Day 54 Sunday, April 28th. Collectivo Bus from Taganga to Tayrona Park

We booked to stay at Barlovento Cabana (Barloventotayrona.gmail.com; Barloventotayrona.com). It’s expensive (Lonely Planet “The best place in Colombia”) but not worth it. US$170/night for a double room. The problem is that 3^rd world countries simple don’t have the infrastructure, vision or capability to deliver top-end services comparable to a developed country. The architecture of the place is interesting and it’s featured near the front of several architectural magazines that the owner has left lying around. Dinner and breakfast is included but both are mediocre despite the best efforts of Mia, our Colombian maid and cook. Our bedroom is right on top of the surf and so the noise keeps us awake. A crocodile is asleep on the river’s edge on a sandbank below-I hope the flooring is secure. We move on the next day.

Day 52 Friday, April 26th. Bus from Cartagena to Taganga

Another crowded bus journey (5 hours so not too bad this time) and about US$25 each. We arrive and walk to the Hostel La Casa DeFelipe and manage to get room 24.

Now we are on the north coast of Colombia and on its Caribbean shore.

It’s a nice and busy place and they have a great roof-top common area that catches the evening breezes off the ocean and the sunset over Taganga. An insomniac cockerel and several barking dogs keep us awake at night. Maybe that cockerel is trying to pass a kidney stone.

One problem with extended travelling is that you lose control over your environment. (The bus driver has the radio up too loud; the shower water is too hot or too cold. Etc etc.) It’s what you give up when you catch the bus to work instead of driving your car. After a while this can get to you.

Day 51 Thursday, April 25th Medellin to Cartagena

We fly to Cartagena and check into Hostel Casa Baluarte

It’s just OK, internal room with no window to the outside. No A/c. just a fan. Cartagena is an old walled city but, unfortunately, they haven’t made enough pedestrian-only spaces and it’s a noisy and hot and crowded place and so we decide to move on after only one night. We want the beach and not a city now for our final week.

Day 50 Wednesday, April 24th . Medellin.

Checked into the hostel Happy Buddha (room 101) and take a double room for COP110,000 about US$60). It’s pretty good. We have to spend a frustrating few hours trying to use the Web to book flights to Cartagena and back down again to Bogota and finally give up and walk to find a travel agent who does the job for us. Still takes forever. We take the Metro (it’s quite new for Medellin and you can see that all the locals are glad to have it as rush-hour starts) to see the Botero sculptures. (Why did he portray all the women with huge breasts and buttocks and the men with such small penises?). On the way back Christine gets off at the right stop but I don’t manage to get off before the metro car door closes-trapping me inside as the train moves off to the next station. I try to hand-signal a plan to meet again to Christine as we look helplessly at each other through the train’s glass door. Then I turn and look at all the other passengers and ask “Hablo- Inglese?”. They all shake their heads but look with

concern at my predicament.

Christine and I manage to meet up again and we head back to the Happy Buddha. We are both very tired.

Trafficking counterfeit money in Medellin,Colombia: (Day 49 Tuesday, April 23rd )

as always we arrive at a hostel without a reservation and the taxi meter reads COP36,000 (US$20) and I’m trying to pay him an initial 20,000 Colombian Pesos to keep him waiting while Christine checks to see if the hostel has a room for us. It’s close to midnight and the streets are dark. The taxi driver is looking at my various COP20,000 notes and shouting in Spanish. I can tell he’s mad but don’t know why. All my notes seem to have a pencil-sized hole in them. The Hostel receptionist holds my notes up to a light and explains to me that they are all counterfeit. Someone fobbed them off on me some time ago I suppose. A huge amount of the Colombian currency is fake and people tear them or deface them in some way to stop them circulating further.

Day 49 Tuesday, April 23rd Plantation House, Salento, then bus to Medellin

First we joined Tim’s guided tour of his coffee plantation. Really interesting and an entire “from tree to cup” explanation of coffee including a live demonstration of the shucking of the bean, soaking the bean (to remove the natural sugars) and the roasting, grinding and finally the filtering and drinking.

After that a bus to Pereira and then another bus to Medellin (about 5 hours of travelling) and then a taxi to our hostel Tamarindo B&B. COP88,000 (US$50 approx.). Not very good and so we checked out the next morning.

Day 48 Monday, April 22nd. Plantation House, Salento, Colombia!

Breakfast at Café Eliana and then a walk into town to catch one of the Willies Jeeps there up into the hills for a five hour hike. Steep and muddy. Raining and slippery log and wire bridges to cross before we get up to the place that sells hot chocolate and their home-made cheese (which is very good). We make friends with Colin and Adam from CO and they hike along with us. Pretty tough hike.

