Pirates and mud volcanoes

March 17th, 2010 by David
Balconies in Cartagena old town.

Balconies in Cartagena old town.

From Bogota we moved on to Cartagena out by the coast. Cartagena is adorable – full of old colonial architecture and flowers hanging down over the street from wooden balconies. It is much hotter here than in Bogota, and the town feels strongly Caribbean. The old city is walled, with cannons still pointing out over the sea where Francis Drake and other pirates used to lurk, plotting to steal from the Spaniards the gold they in turn had only just stolen from the Indians. A couple of replica pirate ships were actually parked in the harbour. Cartagena was an important port in the early colonial days and nearly all the gold shipped home to Spain was shipped from here. It also became important for the slave trade, with the main plaza where you enter the walled city once being a slave market. First local indigenous were used, but the priests started protesting that it wasn’t right to use these people for slaves since they had souls just like catholic people – for slaves it would be much better to import blacks, without souls, from the west of Africa.

Cartagena cannons and city walls.

Cartagena cannons and city walls.

With a charming city center and fantastic seafood the only thing that wasn’t nice in (contemporary) Cartagena was the place we were staying – we had arrived late and picked a random hostel in the Getsemani part of town near the walled city. It looked a bit shoddy and Edel was suspecting it was a rent-by-the-hour love hotel (…they only had a room free for us after 10pm). In the morning we moved across the road to a place that looked better from the outside at least, though the room was smaller, more expensive, and on top of the TV/wifi/shower being broken it was a bit of a party-hostel with someone practising the guitar (quite poorly) outside our room until 2am. And then of course the ants… We decided we might head for Taganga a bit sooner than planned!

After the volcano-dipping.

After the volcano-dipping.

We did one daytrip from Cartagena before we couldn’t stick the hostel any more – to take a dip in a mud volcano 1-2 hours outside town. We booked through the hostel so went in a group with a handful of other tourists. The “volcano” is a 20 meter high mound, with bubbling lukewarm mud inside – some rickety mud-baked steps lead up to the top and then down into the mud pool. Very strange to slip down into – you float high, about shoulder-level, in the smooth sticky mud. One thing we found you need to look out for is that if you lean forward to much your legs will start floating up behind you, tipping your face further and further down – like falling forward in slow-motion. Someone else in the group slipped in and got a total dip. There was a lagoon nearby to wash off in afterwards, and it was a funny experience (apart perhaps from having to dodge all the people who look for a tip by trying to massage you, help you wash off, or take your picture).

Carnaval in Taganga.

Carnaval in Taganga.

With Jean in Taganga.

With Jean in Taganga.

From Cartagena we got a bus to Taganga, a small village by the coast a couple kilometers from the town of Santa Marta. We planned to spend three nights in the village before setting off on a trek, and here we found a really nice hostel. The owner, Jean, is a French gentleman with 76 years of travel stories under his belt – living in Colombia during its most turbulent decades and growing up in China at the time of the Communist takeover, a linguist with eight languages he’d spent time living with a tribe in the Amazon, and as a brilliant jazz pianist he’d played in a jam session with the Buena Vista Social Club. After the first night we were the only people staying there, so we had most of our meals together with him, listening to stories of kidnappings (he’d been in three!) or of being at sea during a typhoon. In the evenings once the heat wore off we’d sit under the lime and mango trees in his garden, listening to crickets, geckos, and more amazing stories that start with “Well, back in 1947…”. Once, living in the US during the height of communist-paranoia he’d been questioned by the FBI for visiting a Russian bookshop (which they saw as unpatriotic enough) and then walking through the town, using his feet, for a full hour and a half (very suspicious)! One evening before we left he dusted off the piano and treated us to a beautiful April in Paris and other jazz classics. He’d worked as a photographer as well, and gave me a couple filters to play with during the trek after I set up the wifi for his hostel. We made plans to come back and stay a few more days after we returned from the six day Ciudad Perdida trek into the Colombian jungle.

