with them the next day and certainly by the top since they would be there for a day and a bit. It sounded a bit odd, but Castro seemed happy enough to feed her. From then she kept popping up on her own, scavenging fruit at the stops or hanging around while we had lunch. By the third day, we had decided that her wild-eyed wanderings and badly mosquito-bitten legs suggested that she had been in the jungle much longer than two days. She had also let slip that her boyfriend worked as a chef at one of the accommodation stations, so with the continued absence of her group, we had become convinced she was a blagger. When I saw her in our sleeping area I told her that she couldn't sleep there because it was for our group, after all eleven people on seven mattresses was already going to be a squash! She got up and went downstairs but later, when some others took their stuff up she was back again. So someone informed Castro and two minutes later, she was putting on her rucksack and heading out into the jungle at dusk. On her own! Castro and the other guides had already been discussing her and had come to the conclusion that she had not paid. And considering how much it costs it really is quite a major blag.

After we had dumped our bags upstairs and showered, it was time to eat. The showers had been cold the first two nights, but up a bit higher where we now were it was freezing. As with every meal so far, it was really good hearty food and there was loads of it. This time I did refuse seconds, because I had to break Castro's perception that I was always going to be the guy who took seconds. Instead, Matt stepped up to the plate.

Castro tells his stories

After food Castro started to tell us lots of things about the Lost City. At this point, several people's Spanish gave out and Alex was called upon to translate. I have to say that my Spanish was still coping, but I don't know how long my concentration would have lasted at that intensity. After a bit he invited us to take a stroll with him to look at the Lost City. I thought he was taking us on a tour, but we just sat down overlooking the ceremonial platform and waited for the TYA to come back from their own wanderings, at which point Matt took over the translation work; all the Americans had really good Spanish, actually, and I was very jealous. I have a suspicion that most of what Castro told us was made up or guess work, because much of it contradicts what was in the guide book and what I've been able to find online. The people had no writing, so a lot of what he was telling us about the culture seemed to me impossible to know in the kind of detail he was telling it. However, he claims that his information comes from Kogui the people who live there now who, according to him but contrary to everyone else it seems, are not descended from the Tayrona people. Castro's claim is that archaeologists came to examine the site and made assumptions about who the people descended from but did not actually speak to them. I couldn't help feel that his belief might be reinforced by the obvious bigotry he felt toward the Kogui, when it simply does not fit with the romantic story he believed about the Tayrona people, who according to him were the most respectful of, and in tune with nature people ever to have lived. He said that the Kogui people were the slaves of the Tayrona, which is why they use slash-and-burn farming method and don't care about nature. He said that the Tayrona died out completely, this huge civilisation, to a man, after some of them brought disease back from meeting Conquistadores at the coast. At this point the slaves escaped and ran away, which is why the city was never discovered.

Ceremonial platform

He told us that the people came from Panama to Colombia, he gave us dates during which the city was built, and he told us a bit about the social structure. This city was just one of many that are dotted around the huge area the civilisation covered, and there are apparently more lost cities in the jungle. The head of each city was a man called the Mama, who was a shaman. The Mama was chosen by selecting three children from the population and putting them in boxes with no food or water, the last one surviving being the winner and next Mama. He said that for a while after they arrived they were just hunter-gatherers, which is pretty unusual for an advanced civilisation capable of architecture, but after they had been settled there for a while they started domesticating potatoes and some animals, however they never cleared unnecessarily large areas of the forest for farming and certainly never burned it down; they remained very much living in the forest. The techniques he described that they used to "micro-clear" the forest sound ridiculous, but he says they obtained acids from some or other plant, which they then applied around the bark of the tree. They would wait months, perhaps reapplying weekly, I can't remember, until the tree was sufficiently eaten into by the acid and then they would push it down. Subtle, yes, but very slow.

Unfortunately I can't now remember much more that he told us, which is a shame since I'm sure he is the only person who would give us that version. We did ask him how he knew so much and he said that, apart from speaking to the locals, he used to be a guaquero with his brother. He then went on to describe in great detail how you go about identifying a good grave to rob and how you do it. Of course you can't do it these days with all the soldiers around. He did say that recently, for his 45th birthday, he and his brother had gone trekking all over the area covered by the civilisation looking for burial sites, for old times' sake, he seemed to be saying; not too worried, obviously, about the fact that it is illegal never mind sacrilegious.

By that time the mosquitoes had already been out of hand for longer than we could tolerate and people started to move back towards the accommodation, so Castro called the meeting adjourned, and we went back for long sleeves and trousers before buying some of the first nice chilled beer of the tour, thanks to the same ice cold water that had made the showers so unpleasant. The beer was now more than double its usual price though. Chatting to some people from other groups we began to feel like we had got the best guide by far. One other group had not had any fruit at all along the way, and their meals were small and not great, but nobody apart from us had been treated to these fantastic accounts Castro had been giving us: little nuggets of information the whole way, culminating in this grand story-telling that night. Most guides hardly told their groups anything apparently, and the others could not believe that he had thrown a birthday party with free booze and a cake for Ali. It had been a great tour so far. A couple of people commented that it had been a really nice group as well, and everyone had got on well and seemed of a similar mindset. People often say this sort of thing on tours and I always think it's really just because people do tend to get on, and most people are basically quite nice, and you don't really get to know the people well enough to make that judgement. However a few days later I had reason to think back to that and realise that I've just been very lucky with the groups but, yes, this was a particularly nice one.

It was bed time, so we retired to our upstairs slumber party under the giant mosquito net, where we giggled about the crazy girl coming back and murdering us in the middle of the night, or her being somewhere else in the room, which was actually full of other people, all presumably wishing we should shut up and stop giggling.

Slumber party

Slumber party

written by  The Happy Couple on January 10, 2010 from Ciudad Perdida, Colombia
from the travel blog: Michael's Lonely post-Honeymoon
Send a Compliment

---

comment on this...

Kogui boy peeking at the gringos

OK that photo's a bit out of sequence here, but I like it so much I think it deserves to go at the top.

