November 2008
Bogota
We’ve been in Bogota the capital of Colombia almost a week after arriving on a flight from Buenos Aires on Wednesday 5th November. We absolutely love it…we originally intended to spend a couple of nights but the city is so vibrant and beautiful with a lot of great museums and attractions that we extended our stay to 6 nights. We’ve been staying in the Candelaria district, an old part of town walking distance from most of the major attractions. We’ve been pleasantly surprised by the amazing hospitality and vibrancy of Colombia and it’s heading towards the top of our list of favourite countries visited in this past year of travel.
Bogota is a big city at a high elevation, 2640 meters (8661 ft) above sea level with a population of approx. 8 million. Bordered to the east by the Eastern Cordillera of the Andes mountain range, the city is surrounded by hills which limit city growth and run from the south to the north. Dominating the city skyline are the 2 mountains of Guadalupe and Monserrate.
This was our £20 a night hotel in Bogota, Casa Platypus, an excellent place with great staff…Sandra, Mercedes and Hector hello if you are reading this! You made our stay in Bogota really special. The communal dining room next door to the communal kitchen was a great place to meet other travellers and the rooms faced inwards to a pretty central courtyard. We were on the second level with a roof terrace above us, a big double bed, cable TV, free wi-fi in the room and a brand new bathroom. The building is beautiful. When we first arrived in the city we headed to their sister building which is a backpacker hostel. The owner greeted us, must have noted our age and immediately led us to the more ‘grown up’ Casa Platypus. Amusing…and grateful. Always happy to avoid late night guitar solos, drum circles and drunkenly amorous hooks up apparent in most backpacker hostels. Hah.
We took the teleferico (cable car) up the Cerro de Monserrate mountain for fabulous views of the city and wandered around the church at its peak with its statue of Senor Caido (Fallen Christ). Like so many religious Latin American statues the depiction of flesh covered in stab wounds and running with blood is gory…it must scare the crap out of kids. An area of several food stalls sold local food whilst pack mules carried crates of fizzy drinks up and down the mountain from the city below.
£7.50 for 2 people, 2 return tickets on the cable car. There’s also a funicular railway which goes straight up but only seems to operate on Sundays. The cable cars are perfectly safe and fit around 40 people. We were advised not to walk up and down the mountain due to the presence of ‘bandits’. Best to err on the safer side when the warning comes from the locals. We looked out across the rooftops to the Guadalupe mountain.
We visited most of the museums in Bogota. The impressive recently re-opened and re-furbished Museo del Oro (Gold Museum) displays an incredible selection of pre-Hispanic gold work, the biggest in the world and is quite simply stunning. The famous Muisca’s golden raft discovered 1969 in Pasca Colombia created 1295-1410 is on display here; thought to represent the gold offering ceremony known as El Dorado. (image credit Wikipedia).
The Donacion Botero Museum houses 123 of Botero’s works, we looked around but aren’t fond of his rounded plump portraits and sculptures, appreciating more the floor of Old Masters ranging from Renoir, Picasso, Monet, Chagall…wonderful and free admission. The Museo de Arte Colonial contains mainly religious art and artifacts, impressive and it had a beautiful old courtyard garden. The Museo de Arte Moderno (MAMBO) was hit and miss but had one floor showing a Colombian artist called Constanza Aguirre which was absolutely stunning work called Quieren Carne De Hombres and deserves to be on show in the world’s art galleries; huge red and black canvases which when looked at more closely depict men on protest marches. We both loved the work. One of the most fun museums was the Museo Historico Policia where we were shown around by an 18 year old policeman called Charles. In the basement they have an exhibition on Pablo Escobar including very bloody photos of him shot down when they finally caught him. His jacket and the drug cartel phones etc plus a whole floor full of guns, Magnum 44’s everything – it was quite bonkers but also fascinating. Free to get in so we tipped the guide. Open every day except Mondays. Charles also guided us to a balcony overlooking the city and pointing to the streets told us we would be perfectly safe as tourists…then pointing to one particular street saying “Even I, a policeman, will not walk on that street.” Warning heeded!
Not far from our hotel in the centre of the city we saw a local man running Guinea Pig betting on the street. Minimum bet is 200 Colombian pesos, put your money down on top of one of the plastic overturned bowls with a hole in the front and bet on the number of the bowl that the guinea pig will run in to. On the starting block, don’t know how he keeps them lined up…a mad dash…and not a single guinea pig will run in to any of the plastic pots with money placed on top. How does he do it? How do you train a gang of Guniea pigs?
