Colombia: Carribean Coast

Ok, I hoped to update this blog roughly weekly but my noble aim has already failed as badly as an ITV sitcom. The reason for this lax approach has been that Paul and I have been mad busy hitting up the Carribean coast in Colombia, with the need to blog being subsumed to the need to consume as much alcohol as possible . Thankfully, I now have a couple of hours free to write, due to the fact we´re currently waiting on a night bus to whisk us away from the colonial paradise of Cartegena and towards the ex-stomping ground of Pablo Escobar, Medellin.

Bay view in Taganga

Turning the clock back two weeks to our previous blogpost and Santa Marta. The city itself was nothing special, consisting as it did of a reasonable beach overrun by middle class colombians holidaying, the city did, however, feature the most homoerotic statue we´d ever seen, so that I suppose that was kind of a bonus. Spending a couple of nights we subsequently left for the ex-fishing village of Taganga located a few miles up the coast. A few years a go this village was apparently unpaved and a relaxed haven inhabited mainly by dazed hippies doing poi and generally buggering about. Today Taganga has become a permanent feature on the backpackers circuit, with pricks like us descending like the locusts we are. This has meant the village has developed into somewhat of a traveller haven with fishing boats being outnumbered by dive schools and hostels crowding out homes.

Jungle fringed beaches of Parque Nacional Tayrona

Thankfully Paul and I crave a bit of the inauthentic and we had a pretty awesome time there, basing ourselves in the least professional hostel and hanging out with Aussies (the good sort). In between the hectic schedule of sleeping/reading/drinking on beach/hammocks/bars we took a few trips. The first was to Tayrona, a national park whose entrance sign makes the  syntaxically challenged claim of: ’welcome to the paradise.’

This claim is easy to understand, with the park featuring some stunning beaches fringed by aesthetically pleasing jungle. Yet for us Tayrona actually proved to be a bit of a faff. The journey there was meant to take 45 minutes but actually became a 2.30 hour marathon due to the fact we were being driven around by the most inept person in the world. Seriously, this guy made Jedward look like motherfuckin shaft. It took us almost an hour to leave the tiny confines of Taganga, with one particularly low point involving the driving reversing 50m up the road due to the fact the way was blocked by a sleeping dog. This is not a joke.

When we finally did arrive we were confronted by a huge trek to get to our campsite, only to find on arrival that it was sold out due to the amount of holidaying Colombians (the fuckers). We were also ripped off for food and drink, with our first meal being accompanied with a dead fly. After a bit of a marathon trek with all our stuff we finally managed to find somewhere to stay, paying $3 dollars for a mangy hammock. This was to prove a mistake as the lack of mosquito net led to us being eaten to the point where Paul´s feet and my hands looked like the plague had returned in a heavily localised form. To cap matters we also managed to spend a night talking to the most annoying Englishman in Colombia, a conspiracy theorist whose intelligence seemed to know no start.

Returning from ‘the paradise’ we decided to sign up for a trek to the ‘lost city,’ a settlement built by the Tayronas and only recently discovered by treasure hunters in the 1970s. Adding to the excitement was the somewhat checkered history of the trek itself; in 2003 a group of tourists were kidnapped by narco terrorists precipitating the current situation where soldiers are dotted around the city and surrounding jungle.

Atop the Ciudad Perdida

Due to depart we were somewhat underwhelmed to find our tour group consisted of around 25 people, instead of the maximum of 14 the travel agent promised. Happily, our initial scepticism was soon displaced as it turned out that everyone on the trek was really lovely. The trek itself was pretty awesome taking 3 days of fairly hard walking, mostly up, to reach the site and 2 days to return. The jungle itself was spectacular and an added bonus was everytime you felt knackered a stunning waterfall would somehow turn up precipitously for people to cool off and swim in. The trip was also spiced up by a visit to a cocaine factory and the occasional encoutner with the Kogi, an indigenous tribe who inhabit the area. Unnvervingly Kogi children had a tendency to suddenly appear out of the darkness at night, skitting around the campsite like ghostly apparitions.

Reaching the city itself was also brilliant, finally coming into view following a pretty punishing climb of 1200 steps in 30+ degree heat and 80% humidity. I was amongst the first to arrive and encountering the city was a pretty overwhelming experience, with the central plateau of the site offering panoramic views of the jungle, with the sense of awe heightened by the sense of isolation of being so far from anywhere. I spent much of the afternoon gazing on this view whilst listening to Four Tet and Dirty Projectors and serendipitously reading about the concept of the sublime in Alain de Botton’s ace book, ‘The art of travel.’

High points in the Lost City

Leaving the city the return journey was pretty fun as it involved running down lots of steep slopes, in my case listening to loud breaks music, like a running version of F Zero-X (paul’s comparison). Returning dirty but happy to Taganga we consquently spent the next couple of days chilling with a variety of people we had met whilst on the lost city, with Paul also doing his PADI (diving) qualification. As this took him 3 days I left him to for the last day and hitched a ride on the back of a pick up truck with 3 people from the trek towards Colombia’s fourth largest and least interesting city Baranquilla. We didn´t stay for long and instead hopped on a bus towards the beautiful port city of Cartegena, a city which has the distinction of having been bombarded by that arch lad himself, Francis Drake.