Breakfast time

The first day had really just been an introduction because on day two, the jungle started getting thicker and greener, and the scenery became more beautiful. There were more lovely fresh water pools of rivers in which to swim (or somersault, depending on you). Castro had told us that all of the water was very fresh but some people (not in our group) still insisted on adding water purification tablets. At least the tour group hadn't let health and safety go mad!

Another swim break

Lovely clear water

Poor mulas

As if that weren't enough, we had now started passing tiny villages and occasional single dwellings. These dwellings were really quite remote and the people did not appear to be that used to tourists. It seems bizarre, since this is definitely one of the major tourist destinations in Colombia but, when you add all sort of factors, like Colombia still having a bit of a dodgy international reputation (totally undeservedly), that many people are put off by a six-day trek, the fact that this area was closed between 2003 and 2005 after a large scale tourist kidnapping by FARC, and the fact that the site wasn't even discovered at all until 1972, then it does become believable. This is very remote and, though there are quite a lot of tourists here, it is nowhere near the same league as Machu Picchu or any city in Colombia, and most of the contact with the locals – the Kogi or Kogui Indians – is with several community leaders who run the little businesses, providing food and accommodation to the tourists; most of the rest just watch the gringos passing from a distance.

Kogui village

Livestock in the village

Little Kogui girls walking alone up the path

Cute, but look at the size of that machete!

And they're already working

And this belongs here. It's so cute it can go in twice.

Kogui boy peeking at the gringos

Our guide, Castro, told us that until only ten years ago the Kogi used to throw rocks at the passing tourists and did not really want them on their land at all. Then the government spoke to the community leaders and cut a deal, whereby the community would get all of the entrance fees from the tourists, and since then they have been far more welcoming. On the down side, according to Castro, this extra money means that they are forgetting their traditional way of life. Well, you can't really keep the people poor just to entertain the tourists with their traditional ways, can you?

The track was great: there was no difficulty with the terrain and I was regretting having wasted all that time and money on new shoes when other people were wearing flip-flops. Again, lunch was fantastic and Castro had now singled me out as the guy who likes second helpings. The food was really nice, and there was loads of it, but I didn't really feel like this level of exercise deserved more. But I find it hard to say no when offered nice food. Despite what we had been told by the group at the start of the walk, day two wasn't very hard either, though I think there was some moaning from the back.

Second night's accommodation

Gorgeous swimming spot next to accommodation

Where we slept. Everyone else is the family of that guy, the majordomo.

Fraggle trying to fly while "Mr Bond" waits for a surprise

No seats for the other group

The second night's accommodation was even nicer than the first: it was a small place with the most amazing swimming spot out the back. It was run by a very high status local, who not only ran this business, but was also the school teacher. Therefore he had two wives and loads of children, who were all very cute and fascinated by electronics. Ipods they particularly liked, though digital cameras were popular as well.

He has a lot of kids

They love it

Cute kids

Really was a lovely swimming spot

Great soup

All day Castro had been carrying an awkward box, which he said contained huevos. It turned out that he had been told that it was Ali's birthday during the trek, so he had brought a birthday cake for her all the way up there. He also produced a couple of bottles of fruit wine and several half-bottles of aguardiente for us. By coincidence, it was also the birthday of his son, Juan Carlos, who was with us on the trek, so we sang Happy Birthday for him too. His birthday and his dad had made him work all day! Castro claimed they had celebrated JC's birthday before the tour began, but we still gave him some cake. Ali probably needed something to cheer her up as her feet were already blistering.

Mel and Gemma, and birthday girl Ali hiding

Birthday girl

Double birthday

written by  The Happy Couple on January 9, 2010 from Ciudad Perdida, Colombia
from the travel blog: Michael's Lonely post-Honeymoon
Send a Compliment

---

1 comment...

Soon all the bags were on the top of the jeep and all eleven of us were squashed into the back. Not long after we set off we were off-road and a couple of times I was almost pitched forward right into Marina who was sitting opposite. Soon we realised that the three people on their own, Marina, Alex, and me, had recently continued their trips without their significant other: in my case my wife, Marina's case her English husband, who had just gone home, and in Alex's case his new girlfriend. The Lonely Hearts Trek, we decided.

Finally we arrived at the place where the trek began and sat down at the restaurant for lunch. A group who had just finished were also having lunch but they all looked pretty fresh, leading us to believe that the trek was going to be pretty easy, though they claimed otherwise, saying that the second day in particular was a killer. On the wall a map also showed the profile of the trek, so I could see that the total distance to our destination was only 20km and the total ascent, including a few ups-and-downs, was only about 1600m. I was glad again that I had gone for the five-day option since to do that over six days was madness, in fact five still seemed pretty crazy. The return trip was about 40km and 2000m total ascent, which I've done in a single day on a few walks among Scotland's Munros. They were difficult days at the time and I was much less fit now, but surely we could have taken one day up, one day at the site, and one day down? Oh well, plenty of time to look at the scenery. And take photos.

Our guide, Castro (who did not speak English) told us that the jeep track we had travelled on to get there was part of a road network built by the Tayrona people, who had also built the Ciudad Perdida. The Tayrona civilisation was very early by South American standards, and so the ruins we were seeking are also very old by South American standards, building having begun in the 9th Century, some 650 years before Machu Picchu. Finally something in the Americas that is actually quite old by European or Asian standards!

The lunch was quite nice and rather large, and as a bonus beer was much cheaper than I expected at the end of a several hour jeep ride along an ancient Tayrona road. We speculated on how much the price of beer would rise with our altitude and some people abstained because of the trek ahead, but I knew it would be dead easy so I wasn't bothered and had a few.

After lunch we set off and the pace was predictably slow. After what seemed like only ten minutes, and it can't literally have been much more, we stopped at a deep slow part in the river we had been following. I couldn't believe we were stopping so soon after the start, but I hadn't yet settled into how easy we were going to take it. The Three Young Americans had been promised jumping spots by Castro, they told us, and sure enough found the deepest place and jumped in. I gathered that there were going to be a lot more stops like this and instantly regretted saving a tiny bit of space by bringing my very tight, hotpants-style swimming trunks, usually only worn under a wetsuit, instead of sensible baggy shorts-style ones. I had thought we had to bring swimming stuff "just in case" we felt like a dip, not because we'll be stopping every fifteen minutes for one. I wouldn't like to wear them under normal circumstances, but with the extra up-to 14kg I really didn't want to. But my choices were to sit at the side while everyone else had great fun splashing around in the beautifully pure and cool water, or else make a joke about my hotpants and get in.

