We've passed the 100 day mark now and are well over halfway
through; left the sun behind us on the Caribbean coast for the chilly nights of
living in the Andes. I know we complained about all the humidity and the
sweating, but now it's cold! Just trying to live up to our British stereotype
by complaining incessantly about the weather.
After the confusions between 'coffee' and 'coca' suffered on our hike to Ciudad
Perdida we made sure the Salento was actually in the Zona Cafetera before
leaving Manizales. Coincidentally, lots of guerillas and cocaine farmers live
there too but we didn't run into any. Once convinced we jumped onto the usual
slew of dilapidated minivans posing as buses, dressed up to the nines in our
thermals and carrying our trashy romance novels. (It seems I have read all the
good books that previous travellers have left in Colombia, and am reduced to
bodice-ripping tales) It was raining when we arrived so we ran into the first
hostel we saw - we are nothing if not well prepared and informed - which turned
out to be owned by the loveliest man and best chef ever to leave Barcelona. A
few days of his 9 course gourmet breakfasts including mango & wild
trout sashimi and plantain & papaya crudites and we were on the verge of
refusing to leave. Buoyed by our epic breakfasts we set out on a hike to a
hummingbird farm via some wax palms. The palms grow 30-40ft straight up and are
pretty epic, but not as impressive as the massive tree we saw in Mexico. Sorry
wax palms. As usual, we had glossed over the word 'hike' and were subsequently
shocked by the two hour vertical climb up rocks and through rushing rivers.
(Damn rainy season). At our destination we drank some much needed aguapanela
(basically just rough sugar dissolved in water.. cheap energy for poor farmers)
and I enjoyed Claire's attempts to capture the hummingbirds with her inadequate
camera.. she has lots of beautiful shots of empty bird feeders.
The next day we set off on a 'walk' to a coffee plantation, assured by Joseph
(hostel owner and new surrogate father) that it would be a hour-ish stroll. Two
hours, many blisters, and even more bloody river fording later and we conclude
that we are lost. And then remember that Lonely Planet (or Swine, as we have
renamed it for those who get the in-joke) strictly forbids wandering in the
coffee district for fears of guerilla activity. Well, we scoured those valleys
pretty damn hard and all we found were cows, coffee bushes and friendly
farmers, so perhaps we should send them a note. Retracing our steps we realised
we'd been stupid and gone the wrong way on a clearly marked road, and finally
turned up at Don Elias's coffee finca feeling tired and a bit silly. We had a
tour, learned lots about coffee (all in Spanish) and then had a quiz at the
end. Seriously. Claire excelled, but I got stage fright. Now I'm not under
pressure from a 16 year old tour guide, I can tell you that they grow bananas
and plantains in the same fields as coffee for three reasons: fertilisation,
shade and food for farmers. Facts abound.
Also staying at Joseph's gastro-hostel were a lovely artsy couple who were
constantly sketching, taking photographs and befriending old men, we had a few
drinks with them an a couple of 70 year olds who considered all-day drinking to
be their profession "all thanks to God".
We left Salento satisfyingly full of food and tired from trekking, and turned
up in Medellin after a horrendous night's sleep on a bus that played merengue
at full blast from 8pm til 5am. I don't like merengue any more.
Medellin is a huge city sat in the trough of a valley with imposing mountains
rising up on all sides. AND it has a cable car (Colombia: 2, Venezuela: 0). We
spent a day napping in the botanical gardens and perving on the fat Botero
sculptures in the centre, then had a huge night out with some Australian and
British girls in a trance club outside the centre. We blagged our way in by
saying we knew the DJ and emerged knackered several hours later, covered in
ticker-tape and with a new appreciation for the mullet haircut.
We decided to blow away the cobwebs by paragliding over the city which was
AWESOME. (This is the part where I turn into a little boy again). We were
strapped to a random and chucked off the side of a cliff, then soared above the
city for half an hour catching little gusts of wind and racing eagles. Words
cannot describe it, but Claire has a fear of heights and loved it. (Also it was
really, really safe mum, promise). We continued our trend of indulgence by
watching SATC2 in a huge multiplex, it felt like being back at home and was
really surreal to leave the cinema and not be in Bristol.
Feeling a little guilty at our overindulgence we decided to cut costs by
forgetting to pay for our hostel. You snooze you lose, haughty receptionist!
Touristy detour to a Salt Cathedral in a town called Zipaquira outside Bogota
meant more overnight buses playing more merengue, but we loaded up with breaded
goods and managed to sleep a little.
The Salt Cathedral was the most eerie and strange thing we've seen so far,
they've turned the excavated caves into a huge cathedral, complete with hidden
alcoves full of backlit salt crucifixes, a huge underground dome full of pews,
and monks chanting on looped soundsystems. Couple this with the entirety of
Bogota's primary school population descending on the site for a school trip and
you have a very strange experience. After the 'educational' 3D video on salt
excavation we were ready to move on.
Spent a day and a night in Popayan, a pretty colonial whitewashed town where
all the streets are identical and everything has meat in it, much to Claire's
disgust, then got a day's worth of buses across the border to Ecuador. Stamp,
wander across bridge between countries, barter with money changers, stamp.
Done.
