Bogota 7/24/12 - 7/25/12

After a night of twists and turns in the mountains heading to Bogota, we rushed into town to get into our hostel.  At first, the hostel wasn't so bad, but we didn't really have the greatest feeling about it given the mattresses were made of plastic and the bathrooms definitely didn't meet our standards (even Matt's).


On top of that, it was raining and cold (of course it was only about in the 50's, but that is cold by Texas standards), so needless to say it didn't provide the best start for Bogota.  We also didn't feel as comfortable within the hustle and bustle of the busy city compared to the tranquil, easy going "towns" we got used to.


Regardless, we still made it to the Museo de Oro (Gold Museum) to accomplish at least one tourist activity of the day.  Later we ventured to the movie theaters and happened to pick a movie that had parts in Italian, which would've had English subtitles in the U.S., but instead had Spanish subtitles.  Kristin didn't understand as much of the movie as Matt, but the popcorn and coke were still delicious.

Next day, we woke up and switched hostels.  Our new hostel was very clean, and the lady at the front desk gave us a warm welcome and things felt right.  After checking in, we headed off to Bogota Bike Tours.  We are so glad we sought this out and did it because we went to places we never would have seen alone, and learned about things we never would have known without our ex-journalist guide, Mike.  We went to one of the city's biggest markets, which had LOTS of fresh fruits, vegetables, meats, breads, etc, and we tested about 15 different fruits we had never heard of before and they were all delicious!  We also learned about political protests, saw lots of impressive graffiti, went into a coffee factory and had a great cup of coffee, saw a bull fighting arena, and even pedaled through the "red light district" (pretty certain we never would have strolled through this part).  Prostitution is legal in Colombia, but they do try limit it to "tolerance zones".  Riding through this zone was eye-opening.  

Us in the fruit section of the market

Matt with maracuya or colombian passion fruit

A tasty fruit that we can't remember the name of

Matt with yuca

Popular graffiti

Fresh cup of coffee from the coffee roasting factory (sooo good)

Bull fighting arena

Stop in the main plaza

After the bike tour we went through the Botero Art Museum with some people from the tour.  Pretty cool for an art museum.  Neither of us are that "artsy".

Painting in the Botero Museum

As said earlier, our first hostel, Fatima, did not meet our needs.  Thus, no pictures needed of crap for $9 a night.  Of course, our next place, Hostel Sue, for an equivalent price was more than worthy so we included pictures.

San Gil 7/19/12 - 7/23/12

First off, we want to send out a reminder that we are continuously adding photos to our Flickr account.  Just click on the right side of our blog: "Picture Albums" and then click the link on our post to go to the Flickr webpage.


We could write for days about how great San Gil was; however we will try to spare you the boredom of reading all the nitty-gritty.  After our bus ride through the night, we arrived in San Gil, known to be the town for "Extreme!":  paragliding, rafting, rivers, mountains, downhill biking, caving, abseiling, repelling, waterfalls, hikes, etc.  Luckily there was also plenty to do in San Gil for cheap.  Always a plus.  The first day we checked out the botanical garden which was just okay.  That night, the hostel had a "bbq" with some pretty big steaks and it was great to meet a lot of people (Matt wants everyone to know that the term BBQ is used very loosely with most and means nothing of the sort as to what actual BBQ is).

Our second day in San Gil we went canyoning and it was quite the adventure.  You may notice plenty of pics from this outing on flickr with random people in them because we were volunteered as group picture taker with our waterproof camera. The outing involved crawling through a muddy cave ("caving"), abseiling through a waterfall and off a cliff, jumping off waterfalls, and hiking down the river by climbing over rocks.  Here are some pictures of what we did:

The next day, while our companion Ben was extreming it out on the rapids, we met up with a Swiss friend, Marcel, and headed out for about a 1.5 hour hike from Barichara to Guane, two colonial towns a short bus ride from San Gil.  The hike provided wonderful views of Colombia's mountainsides while enjoying conversation.  Both towns had pretty town squares, but not much else.

