Turning 30 South American Style

New York

katrinamckeever — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 16:25:00 GMT

Last stop on an epic journey and as much luxury as we have enjoyed on our whole trip. We dined in style, drank in hip bars, saw the sites and accidentally walked into Macy's during the horror show that is the August annual one day sale.

Commitment shy couple that we are, we didn't book a hotel room until the very last minute, ending up with the expensive cast offs that more discerning clients booking months ahead of their holiday had spurned.

After hours on Skype phoning around every overbooked hotel we could find, we got a bed and breakfast in Brooklyn that looked like pure luxury on the web but was actually a pretty enough place with a pretty hefty price tag and the stingiest breakfast in the world.

Great location though near Smith Street with loads of bars and lovely restaurants near by so we bunked down for the night ready to wake refreshed and explore the big apple.

We woke and headed across the road to a lovely French cafe for breakfast, watching our fellow diners tuck into eggs benedict, fresh orange and all manner of pastries as we presented our voucher for a single croissant and coffee each to the waitress. Lovely and buttery but quite literally the cheapest thing on the menu. Talk about mean.

Ah well, the city that never sleeps awaited and we headed out ready to enjoy the hustle and bustle. Without planning to, we immediately found ourselves underneath the Empire State building, wandered over to the Flat Iron building and wandered back ending in Macy's on the day of the famous (never heard of it myself though) one day sale.

Steve made the mistake of leaving me by the first floor of ladies wear and arranging to meet me back at the escalator in a few minutes.

I soon realised that a 65 per cent off sale is no place for lady and hid at the bottom of the escalator praying for Steve to return soon.

Steve meanwhile got hopelessly lost in the maze of Macy's and spent almost an hour frantically riding stairs up and down the 34th Avenue desperately trying to find me.

Enough was enough, we headed off to China Town for some take out, getting ourselves lost again and settling into a Vietnamese restaurant for some delicious noodle soup and tofu. Mmmmm, New York can sure do food.

After freshening up, we hit a few bars back in Brooklyn. We talked to the most boring man in the world who within five minutes had told us he earned a lot of money, was making waves in the art world as an unpublished poet and could sing very well but did not want to risk his voice on karaoke. He was very sweet though and we could only assume he was very drunk.

Heading up the road, we tried a few more for size before settling on bar stools where another drunk man accidentally bought us both a drink.

It seems he did not notice Steve beside me and thought I was a lady of easy virtue sliding up onto a bar stool next to him as a big come hither gesture.

Much awkward silences later, he was replaced by another extremely drunk man who told us he was rich, a hedge fund manager no less, and was buying part of Coast Rica to go and live there because the USA was coming to an end and would never recover from an imminent recession on a scale not witnessed since the depression.

We discovered that people in Brooklyn like to talk and often about something quite interesting so you just have to sit there and listen.

And if you don't want very drunk people to talk to you, you really shouldn't sit on the bar stools.

After being politely evicted from our final bar at around 4am, we headed home and woke the next day with heavy heads. Not fit for much, we watched the football in our room and headed out in the afternoon to Battery Park see the Statue of Liberty across the water, passing the former World Trade Center site on the way where I stubbed my toe on a grid so hard that it started bleeding. Clearly not a tragedy on the same scale but it did hurt.

We also had great fun walking past the American Stock Exchange shouting: "Buy, buy, buy. Sell, sell, sell." Ah yes, greed is good as the great Gordon Geko informed us, but childish antics are more fun if you are a tourist.

One of the best ideas of the weekend though was to walk across Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan as you get a great view of the famous skyline framed by the impressive steel structure of the famous landmark.

A great place with great people, we could definitely see ourselves living there and loving it if only someone would let us in.

We will definitely be back, some day, and next time we will probably buy the T-shirt.

Kat on a hot tin roomette - riding the Atlantic coast Amtrak in style.

katrinamckeever — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 16:21:00 GMT

Kat on a hot tin roomette - riding the Atlantic coast Amtrak in style.

