Colombia

We were finally reunited with Ms Sparrow after gaining many air miles, flying to Bogota via Dubai and Orlando. The last leg of the journey, from Orlando to Bogota, turned out to be quite a treat, as our LAN flight attendant Jonathan secretly gave us extra snacks and drinks to make the journey a bit more bearable and offered us seats with extra leg room. I think he felt sorry for us, looking at the state of us after two days travelling!
On our way to our hostel Craggy Crock in Bogota, our taxi man Nicholas gave us a brief tour of the city, with Edel (being the only Spanish speaker in the group) translating for the rest of us in the back.
In order to get over our jet lag, we decided to do the free city walking tour with our guide Freddie from True Colombian Tours. In the welcomed rain with our rain jackets on, we visited various famous historic buildings, the Houses of Parliament, learned about the history of the city and how it got its freedom. We sampled some of the local delicacies including Chicha (a fermented drink, made from maize), Obleas (jam in a thin wafer style sandwich), chocolate con queso (hot chocolate with cheese pieces) and arepas con queso (pancake style flat bread filled with cheese). We finished off the tour with a game of Teja, which is a traditional Colombian game of throwing a metal disc onto a board with small gunpowder pods.
Next day we visited the Museo del Oro where we saw the history of making gold and numerous beautiful statues and figures made from gold. After this, Edel and I went to the Catedral de Sal in Zipaquira, a small town north of Bogota. Our guide Juan told how the cathedral was built in a salt mine in the Halite mountain. There were beautiful statues and crosses all made from salt and a shallow body of water with 30% salt forming a mirror effect from the roof above. An amazing light show on the roof of the cathedral, topped off an amazing tour.
Next day we flew north to Santa Marta on the Caribbean coast. Here we did a tour of the small town Minca, where we visited a coffee plantation and factory. The guide was unable to speak any English so Edel did a fantastic job of translating for the rest of us.
We then got a shuttle bus to Palomino where we went tubing on the Palomino river. After a short motorbike ride to the bottom of the mountain with our large rubber rings and a 30 minute hike up to start point in the blistering heat, we peacefully floated down the river in about three hours, before reaching the warm Caribbean Sea.
Next stop was the extremely hot and humid Cartegena where there were celebrations for gaining independence from Spain in 1811. Walking around town we came across the Plaza La Trinidad where we saw the Reina De Cartegena, which is a beauty pageant for local teenagers with aspirations for becoming Miss Colombia in the future. This was a precedent for the main event for the adults, which would finish off the week of celebrations at the end of the weekend. We watched the La Batalio de las Flores, which is Cartegena's take on Carnival, with plenty of music and dancing ongoing while the beauty queens from various districts, paraded the streets in large colourful floats.
Then we went to El Totuno volcano, where we had the unusual experience of bathing in the dense, warm mud bath. We floated in the unsinkable mud before washing it off in the nearby lagoon.
Within the walls of the old town of Cartegena we visited various cathedrals, churches and museums including the Palacio de La Inquisicion. Here we learned more about the way the city gained it's independence, and how it has developed and expanded recently. Next we flew south to the city of Medillin, which is situated in the beautiful Aburra Valley in the Andes Mountain range. We got a cable car to Arvi National Park where we viewed the city from above. We also visited the Parque Berrio where we saw the numerous large bronze statues.
From here, we got a night bus with Coomotor to San Agustín, where we stayed in Casa del Nelly. The hostel organised various tours for us. Firstly we went horse riding and visited various monuments and stone statues built in 4000BC. Our guide Albero showed us how to extract the three colours of the Colombian flag (red, yellow and blue) from various trees. We viewed the beautiful Rio De Magdalena River (Colombia's longest river) in the valley, before finishing in the amazing Parque Arquelogico de San Agustín.
The next day we went on a jeep tour of the area where we saw more statues and tombs, visited the narrowest point of Rio De Magdalena and stopped at a sugar cane processing factory before finishing the tour at the tallest waterfall in San Agustín (Salto de Bordones).
The next city we visited was Popayan where we stayed at the Parklife hostel on Parque Caldas. This was an ideal location for exploring the lovely streets of the 'White City'. We visited the Puente Chiquito, which is one of the oldest bridges in Colombia. To finish off our time in Popayan, we treated ourselves to a trip to the cinema, to see the last of the Hunger Games films.
Our final stop in Colombia was the border town of Ipialas where we visited the amazingly beautiful El Santuario de Las Lajas. This was a church built in the gorge of the Guáitara River.
This was a lovely way to spend our final morning in Colombia before we head across the border to Ecuador.Read more