Cooling off

Not long after we stopped again, this time for some very nice fruit, and I had begun to accept that it was going to be slow and I wasn't going to get the kind of exercise I had been hoping would kick-start my weight-loss plan! When we set off again, the TYA had already gone ahead, so I took the opportunity to put on a burst of speed and catch up with them. They were making quite a good pace, which I was able to keep up with quite easily, but soon Matt fell behind, and then Colin. It was just me and Jake now, and he was really setting a good pace. My heart was thumping and I was getting a great workout – probably for the first time in over a year. For a while I kept pace with young Jake, but it had already been mentioned that he was a semi-professional cyclist, so there was no way I was going to be able keep up with him if he kept going, so after a short time I started to tire and fall behind. At the next bend he was waiting for me. How you feeling? he asked, seeming quite concerned. I'm sure what he was seeing was a fat old guy with a purple face, working way over his limit, rather than the recently very fit, Munroist I knew myself to be. After all he was only 21, so I must have looked ancient. I told him I felt great, but his concern remained, though he was satisfied I wasn't quite ready for a heart attack and shot off into the distance, leaving me now quite tired, but feeling much better than I had walking at the snails' pace we had been doing before. At the next fruit stop, our reward was a very long wait, where we were encouraged to take photos of the lovely green view. Already lazy (or just unfit I suppose) people had resorted to mulas to carry them up the incline.

Lazy people

The TYA were constantly bantering with each other, the way young people do: it was mostly gibberish and in-jokes, but quite harmless. I soon noticed that they were actually being really nice to each other – as well as everyone else – the whole time; they often checked that the others were feeling great, or at least good, and they even went as far as being really polite and well-mannered to each other. Now this might not sound so strange to some people, but in Britain, Scotland in particular I believe, and therein Glasgow in particular, friends, particularly young guys, just don't treat each other like that: you express your close bond by constantly taking the piss out of each other and saying cruel things; the closer you are the more brutal you are permitted – and expected – to be. So one of the first acts in getting to know someone is usually some gentle teasing, leading to some remorseless slagging if you really hit it off. When I thought about it, I remembered that there are simply different social rules in each culture, so that we all value this exchange of pleasantries in different ways: at one end of the spectrum you have the Americans and at the other, perhaps, Mediterranean culture, British somewhere in between. I wondered how this overuse - from a Scottish perspective - of pleasantries would be seen by my Greek friends, who had actually been offended once because I was being so polite, as they saw it, in their company; their attitude was "we are friends so you don't need to ask and you don't need to say thank you; just take – of course you can have whatever you want". As far as they were concerned my automatic, ingrained, politeness was actually rude, as if questioning the bond of friendship. It's similar in Glasgow: if you are anything less than merciless, it means you are putting a distance between you and your friends. It's possible this attitude is where a minor cultural misunderstanding came from: after sitting among the boys' chit-chat for a few minutes, Jamie piped up that he just couldn't believe them and all day he had felt like he was in an American sit-com. Following his lead, I said that I knew what he meant because I used to think that American actors were all really bad, until I met some Americans, when I realised that they are all really like that. At this point the three Americans looked extremely upset and offended, as if I had just slapped them out of the blue. Matt said Wow I wish I knew some really good put-downs for Scottish people… hey don't you guys still wear skirts? and I felt really awful. I hadn't meant it, but I had apparently really hurt them.

Green

Anyone knows me is aware that I generally do not have much time for the Americans. Mostly this sentiment is political: after all in recent history they elected Bush twice, Iraq, and as a country continue to behave very badly on the world stage. Of course I feel the same way about the English for Thatcher and the Scottish for Blair. Obviously I have never applied this at an individual level: everyone is different and may not be someone aligned with the national characteristic I despise so much. The big difference is that, even taking them individually, I rarely meet an American I like: their opinions are usually so very different from mine – they usually seem ultra-conservative – that it doesn't often happen, and the biggest problem of all is that they don't seem to be able to criticise their own state and become very defensive if someone else does. This I cannot understand or tolerate: I am more than happy to acknowledge defects in Scotland and the UK. When I have expressed these opinions to friends in the past they have often responded, but forget about America - don't you think that Americans are just so nice? and until this trip I had always responded in the negative. However that is exactly what these three guys were: they were really nice. Clearly I had never met the right Americans before, or perhaps my travelling had made me more open-minded, who knows? Aside from being so damned nice-and-polite they were also pretty critical of America, not just Bush, but America the state. I was very impressed. Socially, though, I must admit that I still find Americans very strange and somehow really different from most other people on the planet. However, strange is no reason to hate anyone, so here it was: these three young Americans had changed my mind about Americans. And by the way, Alex, who was not part of their group of three, was also really nice though much quieter, which wasn't hard considering how loud they were! However there remains a paradox: if the USA is a country of such nice people, then how could they have voted in Bush twice, or so many of them go off to murder innocent Iraqi children, or indeed any other non-white people whose country dares slightly obstruct their all-powerful global dominance? I genuinely don't get it.

Anyway, after my teasing insult I tried to explain that it was a friendly thing to do where I come from, and sure enough they took it onboard and for the rest of the tour I was peppered with playful insults, though they were far too polite to say any of the really obvious cruel things I so deserved. Or maybe they just didn't like me enough.