The next morning we teamed up with a few guys from the hostel and headed out to find the waterfalls near by.  On top of that, we were on a mission to head across the river and find the hostel owner's farm house on the other side of the waterfalls.  We got to jump off some more waterfalls and then walk behind another while crossing the river which was pretty cool.  Colombia is quite beautiful.

The last day we had time to go out and have a whole day of adventure due to buses leaving at all hours of the day(for us it left at 11:30 pm).  We went with three others to Pescorita, about 20 minutes away from San Gil and it was pretty stunning.  We managed to turn a 40 minute hike up the river into 2 hours of round about ways and through paths less traveled, but the scenery was great so we didn't much care.

On a side note, one of Matt's favorite things so far from Colombia would have to be the "meatsticks".  He and Ben got to know the meatstick lady in San Gil pretty well! (pictured with Marcel in the middle)

While in San Gil we stayed at Macondo hostel, owned by a nice Australian, Sean.  He was always around, more than willing to answer our questions, and was super friendly.  The hostel had a low-key, fun vibe and was a great place to stay.  We had a different room for the first two nights and paid about $12 each, then moved to the other dorm for our next two nights at $9 (every little bit helps).

Palomino and downtime... 7/17/12 - 7/18/12

After Taganga, the Swiss couple, Oliver and Linda, headed off for the "Ciudad Perdida" (Lost City) trek, and the rest of us went on to Palomino.  They were great fun to travel with, we wish them the very best on the rest of their trip.

After reaching the town of Palomino (roughly 1 1/2 hour bus ride east of Taganga), we caught moto-taxis down some dirt roads and it was about ten minutes from the town to the actual beach.  There were 3 hostels on the beach and we weren't too impressed with the hostels as it was a bit pricey for what you actually got.  Also, the water looked more like Surfside, TX on a bad day than the bright blue water we saw in Tayorona.  Thus, opposed to chilling on the beach for a few days, we decided to only spend one night.

We stayed at a place called Finca Escondida.  We paid for a hammock which was about $11 and an outdoor bed for $16.  It was actually a quite comfy night.

So after hanging out, eating fresh seafood, and getting a good nights rest, we went on a tubing adventure.  Tubing down the river was the main thing to do in Palomino.  Once again, Matt had to be the "Gringo Muy Grande" on the back of a bike going down narrow roads and up hills, while holding the bike with one hand and a tube with the other.  At times, the bike couldn't make it up the hill with him on it so he just got off and ran up the hill and let the moto-taxi catch up.  Of course, it was the bad manufacturing of the bike and small tires, not his rather large frame.  Anyways, once we all gathered at the drop off, we did a quick 25 minute hike up the mountain to the put-in point on the river and floated down the river to where it meets the ocean.  Since we've been in Colombia people keep telling us to lower our expectations or have no expectations so that we aren't disappointed in some of the tours.  We forgot.  We pictured the tubing to be similar to tubing down the New Braunfels river, but with bluer water.  The water was pretty brown; however, we still enjoyed our time with our new friends and looking at the scenery around the river.

Once back at our place, we rinsed off, ate, packed up, had to part ways with one more in our group, Carlijne, and then headed back into town to catch a bus back to Santa Marta.

Apparently, we ended up on the slowest bus ever, never reaching above 40 m.p.h. and stopping VERY frequently.  By very frequently we mean sometimes twice in one minute.  However, it was neat to pick up quite a few banana workers and other locals returning home from a hard days work.  It's nice to get an inside look into each region's culture and the people.  You can see it was a typical Latin American local bus that wasn't afraid to stack the people in:

Once in Santa Marta, we made our way to La Brisa Loca, a hostel recommended by Ben.  It was very nice, had a great atmosphere, and good food next door.  We wanted to use the night and next day (waiting on a night bus to San Gil) to play catch up.  Each dorm bed was $12.  The only not so great thing about this stay was that we chose a room with no air conditioning, only a fan, and that was not enough! We both woke up about 5:30 am drenched in pools of sweat and could not go back to sleep.  So we got up and were productive before our night bus departed for San Gil.

Taganga 7/11/12- 7/16/12

From Cartagena we went on a 5 hour bus ride heading east to Taganga.  This is a low-key beach town where we knew we could take it easy and relax. 