Arrived in Quito around midnight and managed to find the most clueless taxi
driver working in the entirety of Ecuador. We ended up showing him the way, and
we get lost in fields! Slept in our first proper bed for days, had our first
proper hot shower in ages, and woke up on our 100th day of travels feeling
decadent. Banana splits for breakfast followed by lazy sightseeing. A chance
meeting with a lovely Ecuadorian civil engineer led to an invitation to chocolate
caliente, at which a suspicious American tourist chased us down the street
shouting "it's a scam! it's a scam!" One innocent hot chocolate
later, we were not dead and still in full possession of our wallets and
maidenhoods. Felt like finding the American and telling him to chillax, but he
was probably too busy lecturing prostitutes on their base morals. Once back on
track we wandered through the beautiful Old Town with its fancy European
architecture and incredible churches. In one almost every surface was coated in
gold; the frescoes on the walls, the ornaments, the pews.. bling does not even
begin to cover it. Four tonnes of gold. We walked past the monastaries where
men wandered around with their lovely rope belts and nunneries where women are
cloistered and make handicrafts (why are men never cloistered?), then found an
enormous gothic basilica which had just finished mass and was emptying families
in their Sunday best. Religion bit over we continued on our epic walk into the
new town and skyped our families, before toasting our journey with pineapple
margaritas and burritos in an amazing Mexican restaurant. It was coming towards
sunset so we got a taxi to the teliferiQo (cable car: Ecuador: 1, Venezuela: 0)
and rode up to the top as the sun went down. You could see the whole city as it
began to light up for the night, and snow-capped mountains in the distance. It
was incredible. Unfortunately we were joined by two philosophical Americans on
the way back down, who were having a ‘debate’ (for debate read mutual
ego-massage) about religion and the meaning of life. I don’t know whether we
were closer to laughter or tears. We shared a taxi to the square near our
hostel and walked the two minute journey back to a well deserved lie-down. Or
so we thought. As we walked under the bridge to our hostel two guys cornered us
and grabbed our bags. We both started shouting indignantly and Claire’s gave
up, but I ended up having a tug of war with mine and kicked him in the shin.
Ha! They both backed off and we walked away. It was all over in less than thirty
seconds and they obviously weren’t trying that hard. Apparently tourists are
fair game in Quito, we heard about loads of unsuccessful muggings while we were
there. It was a bit of a wake-up though, it was the first time anything like
that has happened to us, and it was on our 100th day! When we went out that
evening we didn’t carry bags and stayed in really busy areas as we were both a
little shaken up. We did find an amazing maze of alleyways where restaurants
and bars spilled out onto the the streets which were full of mimes, musicians
and food vendors. Claire bought a stick of chocolate covered grapes and we
escaped the scary mime for an early night.
The next day we got up insanely early to get to the market
town of Otavalo where we haggled our hearts out and took note of everything we
want to buy ten times cheaper in Bolivia (sneaky). It wasn’t like the usual
market towns where the indigenous people are cynical and only dress up for
tourists and had a really lovely chilled out vibe. I had fun pointing out all
of the visceral butcheries to the stubbornly-vegetarian Claire, and we spent a
few hours wandering around before heading back to Quito. That night was a
Saturday so we headed off to a series of bars and clubs before ending up at one
named KY. Nice. Danced our flip flops off til 3am then collapsed into bed. Met
Sally’s friend Steph the next day and did nothing but eat, drink hair of the
dog, and lie around in parks. Perfect.
It had been over a month since we’d been to a beach (such hardships!)
so we bussed to Montañita, unfortunately losing my beloved sleeping mask along
the way. The Pacific coast is pretty grey and miserable, but it’s much warmer
and the surf was awesome. We splashed out on a $20-each hotel room (mostly because
we’d walked all the way down the beach with our bags and couldn’t be arsed to
turn around) but got two of the best breakfasts of all time, free films,
air-conditioning and newly born kittens everywhere, so couldn’t complain. After
a shared $1.50 lunch (our room called for frugality elsewhere) we rented surfboards
and Claire stepped up to the challenge of teaching me how to surf. First I
endured the embarrassment of ‘practicing’ on the beach, then we headed for the
water and I stood up on the third go! Claire was like a proud mother hen. My
later attempts were much less smooth, and a surf instructor we named Sex Pest II
(Sex Pest I was taken) spent the next
half an hour ‘teaching’ me. I was too polite to say no. Claire gets annoyed
because I have the customer service habit of smiling at everyone, which gets us
into some sticky situations. Will have to work on my ‘go away’ face.
Achey and tired after travelling overnight and then using
muscles we didn’t know existed while trying not to drown we had a nap at 6pm..
and didn’t wake up til 9am the next day. Best. Bed. Ever. We moved to a hostel
in the centre of town which cost $3.50 per night (probably because it was just
a shack with mattresses on the floor) and spent the day watching the world cup
games and drinking sangria, then made lots of friends on the beach and had a
night of pizza, awesome cocktails made on carts in the street, and dancing in
an ecological finca/disco made of wood. There was fire poi, which I don’t think
is the most sensible idea to perform in a wooden structure, but who am I to
question Latin American safety standards?!
Yesterday we left Montañita for Cuenca, which involved more
buses and epic views over the Andes. They played the usual series of gruesomely
violent pirates films starring failed rappers, and we chose to look out of the
window. So we are now in the place where
Panama hats come from (long story, Wikipedia it) where we will hang out with
the people we met yesterday and look at lots more churches, before travelling
to Peru where we can FINALLY SEE ANDREW RCHARD MICHAEL TWEDDLE! We’re both a
bit excited.