The most dangerous place in Bogota

March 16th, 2010 by David
Botero museum in La Candelaria.

Botero museum in La Candelaria.

North of the equator for the first time in over five months. I’ve always wanted to go to Colombia – or at least since the country stopped leading the worlds-highest-rate-of-kidnappings list! (..that title now belongs to Iraq). In Bogota we stayed in the La Candelaria old part of town, very charming with lots of old houses, wooden balconies, courtyards and narrow streets running up and down the hills. The area feels safe, and there’s military or police on every second street corner to make sure it stays that way – Colombia is working hard on improving it’s tourism image recently and by avoiding a few jungle/border areas the ad-slogan “the only risk is wanting to stay” could well be true.

El Dorado raft in the Bogota gold museum.

El Dorado raft in the Bogota gold museum.

One of the main sights in Bogota is the Gold Museum – probably the biggest collection of conquistador-surviving artefacts anywhere. The museum is very modern and well put together, expert lightning and use of ambient music to build atmosphere. One room you enter completely in the dark before more and more ancient gold pieces are lit up all around you on the walls, and also below your feet in the floor together with water sounds to simulate El Dorado lake offerings. Afterwards we went to the Botero modern art museum which I must say impressed a bit less…Botero’s work is a fairly repetitive collection of paintings of the over-fed, all with expression-less faces. His horses are funny though! They also had some paintings by other artists including an incredibly disturbing early Picasso that was probably put there to make Botero look good.

The next day we went to the most dangerous place in Bogota – which is of course the science museum! In the Maloka museum they put us inside a big steel-cage and sent 600,000 volts through it! I missed most of the explanation (including the general point of the experiment) as it was in Spanish but it was anyway very important to hold your ears and to avoid touching the cage…which was difficult with way too many people inside. At one point everyone else in the cage laughed and looked at me – the “experiment supervisor” had just explained that in case anyone gets electrocuted it’s usually the tallest person! After surviving this they also put us through the standard charge-someone-until-the-hair-stands-on-end trick, and the hold-hands-in-a-big-circle-so-everyone-gets-an-electric-shock. To relax after this adventure we went to the omnimax movie theater…something about an alien invasion in an amusement park.

The Zipaquira salt cathedral.

The Zipaquira salt cathedral.

The Zipaquira salt cathedral was our destination for the next day. In the village Zipaquira 50 kilometers north of Bogota salt has been mined since pre-Columbian days, and some of the old mining tunnels inside the mountain have been turned into a giant cathedral (two cathedrals actually – but the first one didn’t please the lord so he made the roof cave in, in his mercy). We got a local bus to Zipaquira then a taxi up to the salt mine – the taxi driver was very friendly and chatty and was driving around with his whole family in the front seats for the day. The cathedral is a strange place, long dark tunnels and big caverns, a bit of religious imagery over there, some tacky coloured lighting over there. They even had a 3D cinema fitted down there, showing the history of the mine. We had just been fitted out for the hardhat-and-headlamp part of the ticket when all the lights went out everywhere down in the mine – everyone had to be led out to the surface by one of the guides.

The last day in Bogota before moving on to Cartagena we took a cablecar up to the Cerro de Monserrate hill 500m above town, for panoramic views over a city of 8 million.

Wine, wine, wine… Surf, surf, surf…

February 15th, 2010 by David
Oak barrels in a Maipu winery.

Oak barrels in a Maipu winery.

The city of Mendoza is Argentina’s wine growing capital, and we had made sure to meet up with a genuine Frenchman so that we wouldn’t look like complete amateurs when visiting the wineries. Matteo had arrived from New Zealand via Chile, and sported the same spectacular jetlag that we caught ourselves a few months back on the same long east-bound flight. Alcohol is one of the worst ways to try to cure a jetlag, but Matteo was brave and willing to try anyway. Apart from visiting an underwhelming modern art museum in the city center we accomplished little during our first few days in Mendoza. We moved hostel after three days as we are now stuck in high season and the room we were in was booked out – luckily we found another hotel closeby that had a room free. And no wonder…something was terribly wrong with this room – the place was a bit cheaper and had fan instead of a/c, but something else was heating the room up as a furnace… It kept least 10 degrees Celsius hotter than anywhere else in the hotel, clocking in at 32 degrees already at 7am in the morning! We checked the walls and floor but couldn’t figure out where all the heat was coming from… After two nights of awful sleep with the slow ceiling fan only gently stirring the air we found a third hotel to move to.