First night's dinner table

First night's bedroom

The first night's accommodation was very nice and the view was astounding before the sun went down. After the sun went down the stars were astounding. The food was also really good, and there was plenty of it. They had told us the accommodation was going to be basic, but this was obviously the standard spiel that they need to give everyone, even people who haven't been travelling for months, because all of us were really happy. At dinner Melissa proved that she was half Chinese when I brought my camera out. Apparently it's really obvious to some people, but I just didn't see it – until her "Chinese salute". After dinner Castro tied together Jake and Gemma in what I guess was an ice-breaking exercise, though he claimed it was a puzzle they could solve by getting out of it. We were all pretty sure it was impossible and he never provided a solution. And neither Jake not Gemma are the sort of people who need ice-breakers!

OK, Mel, now I believe you're half Chinese

Bondage

We were too slow arriving so all the beer was gone by the time we arrived, though we were told the price it would have been, and it was still reasonably cheap despite having increased since ground level. Luckily the TYA had some rum and were willing to share. Otherwise, how would I have slept through the mystery snorer?

written by  The Happy Couple on January 8, 2010 from Ciudad Perdida, Colombia
from the travel blog: Michael's Lonely post-Honeymoon
Send a Compliment

---

comment on this...

Back at the hostel, they had new plans for me: I was taken through to a back room where there were already several hammocks with people in them, as well as some mattresses on the floor, one of which was mine. It was only a piece of foam, but I had slept in New Zealand hostels and it wasn't going to be any worse than their foam mattresses. Of the group sharing the newly converted public area with me, the two girls were also planning a trip to the Ciudad Perdida, starting the day after next, when two other friends would be arriving after extensively researching the best company with whom to do the tour. I had done no research and, although the hostel had offered me a tour beginning the next day, I was unable to go as I did not yet have appropriate footwear, so I said I'd be glad to join them, thus saving myself the effort of doing any research or risking a terrible company. Besides they seemed quite nice for Australians.

Next day I spent the entire time looking for places to buy shoes and trying to find somewhere that could unlock the locked Mexican phone I had swapped with Maude, in the Peruvian jungle, for the incorrect frequency band, but otherwise identical, Thai phone; my good phone was well and truly dead: even plugged in it was struggling to stay on. I completed all my missions, even finding nail-clippers, which I had recently realised Joanne had taken with her, leaving me with no means to prevents my own toenails from cutting my feet while trekking. The shoe shop was a bit of an ordeal and the only affordable shoes that fitted me and seemed vaguely appropriate were a pair of desert boots. I have to emphasise that I have never before owned desert boots and it was only dire straits that brought about this recent state of affairs. Back at the hostel, they had spotted a money-making opportunity and everyone was hard at work, cutting mattress-sized bits of foam from huge slabs while other sewed covers over them. Clearly they were planning to put gringos on every flat surface in the hostel and charge then ten thousand pesos, which was a good deal considering the dorms were thirty thousand. Towards the end of the day I went with the Aussie girls and booked up for a five-day tour starting the next day, which I was quite pleased about because I had expected it to take six days and I didn't really want to spend that much time before moving onto my sailing trip. Every day counts. As we left they shouted after us "no beer tonight!".

During the day I also established via the internet that Lucy and co had arrived in Santa Marta before me and had quickly moved on to nearby Taganga for the beach. She had sent me a text to that effect the day before, but of course my dead phone didn't receive it; I had expected an email or Facebook message. Anyway, they were planning staying there for Natasha's birthday a few days later, so I decided to visit them for "one last drink". I waited for over an hour on the main street where the LP said to catch a bus to Taganga, but the first one pulled away after letting everyone off right next to where I was waiting, but showed no interest in new passengers; the next one, some twenty minutes later, flew right past me, even though I was walking into the road flapping my arm up and down. Meanwhile every two minutes buses to some place I can't remember went by, and every five minutes maximum buses to every other place passed. Eventually, when the next bus didn't turn up after twenty minutes, I gave up and got a taxi, who charged much more that I was expecting for the five kilometre journey. It was a horribly twisty coastal road, climbing up high and then dropping down into the bay, so it took a lot longer than I expected to get there, so I forgave him the fare; however I did not forgive the driver for leaving me up a blocked side street, saying "there is the beach" and pointing to the end of the street, when I couldn't find the "hostel on the beach" as Lucy had described it.

Walking up and down the beach of Taganga, which the LP tells you to go to instead of Santa Marta, was a horrible experience: loud, busy, and horribly touristy, like all the bad bits of Thailand; I much preferred Santa Marta which, although similarly busy, was much more civilised. I finally found the others who had also had a very hard time finding accommodation, necessitating that the girls split up: Natasha with the boys (the Swedish ones) and Silvie with the couple. Not ideal for anyone, but two triples was all they could find. We had a nice but dear meal on the beach then the boys and the couple all went to bed while the girls and I went to a couple of other places to drink cocktails and ended up at a club, despite the warnings from the tour operator. From below the place sounded terrible, but once inside it was actually really nice: the whole dance floor was in the open and it was much more laid-back than the horribly uptight and pretentious club scene I had become used to in the rich bastards' playground of Cartagena. It seemed like it might actually be fun, but I had to leave soon, especially since I had notice there were no longer any taxi loitering outside. I found one and made it to bed not too late. I had managed to secure a private room for the second night, thank goodness.

written by  The Happy Couple on January 7, 2010 from Santa Marta, Colombia
from the travel blog: Michael's Lonely post-Honeymoon
Send a Compliment

---

comment on this...

Lucy's birthday cake

She managed to get up for some birthday cake about midday , after which we finally made the journey to the old town to see the walls while it was still daylight. Just. Near the centre of the old town there is a statue of India Catalina, whose claim to fame is betraying her own people and helping the Spanish defeat the natives they encountered there. I'm not quite sure why she is venerated.

India Catalina

The walls

The walls in sunset

Inside of the walls

Sunset

Kite surfer in the sunset

We continued to the walled part of the city and took a little walk around. Silvie commented that the walls weren't very impressive by the standards of some other walled cities she had been to, and didn't think they would do much of a job of keeping invaders out. True, it's no Great Wall, and at points it does look like you would only need a puddy up, but the walls are wide enough to have large numbers of soldiers marching up and down, which is what I supposed they must have done. Soon the sun set and we entered the walled part of the city to wander around. Old Cartagena really is beautiful and it reminded me of nice bits of Barcelona, with the multitude of plazas. The bit inside the inner walls, though, is almost as expensive as Bocagrande, so when we stopped off at Cafe del Mar for a birthday drink for Lucy it had to be one only.

