 |
September 2006 |
Jump to updates:
27 September - Traveling inland Colombia
We put the boat in the marina at the beginning of the month, gave Mano to some friends to look after and set off to do some traveling inland. Our first destination was:
Santa Marta and Taganga
Santa Marta is a 4 hour bus journey along the coast from Cartagena, the ride there was good, on a nice air conditioned bus with toilet and movie and they don't drive like lunatics like they do in Guatamala which is very good. We only spent a night here as there isn't that much to do in the town but there is a lot to do in the surrounding areas. After spending a day wandering up and down the sea front and checking out the town we took a mini bus to Taganga, a small fishing village just round the corner. It was much nicer here, only a small village with dusty little mud roads and little houses. There were quite a few other back packers, mainly in diving schools. We found a cheap little hotel 'The Pelican' which was very nice and clean (apart from the naughty scorpion that found its way into our room).
We spent most of our time here sitting on the beach, swimming in the sea and having beers in the small restaurants along the sea front. We also managed to pop into the local health centre and get ourselves a Yellow Fever vaccination, which we should really have had before going to the San Blas. The health care here is amazing, we just walked off of the street in the morning, asked if they did the vaccination, was given it for free and was out of the centre in less than 30 minutes. I don't think you could just pop into you local doctors back in England without an appointment and get treated so quickly. So now we are covered which is good as we needed this injection to go to the next place we wanted to visit:
Apparently they often ask to see your Yellow Fever certificate when you enter the park. They never bothered with us but there was big posters everywhere saying that you need it to enter and to our horror it also said that you should have it 10 days before entering the park! We had just had it that morning!
We took a bus from Taganga to the Market place, then wandered around for a while looking for the next bus stop. Stuart stopped in the market to buy a new Rack Sack as in traditional Stuart stylee, he didn't want to be burdened with too much luggage so just took a day bag with him, only to realise quite quickly that it was just too small. Anyway in true Latin American market purchasing stylee the new bag began to brake as soon as he started to use it!
We found the bus stop after asking a few locals who were all very helpful, it only took about an hour to reach the entrance to the park. We declined a lift at the entrance of the park as we had read in the book that it was an hours walk through the jungle to the campsites and the beach and we fancied the walk. We found out after an hours walking that that wasn't the start point that they were talking about and had an additional hour to walk! We didn't mind though, after so long cooped up on the boat it was nice to get out and do some exercise, the walk was nice and shady so it wasn't a problem. Also if we had taken the lift we would have never seen the group of white faced monkeys that we saw in the trees. They decided to let us know who was boss by making a lot of noise, jumping up and down in the trees and pulling branches off!
The second part of the walk was a nice trek through the jungle (before we were walking along the road) so we reached the park after 2 hours of walking and was very glad to get our back packs off at the camp site. We took a couple of hammocks in a bodega, dumped our bags and went to find the swimming pool. Quite stupidly when they wrote swimming pool, I thought they meant an actual swimming pool, but what they really meant was the calm beaches that you could swim at! The rest of the beaches around here have very strong currents and it's not advisable to swim there. We found the swimming pool, an area which is surrounded by reef so is nice and calm to swim in, and had a little beach all to ourselves. These are the nicest beaches we have seen for a long time. We spent a couple of days here just spending our time on the beaches and in the sea then headed off to:
We had quite a mad dash here, we hadn't actually planned to go the same day as we left the National Park, thinking we might stop a night in Baranquilla but when we reached the bus terminal in Santa Marta, one of the bus guys said where are you heading, so Stuart said Medellin, before we knew what was happening they had held the bus up for us that should have just left and had us at the ticket office to buy the tickets! We jumped on the bus and settled down for the 16 hour journey (which turned out to be 20 hours). We had lot of inappropriate films to watch on the bus as normal, lots of blood, guts, sex, swearing and violence, all good family entertainment!
Just after dark the bus came to a stand still with the rest of the traffic, the police had put up a road block and weren't letting any more traffic go through, we were sat there for 2 hours whilst the bus driver negotiated with the Police to let us go through and finally they let all the traffic continue. We're not entirely sure why they stopped everyone, but we eventually got to our destination at 8.00 the next morning without any further hold ups.
The views in the last hour of the journey were amazing, we were driving along the very top of the mountains with steep drops all around, when we started coming down into Medellin all you could see was a big basin full of clouds, it looked a little like a witches cauldron!