Bottles in a Maipu winery.

Bottles in a Maipu winery.

We went rafting one of the days – there’s a fast flowing brown river with lots of rapids an hour out of town. The water was higher than usual in the river and it was great fun. Between the rapids I asked the raft-leader if anyone ever fell off, “oh rarely, maybe three times in a season”, then ten seconds later someone fell off the raft just in front of us (the person was quickly recovered luckily). Matteo went paragliding the next day, then we organized to do the main thing people come to Mendoza for: bike around between the wineries for a day. Being good students we commenced the sampling already the evening before, so we got a bit of a late start and only made it to two different wineries during the day, plus a small olive farm. One of the wineries was very traditional, giant oak barrels, the second more modern with huge metal cylinders. It was nice to bike around in the sunshine, stop by the side of the road here and there for some bread, cheese and olives, then sample a few more wines…better the more kilometers you’ve biked. It was nearly too hot to drink wine though really…but it probably wouldn’t have been too good an idea to ask for a cold beer…

Matteo (and Lukas) and Edel in Valparaiso.

Matteo (and Lukas) and Edel in Valparaiso.

After eight nights in Mendoza – one of our longer stops for the whole trip – we had our final Argentinean steak and then the three of us got a long bus-ride across the Andes back to Santiago, then to Valparaiso, the cute rundown sea-port town me and Edel visited already once while making our way south in Chile three months ago. We were stressing a bit to make the bus…ending up with the only taxi driver in all of Latin America that stops for amber, and arrived at the station with just two minutes to spare – before having to wait an hour for the delayed bus. It got even more late during the border crossing 3,200 meters up in the mountains – standing still for hours in the queue. Once we got inside the checkpoint all counters except two were closed…long queues but the people behind all the other counters were busy playing patience on the computer or doing their facebook… The bus was meant to reach Santiago at 5pm but got there at 9pm..luckily we still found a bus to Valparaiso and the hostel there had kept the room we booked.

Epic looking feline in Valparaiso.

Epic looking feline in Valparaiso.

We spent two nights in Valparaiso, walking around town and looking at all the cool graffiti (some had been cleaned since out last visit – La Ganja es una Deidad no more unfortunately…) and riding the funky funicular lifts. Next we headed to Pichilemu – Chile’s surf capital – and signed up for some lessons at a surf lodge outside town. Matteo had already mastered the art in New Zealand, but me and Edel took a lesson with a real long-haired surfer-dude who thought everything was “epic”.

At least we look like surfers!

At least we look like surfers!

This beach was a bit less beginner-friendly than the one Matteo had surfed in New Zealand, but he still managed to stand up on the board unlike us. There were crazy waves running out from the beach to meet the real waves in a big splash, and currents dragging you along as you fight the waves trying to get back out. The hardest part was just getting far enough out to even get to try – my routine would be something like this: struggle for half an hour to paddle out, big waves beating me in the face, get tipped over and go under, swallow some water, get a bruise from someone else’s board, and find myself all the way back at the beach again without even having tried to catch a wave! Did get to catch a few waves eventually, body-boarding along the whole way to the shore with the wave breaking underneath me, but didn’t get as far as standing up on my feet. Just as often the wave would just pass by below without taking me along, completely ignoring all my frantic paddling.

Street in Valparaiso.

Street in Valparaiso.