Taganga's beach wasn't that impressive; however, there were some nearby beaches that were pretty.  Playa Grande is a beach that could be reached either by a 5 minute boat ride or a free 20 minute hike.  We opted for the hike and were glad we did because it offered some beautiful views of Taganga and Playa Grande. 

Taganga beach

View from hike of Playa Grande beach

Playa Grande's beach was supposed to be a little more quiet than Taganga, but we were surprised at how busy it was.  It was a small beach filled with lots of "places" to eat.  Every place seemed to have the same menu- fresh fish with rice, beans, soup, and plantains of some kind. The fish was delicious!!! As you can see, Matt didn't like it at all ;-).  We enjoyed some snorkeling around the reef and although there wasn't a lot of fish, the visibility wasn't bad and we both just love being in the water.

While in Taganga we met back up with a group from Cartagena, a Swiss couple, Oliver and Linda, and a Dutch girl, Carlijne.  We also added a Brit, Ben, to our group and decided that we wanted to go on a little adventure.  One of Colombia's national parks, Parque Tayorona, has some of the country's prettiest beaches.  Matt heard about taking a little fisherman's boat to one of the more isolated beaches so we did some beach side bartering and eventually hired a guy for the right price to take us on his boat to Playa Crystal and pick us up the next afternoon. 

Ben, Carlijne, and Kristin

The views of the coastline along the way were awesome. The water at this beach was bright blue and very clear, it was beautiful.  This beach was much less crowded then the others we had been to and by 4 we had the beach to ourselves.  We stayed the night out there in hammocks which was quite the experience. Not a lot of sound sleeping thanks to the worry of coconuts dropping on our heads ;-).  While at Playa Crystal we snorkeled, laid out, played frisbee with some local kids, and had a great time with our new friends from Taganga.

Playa Crystal

In Taganga we stayed at Casa de Felipe.  It was a nice hostel with lots of lush vegetation and a refreshing outside area to hang out in hammocks, have a beer from the bar, read a book, etc.  The dorm beds cost about $9 each per night.  There was a nice breeze and the rooms had huge fans, so we were happy people! 

After our beach trip, we all spent one last night in Taganga.

Cartagena 7/8/12 - 7/10/12

Cartagena was our first stop in Colombia!  We'd like to start off with a disclaimer and say that our opinions of each place shouldn't be taken as gospel.  Each person's experiences differ and should be taken with a grain of salt.  

Many guidebooks suggest Cartagena is a magical place; however, I'm not sure that we would agree with such a strong adjective.  Within what is called the "Walled City" it is a beautiful place.  Everything is cobblestone, colorful, and the colonial architecture is well preserved by the tourism dollars that pour into the place.  We enjoyed walking around, watching people, and taking photos throughout our first day, but we also really enjoyed the views during the night hours.  All the yellows, whites, and bright colors looked stunning with the lighting.  Outside of the Walled City though, it seems like just a typical city in South America with all the normal hustle and bustle.

From Cartagena, Volcan de los Totumos (a mud volcano) is a short day trip away.  We went on the tour with a few people from our hostel who were nice to meet and experience the mud volcano with.  The mud volcano wasn't exactly Mt. St. Helens of mud, but more of a hot tub sized mud pit 15m high.  Stepping into it felt like being stuck in the middle of a marshmallow, you couldn't sink if you tried because you just kind of floated in it.  In order to immerse your whole body in the mud pit, people had to push you down into the mud otherwise you'd stay on top of it. Overall, an interesting experience!

While in Cartagena, we stayed at Casa Viena which was close to many other hostels and outside the Walled City, thus we got to see some of the local life up close and personal, a nice touch.  A private room at this hostel was about $13-$14 each per night.  Our room was small, and pretty warm (no air conditioning), but the room fan helped.  Cartagena was very hot- imagine Houston in July with no air conditioning, that's kinda how it felt ;-). 

Although we enjoyed the beauty of the Walled City, after 3 days in Cartagena we were ready to move on to the next place- Taganga!