A roomette for two on Amtrak for the 31 hour train journey from Miami to New York is about as close to flying first close we are likely to experience any time soon and oh what fun we had.

It all started at the train station where we were informed we had a private lounge. Had we known this we would have arrived ten hours before departure to fully appreciate it. As it was we had just five minutes.

Muffins, danish pastries, fresh coffee, cans of soft drinks, bottles of water, sandwiches and sweets. We swiped the lot, raiding the fridge like a fat couple from Burnley on Supermarket Sweep.

Haul in tact we pretended our tickets to the guard who informed us we could not possibly walk the 200 meters to our room and should wait here for a ride on the golf buggy. Meanwhile an 80 years woman stumbled past with a heavy bag and had to heave it all the way herself. I love traveling first class.

After being shuttled up the platform by a frighteningly cheery man we were seated in our roomette, which although shockingly small housed everything needed for a long journey including a toilet.

At first I thought it was a seat, having no door and being well, next to my seat. But no, convenience indeed, I had to shift just five inches along the bench and lift the lid to enjoy a little light relief.

I always prefer to be good yard away from someone using the toilet, preferably with a door in between us.

A feeling I was assured was mutual, we instigated a 'no using the toilet in the roomette' rule.

As there was no other toilet available nearby, this later became the 'leave the room and draw the curtains if somebody wants to use the toilet in the roomette' rule.

Matters of hygienic services aside, we pulled off our shoes, put our feet up, fluffed our pillows and enjoyed the feeling of luxury. (Really you could ignore the toilet after a while).

Free coffee and juice with ice on hand, three meals a day in the dining car (with tablecloths) and the United States of America rolling past your window.

We spotted orange orchards, men on porches on rocking chairs, wooden clap board houses, deep rivers and bays and more trees than you can shake a stick at.

Not the most scenic rail ride ever, but pleasant enough and we got a better view of the Atlantic coast of the states than we would have from the air.

As night fell, our friendly cabin guard came and transformed our facing seats into bunk beds. Dimming the lights and opening a bottle of red we smuggled aboard, we got giddy as school kids on summer camp.

Truly the way to travel. Beats being barked at and man handled at the airport.

Welcome to Miami

katrinamckeever — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 16:20:00 GMT

Happily tucked into a seat on Lan Airways, blanket on lap and glass of red in hand, I turned to Steve and said how lovely - for the first time in almost a year we will be able to just talk to people, in English.

The first person we met in the airport strolled boldly up to us and asked: "De donde vienen ustedes, Bogota?".

Quite quickly we realised that Miami is about as Latin American as a city can be without actually being in Latin America. We already knew this, but we didn't realise quite how true it was.

And oh what a lovely city. First pleasant surprise came at the airport. We were dreading the immigration line after having such a bad experience of it at New York on the way in but it was lovely. People here were genuinely pleasant and even had a bit of a laugh with us.

We soon discovered the cheap seats we got from Colombia were probably due to a combination of it being a popular holiday destination for Latin American holidayers and arriving in the middle of hurricane season.

Fortunately we missed hurricane Fay by a week, but we did have some quite impressive tropical rain to greet us on arrival, partially flooding the streets of South Beach.

Flip flops on, we waded through the water to get a pizza at a lovely friendly place run by tattooed blokes who chatted to us as we perched on our bar stools shoveling bin lid sized pizza slices into our gobs.

The next day we got up with the sun rise to get onto the beach and could not quite believe how lovely it was.

True, it was packed and every square inch of sand was covered in loungers and umbrellas, but the sand was lovely powdery white and the sea stretched for miles, crystal clear, shallow and oh so still.

Stepping into the ocean here is like dipping your toes into a lovely warm bath, soothing, relaxing and heavenly. The warm water means that you can lie bobbing around like a floating tadpole for hours without getting the least bit shivery.

