Colombia

Colombia/Panama 2010: the longest bus ride ever, 12 hours in Bogotá, and the world’s best hostel

/ kw1385 / Leave a comment

Note: This post comes from an email I sent during a trip to Venezuela, Colombia, and Panama in June 2010.

Greetings from Panama City, gateway between the oceans!

Although I haven’t written for a few days, there is not a ton to report. Let’s start with the bus ride from Cartagena to Bogota, otherwise known as a day I will never get back…

I spent my last day in Cartagena lazing around the hostel with some shopping thrown in. I worked my way through about 70 pages of the Spanish version of the new Eclipse novela by Stephenie Myer while in the rooftop hammock and eventually descended to brave the souvenir shops, where I bought some jewelry and a dress. It was a cloudy, rainy day, so there just wasn’t much else to do. Greg and I ended our time in Cartagena by visiting a grocery store, where some Colombians helpfully advised me in which type of aguardiente, strong Colombian liquor, to buy before our long bus ride. I also coached Greg on how to ask Olga, the beautiful and friendly proprietess of the hostel, to be his best friend forever in Spanish… something I picked up from reading the novela. (It’s literally “do you want to be my intimate friend for eternity?”) Unfortunately, Olga had already gone home by the time we returned, so Greg will now save this for another lady.

Our bus ride to Bogota was supposed to last about 16 hours. A British girl we met said she had heard 20 hours. Let’s just say, we were all wrong. We boarded a bus in Cartagena that was having air conditioning issues, and the Colombians were so indignant about this that most of them stormed off the bus before it left Cartagena. We were told it would be fixed in Barranquilla, which is great, except that Barranquilla is two hours NORTHEAST of Cartagena when we were supposed to be heading SOUTHWEST. However, always the flexible travelers, we shrugged our shoulders and settled back to enjoy the trip as best as we could. It really wasn’t uncomfortable on the bus when there were just seven of us. We passed plenty of small towns where chickens, goats, cows, and donkeys were plentiful and arrived two hours later in Barranquilla, a place you might recognize from a line in Shakira’s “Hips Don’t Lie”. (En Barranquilla se baila asi!) We were pleasantly surprised to see that the air conditioning issue was resolved within 15 minutes, but this turned out to be for the worse. The bus was FREEZING for the rest of the night… even in my ankle-length dress with a sweater, jacket, and shawl around me, I was wholly unable to get warm and spent the night alternating positions every few minutes in an effort to minimize my discomfort.

The bus ride featured a number of movies that I can safely say I will die happy without ever seeing again. They included “Highway Assassin 2”, “Boat Cruise”, “Wrong Turn 3”, and a random series of music videos that were really more like raunchy short films. When these were not on, we would get spurts of salsa music that unfortunately did not inspire the same spirit as the rumba chiva. Meanwhile, we just drove, and drove, and drove… eventually winding through the mountains, where I was grateful (despite my tendency towards motion sickness on winding roads) not to be sitting in the front of the bus, because our driver’s favorite game was to pass the cars, buses, and trucks in front of us. On winding roads. I took a few pictures of situations in which we could have run into an oncoming truck and also have a picture of the sign that indicates that passing is not allowed.

Every once in a while we would stop to let someone get on the bus to sell food or drink… I could have bought a ham and cheese pastry with a cup of coffee for about 75 cents US, but when you’ve just been sitting forever, you don’t have much appetite.

We hit some traffic when we got close to Bogota, and so despite being on the outskirts of the city, it took another two hours for us to fnally get to the bus station… at 6:30 pm, also known as 23 hours after we left Cartagena. Conclusion: I am never, ever taking a bus like that again.

I was quite disappointed not to be able to see Bogota in the daylight. Our hostel was in the old part of the city, and I managed to see the Plaza Bolivar (they exist everywhere, including here in Panama City) but not much else. I had opted not to bring my camera with me during our venture to find dinner, which I regret now because Bogota has lots of very interesting graffitti (it reminded me a lot of Zagreb). My favorite said, in Spanish, “we don’t want to be an American colony”. I definitely want to return to Colombia and see not only Bogota but Medellin, Cali, and other places that are supposed to be very interesting and fun.

