Colombia Part 2

We spent almost 2 months in Colombia and loved every second of it! The country offers culture, nature, activites and the nicest people.

After El Cocuy National Park we spent a night in Villa de Leyva, a small town outside of Bogata. It is a very popular local Colombian tourist spot. Mainly people from Bogota go there for the weekends. It also has the largest plaza in Colombia.

Next we went to Bogota and spent 2 weeks there. Here is a view of the large sprawling city from the mountains behind it.

Here is where we stayed in La Candelaria (the historic area of Bogota). It was a very beautiful neighborhood with numerous universities and government buildings. Almost every building was covered in grafiti. Majority of it was political. We found out that whenever a major political event takes place the streets get covered in grafiti. They leave it on for a month or so until the crowds calm down and then shortly after everything will be covered again.

There were rallies in the main square at least twice a week. With their crazy political history, the people of Colombia are very active and make their voice heard.

One of our favorite activites was walking up and down this pedestrian streeet. There are vendors everywhere selling anything you could ever imagine, street preformers, protests, amazing people watching and of course guinea pig races.

This shop would put a pair of pants in the street everyday to show they were open. It always cracked us up as this was a busy street and all the cars would just go around them.

One of our favorite treats was bocadilla which is guava paste (in my leftt hand). One day while I was enjoying my snack a bird pooped right on my hand.... and hair and back.  Patrick found it hilarious and made me pose for like 10 pictures beofre I could wash it off.

Our friend Matt from home and Ronaldo came and met up with us for a few days in Bogota. Here they are on top of the mountain behind the city.

A big highlight in Bogota was the beer. There were a few breweries here with good beer. A treat from the watery lagers offered everywhere else.

After Bogota we went to a small agriculture town called Salento. 

Here was our camping spot at the hostel. Our view was amazing !

Salento is a 20 minute Jeep ride to a beautiful National Park where we spent a day hiking.

The jeeps were actually the local transportation to the surrounding towns. So we were crammed in.

It rains a lot in Salento so our hike was quite muddy but it made for some awesome vegetation.

Huge leaves! This is a plant we have in our house. Only our house plant has leaves smaller than my hand.

There were amazing humming birds on our hike! We have never seen such a beautiful tail.

There were palm trees all over the country side before the hike. It made for an interesting mix of trees.

Patrick paying the jeep back in Salento.

We went through a few more towns before we made our way to the Ecuadorian border. We did some more hiking in Buga and some good eating in Popyan. One of the last soups Patrick ate in the border town Ipiales. Yummy chicken feet!

El Cocuy National Park, Colombia

This was our trip to El Cocuy National Park, the park has many glacier covered peaks that are above 17,000 ft. and some amazing hiking. We got a little mixed up on our buses getting there but we made it in one piece (2 days later after 4 buses and 2 lecheros).

Here I am during our bus mix up trying to hitchhike from a small town to El Cocuy, we tried to catch a ride for over an hour without any luck. Eventually we ended up catching a bus.

Here Colleen is in the Lechero(milk truck) during our ride to the trail head from the town. This was the only public transportation out to the trail head. The truck would stop for the local farmers and buy their fresh milk. We ended up having to catch two Lecheros to make it to the trail. We loved the authentic cowboys in their hats and ponchos.

The view from the Lechero.

On the trail! We were litterally the only ones on the trail.

Not really sure what to think about this sign..... glad we didnt run into any pumas.

Passing a glacial lake on the trail. There were also these crazy cacti that looked like people in my peripheral vision, kinda trippy.

Our campsite in the Cueva De Los Hombres, you can see our tent on the left behind a small rock wall. This campsite was great protection from the wind, rain and snow in the valley. Plus it had amazing views!

This is Concavo Peak covered by clouds and an enormous glacier.

Colleen and I in front of Concavo Peak. We climbed up the plateau to the left of the glacier as high as we could go.

A chilly morning in the sleeping bags. We got these sleeping bags from a store called Exito, similar to target, so we were skeptical of the quality. As it turned out these sleeping bags saved our asses! So warm! 

Here I am looking at the view of Pulpito Del Daiblo.

Fuck ya El Cocuy!

A crazy plant that we found, looks very similar to some coral we have seen in the Caribbean. We named it high alpine coral.

Finally the clouds lifted and we got a clear view of the beautiful valley above us!!

Enjoying the view and the sunshine!!