Dinner at Café Eliana and then we hang out with some other back-packers around the log fire at The Plantation House Hostel.

Day 47 Sunday, April 21st. Plantation House, Salento, Colombia!

The collectivo was fun. Once again we engage in attempts at using our poor Spanish to chat with all the locals. They all enjoy it tremendously and everyone helps us get off at the right spot and then we all wave goodbye to each other. We checked into the Hostel-Plantation House- where Sarah and Ryan stayed last year. The owners, Tim (a Brit but raised in Australia) and his wife Christina (Colombian) and their dog, "iPod", are very nice and the hostel and our room was great at COP55,000 (about US$30)/night for the room. 

Christine and I share some wine with Tim and Christina on their back deck.

The town of Salento is really great and very cute. A walk across town practicing our Spanish creates 50 best friends. Trying a foreign language amongst the locals is a tremendous ice-breaker and very much encouraged by them (I wonder why I didn’t try it all those years ago when travelling in Europe and when on business throughout Asia. Too many languages I suppose). All the locals would like to speak the little English they have but are shy and a little frightened of doing so. Telling someone “good English!” is quite likely to bring hugs if not tears of gratitude and another friend for life.

We had dinner at Café Eliana which is owned and run by Jesus and his wife Luz Eliana. They have a nice back veranda and make a great curry and breakfasts with home-made bread and yoghurt and fresh eggs from their chickens. Jesus is Spanish and also lived in London for many years. He makes his own sausages and bangers and mash.

He runs a very well regarded coffee appreciation course of a few hours where he teaches you how to look after and make coffee. We didn’t manage to attend it and regret that.

Day 46 Saturday, April 20th La Luna, Otovalo, Ecuador to Colombia!

We visited the famous market in town (mainly locals and they do all seem to be enjoying it but we don’t find anything of interest) and then left by bus for the Colombian border. First a 3 hour bus ride to the border station then a taxi to the border itself then a walk across into Colombia and then a Collectivo to Ipealis, Colombia, then a 2 hour bus-ride to Pasto, then a 12 hour, overnight, bus-ride to Armenia, then another Collectivo up into the Andes to Salento to look at one of the coffee-growing areas of Colombia.

 

Day 45 Friday, April 19th La Luna, Otovalo, Ecuador.

Amazing climate change from the Galapagos. Yesterday at sea level and on the Equator where we were always covered in a light and sticky layer of salt water and sweat. Now we are, once again, in the Andes and we are now at 3300 meters and, even though we are not far away from the Equator, it’s drizzly and a little cold. We take another strenuous hike around the local mountain and lake-maybe 12km and about 5 hours during which it thunders and rains. We light the wood fire in our room and all our gear drips around it as we try to dry out.

Day 44 Thursday, April 18th Goodbye Galapagos.

Up at 6.00am for a quick taxi to the Santa Cruz Island bus station. ($1). Then a 45 minute bus ride ($1.60 each) to the port on the north side of the island. Then a $1 ferry ride to Baltra Island (where the Galapagos Airport is located) for our flight back to mainland Ecuador at Quito’s new airport. Then a 90 minute bus ride from the new Quito Airport to Quito’s old airport ($8 each) then a taxi ride to the Quito’s bus station ($5). We weren’t sure where to go and so I struck up a conversation with my bus neighbor (Jose is an Ecuadorian lawyer and speaks a little English) and he ends up sharing the taxi with us and directing the driver for us. We get to the bus station around 8.00pm and, once again, seem to be the only tourists and non Spanish-speaking people around. We manage to find the bus we need and buy the $2.20 each tickets for the two hour journey to Otavalo (“Otobalo”) up near the Ecuadorian border with Columbia. The bus pulls out at 8.20pm and so we arrive at Otovalo around 10.30pm and manage to get a taxi ($5) to take us to La Luna, our hostel for the night. It’s a 30 minute taxi ride up into the dark mountains along farm tracks. We had called ahead to make our reservation here since it was recommended by fellow travelers that we met a few weeks ago. This place is very beautiful. It’s owned by Kevin (from Wiltshire England) and his Ecuadorian wife Tamara. We have a super room ($42/night including breakfast) with a wood fire and the fire is lit for us and the room soon becomes warm and welcoming. It’s been almost 18 hours of travelling (on most legs we are the only tourists) but at 11.00pm at night we are offered a pizza and red wine by the staff at La Luna. We are the only guests tonight but many more are booked for tomorrow.