Horse and carriage through the old town

Cartagena

At Cafe del Mar

Cartagena

Cartagena

Cartagena

Cartagena

Cartagena

On the way home we passed loads of kitsch Christmas decorations and booked our tour to the volcan de lodo at a tourist office on the main road to Bocagrande. Then it was an early night so we could get up for the tour, Lucy having rolled her birthday over to the next day; something tells me she does this every year, but who can blame her when it's the 2nd January?

Cartagena

Hard Rock Cafe

Cartagena

Xmas decorations

Cartagena

More Xmas decorations

That thing in the middle is Jesus, not a snowman, apparently

The Swedes hadn't come out with us, but didn't seem interested in the mud volcano anyway.

Mud volcano!

People after the mud volcano

On the way to the lagoon to wash off

When we got back, I tried desperately to contact Joanne, because it was also our first anniversary that Lucy had hijacked by spilling her birthday over into the next day. Nothing: no email, no chat, not responding to texts. I went to bed depressed. What an anniversary!

I had to take a photo - they were always like this

Then it was a few days more of the same: late nights, in particular "one last night out" happened a couple of times, the Swedish boys never seeming to do anything except for sleep, until finally it was time to leave and I went into the old town to try and find out about a boat to Panama. Several people heading south had told me that they took a boat through the Canal, past the San Blas Islands, and onto Cartagena; everyone had said it was fantastic, but I spent all day and hadn't been able to find a boat that included the Canal part of the trip. Eventually the hostels I was asking in told me that I should go to the Club Nautico and ask there. I didn't have time; I needed to get to Santa Marta that night, and hopefully begin a Ciudad Perdida trek the next day. Hanging around the hostel area for a day, I really regretted not having been there the whole time I was in Cartagena: the area is just outside the inner walls and nothing like as well maintained, but it has a nice, old, shabby charm to it - and it's much cheaper.

The walls

I had to leave without organising a boat, deciding i would go directly to Club Nautico when I returned from the Lost City. An absolute planning disaster and misreading of the guidebook caused me to get on the wrong bus: instead of a bus going to Barranquilla, halfway to Santa Marta, I had got on a bus to La Boquilla, which was the very same small fishing port we had been taken for lunch after the volcan de lodo. I'm not sure how it happened, but it was probably just not paying enough attention and the fact they are mentioned on consecutive pages in the Lonely Planet. After changing buses another three times, I was finally on a direct bus to Santa Marta, far too late to sensibly arrive and organise accommodation.

written by  The Happy Couple on January 6, 2010 from Cartagena, Colombia
from the travel blog: Michael's Lonely post-Honeymoon
Send a Compliment

---

comment on this...

The castle from the apartment at night

The apartment we moved to on Boxing Day was a bit closer to the centre of town, but essentially it was still in Bocagrande, which meant that the beaches were still easy walking distance, but I hoped we might be able to spend some time in the old town, which includes a cheaper backpacker district. In fact we just kept going out in Bocagrande, which really is very expensive, and it has none of the charm of the old town. Once you get past the nice views because you are twenty floors up, Bocagrande really doesn't have much going for it: it's full of tower blocks and horrible people, who won't even slow their expensive cars to let you cross the road, on their way to parking them right up on the pavement so that you can't walk anywhere. OK there is also the beach, but it's not the nicest of beaches, and I really need to spend a lot of time in the gym before I would feel like spending any time on a beach, for fear that I might be harpooned.

View across the bay from new apartment

View towards central Bocagrande

Quite soon I was regretting having agreed to the extra twelve days, in the second flat, in Cartagena. There was a dance music festival on the 6th January which we had all wanted to go to, but even before New Year I was utterly sick of getting wasted and staying up most of the night at terrible clubs you have to pay to get in all for the privilege of paying crazy money for the drinks and listening to terrible loud music. Bocagrande is not my sort of place at all. And of course, because we were up so late we never managed to do any touristy things like go to the castle or walk around the old town during the day. At least we could see the castle from the window at night.

View towards Bocagrande at night

View across the bay at night

Lucy and Natasha on the beach

Another thing spoiling my time was wasting so much of it on trying to fix the laptop. I kept going to the internet cafe to look online for solutions. Eventually I gave up on Windows and downloaded a miniature Linux install, which is easily small enough to run from my USB key, without even needing installed. I couldn't get the sound or camera working, and the resolution wouldn't go higher than 800x600 but it would be enough to deal with my photos (stretched wider at that resolution) and write blog entries. Finally on Hogmanay I joined the others on the beach, which made a nice change, but after a couple of hours I'd had enough. I don't know how I used to lie on the beach for hours on end, because I really don't like it now. The sea I enjoy, but beaches are just covered in sand, which gets everywhere. On the beach I realised that the birds flying up and down the waves were not seagulls as I had assumed, but pelicans, which are much nicer and perform frequent impressive dives into the water for fish.

The beach on Hogmanay

A bird on the beach

Bocagrande from the beach

We had been given a leaflet by someone running a free New Year party selling cheap beer, which sounded like it had great music, and much more the type of event I enjoy. The only problem was that it was fifty kilometres away, or an hour in a bus. Natasha and Silvie seemed quite keen as well, but when we put the idea to Lucy she wasn't keen at all because of the distance. Zdenek was sure that there would be parties on the beaches round about where we were, so that became the vague plan for the evening. It was very nice to be with friends over Christmas, but I was really beginning to see the disadvantages in staying as a big group. However I had paid the exorbitant rent, so I was stuck with my rash decision.

Across the bay to a blue moon rising

Blue moon rising over el club nautico

The moon

Again

Zdenek suggested staying longer in the apartment to save money, and do most of our drinking before we went out. Most people in Cartagena don't seem to go out until after midnight anyway, so it certainly made sense. He went into dangerous barman mode and kept plying us with shots of rum, while we watched the incredible blue moon rising over bay and the city.