And to be honest, the glaring white heat from the sun makes it pretty much the only pleasant thing to be doing on this beach in mid summer, unless you have a large sun shade and cooling fan close by.

After a couple of hours we beat a retreat from the merciless sun and headed down the strip for something to eat.

We caused something of a commotion in a restaurant after trying to negotiate the 'optional' 18 per cent tip. The cheeky waiter took the 18, then treated himself to a little extra on top.

Renegotiating his tip down involved a long wait, and him throwing a hissy fit and threatening to call the manager. Us unbowed, he finally handed over the change.

That done we set off with self righteous zeal to explore the art deco district and snap some pictures of the lovely palm tree lined pastel shade streets. It really is a beautiful city,much more so than we imagined (Miami Vice did tend to look at the steamier side of the city, all be it from the perspective of a yacht).

A night on the town led us to a half empty Irish bar at 3am on a dull Tuesday morning, sipping pitchers of beer and talking nonsense before stumbling home to bed.

It made us want to come back with more time, money and clothes to really do the place justice as it really is an incredible place.

Barely visiting Bogota

katrinamckeever — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 16:16:00 GMT

Owing to oversight on booking coach ticket, we missed out on a decent view of Bogota leaving ourselves little more than one day in which to race around the city.

To be fair though, we didn't exactly race around it, selecting instead to visit a very good art museum, several bike shops and a Turkish themed falafal house.

The latter was an excellent introduction to the culinary delights of the town and very welcome indeed after twelve hours on a bus from our Caribbean paradise into the gloomy grey skies of the center of the country.

But we got the feeling that here, like Buenos Aires, young people live, work and party and probably have a good time doing it. We wished we had more time and money to explore.

Arriving at Bogota bus station we were quickly approached by five part time comedian cabbies who joked with us as Steve whipped off his trousers in the middle of the rank to change into cycling shorts and ride into town.

Vanishing as quickly as they appeared, we set off into town me on the bus and Steve on his bike meeting in the historic center to find a bed for the night which we found easily enough.

Bags in room, we found a big kebab joint and ticked into some actually very nice falafal thank you very much.

Limited on time and with a massive plane and train marathon through the states ahead of us, we spent the morning looking through bike shops for a cardboard box to transport Steve's bike home.

Job done, we had a quick nose around - plaza, church, colonial building and museum of religious art all present and correct.

Then back home to watch the Gilmore Girls on cable before swearing and cursing the wheels of Steve's bike, discovering the pedals had become welded on and throw allan keys across the room.

Bike in bag, we went to the Bortoli art museum to look at his pictures of giant fat bottomed nude ladies in kitten heel shoes and they were ace.

The museum also had stuff by Francis Bacon, Picasso, Dali, Monet, Henry Moore, things that even art buffoons like me have heard of and not a pre colonial or religious art work in site.

It was like stepping back into an international world beyond Incas and invaders.

And that was pretty much it. Pizza slice for tea, couple of cheap beers in a student bar opposite the university, quick glance at fly posters with actual graphic design promising international and local DJs at clubs across the summer.

Cursing ourselves for not having more time and money, we headed off to bed ready for our flight the next day to Miami, and home.

Hammock swinging in Taganga

katrinamckeever — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 16:09:00 GMT

With its horseshoe bay framed by rolling hills, little fishing boats bobbing in the clear water under a warm Caribbean sun, Taganga, we discovered, is best viewed from a hammock, glass of wine in hand.

True, there is not much to do here beyond diving, drinking and dozing about as your hammock swings softly in the gentle breeze but that is surely the point of a little fishing village.

We were put off coming here by people who told us there was nothing here beyond dive centrers but when we popped here for dinner from Santa Marta we couldn't believe we had stayed in the port side town for so long when this little nugget was just up the road.

It is lovely, very chilled, relaxed, calm and pretty with plenty of little bars and cafes.

