“Travel and change of place impart new vigor to the mind.” – Seneca
Colombia is synonymous with cocaine and drug cartels and when people think of Colombia, they envisage a place fraught with crime and people living in fear. Although this has been true in the past and yes, still today cocaine and other drugs are still extremely easy to get and very very cheap, we discovered that the country has so much more to offer. From diving in the northern coast to dancing salsa in Cali, from drinking amazing coffee in Salento to eating and having fun at great restaurants and bars in Medellin and Bogota and of course there are the beautiful old towns around the country. Colombian people are so happy to finally be sharing their wonderful country with outsiders and we were met with kindness wherever we went.
We embarked on Colombia by flying from Panama city into Medellin, a city well known for being home to the infamous Medellin drug cartel and drug lord Pablo Escobar. Escobar was killed in 1993 and since then the city has completely turned itself around. It has a fantastic metro system with not a scratch of graffiti, beautiful parks and plazas where people are able to hang around without fear, amazing restaurants and bars and a couple of kiwi-owned hostels (The Black Sheep and Casa Kiwi) of which we stayed in one of them :). Paisa people, as the locals are known, are extremely proud of their city and on a couple of occasions locals yelled out “Welcome to Colombia, Medellin is the best city.”
Boarding a pimping overnight bus equipped with TV’s in each seat, we headed off to the northern coast of Colombia. First stop was the colonial city of Cartegena. It was again a beautifully restored Spanish city with cobblestone streets, whitewashed buildings, colonial mansions and sprawling plazas. However the city did not grab us like the guidebook said it would, most likely because we have seen A LOT of colonial cities already in Central America. So a couple of days here was enough and then it was onto the fishing village of Taganga for diving. The town itself doesn’t have a lot to offer but is a really chill place to do nothing for a few days. We decided to do a day of diving here and it was good. We saw a lot of underwater life and coral gardens and to top it off we stayed the night in a cabana on a deserted beach, sleeping in hammocks, cooking on open fire and it was just us and the caretaker there. Was exactly what I needed at this stage in our travels.
A few days chilling by the beach reinvigorated me and we set off for San Gil. This small town was my favourite in Colombia. Most travellers are enticed here by the adventure sports offered but as we are saving these for Ecuador we instead enjoyed day trips out of town to natural pools, hiking and simply wandering around town and shopping at the local mercado. The town has a good medium that caters well for tourists without being a tourist only town. Walking through the market, locals would often engage in conversation with us and make us feel really welcome. After San Gil we were headed for the capital city, Bogota. We had arranged to stay here with a couchsurfer and finding her place turned out to be quite the adventure. We asked the Police for directions and after they told us the area isn’t safe they drove us to her apartment, escorted us inside and waited while we rung her doorbell. Unfortunately nobody answered and turns out she was still in the north of Colombia but her flatmates would let us in. We decided to not wait around and walked to the old town to find a hostel. Passing an extremely high number of brothels and prostitutes on the way we finally reached downtown. Being a Saturday morning there were lots of people around and as I felt fingers on my neck I noticed someone was trying to steal my necklace. Luckily I screamed, the guy dropped my necklace and we were promptly told my locals that the area wasn’t safe for us. 1 block more we finally reached the old town and a hostel. Unfortunately stories like mine were pretty commonplace from other travelers in the hostel and this led to me never feeling 100% safe here. Despite this, Bogota has some great things to see, a beautiful historic center and great nightlife. We also met up with a different couchsurfer and he took us for a big walk around the city, explaining lots of things to us.
Continuing south I was excited to visit the coffee zone and see how the amazing drink is made. We stayed in the small town of Salento and enjoyed visiting the small coffee plantation of Don Elias. Unfortunately the beans are sold to a big distributor who then sells them to the world so the farm only grows the bean. They did explain and showed us a brief explanation of the process to make the coffee and of course we got to enjoy a good cup of coffee at the end! The area is also home to Colombia’s national tree, the ‘Wax palm tree.’ We hiked around the beautiful national park while enjoying views of these extraordinary trees.
Last stop before moving overland to Ecuador was ‘salsa capital of the world’ Cali. We ensured we were there for a weekend and had fun out at the discotecas, attempting salsa and watching the locals engage in many different forms of dancing with the most entertaining being reggaeton (youtube it!!).
Unfortunately as December creeps closer, our travel time in each country is becoming less. There is still so much more of Sur America we want to see and although I could have spent so much longer exploring Colombia, 3 weeks was all we had! Until next time…..
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