Having looked into our options for getting to Colombia, Nadia and I decided that it would be way more fun to sail than to fly and pricewise it was roughly the same anyway. With this in mind we checked out some boats through our hostel in Panama City (Lunas Castle - wonderful staff) and booked ourselves onto a boat. Luckily for us we then met some people that had just arrived from Cartegena who gave us some up to the minute advice about the boat we had booked and the Captain. It was not encouraging as they had been on another boat that had to rescue the one we were booked on from a reef breach! Apparently the Captain had been drunk and one of the guests was steering the boat when they hit the reef and got stuck for 6 hours! Suffice to say we immediately cancelled our booking and changed boats.
This may have turned out to be one of our best decisions ever as we ended up on a boat called Kanowa with a fantastic Captain (Jose from Columbia) and a very helpful and entertaining First Mate (Isrrael from Spain). We spent the first few days island hopping around the San Blas Islands snorkelling and just chilling out. It was beautiful. Gorgeous clear waters, heaps of fish, coral, starfish and the occassional barracuda and stingray. We worked out a barter system with Jose and Isrrael whereby they taught us Spanish and we helped them with their English. It turned out to be very useful and quite entertaining with our days being divided up into hours of solo Espanol, only English and then in the evenings Spanglish so we could all be understood a little better!
We spent 5 days on the boat and to be honest 2 and a half of them were amazing. The food was simple but very tasty and there was plenty of it. We had been advised to take snacks as some of the boats do not provide much in the way of meals but we never even opened our snack bag and Isrrael offered plenty of drinks and cookies or saltenas between meals to ensure no one was the slightest bit hungry. The last part of the trip on the open water heading to Cartegena was a bit of a challenge for us though. The swell was not even that big but having never really spent that much time on a boat out at sea, Nadia and I both suffered a bit from seasicknes. Again though, Jose and Isrrael were great. Very understanding of our delicate state they offered plenty of drinks and light snacks and even gave Nadia some seasickness tablets to get her through. Once we arrived in Cartegena we were amazed at the lack of immigration regulations. It was a Sunday so the port office was closed which meant that Jose took our passports and jumped in a cab to the airport to get our stamps/visas. This was a bit unorthodox to us so despite the fact that he had promised to drop them at our hostel straight after, we were pleasantly surprised when they turned up all stamped with a 90 day visa.
The one thing that stands out from the advice that our Captain gave us about Columbia was this - Columbia is very, very beautiful. But you should go to Ecuador. It is not safe. We tried not to let this colour our opinion of the place too much before we had even set foot on Columbian soil!
Once we got our landlegs back and the pavement stopped swaying we set out to explore Cartegena. The old town area where we stayed is such a beautiful place with all the old city walls still surrounding it. The buildings are lovely old Spanish style villas with flowering vines draped all over the old wooden balconies and brightly coloured walls. In the squares there are nice gardens and shaded seating areas near big stone fountains or statues and everywhere you look there is something else in one of the cobble stone streets that makes you love the place. They sell heaps of homemade sweets in stands under the archways of the larger buildings and there is fruit everywhere. Nadia and I brought a plate each off some ladies decked out in Carribean-style skirts and blouses. You just choose which fruits you wants and they peel, slice and dice right in front of you and fill the plate which is then covered with condensed milk just to make it a bit healthier ;-) It is delicious.
Our hostel wasn´t much to write home about but it did have two rather large turtles wandering around the tiled courtyard that I nearly stood on a few times and a whole buch of smaller ones living in the pot plants too. On the upside we met a girl in our room called Steffi who told me all about the volcano nearby that you can visit and take a mud bath in. This sounded like to wierd and experience to pass up so the next day Nadia, Steffi and I headed out on a bus to take a dip in the mud. I cannot really describe how strange it felt but it was kind of like jumping into a tub of custard or cream I guess. The texture was really thick and creamy but the most bizzare thing was that you could not sink in it. No matter how hard you tried you couldn´t push yourself down into it, very odd. The funniest part of the whole experience for me was that when you get out they tell you to walk down to the lagoon to wash off but the lagoon is basically a grotty, green, algae covered pond which looks less than appealing even if it is the only way to get the mud off. Once you get in there these local ladies come out with containers so they can pour the water over your head but they also whip your bathers off before you can even blink and rinse them out for you too. Took me by surprise I can tell you that much!
From Cartegena we made our way down to Bogota where we wandered around and checked out the Gold Museum and the Botero Gallery. We visited an old bar that plays exclusively tango music from back in the 40´s and 50´s which was pretty cool. We also decided it was time for another night out but we were a bit cautious about it as they main advice that you get from other travellers is that it is not the safest city to go out at night in. So we got ourselves on a party bus type thing that left from the hostel around the corner from ours which took us up to one of the hilltop lookout areas to take in the view of the city at night (absolutely massive!) and then on to some clubs. The only problem was that we had drunk quite a bit of rum before leaving for the bus and then on the bus they were handing out loads of free tequila shots. By the time we got to the first club after also drinking at the lookout I was quite tipsy and Nadia who had not called it quits on the tequila shots when I did was definitely drunk. She ordered us a drink at the bar and was then horrified to realise that they were charging the equivalent of $7 bucks a drink! This may not sound bad to you but it is extortionate for this part of South America. The funny part is that despite paying so much for it Nadia was already too drunk and could not finish it. By the time the bus took us to the 2nd place which was closer to our hostel we had to call it a night. My favourite part of it all is that we decided that food was definitely a neccessity before bed so we stopped at a snack style food place and they had very little left so I ordered us 2 chicken empanada each while Nadia kept asking again and again - Hamburgesa? Possible Hamburgesa? I guess you had to be there but it was really funny! (I don´t think that the pot plant outside our room thought so later though when Nad´s paid it a visit!)
The next day we took an old fashioned steam train ride out to Zipaquira from Bogota to see the Salt Cathedral. The best thing I can say about that day was that the train ride was fun. The cathedral was a bit of a let down as I thought it was going to be all white and cavelike given that it is made in an old salt mine 180feet below ground but it was actually all dark grey and not at all as speccy as I had expected. The train had a Marriachi band that wandered up and down the carriages playing songs though and of course I was in hysterics when the drummer chose to stand right beside Nadia´s poor hungover head!