Blue moon risen

The new apartment

Zdenek dishes out the shots

Cheers!

Finally, after the bells, we were sufficiently mashed that we felt it would be sensible to go outside. There were no parties on the beach and all of the clubs were asking for outrageous covers. Zdenek was absolutely certain that there was a party near an after-hours club out of town that we had been to a couple of times and he really liked; he had noticed late night parties from the taxi on the way there, which he thought had been running every night since Christmas, so we got a taxi right out of town to this beach and there was nothing happening there either, although there was an unlit empty stage still there from the previous nights.

Lucy and Zdenek dressed up. OK maybe just Lucy.

The ladies are ready - just as soon as they've drunk their pina coladas

Andrew likes Silvie's look

Maybe too many shots?

It was far too early for the after hours club to be open, but we didn't just want to pay for a taxi back to town - for what? - so Zdenek knocked on the door and they were happy enough to let us in. We ordered a bottle of rum and drank it slowly, totally on our own for a couple of hours until a trickle of people started to come in. It did eventually fill up and we had a good night, but I have no doubts that the free party out of town would have been much better - and cheaper. But I hadn't been on my own, so other people had to be taken into account, also I didn't really want to be a party-pooper and go off on my own, although the Swedes had disappeared early on in the night and done their own thing, but they were a team beforehand, whereas my partner in mischief had gone back to Scotland.

Last photo before we head out

written by  The Happy Couple on January 1, 2010 from Cartagena, Colombia
from the travel blog: Michael's Lonely post-Honeymoon
Send a Compliment

---

comment on this...

View from apartment at night

Cartagena, I noticed quite quickly, is hot and humid. It felt more or less the same as the jungle climate I had left behind a week previously. Unfortunately, my phone, which had begun working properly again after I left the jungle, also soon noticed that the climate was like the jungle and started overheating and losing power really quickly again. Since then my phone has been nearly useless, which means I've not been able to use it to keep track of what I'm doing or take blog notes, so I'll probably miss lots of details out from now on, which surely can't be a bad thing?

Zdenek offered to take me for a quick walk around the old town to introduce me to the place, but it was only brief taxi journey there to walk around, and we didn't even stop anywhere for a drink. Already, though, I was noticing that most of the people in Cartagena seemed to be very well turned out and it was full of large expensive cars. I was beginning to suspect we had come to a rich people's playground for Christmas.

The beach across the road

View by day

The following day, Christmas Eve, we visited the supermarket and bought just about everything in the shop. We went a bit crazy but we were all keen to capture as much of the magic of Christmas so far away from home and our loved ones, so we made sure we had fizzy wine and plenty of other booze, but also blue cheese, which isn't very common in South America, nuts, some cake, little sausages to wrap in bacon, and all the other Christmas essentials. We did at least draw the line at the massive turkeys they had, settling instead for a large chicken. It was clear that the two Swedes had different ideas about how to run Christmas, though, and they preferred to keep their shopping separate. We were spending a lot but, I told myself again, it was Christmas, wasn't it?

Parrillada

That night we went out for dinner at a parrillada in the local area. The prices were a bit high but, I told myself, it was Christmas. The Swedish boys wouldn't cave, though, and got their food from MacDonald's or some other take-away; Andrew was actually starting to sound like he had some sort of eating disorder because he only seemed happy to eat a very limited range of food and what they had on offer here, bits of cooked animal, was just too "yucky" for him, since he seems to only like it minced up into burgers and sausages. In fact, when my full parrillada arrived I too briefly had second thoughts: not only was it huge, but it included some long wiggly thing that looked suspiciously like it might be intestines; I remembered that the fact a parrillada always seems to include intestines is the main reason I had not so far ordered it, despite being surrounded by suitable places in Argentina, and frequently since. I thought I might as well try it since it was sitting in front of me and I was surprised to discover it wasn't too bad, at least nothing like as bad as tripe usually is, but maybe that's because tripe isn't usually barbecued until crispy, so that it becomes reminiscent of crackling.

The counter just needed a prop to go on it

Genuine I think and much cheaper than UK

On Christmas morning I got up quite early so that I could take my laptop to the MacDonald's where there was wifi for me to Skype Joanne and my mum. I was a bit too keen and the manager seemed not to have turned up on time with the keys because lots of staff were sitting around outside waiting. While I was waiting someone offered to sell me some Cuban cigars, which he claimed were on promoción. They seemed quite cheap and he happily lowered the price by half in response to some mild haggling, making me thing I should have aimed lower, but it was Christmas after all. I returned to the flat for breakfast and Buck's Fizz. We had decided to use the cheapest bottle of fizz for this, which was Colombian, but it really was terrible; even with the orange juice it was still pretty horrible, although the orange juice itself was also disgusting, in fact I think it might have been the biggest problem: the carton proudly proclaimed it to be lactose-free, which you would have thought went without saying on orange juice, until you remember the strange South American habit of adding water or milk to fruit juice - and always sugar, of course, because fruits just aren't sweet enough are they? Well, in this case, they had helpfully substituted the absolutely necessary milk with... soya milk! Yum yum, and now we had it in our very bad Colombian sparkling wine; I drank most of everyone else's as well as my own.

Natasha opens the first fizz

The girls sit down to a bucks fizz breakfast

After breakfast, I finally got into MacDonald's, ordered a coffee, and proceeded to call my loved ones using Skype. The place was jam-packed with noisy hyper-active spoiled little brats and their bored-looking parents, who seemed totally unwilling to control their progeny. At least I was able to download a Christmas album as a surprise for Lucy, who had complained that Christmas music was the one thing missing, and it wouldn't be Christmas without it. The conversations were a bit frustrating with all the noise, but it was just about enough to make up for not being there.