That’s pretty much it and I now am going to rejoin paul in the bus centre, unfortunately he is feeling pretty shitty (literally) and I´m praying he doesn’t burst during the 13 hour journey to Medellin. Wish me luck.

Update: Well we got to Medellin in a coach whose temperature was set to artic levels, bloody max aircon. The journey was also not aided by a crying baby and the loud showing of a pirated Spanish copy of Avatar. Making matters worse is that Paul has got come down with something, probably from the stodgy food here, meaning he has been bed ridden all day. Sucks. Seriously the food here is lethal, most people we’ve hung out with have been sick at some point, indeed this is Paul’s third time since I got here 3 weeks a go. For some reason, despite eating exactly the same food, I’ve felt all good, though I’m sure my time will come.

Quito

Following a surpringly easy 26 hour journey, helped by a sleeping pill and Steigg Larsson’s ridiculously entertaining book ‘The Girl who played with Fire’ (srsly this book makes Harry Potter read like a washing machine manual) I (Francis) arrived in Quito on New years eve. Grabbing a taxi at the airport I went to meet Paul at our hostel. My initial sense of euphoria at arriving without any untoward incidents  was somewhat tempered by meeting Paul. This is not due to the fact he is a douche or anything (this factor is merey incidental) but because he was feeling totally shitty, within an hour he was vomiting due to picking up jungle AIDS or some shit whilst volunteering in the Amazon. To make matters worse he was also sporting a beard which made him look like the love child of Brian Blessed and an ugly wolf. This is not how I imagined the noughties (apologies for bullshit word) would end for me.

Paul somehow managed to raise the energy to head out and show me around Quito, where he had spent around 6 weeks living and learning Spanish. Happily, these weeks were well spent and Paul is pretty damn compentant at the language now, this is good for us as left to my  own devices I would be travelling for 4 months ordering nothing but beer accompanied by unspecified meat.

New years in Quito is somewhat strange, from reading our guidebook we were expecting something pretty special. What we got were lots of men dressed as women crying and attempting to stop cars in order to demand money. Apparently this is not normal for Ecuador but is instead related to them being married to the ending year and are consequently becoming widows. This was not however readily apparent and I thought that Ecuador was a nation inhabited by destitute transvestites.

Accompanying this was a bizarre parade, but Paul was in the process of throwing up, somewhat spoiling the vibe,  so we headed back to the hostel for serious nap time. Heading out at about 10.30pm, the sort of time you´d expect to see some serious multi coloured vomit occuring in the UK, we were surprised to find the streets almost empty. We later found out that Ecuadorian´s tend to New years  with their families, doing wholesome things as opposed to drinking so much you cry (or is that just me?). This meant that the streets were pretty empty save for the odd burning effigy (a reference to the death of the old year) and a number of gringos vainly attempting to find ‘the party.’ This scene was somewhat unsettling being erily reminscent of the apolcalypse or something like 28 days later but with white people replacing the zombies. It was actually lucky there wasn´t too much going on, by midnight Paul`s face was looking like he´d been repeatedly kicked in the balls, (you had to look closely though – his thick mane made illness detection sketchy at best.) Due to this we had a pretty early night, hoping that all would be well for 2010.

Luckily it was and we spent the next 6 days hitting up Quito. Highlights included the botanic gardens, where we pretended to eat dead butterflies and dared each other to put our wangs in the carniverous flowers (UK reprazent). We also went up a mad high cable car to 4100m above sea level to get some shit hot views over the city and the andes. We spent a couple of days in the company of some of Paul´s Ecuadorian ladies, despite looking like a bear he sure knows how to charm. He has a lot of them. They were all really lovely and seemed genuinly sad to see him leave – there were even tears.

View over Quito from 4100mts.

Whilst the lady population of Quito was lamenting the loss of a homeless man I was also lucky enough to be given a tour round the city by my cousin´s new wife´s family, who were incredibly generous. What particularly impressed was the Iglesia Compania de Jesus, a Jesuit church which my cousin recently married in. Located amidst the colonial splendour of old town it was unlike any church I´d seen in featuring enough gold to put Bangkok`s buddhist temples to shame and as much geometric patterning as the blue mosque in Istanbul. Stunning.

Leaving on the 7th we flew at the ungodly time of 6am to Colombia, where we are now, to a beach resort by the Carribean sea called Santa Marta where temperatures seem to be a steady 33 degrees. Anyway, I’m off back to my dorm room which includes the much desired feature of a blocked up toilet. The smell is so bad that if Dante were alive today he´d have to rewrite Inferno in order to incorprate the nasel Hiroshima that is our bathroom. Will try and write again in a week or so. Chau.

Lads introduce

So, here we are, Paul and Francis sitting in our hostel in Colombia attempting to write a blog. Hopefully this is not due to a sense of vanity or narcissm on our part, but instead due to us wanting to record our trip so we don’t forget what has happened incase we have a coke induced fit of amnesia in the near future. Most of all, we don´t want to get all deep, talking about ‘finding ourselves in the jungle’ but instead intend to follow the rule of Seinfeld´s producers: ‘No hugging, no learning’