After faffing about at the bus terminal trying to find a bus into town and everyone sending us in different directions, we finally realised that when they said Metro, they actually meant metro (train!) not a metro bus!! Its the first metro we have come across since we have been away, it was really good, super quick, cheap and very modern. We found a hotel on the Plaza de Bolivar, the main square, which we worked out doubled up as a knocking shop at the weekends! We spent 2 nights here, it was a very busy city and we know it gets a lot tourists but we never saw any. We spent our time looking around the city and Stuart got himself a new hobby of collecting massage parlor cards that were handed out to him on the street! It doesn't seem to make any difference with that sort of thing if you are with your girlfriend as we found out one night when a prostitute came over to our table and asked Stuart if he wanted any business! Stuart said I was his girlfriend and she said 'That's ok, do you want any business'. From here we took a bus to:
This towns is an original Colonial town with very pretty cobbled streets, we got a lovely little room on the main square with a little swimming pool out the back. We only spent a day here as we didn't have so much time left, our friends who were looking after the cat were leaving the boat in a few days and we had no one else lined up to look after the cat, so we decided to do a couple more of the towns in Antioquia then head back. We went to see the first suspension bridge in South America the next morning in a little tuk tuk, where the guy explained to us, how and when it was made. We then went back to Medellin to change buses for:
We're still not quite sure if we needed to go all the way back to Medellin to get a bus to Jardin but, it seemed the simplest option at the time. Jardin is a post Colonial town made in the same style and again is very pretty. The towns all seem to be based around one main square with a large church and lots of places to drink coffee. Again we got a very reasonable hotel on the main square, with a balcony, which was very nice to sit and watch the world go by. We were the only people in the hotel too so we had the whole place to ourselves.
The next day we explored the town, went to the sweet shop and was given a tour of the building and shown how the fudge was made, they call it Queso Dulce here which translates to sweet cheese. Stuart says that there really is no cheese involved though! It was very nice, what ever it was made of. The locals were very enthusiastic and wanted to talk to us, it helped us gain a little confidence in practicing our Spanish as no one spoke any English. It also gave them all a good laugh! Everyone automatically assumes you are American here, which isn't always a good thing. We had a little old man come up to us ranting away and not looking very happy at all, all we caught from his words was 'Estados Unidos' (United States) so we said 'No Inglaterra' (England), all of a sudden his expression changed and he was all smiles and sorry's, shook our hands and patted us on the back and rambled away some more, we were now his best friend!
The teenagers here are especially friendly and want to know where you have come from, where you are going. Stuart even got roped into doing some teenagers English home work for them!! Poor kids, I bet they got a lot of red crosses the next day, and they thought they were getting help!
We did a little hike to the Cueva del Esplendor, a cave with a waterfall coming through a hole in the top, the walk was all up in the mountains, in the grassy hills. It was a very nice walk, a little hard going at first but we soon got into our stride. The scariest bit was climbing down to the cave, you had to climb down the side of a small water fall which was vertical. I managed to make it in one piece and it was quite fun.
After spending 3 nights here we headed of for:
We had managed to get a residence in a vets arranged for the cat to stay in whilst our friends went away, with the help of them and the marina, so we had a few more days left to travel.
The bus journey here was quite funny, we were told that there was no direct bus from Jardin to Jerico, so we had decided to go to the next big town called Andes and change to a bus there. All the people in the bus station and on the bus were giving different opinions on where was best to change the bus and they all decided that we won't change at Andes as the connecting bus didn't leave there until 2 in the afternoon, which would give us a 5 hour wait. We didn't mind the idea of the wait, it meant we could sit in the square drink coffee, watch the world go by, we would fill the time. It was a good job we hadn't set our hearts on spending an afternoon in Andes as everyone wanted us to get to Jerico in the quickest most efficient way possible! They made us stay on when we stopped at Andes telling us there was a better way and dropped us off at a cross roads a hour or so later. When we got off the bus conductor spoke to the local venders telling them where we wanted to go and when the next bus showed up 15 minutes later the venders stopped the bus came running into the restaurant where we had stopped for a drink, telling us our bus was here. They were so nice and helpful, Really nice people.
The town again was made in the Colonial style and was very pretty, there were a lot of people walking around in ponchos and cowboy hats, the men had the little handbags with the cow hide on the front, very Spanish in style. A lot of people got around on horses so on every street corner there was a horse or two. We spent a couple of days here milling around and just taking in the ambience.
We headed back to Medellin after 2 days in Jerico, spent a night there then caught a bus back to Cartagena the next morning. The bus journey was during the day this time and only took 13 hours although it felt like a longer journey than on the way there.
We are back on the boat now, we have picked the cat up from cat prison, he doesn't appear to have missed us at al, showed no signs of even recognising us when we went to pick him up. We think they may have removed his brain whilst he was there!
We can't believe how hot it is here, the climate was so nice in the mountains, dry heat during the day and nice and fresh at night, here it is just so humid. We think it must be hotter than it was when we left, but we can't believe that such a short time in a cooler climate has made us forget what it is like to live in this heat!
We leave the Marina in a week and have some jobs to do on the boat, but who knows where we'll be next!