Prawn cocktail and avocado to start

Xmas dinner nearly assembled

When we were nearing the end of our conversation I got a text from Lucy, as my phone hadn't quite run down yet, telling me that food was nearly ready. The girls had done all of the preparation work, so I was glad to be able to complete the experience by putting on The Best Christmas Album In The World Ever with aplomb. The girls had done a great job and we tucked into huge amounts of food and booze, including some much nicer sparkling wine, not from Colombia, all accompanied by cheesy Christmas classics and a couple of Cuban cigars, until, near the end of CD2 my laptop screen suddenly went blank and the music was also frozen on one particular note. When I rebooted the machine it wasn't working; the thing would go on, but Windows didn't get very far into the boot-up process. Not more hassle! Was this the effect of humidity as well? What about my photos and my blogs, and using it for wifi? Someone sensibly advised me to forget about it until the next day.

Lucy carves as Zdenek poses

Not bad for being so far from home

Xmas dinner hits the spot

So apart from the laptop it was a very lovely and successful Christmas day. Unfortunately the next day we had to move out of the apartment because the price was nearly doubling in preparation for the New Year period. Amazingly, Lucy and Zdenek had got up earlier than me on Christmas morning and had found us a new place to move to on Boxing Day.

Everyone but me

Still there after plenty of rum and beer

Cake at last

Despite the cramped conditions, I managed to get some sleep after a couple of Colombian beers with my food, but I woke late at night and saw people frowning and looking under the minibus. We had stopped at another roadside cafe place, but we had stopped for repairs not for food this time. Outside the cafe there was a table with some people I recognised from my bus, already quite full of empty beer bottles, so I got off and joined them. The Spanish was getting harder to understand again but, despite my inability to communicate more than the basics, everyone was very friendly, and we sat around drinking and laughing for more than an hour while they worked on the bus. When it was time to leave I tried to pay for the four beers I had drunk, but the waitress said that I only needed to pay for the one I had asked for, because the rest had already been paid for. Apparently the guys who had been collecting handfuls of beer and handing them around had paid for them all. Amazing! In Peru, the asusmption was always that the gringo would pay, and now in Colombia, they hadn't even asked me to pay for my own.

Strange corn and egg snack with beer

I had been in Colombia for less than a day and already I could see why people liked it: the people are very friendly and sociable, they don't seem to treat you differently because you are a tourist, and another thing I noticed is that everyone seems to start speaking using the familiar form of the verb, which I think seems more friendly rather than rude, which I suppose is the argument against it. I don't think I've yet heard anyone using usted in Colombia. And where there had been a broader ethnic mix in Ecuador than the Southern Cone, the Bell Curve seemed even wider in Colombia: it really is a "rainbow nation".

Posh Colombian beer

Back on the road, I finally listened to the last "unlistened" track on my mp3 player. Eight GB really is a lot of data: it took more than one year of travelling to listen to everything once. OK obviously I listened to some things more than once, but for the last several months I had only been listening to the "songs not yet heard" playlist.

At 4am, almost to the second, we arrived in Cali, just as the ticket salesman had predicted. I suppose they must have breakdowns so often that they feel they have to factor them into the schedules; in Peru, of course, the schedule assumes that there are no breakdowns, there are no other vehicles on the road, the engine is at peak performance, there is no extra weight from passengers, and there is a 100 mph tailwind the whole way. Despite the email I had asked in a text for Joanne to send, the hostel was all locked up when I got there at 4:30am. But after some persistent knocking a woman came to the door and let me in.

Joanne had booked me a dorm bed, because a private room was much dearer, but the dorm was really only a triple room and it had nobody else in it. Nice.

Since Joanne isn't here to photo the grafitti

Grafitti

In the morning I discovered there were only two other people staying in the hostel, which was more like a nice big house. I tried to have a conversation in Spanish with one of the other guests, until he eventually asked me if I spoke English. He was Israeli, and he seemed perplexed that I hadn't spoken English to him straight away. "Why were you trying to speak Spanish to me?" he asked. Sure, if I'd known he was Israeli I'd have spoken English to him, but how was I supposed know where he was from? I was just following almost everyone else's good example of at least starting in Spanish in a Spanish speaking country on a predominantly Spanish speaking continent.

Crumbly house across the road from hostel

Hostel

The woman who ran the hostel was very friendly and seemed surprised that I was leaving Cali so soon, when the Cali Festival was about to start. She told me it's a beautiful place, particularly during the festival, but I didn't have time to see much of Cali at all: I just had time to find a place where I could finally send an international fax, hopefully securing me enough money from the bank so that I wouldn't have to beg to save up for my flight home.

Hostel

On hostel wall

Hostel

Hostel living room

My mum has this same clock

Another Colombian beer

Hostel

Then it was a bus to the airport for my expensive flight to Cartagena, via Medellin. I was really looking forward to the flight after so much bus travel. There was a time earlier in the trip when I didn't ever want to get on a plane again, but the South American buses had cured me of that. I was a bit shocked when I saw the plane though: it was barely bigger than the light aircraft we had our tour of the Nazca Lines in. OK, it was bigger, but it was only four seats across, and it didn't even have proper engines: it was just a prop-jet! I started wondering what Colombian air safety statistics were like.

After only a 45 minute flight we landed at Medellin, where I hoped we would be changing to a bigger plane but, despite making me get off and go through the transfers process, I returned to the same plane and a stewardess laughed when she saw me getting back on the plane for some reason. Perhaps it was because I had drawn attention to myself by asking if they had any alcoholic drinks on board (they didn't, and there was no meal or snack privided either).

Another hour-and-a-bit later and we landed in Cartagena. Finally! After one week of travelling almost non-stop from Lagunas in the jungle of Peru, with most of those nights sleeping on transport, I was finally at my destination and I had made it to my friends in time for Christmas.

written by  The Happy Couple on December 23, 2009 from Cali, Colombia
from the travel blog: Michael's Lonely post-Honeymoon
Send a Compliment

---

1 comment...