I had probably swallowed a gallon of sea water at the end, with another gallon lodged in my sinuses (exiting gracefully through the nose in large quantities whenever I’d tilt my head…). Still fun though, but awfully hard work. Like snowboarding if you had to climb the whole mountain between each run instead of taking the lift… We went back a second day, and I managed to surf standing on my knees at least. Then I paddled out a bit too far “too catch that perfect wave” and the current caught me and dragged me some kilometer down along the beach. I was paddling until I was blue in the face but couldn’t quite tell if I was getting closer to or further away from the beach… Once I finally got back we decided to call it for the day. Me and Edel would fly to Bogota after this, but I looked in no shape to cross borders…three day stubble I didn’t want to shave due to a bad sunburn, blood-shot eyes from the waves beating me in the face – looking in the mirror even I would think I was smuggling! Then again, who ever heard of anyone smuggling drugs in to Colombia?

Stayed out of the water and sun the last day, then went in to town for leaving drinks with Matteo. Slept most of the bus to Santiago the next day, as well as the flight to Buenos Aires, the nine hour airport stopover, and the flight to Bogota…

Calilegua: eaten alive by blood-sucking animals

February 14th, 2010 by David

After leaving Tilcara we got a bus to Jujuy, then another to the small town Libertador close to the Calilegua national park. In Libertador we got a collectivo taxi to take us another bit further to Calilegua town, which the guidebook recommended as a nicer place to stay, though when we got there the town’s only little hostel was full. Luckily the same taxi driver spotted us again when driving around looking for people for the return journey, and we checked in to a hotel back in Libertador instead. When we went for something to eat in the evening we noticed the whole town was overrun by one-inch bugs, thousands of them running around or lying crushed everywhere on the sidewalk.

Bus to Calilegua.

Bus to Calilegua.

In the morning we got the one daily bus to the national park, after having breakfast in the hotel while being interviewed by the fairly-drunken staff…“which part of America is Ireland in now again?”… The bus had a nice countryside feel to it, finally limping out of town an hour late packed with people and the aisle stacked high with sacks of potatoes. The road runs through the national park to a couple isolated villages on the other side – we got off at the second ranger station “Mesada de las Colmenas” somewhere in the middle of the park, planning to do a trek from there. The ranger station was unmanned, but a faded map outside suggested the trek should start nearby – we eventually found where it branched off from the road, unsigned except for a fallen-down rotting sign a hundred meters into the trek reminding you not to forget to register… It hadn’t been walked in a while it seemed – overgrown and lots of spiderwebs across the trail kept getting stuck in my face. It was boiling hot when we started the trek, even though we were 1200 meters up, and the trail was a steep downhill, through dense forest covered in epiphytes; bromeliads and even cactus growing up in the trees.

Natural shower in Calilegua.

Natural shower in Calilegua.

At the end of the climb down we came to a small river and a waterfall. The water was cold and refreshing and we were hot and sweaty from the walk – we hadn’t brought any swim gear but luckily I’m Swedish and we seemed to be all alone in the park. We stayed a couple hours by the stream, lunching on tuna, bread and olives we’d packed, before starting the long climb back up (did meet someone on the way actually…). When we got back to the ranger station we started walking back along the road – nice views out over the forested hills in the park but it was boiling hot and now we had less shade…it was all downhill at least luckily. When we got a lift some 6-7 kilometers later we were almost completely out of water, and it was great to feel the breeze in our face sitting on the back of the pickup.

Back in the comfort of the hotel in Libertador I discovered there might be something to be said for not “going Swedish” in the national park – I counted a full 30 ticks sucking blood from my leg! Got a bus back to Salta the next day (…more ham and cheese sandwiches), then a long 20 hour bus took us (minus our contraband apples which were confiscated by an armed guard..) south to Mendoza. The city of Mendoza is a wine growing Mecca, and we had organized to bring with us a genuine Frenchman so we wouldn’t make complete fools of ourselves. Matteo had already arrived from Chile and was waiting in the hostel.

Forest in the Calilegua national park.

Forest in the Calilegua national park.