Bogota has a large student population which really lends to the city’s vibrancy and fantastic music and youth scene. Street art and graffiti, some political…is all over the city, an armoured police vehicle menacing, dystopian.
Colombia has the unfortunate global reputation for drug cartels, Pablo Escobar, rebel opposition groups such as FARC and high levels of street crime. Since the 1960s government forces, left-wing insurgents and right-wing paramilitaries have been engaged in South America’s longest running armed conflict. Fuelled by the cocaine trade this escalated dramatically in the 1990s. The insurgents lack the military or popular support necessary to overthrow the government, so in recent years the violence has been decreasing. Many travellers and tourists are understandably wary of visiting the country but the current President Alvaro Uribe Velez is tightening security with a higher level of military and police presence on the streets of most major cities. Colombia’s homicide rate was for many years the highest in the world but has almost halved since 2002. Velez’s tactics may intimidate; seeing firepower on the streets…but most of the patrolling police and military we encountered were young men, friendly and helpful towards visiting travellers; many of them eager for the opportunity to talk with someone from another country.
The Plaza de Bolivar anchors the city, belltowers overlooking the people and pigeons…impressive architecture and pastel painted buildings with landscaped planting are grand but sit well among the more worn streets, flaking buildings and narrow lanes of street vendors bustling with trade and mules plodding through their working day. We saw the new James Bond movie and on the walk back, Calle 7 a main streets through the centre closes every Friday afternoon for processions and live music; stages set up along the street, street vendors, street entertainers. Fun to walk through the excitement and music.
The energy in Bogota is infectious; take New York, London and San Telmo Buenos Aires and mix with Bogota, you’d have the perfect city. Yes you need to be cautious especially at night; street muggings of tourists happen and sadly it happened to us. Out with two English women we met at Casa Platypus, a fantastic evening at a local bar and venue meeting the musicians later..talking and drinking…the street we were on too narrow for a taxi to drive up and being only a few minutes away we decided to walk back. In those minutes a group of youths jumped us holding small knives…grabbing a bag from one woman but getting nothing from Dave as we’d spent the little cash we’d needed…him drunkenly offering his driver’s license. The boys ran..walking a little ahead I got to the hostel and Hector, the young man managing night desk, leapt across it brandishing a machete and took chase. Being too many tequilas in…Dave and the two women took chase with him leaving me standing on the hostel doorstep locked out. Over in minutes they returned out of breath, a stolen bag recovered, the money missing. Police were called and hostel security cameras showed events…me trying to explain what they looked like, the police muttering ‘ninos’ (children)…we were accosted by kids. The young woman who took her bag containing all her cash, her passport (but more distraught about her makeup and hat from her Grandmother) could have left her valuables in the hostel’s Safe. Her bulging bag an invitation…staggering and singing drawing attention. But we live and learn and no-one got hurt…more of a target walking at night (after 10pm) and after a few drinks street savvy is compromised… but that could happen anywhere in the world and you just need to be aware of your surroundings. Don’t go out at night with a bag or camera, keep cash and cards to a minimum, only take what you need for the evening. That way if you run in to problems at night (and it’s usually gangs of young people) you can hand over what you have and it won’t be much after a night out. Luckily the experience didn’t put us off, the city during the day was very safe in the centre…in fact we loved Bogota so much we extended our stay…at Casa Platypus with our protector, Hector!
Zipaquirá Salt Cathedral.
10th November: Our last day in Bogota we took a day trip to see the underground salt cathedral in Zipaquira, a couple of hours outside the city on 2 local buses. We got the Transmilenio bus from Las Aguas in the centre of Bogota (1,500 Col. Peso each) to Portal Norte which took about 40 minutes and then changed on to the smaller local bus for Zipaquira (3,000 Col. Pesos each). The main cross in the temple is the largest underground cross in the world…16 metres high and 10 metres wide. Confusing when you don’t speak Spanish but we managed to buy our bus tickets okay with a lot of guessed Spanish, hand waving and smiling and a lot of laughter on the locals part. Once in Zipaquira a friendly local music student showed us the way to the cathedral which is a 15 minute walk uphill from where the bus dropped us, walking through the attractive town plaza en-route.