We were lucky to catch this sunshine. Later on this evening the weather change and it snowed with lightning bursts. We woke up the next morning to a few inches of snow and were very happy to have our tent in a cave.

Colombia (Medillin, San Gil)

This is a view from the metro of a small part of the City Medellin. We spent a week in the city exploring the museums and walking around the city. One of our favorite things was a city tour, the tour giude gave us a run-down of the crazy history and brought us to many areas that we would not have seen otherwise.

Here we have Colleen fondeling a Botero sculpture in front of the Antioquia museum in downtown Medellin.

This is San Gil 10 hours northwest of Medellin. A small city that we enjoyed for over a week. While here we went paragliding, enjoyed our days lounging in the central park and driving through the surrounding towns with Mauricio(in the picture below).

Patrick helping Mauricio deliver toilet paper, cooking oil and broom sticks to a local bodega.

We met Mauricio hitchhiking back from a nearby town and we instiantly made friends. We ended up spending 3 days with him driving around the countryside delivering goods to the samll picturesque colonial towns. He would show us off to all of his friends who would feed us and give us treats from their trade. We got a fresh cigar from a tobacco farm, 2 kg panela, guyaca juice, fresh bread and lots more. Colombians are the most friendly people ever! 

A small town called Barichara outside of San Gil. Famed as being the most beautiful town in the area with 300 year old whitewashed buildings and stone streets.

This is one of the vegetable/fruit areas in the local market in San Gil. The was also a meat area and a whole floor above this one selling veggies and random contraband stuff. We came here everyday to get food for dinner.

Colleen taking flight with her paragliding instructor!

View from the paragliding. Patrick took this photo up in the air. Shortly after his guide missed the landing and they crash landed in to a tree! They both ended up being just fine minus a few cuts and bruises. 

Journey from Panama to Colombia

We were over Panama City and eager to get to Colombia. We decided to take a speedboat from Panama to Colombia which entailed a long day of travel on an uncomfortable boat. We woke up at 5am to catch our ride to the caribbean coast. Once we arrived our driver let us out and took off in a hurry. We met our boat captain who told us that the boat would not be leaving that day. The area we were at was a territory given to the indigenious Kuna community. This was beautiful area which included the San Blas Islands (a popular tourist destination). The only issue was there were no banks and all the accomodations were on the islands and we were stuck on the coast with limited cash. Through our broken spanish and facial expression the captian could tell we upset and he let us know he would pay for our accomodations for the night and take us to some islands for the day. 

A view of the untouched Kuna territory and caribbean coast.

This is the first of 3 islands the captian took us to that day. Normally people explore the San Blas on prearranged sailing tours. Since a tour boat was not in the area we had the island to ourselves. The captain even bought us some beers.

Our accomodations were not on the tourist islands but instead on one of the islands the Kona lived on. We were definitely the only "gringos" staying on the island. It was very basic and very poor but still beautiful.

Here were are sitting on the dock watching the sunset. You can see the basic houses in the background.

It was an amazing sunset that night.

Here are the boats the Kunas took from island to island. They were constantly bailing out water.

Our lovely bed came with three mattresses. We were literally tacoed into the bed.

It was an interesting night sleep with the bed and the other creatures in the "hotel". All night we heard rats crawling and running around. The worst was hearing them run up and down the tarp covering the ceiling amd above our bed. Patrick stayed awake all night scaring the rats away from our stuff. He suceeded except one got to his sandals.
(We classified this night as 3rd hand fun. Aka funny when you look back on it.)

Here were the neighborhood bathrooms. Dumping straight into the ocean with all the trash. Also the spot where the kids swam in the evening. Overall makes you greatful for what you have.

The women still dressed in the traditional clothing. They were beautiful colorful patterns and their arms and legs were wrapped in beads.

After a night of little sleep we took of the next morning for Colombia.  There were only 3 of us on the boat and the ocean was calm. We had read a lot of horror stories about the boat trip so we were happy this part of the journey was uneventful.

After 7 hours we arrived in Capurgana, Colombia. A beautiful costal town located in the middle of the Darian gap. (We had to take another boat to get to the mainland of Colombia.)  Everynight all the local boys would fish on the dock, as you can see in the background.

Here is the airport. It served as a park for dogs and livestock when no planes were coming in.

We made it all the way to mainland Colombia and caught a bus to Medellin! Patrick got a bag of water to celebrate. Drinking it like a local.