We got up at 3:30 yesterday morning for our 6:30 flight to Panama, and it was at the airport that I finally had some Colombian coffee. I don’t have a great palate for things like coffee, beer, and wine, but it did taste pretty damn good to me… or was that just because I was in a semi-zombie-like state after extended sleep deprivation? I managed to fall asleep on the plane in spite of the coffee but was wide awake during our drive from the airport. Our cab driver was extremely well traveled and had a number of things in common with me… has family in Indiana and Colorado, likes Croatian people, etc. He had all sorts of things to say about how great the United States is and what the Panamanians are like.

Our hostel here is perhaps the most genuine hostel experience I’ve ever had. It’s called Luna’s Castle and overlooks the bay near the fish market. There is no air conditioning, but floor to ceiling bay windows stay open, and ceiling fans keep the air moving enough to keep things pretty comfortable. I was able to go to bed last night with a view of downtown from my pillow… awesome. There’s also a ping pong table, do it yourself pancakes for breakfast, a movie theater (we watched “the Big Lebowski” last night), and a bar that offers $1 cocktails from 9-10 pm. People are staying here from all over, including Britain, Germany, New Zealand, and Israel. Some of them have been traveling for months (living my dream). I had a fun time last night talking to a Londoner and a New Zealander who didn’t know the difference between Washington state and Washington, D.C., nor did they know where either of them are.

The hostel is in an old part of the city, where we walked around yesterday before hiking through a park that boasted a multitud of species of birds, monkeys, and other animals, none of whom we saw… but we did observe some amazing colonies of ants, and at the summit we got some pretty awesome shots of the city and the canal. It was absolutely worth the sweaty and somewhat perilous hiking up and down… I nearly faceplanted four times but emerged unscathed.

We are heading to the canal in a few minutes… should be pretty interesting!

Colombia 2010: Rumba Chivas and Mud Volcanoes

/ kw1385 / Leave a comment

Note: This post comes from an email I sent during a trip to Venezuela, Colombia, and Panama in June 2010.

I have had an epic 24 hours in Cartagena. Last night Greg and I arrived in our lovely hotel’s lobby at 8:00 to await the arrival of our tour bus for an evening tour of Cartegenian nightlife, or something to that effect – we weren’t sure what to expect.

You are probably familiar with the concept of a “party bus” in the United States… people rent a bus with tinted windows and get to drink on it while driving around. I haven’t been on one, but let me tell you: they are LAME compared to what they have here in Cartagena.

The bus, or chiva, that arrived to pick us up was open air – there was a roof, but nothing on the sides. Each of the eight or so rows on the chiva holds about six people, and one of the rows holds a band. Yes, a band! When the chiva pulled up to our hotel, already about 75% loaded, the band of a clarinetist and two drummers was in full force, pounding out rumba rhythms to match the enthusiasm of those on board. We climbed up next to a young Colombian couple and were later joined by an older couple from Brazil (with whom I managed to converse in Spanish). The 30 additional minutes of driving around to pick up people were a blast in and of themselves; at every stop, the seemingly omnipresent street vendors hopped aboard in order to try to sell people hats, maraccas, beer, or water. We passed many other chivas, and each time this happened, we of course made an effort to make sure ours was the loudest. I have video footage of this.

Things got signficantly more interesting when we suddenly received a bucket of ice, a bottle of Pepsi, and a bottle of rum – for the six of us in our row. We quickly poured ourselves a cocktail, which we quickly consumed while we continued to drive around the city. After everyone had partaken of sufficient social lubricant, the tour guide commenced with the real entertainment: get up and dance the rumba while drinking and while the bus is moving! The girls began first, and each row would stand up in succession and shake it like a saltshaker for 10 seconds before yielding to the row behind. (I did my best, but it’s hard to compete with Colombian women.) The guys went next, and being less able to shake the tops of their bodies, they imitated the tour guide: stand up on your seat, bend over, and shake your ass around! I caught some of this on tape as well… “hilarious” doesn’t begin to cover it. After this, the guide asked for volunteers to participate in a contest… and my new Colombian friends to my left quickly volunteered me for this. Three of us stood up and danced for all we were worth, to thunderous applause all around. It was unclear who ultimately won, but the point is that I tried. 🙂

We ultimately arrived at one part of the old city, where we had 45 minutes to hang out up on the wall with a bunch of other partiers. It reminded me a great deal of the great tradition of botellĂłn in Spain, where everyone brings a bottle of liquor and drinks in the plaza all night. Greg left to make friends with some Europeans on our bus, while I stayed with the Colombian couple and talked to them over a beer (which is, by the way, great here and in Venezuela). We discussed a variety of things, and they praised me on my Spanish – hooray! While we were talking, one of the ever-enterprising Colombians came over holding none other than a three toed sloth and transferred the cute creature into the arms of JosĂ© and Diana, who then passed it to me. You never know what the night will hold.