Opened to the public in 1995, the Salt Cathedral of Zipaquirá (Catedral de Sal de Zipaquirá) is built in an underground series of salt mines 200 metres inside a salt mountain near the town of Zipaquirá, in Cundinamarca, Colombia. 75 metres long 18 metres high holds 8,400 people, a vast entrance tunnel descends into the Catholic cathedral passing 14 small chapels en route each representing the stations of the cross illustrating the events of Jesus’ last journey. Each station is an area carved in to the salt walls and has a cross and several kneeling platforms; the salt looked like marble until the guide shone his torch close to the structures and the light passes in to the salt, a beautiful internal illumination. Walking through the tunnels deeper in to the mine there is a temple of three sections representing the birth, life and death of Jesus. Years before the Cathedral was built miners had carved a sanctuary and in 1950 the construction of the bigger project began, the Salt Cathedral inaugurated in 1954. As the cathedral was carved inside an active working mine, structural problems and safety concerns led the authorities to shut down the sanctuary in 1990. In 1991 the construction of a new Cathedral was undertaken, 200 feet under the older one. This new Cathedral was inaugurated in 1995. Its various corridors and sanctuaries achieved by making small but significant additions to the caves left behind by previous mining operations. (interior cathedral images credit Wikipedia).
According to research the salt deposits in Zipaquirá were formed approximately 250 million years ago and were raised above sea level during the late Tertiary period when the Andes were formed, underground pressure forcing the salt upwards through several layers of rock. For an additional fee there is a museum near the entrance of the cathedral explaining the history and processes of salt mining in Colombia but it’s basic, a lot of the brass signs worn away and difficult to read. Outside the entrance to the main park leading up to the cathedral entrance there is a second museum with a pottery display also included in the ‘complete’ entrance fee for the cathedral and 2 museums. Walking back to the town we passed through the pretty park which has been built up around the cathedral as a tourist attraction.
Cartagena Independence Day Fiesta!
11th November we flew from Bogota to Cartagena on the Caribbean coast of Colombia…realising that 11th November is their Independence day and they celebrate in spectacular style. Getting out of our taxi, thrown immediately in to a chaotic scene of of colour, music and partying…we’d arrived on the first day of a week long carnival. Initially taken aback as we weren’t prepared for the scale of it, we dumped our suitcases at Casa Relax and threw ourselves in to the madness.
Known as Carnaval de Cartagena or Fiestas del 11 de Noviembre, this is the city’s most important annual festival and includes a National beauty pageant (Reinado Nacional de Belleza) which culminates in the coronation of the new Miss Colombia.
The main avenue running through the city was packed with people. From our vantage point outside Bar Havana we stood with locals and tourists…watching the colourful costumes, dancing, papier-mache figures and animals, floats, traditional clothing, a non-stop procession of joyous raucous fun.
We befriended a Belgian traveller called Ian and spent the day with him. No holds barred as we were flour bombed, paint bombed and water bombed…sprayed with crazy foam and strewn with glitter..…it’s bonkers, infectious and tourists were understandably fair game. Walking back to where we were staying, tired and happy, I was corralled by a group of young men who smeared my arms with black viscous stuff…no idea what but hey…it washed off.
The sea walls were packed with people waiting for the second major parade of the week, the Beauty Queens from each major town/city of Colombia pass by on floats. I couldn’t get close enough to take photographs but it was the same people as the Tuesday parade. Dave got flour bombed again and a local man gave him a fabulous hat. People were welcoming and wanted to share the fun. They really know how to party…it goes on all day and in to the night. Walking back to Casa Relax to shower off more blue paint and crazy foam, I stepped out on to the street cleaned up in a change of clothing…to have a full bucket of water lobbed over me from a nearby overhead balcony. I was soaked to the skin, Dave thought it was hilarious. I gave in to the madness and carried on to the restaurant where I enjoyed my food, my hair dripping on the tablecloth. We would do it all again in a heartbeat…what an amazing arrival to a city.
Once Carnival was over we explored with Ian the poorer Getsemani district where we’ve been staying just outside the city walls. A quick lunch stop, fish and coconut rice for 11,000 Col. pesos. Buying bottles of water and snacks from the local bodegas. The street we stayed in Getsamani had colourful painted buildings, flowers spilling from planters over doorways and windows.