I had changed enough of my "Ecuadorian" US Dollars at the border to pay for a collectivo to the town of Ipiales which is the first settlement after the border. Here I reckoned I could draw money from an ATM and pay for my bus Cali. Unfortunately, the border had taken so long that the day time buses had all departed, which meant I would have to get an overnight bus and waste the money already paid to reserve a room in a Cali hostel. I needed lunch after all that travelling, so I asked for salchipapas at a cafe in the bus station, because I had seen it everywhere in northern Peru and Ecuador and not tried it. I assumed it would be spicy sausage like salchicha and insisted I defintely wanted it when the girl behind the counter said it would take ten minutes. Meanwhile I went out to ask more companies about transport to Cali. I found one desk where they were selling minibus tickets, leaving at 4pm, which was twenty minutes time, but it wasn't supposed to be arriving until 4am. I couldn't understand this because the guide book said Cali was eight to ten hours from Ipiales by bus, so I asked the man why it wasn't arriving at 1am or 2am. He said that yes, it was possible we would arrive then, but he doesn't want to tell me that time, when there is also a chance we won't arrive until 4am; he didn't want to lie to me and make me angry, he said. What?! After Peru I couldn't believe what I was hearing. So I bought a ticket and rushed back to the cafe to eat my salchipapas, which was disgusting: the sausage was hotdog and the chips weren't even nice, but I didn't care because it was cheap and I was starving.

Salchipapas

I rushed to the bus and I was off again. So much travel, and this time so little space: a man and his small son were both sitting in the seat next to me.

written by  The Happy Couple on December 22, 2009 from Ipiales, Colombia
from the travel blog: Michael's Lonely post-Honeymoon
Send a Compliment

---

comment on this...

We arrived at Guayaquil about 5:30am and were on our way again on a 6am bus to Quito. By late afternoon we were in Quito. Daniel had told me to send him a text when I arrived, which I did, but he wasn't responding. Great! I didn't know him that well, I supposed, but I didn't think he was that unreliable. Instead I took a taxi to the hostel the Canadian girl (yes, whose name I've forgotten) was staying in, reasoning that I could just stay there if it Daniel's place fell through completely. On the way I got a text from Daniel asking if I had arrived yet and realised that I hadn't received any delivery reports for the texts I had sent him. It costs far too much money to make even a short phone call from my UK mobile, so I went to an internet cafe while the Canadian was checking in, and sent Daniel a Facebook message, got a response, and managed to arrange that he would meet me at the hostel. After a drink, waiting with the Canadian for Daniel, she said that she was going to the internet too, but she'd be back soon because she wasn't "some major internet geek or anything". Daniel arrived soon after, with his wife and Chris, a friend of theirs. We had a drink and waited over an hour for the Canadian to return, but in the end I just left my email address at reception in case she wanted to go for a drink in Cartagena, and we left. Not some major internet geek, my arse!

Daniel and I went for a couple of drinks and the other two left. Ecuador does not seem to be cheap, despite both guide books having claimed it was the cheapest place after Bolivia on the continent. Quito was pleasantly cool after the jungle thanks to its altitude, despite being almost on the equator, and it seemed to have a good night life. Daniel, though, was ill, and though he was trying to put a brave face on it, clearly would rather have been in bed than in a pub. After Bolivia and Peru it was clear the ethnic mix in Ecuador was much more diverse, in fact I think it was more diverse than any country we went to in South America (with the exception, of course, of Brazil which we didn't see any of apart from Iguazu Falls). For the first time in my South America, there were significant numbers of black people, and there were lots of people of European origin again. I like seeing a lot of mixing, and what always seems nice in South America is that there appears to be very little racism, no matter what the mix; it's not like everywhere, I believe, in Asia, where "white skin in more beautiful" and all of the beauty products have skin lighteners: they don't exist in South America. This was definitely a pleasant surprise about South America: considering how much US culture they seem to have absorbed, I had expected the continent to be much more racist, but I think it's less racist than Europe.

Quito

Quito

Looking at the remainder of my journey to Cartagena more closely, I asked Joanne in a text to look for cheap flights within Colombia, which I had heard exist. She found a flight from Cali to Cartagena for only £78, which was definitely worth it, but I couldn't decide which day to leave; it depended on when the buses would get me into Cali. Instead of going directly to the bus company we knew could give us information, Daniel took me on a tour of agencies that only sold flights and knew nothing about buses, I think to save us the five-minute bus journey. When we finally got to the company we discovered that I wouldn't have time to see the old town and send my fax before catching the bus in time to fly the following day. I sent Joanne another text asking her to book the flight on the day after next, but the cheap flights had already sold out, leaving only the £142 flights, which didn't seem as obviously worth it at all. I was so annoyed: I hate these sneaky cheap flight websites! They always know when you are about to make your mind up and the fare you've been looking at for days disappears. There was still a cheap flight for the next day, but it would be a rush to catch it, I wouldn't see the old town, and my overdue fax would be delayed even more.

Quito

Quito

Quito old town

Quito

I cracked and decided just to splash out on the expensive flight, as a Christmas present to myself. Then I instantly regretted spending the money and I was in such a mood that I couldn't enjoy the old town anyway, when we went there. It just looked another boilerplate South American town. How many of these towns have I seen? One would have been enough: Buenos Aires and you don't need to see another town in South America, except maybe Colonia del Sacramento, which is a bit different from the standard model. A main square. A cathedral. Yawn. Even the local speciality desert, tres leches, did not cheer me up. Then back at Daniel's flat, Chris hogged Daniel's PC, so I didn't have time to write the letter I needed to fax and it was all a big waste of time spending the extra money and staying the extra night. I was in such a foul mood that I decided I must have had enough of travelling for me to over-react so much, and I should go home as soon as possible.

Quito main square

Quito main square

Quito main square

A really ugly building on Quito main square

Daniel in Quito main square

Tres leches

Next morning I got up early for the 7am bus to the border. This meant I would have loads of time hanging around, but I was feeling so defeated when I bought the ticket that I couldn't be bothered going to the extra effort required to leave at a different time: it would have meant going to the main bus station and back, just to buy it, then going there again when I wanted to leave. I couldn't be bothered. I just wanted to be home with my wife!

Once on the bus, I started to cheer up again: I was soon going to be in Colombia! Everyone I had met on the trip who had been to Colombia had loved it, so I was really looking forward to it.

written by  The Happy Couple on December 21, 2009 from Quito, Ecuador
from the travel blog: Michael's Lonely post-Honeymoon
Send a Compliment

---

comment on this...