Back on the chiva, we got to eat a great drinking snack: arepas con huevo. Arepas exist in Colombia as well, but they typically just have egg in them. It was delicious and necessary given that we received ANOTHER bottle of rum (granted, these are about the size of a soda bottle from a vending machine) and proceeded to get rid of that as well. A short time later, we arrived at another entrance to the city for our final destination, a salsa club. Once inside, we watched as the talented Colombians shook their groove things to the peppy music of the Caribbean, and JosĂ© and Diana demonstrated a bit for us. A short time later, Diana passed JosĂ© to me (dance with a hot Colombian man? check), and I had a great time twirling and shaking with the best of them… perhaps my salsa lessons from Spain resurfaced to help me. Greg danced with an old lady who was still plenty able to dance, and we all had a great time.

Finally, around midnight, it was time to get back on the chiva for the ride back to our side of town. The band was gone, but the spirit remained. I continued chatting it up with Diana and JosĂ©, who felt very strongly that we should stay longer in Cartagena and avoid going to Bogotá altogether. Unfortunately, we have to fly out of Bogotá on Tuesday, so we have to go there eventually, but we came back so convinced of Cartagena’s greatness (not that there were any doubts before) that we actually contemplated trying to switch our flights. Instead, we settled for skipping MedellĂ­n and staying here an extra day so that we go straight from Cartagena to Bogotá (a 16-hour ride reminiscent of our Model UN trips to Montreal).

After getting those changes taken care of, our principal activity today was to visit a nearby mud volcano that JosĂ© had described as “delicious”. After a nap in a hammock underneath the rooftop gazebo during a noontime thunderstorm, we boarded a van with four other people and headed along the coast an hour to the site of the volcano. What a change between Cartagena and the surrounding rural areas: we quickly went from expensive highrises to roadside huts and people riding donkeys (seriously). We were also stopped by a few members of the military, who chose only to check the credentials of our driver rather than make us get out and submit to a frisking (which the men on the other side of the road experienced). Never a dull moment.

The volcano is quite small, but that’s definitely what it is. A volcano-shaped (?) mound rising about 25 yards above the ground, its sides are covered with dried mud, and two steep staircases (also constructed from mud) run up its sides. We were just in time to see people coming down from the top, completely covered in black mud. Once we got to the top (after some clinging to the guardrail on my part due to the slipperyness of the mud), we saw that the mud pool was large enough to hold maybe 10 people comfortably. Greg was the first from our group to lower himself into the mud; I followed soon after and was immediately flipped onto my back and covered in mud by a helpful native who then proceeded to give me a full-body massage… delicious, indeed! Everything other than my mouth and eyes was covered in mud. After the massage, we had a good time just hanging out in the mud. It was roughly like being in a pool of thick, melted chocolate… it was impossible to sink lower than my shoulders, and moving was quite difficult. As Greg put it: “this is where standing and floating meet.” I was literally suspended in mud, not moving up or down at all. You could stay there all day!

After about 20 minutes of mud bathing, we exited and made our way down to the river, where more helpful natives each took charge of one of us and led us into the water. They did quite a thorough job of cleaning us off, including removing our bathing suits and getting all of the mud out of them. We emerged 10 minutes later relatively mud-free and boasting newly glowing skin.

All in all, the last 24 hours are the best of the trip thus far. Tomorrow will include beach time and shopping (there’s quite a lot to buy in Cartagena) before we head to Bogotá overnight. We’ll be in Bogotá on Monday before leaving for Panamá early Tuesday morning.

I’ll write again from Bogotá!

Venezuela/Colombia 2010: from Caracas to Cartagena

/ kw1385 / Leave a comment

Note: This posts comes from an email I sent during a trip to Venezuela, Colombia, and Panama in June 2010.