We splashed out here on a little hill top cabin with its own veranda and watched the sun set over the bay with a bottle of red or three we found on special offer at Exito supermarket.

The view was beautiful, with boats rolling into the bay at sunset as sky turned rose coloured and the sea all shimmery. Muy romantica.

And beyond short strolls up the road to feed ourselves on fresh baked baguette sandwiches or fresh eggs for breakfast, we did very little else.

Just laid in the hammock for days, watching the boats rolling in and then rolling out again as we nodded off with a good book.

Ciudad Perdida Katrina Jones and the Lost City

katrinamckeever — Thu, 7 Aug 2008 15:36:00 GMT

Reared on a diet of Indiana Jones and Romancing the Stone, I had been looking forward to the machete swinging jungle trek vision of the Ciudad Perdida for months and happily it lived up to expectations. We forged waist high rivers with backpacks on our heads, clambered over boulders, walked through coffee plantations, bathed under waterfalls and camped in hammocks under the stars. It was ace.

The whole trip took six days and although we only walked for around three or four hours a day the heat and humidity really took it out of us, much more than altitude ever did on our Altiplano hikes. But what fun we had. The real joy here is the walk, the city at the end is just a bonus and the walk really is great.

We set off in our group of 17 with Turcol guide Edwin and cooks, porters and mules. Anyone who didn't keep up was left behind but there was always someone at the back to make sure you didn't get too lost.

Every day has a different topography with jungles, rocky river beds and cultivated indigenous villages. Within an hour of the first day we had reached our first swim hole and everyone stripped off and jumped off rocks into the river below providing blissful relief from the heat. We were pretty much wet from that moment on as the humidity would not allow anything to dry even when wrung out and strung out overnight.

Revived on regular offerings of pineapple chunks, oranges and bananas along the way, we made the three day walk up to the lost city through some spectacular scenery. Lush forested hills gave way to hill top vistas across the jungle that spanned for mile upon mile of lush verdant green. No machete action on the well kept route necessary but you got the feeling the jungle would reclaim the path in an instant if people stopped walking it.

Our guide Edwin was quite a card, his family history is tied up with the site and he loved telling it.

His father was one of the original grave robbers who came to Santa Marta and hiked up the Ciudad Perdida in the 1970s on the tip of a local friend. They began robbing the gold from the burial pots unaware of what they were finding and selling it well below value. When they tried to flog it in Bogota though it came to the attention of Government officials who realised it was something quite big and stepped in to stop the looting.

Years later, Edwin was the guide who took a group of international tourists up there and got kidnapped by guerrillas, managing to escape and falling under suspicion himself as being part of the plot. We took his story with a hefty pinch of salt until he produced the newspaper clippings showing him at the center of the story.

Caribbean slumming in Santa Marta

katrinamckeever — Thu, 7 Aug 2008 15:14:00 GMT

Santa Marta didn't look too promising at first, especially after we took a wrong turn out of the bus station and ended up walking for hours in the back breaking 30 degree heat late at night. But illness and changing travel plans conspired to keep us at this beach side town for a lot longer than we expected and although nothing special, it is not a bad place to while away a few days.

We were so tired when we arrived in the town that we could barely lift our eyes to look at a room but despite this seemed to look at every hotel in the place before settling on the friendly sweat box that is the hotel miramar. After two nights feeling like Steve McQueen bleeding sweat in the awful heat of the tin box we called a room we had to move out though in search of air con. Nice people though and we found a great bar across the road that sells cheese toasties at midnight, cheap as chips bottles of larger and is home to some very friendly prostitutes.

Once we got air con things began to look up. We could skip down to the beach in the morning, retreat back into the cool of our room at the height of the 38 degree midday sun and head out again at night when it dipped to a more tolerable 35.

Managed to get a bargain deal on our ciudad perdida tour but had to put it off for a few days when Steve and then I got a cold. This gave us plenty of time to establish that there is pretty much nothing here except a bank, a beach and some cheap corner shops posing as bars. Maybe the heat was getting to us but we didn't care one bit.