Taganga. Smelling the goats
I’ve been exceptionally lazy at writing the blog, cheating instead by just uploading photos (cheated again, the one above is nicked from the internet) so here’s an example of our days where we are now in Taganga, on the Caribbean Coast of Colombia. The word Caribbean can be rather misleading as you will discover when reading on.
A potent smell of urine wafting over the wall from the goat farm next door to our hostel and the honking and braying of their donkey at 6.30am woke us up and motivated us outdoors to the communal breakfast tables. Just had my breakfast; a measly portion of grey scrambled egg, half a spam frankfurter with fork holes in it (not eaten), some bizarre fruit which tasted of warm wax (not eaten) and a sugary piece of half baked cold toast (not eaten)…now starving. The young backpackers here think breakfast is great – what the hell do they eat back home?
We are going with an English couple today to nearby Santa Marta….. which apparently really is quite the complete and utter shithole with lots of thieves and people chucking broken bottles at tourists…. but there is no cash machine in Taganga so we have to go. Plus the English guy has been bitten all over his face by mosquitoes from sleeping in a hammock in the Tayrona National Park…and although I keep lying and telling him he looks fine….he really does look rather frightening (good old dependable Dave tells him so quite regularly). We are going to get him some Caladroyl (like Calomine lotion) to take the swellings down and stop the itching. An alternative day out in London could be a trip to Borough market to buy fresh veg or to the new shopping centre in Shepherds bush with my girlie mates instead; lunching at Wagamamma noodle bar on Yaki Soba and Gyoza. I am salivating at the thought and feeling rather homesick.
There is a huge dog here called Ricky. He looks like a great dane but is allegedly some rare Brazilian breed. However, The Great Dane is now in Chains (was that in My Fair Lady at any point?) – he bit a Canadian girl last night (she was wearing the most ridiculous black trilby hat)…only nipped her on the wrist but it broke her skin…not good for the hostel business, better for a hostile business. The owner says he might build a big cage for the dog, I said just buy a bloody muzzle and let him wander around. Why the hell they have a giant biting dog on the hostel premises is beyond me. It scares the crap out of most of the guests. But Ricky still hasn’t bitten me (let’s wait for the next installment before we get too carried away) instead he follows me around slobbering on me…maybe I don’t smell of fear.
It really is too bloody hot here, I cannot move without sweating (undignified) and there are far too many mosquitoes than is acceptable (for a fair skinned English person) …and I’m pining for a copy of the Saturday Guardian, but I still have some English teabags left so all is not lost (am I really that English). Whilst I lie in our darkened room with shutters closed and the fan on its highest setting, Dave is lying sweating profusely on a plastic sun lounger determined to get a healthy tan by the hostel swimming pool; which I must admit to being a fantastic treat in a hostel where we only pay £14 a night for our room with private bathroom.
But at this point I do feel my hostel days are over and for all the really bright, beautiful, intelligent young backpackers we meet (tons of tattoos) there are also the many drunkenly stunned who are simply travelling to shag. Oh god we must be feeling old, we are twice the age of most of the people we meet and are tiring of being asked our advice…..or handing it out anyway whether welcome or not (…backpackers, stop persisting in walking around in bare feet – do you see the locals poverty stricken as most of them are walking without shoes? No; they don’t want to get worms or stand on broken glass and they think you are an idiot in your shoeless foolish wandering). It’s now over a year spent living out of our one Dakine wonder bag which has won admiration all over the globe; the end of the backpacking road is getting nearer and will be welcomed at this point with open arms.
I crave roast chicken Yorkshire puds and gravy…. shops which sell something other than tourist tat and 100% polyester. We both dream about reading The Observer. I want to go to a hair salon and leave with glossy locks instead of pulling my broken Mexican hairbrush through a tangle of frazzled straw. I am desperate for a pedicure for my leathery travellers toes. We want to go to a gig (we missed out on Duran Duran who just played in Bogota of all places, greeted like heroes 20 years out of date). I want to see a good photography exhibition in a gallery which also sells mozzarella and basil Paninis in the cafe; we crave the movies, good food, Cadburys chocolate and the company of old friends. We have seen the most amazing sights and visited incredible countries, met friendly locals and grappled in the typical English like fashion with several foreign languages…still hopeless in all of them. We feel we are in a holding pattern until the 4th December when we fly from Cartagena to Bogota, to Miami to Los Angeles on the cheapest ticket travel day we could buy; 16 hours of changes and mad dashes between terminals and officials….and an inevitable grilling at US customs arriving from the drug cartel trafficking capitol of the world which is Colombia.