Hello from Cartagena!

Our last day in Venezuela passed extremely uneventfully since we left our hotel only to go to the airport. Greg and I joined other Venezuelans in the lobby of our hotel to watch the Italy-Slovakia game, and the Italian-at-heart part of me felt very sad as I saw them miss some shots and ultimately drop out of the running.

As I predicted on the way to the airport, Venezuela is a difficult country to leave. In addition to an exit tax (which somehow we didn’t have to pay?), there is an airport services tax which you can only pay in cash. Given that we had just given our last remaining bolivares to our cab driver, that was a bit of a problem. After searching in vain for an ATM and rejecting numerous whispered offers of “Âżcambio?”, we gave in and experienced another round of horrible exchange rate currency switching. If nothing else, this provided us the opportunity to eat one last arepa, though none of the four I ate were as good as the first.

Final thoughts on Venezuela: I would love to go back one day when the country has calmed down a bit and see the rest of it. There are beautiful beaches and plenty of things to see outside of Caracas, and the people can’t be beat – they were incredibly friendly and accomodating of my sometimes struggling Spanish skills. I am excited to have made it through without having been robbed at gunpoint (something I was legitimately concerned about thanks to both the State Department and various connections there), but on the whole I found it much less scary than I had anticipated, and I am extremely glad that we went. My favorite part other than the political discussions with the cabbies was ascending the mountain to view the city; be sure to look for those (and plenty of pictures of political propaganda) on Facebook when I get home.

We arrived in Cartagena last night around 10 and quickly made it to our hotel. Our helpful cab driver gave us lots of tips for exploring the city and assured us that we’d be safe walking around at any time. (Everyone to whom we’ve mentioned that we were just in Venezuela has reacted with faces or words that indicate that we are clearly very brave people.) Our hotel is AMAZING. While technically a hostel, it’s really quite nice and located in a great part of the city. It’s in a building that is pure hacienda design; its three floors form a rectangle around an open courtyard, and there is a roof complete with three mini jacuzzis and three hammocks hanging under a gazebo. I enjoyed some time in those this afternoon!

This morning we started with a trip to the beach, located a mere two blocks away. The water looks about the same as it does anywhere on the east coast – that is to say, it wasn’t crystal clear, but it wasn’t disgusting either. It was warm, though – like bathwater! Greg and I had barely had time to learn this before we were pounced on by various zealous Colombians offering a variety of goods and services, from necklaces, bracelets, t-shirts, beer, fresh fruit, snow cones, sand shovels, flip flops, massages, and hair braiding. We took advantage of the last two… while two women set to work on my hair (and Greg’s, which is long), a third massaged my feet, legs, and arms while consistently telling me “you are so tense!” Two hours later, Greg and I sported more than 30 tiny, beaded braids a piece and found ourselves to be victims of majorly overpriced services… I won’t say how much we spent, but suffice it to say, Greg is taking control of our money and haggling hard from now on. (I always tend to think that they need the money and thus will cough it up, but the braids were ridiculous even with that.)

Given that we’d been in the  sun for two hours and that Cartagena is both very warm and extraordinarily humid (Virginia loses that contest in a heartbeat), we trekked back to our hotel and changed into more tourist clothes (shorts) before walking the two miles or so to the old town. Like Old San Juan, it is surrounded by a large wall, and we walked on top of the wall (at times only two feet wide) for most of the way around the city. I also insisted on some time sitting in the main plaza (another Plaza BolĂ­var; he’s big here, too) and complaining about how we don’t have those in the US. (Really, why don’t we?)

After some brief shopping (during which I only bought postcards), we started heading back towards our hotel, where I promptly collapsed in a hammock and got back to reading Gabriel GarcĂ­a Marquez. We are leaving shortly to go on a nightlife tour of the city that will presumably include some sampling of Colombia’s own liquor… which apparently Americans don’t like, but which I don’t think can be any worse than the “rocket fuel” I consumed in China.

Tomorrow we are hoping to bathe in the mud of a nearby volcano before boarding a 13-hour bus to Medellín (yes, as in the cartel), where we will spend a few hours before heading to Bogotá. I will be extremely sad to leave Cartagena (I truly would love to live here), but I am excited to see more of Colombia as well. So far, I am impressed!