Cartagena

katrinamckeever — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 00:21:00 GMT

We spent three days on a bus traveling across the length of the country to reach the sunny Caribbean coast and arrived in Cartagena happy and hot. We ditched plans to stay in the back packer ghetto at Gethsemane shortly after I accidentally wandered into a crack den thinking it was a hostel. And so into the cruise ship annexe of the inner walled city, a lavishly restored Disney version of colonial Colombia. As close to Havana as Latin America gets but with the soul taken out. It is so breath takingly beautiful and entirely unreal at the same time. No one lives there, it seems almost entirely functioning to serve wealthy tourists with local people hired as extras to sell fruit in the streets and add some character.

It is a spectacular place, painted in the brightest sassiest coluors available, with rich reds, blues and yellows all lined up cheek by jowl and covered in tropical plants bursting out of terracotta plant pots and trailing trees. A photo opportunity awaits on every street corner and even the police do their best to fit in with the scene with some riding a scenic horse and cart around the cobbled streets.

We spent three days wandering around the city walls, searching for shade in the plazas and having many beers in a picturesque al fresco bar by the clock tower at the main square. And we had a lovely balcony on out hotel right in the center so we could sit out at night watching the boys on the pavement below checking out the girls walking by.

Colombia: Pasto and Popayan

katrinamckeever — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 00:00:00 GMT

And so to Colombia

I was really excited going for the border at Colombia. It is pretty much the last country we will visit on the trip and every kept on telling us about the freindly people, beatiful towns, great beaches, Caribbean breezes. Sounds lovely.

Crossing the border was a breeze, we were stamped in with a smile and waved across the frontier into a waiting taxi to make the bus trip an hour north to Pasto and straight into the hostel at the other end. Not much in the way of exhilirating night life and the food was awful in this town, so after a quick nosey round in the day light we skipped on north to Popayan in an eight hour journey breathing petrol fumes the whole way. I perked up when a young man got on the bus holding a chicken though.

Arrived in Popayan at night and spent a while searching for bad food at over priced restaurants. By day we saw the town was pleasent enough. Had all the usual plaza surrounded by banks, church and white washed offices and some nice enough cobbled streets. Also managed to find a really beatiful hotel.

But every time we went to find a museum or church or even somewhere to eat it always seemed to be shut. Rather annoying really but the ensuing boredom drove us into one of the best bars I have seen in the continent.

It is an antique old thing, run by a tiny little old man who shuffles to and from the bar with his beer bottles. He has a great wall to wall record collection behind the bar and keeps the record player on a shelf at head height so he is on eye level with the turn table, postioning the needle with a flourish waiting to hear the bosa nova beats kick in before he shuffles out to greet the next punter.

Quito

katrinamckeever — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 23:42:00 GMT

Lovely white washed historic Quito is easily one of the loveliest colonial cities in Latin America, but a total ghost town at night as residents hurry home to bolt their doors against the violent reputation of the city. It is a real shame as it could be a spectacular place, beautifully restored and you can watch the artists at work brushing up the frescos in the church or climbing up ramshackle scaffolding to paint the clock towers on government buildings.

We stayed in the old town with a beautiful view from our window taking in three historic churches, all lamp lit at night giving the town a creamy glow. By day we wandered around having coffees, looking at the impressive buildings, strolling through the library and cultural center and enjoying bustle.

The historic center is filled with little cafes and we found one really good one attached to the theater which did lovely coffee and fresh bread where you could sit for an hour or two and read the papers.

But come night fall, all that was open was a handful of tourist restaurants, all next door to each other in the same heavily guarded arcade. The fear of violence that prevents normal residents from venturing into the center at night makes it difficult to open restaurants and bars.

With very little open, it made more sense to grab a few beers and hang out of our window watching the world go by below.