We are going to spend our last 10 days in Colombia in Cartagena back at Casa Relax with eccentric Frenchmen and parrots at the breakfast table. We will get the Marsol mini bus from Taganga on Monday and spend a return 5 hour journey munching on Ritz biscuits (if we can find this Holy Grail) with a driver pumping the failing brakes and accelerator simultaneously whilst he hurtles round corners and attempts to overtake 12 vehicles on a blind stretch of road.
…..but right now I am off to wash my straw like locks. Until next time …..I hope this has vaguely entertained for those still following us.
Taganga. Dossing about doing absolutely nothing.
Not much news from Taganga, it’s a one road fishing town with a handful of restaurants and a few hostels. People go to Taganga for the cheap diving courses, Tayrona Park and the small beaches. We found a funky hostel called Bay View and stayed there for 6 days, our room was at the far end of a single level block….and did absolutely nothing the whole time we were there, it was great. It has a swimming pool, fantastic for a hostel especially at £14 a night for a double room.
I was perhaps a little unfair in my rant about Taganga because we did meet a lot of great people at the hostel and it was great hanging out with them, even if it did age us a bit as most of them were only about 23. Johnathan and Camilla from Sweden spent the past year travelling and were also eeking out their last days on as low a budget as possible…similar to us. Johnathan has some pretty cool tattooes…he had the phoenix tattooed in Thailand. Rajvir, a beautiful English born Indian girl is Lee’s girlfriend. We spent quite a lot of time hanging out together…me and Raj talking non-stop about food….honestly it became obsessive. She knows some amazing Indian recipes. I am DREAMING of eating great Indian food. Lee wants to start a business called Curry in a Hurry.
Ricky the infamous Great Dane, actually he’s not a Great Dane he’s some Brazilian breed I had never heard of. Anyway since nipping a couple of people, trying to steal everyone’s food, finding his own way in to the fridge and stealing pizza, jumping up and eating all of Johnathan and Camilla’s food off the BBQ and shovelling his entire head in to the communal BBQ salad bowl one night….then biting one of the backpackers (the one in the trilby hat)…the owners realised they needed to take action and took my suggestion of a muzzle seriously. My lovely husband Dave was very generous and gave me 50 million! Actually even though it says Mil on the note it means thousand, so this is a 50,000 COL Peso note….about £15.
A shout out to Arthur’s baguette shop in Taganga…real deep filled baguettes, real bread, it was heaven, we ate there every single day. And by bizarre coincidence we bumped in to Mark, an American guy we last saw in Guatemala a few months ago and turned up in Taganga…renting a room at the baguette shop. It surely is a very small world. We left on Monday 24th and headed back to Cartagena. no regrets at all at not trekking through the national park getting ravaged by mosquitoes.
Back in Cartagena hanging out with parrots at breakfast.
A few photos of where we’re spending 10 days relaxing in Cartagena back at Casa Relax, whiling away our days until we fly to LA. It’s baking hot, there’s non-stop Salsa versions of old Christmas tunes blaring out on the streets of Getsamani…which is great fun, they party all day AND all night. One of the parrots living here is friendly and bold….he comes and nicks my breakfast in the morning from the large wooden table we all sit at. Michel the French owner of Casa Relax joins us at breakfast and Hugo and Adriana from Argentina were staying here a few days in the room above us, going out dancing every night. Adriana works as an architect in Caracus in Venezuela. Lots of fun.
Jean Louis and Claudia are also stayin. Jean Louis lives in Colombia. We cook in the communal open air kitchen. Before Hugo and Adriana left they cooked up a great Parilla (BBQ) for us Argentine style – loads of meat! It was excellent. And the two wonderful breakfast girls whose names I’ve sadly forgotten cooked us crepes or scrambled eggs, toast, marmalade, fresh pineapple juice. They sort everything out for the guests every morning…always with huge beaming smiles, lovely people.
Colombia: Last days in Cartagena.
December 3rd was our last day in Colombia and Cartagena is a great city to leave on. We are now in Los Angeles but a few parting shots of Cartagena’s gorgeous buildings. Punk iguanas in the park. Yellow everywhere. A beautiful beautiful city.
The Travel Diarist 