I was f’g exhausted after my alta Guajira trip so parking myself in Barichara, a tiny little colonial village of 7k people in the mountains seemed like exactly what I needed. Getting there from remote Riohacha was a bit of an undertaking involving 2 flights, 2 buses & an overnight in San Gil but I made it. And then proceeded to do nothing but wander, sleep late, dine & go on hikes. There is one especially great hike on Camino Real, a stone path built ages ago for locals, that wanders to Guane, a town 10km down the mountain. While most folks opt to take the bus back to Barichara for USD50c, as the hike is primarily downhill to Guane, I opted to do the return hike back up to Barichara bc I’m weird & always prefer the uphill portion of hikes given the downhill is murderous on my worthless cartilage-free & arthritic-crazed left knee. I quickly discovered perhaps I downplayed the extent of the decline as I was too mesmerized by the gorgeous views but I got in a damn good workout & then promptly had a long late lunch to fill my belly & rest my now wobbly legs & knee.
I doubt one can find a more picturesque colonial town so if you travel to Columbia, put Barichara on your list & perhaps settle for the one-way hike.
The hike Guane is a cute little town but when you’re beginning from the stunning Barichara, it’s hard to top. One thing Guane is known for is its sabajon, a goat’s egg based drink usually mixed w alcohol. I did taste tests to find that my fave mix was whisky (shocker) so I bought a little bottle complete w plastic shot glasses & that may have aided my hike back.
I’ve always said the places really worth visiting are difficult to get to. Difficult travels keep the casual tourist from visiting. Those are the places I like to find. Punta Gallinas takes that to the nth degree both in terms of travel & payoff. It is LITERALLY one of the most beautiful & wild places I’ve ever been to in my entire life (no hyperbole, really). The desert environment is harsh but so odd bc it’s unlike any desert I’ve ever seen with its aqua lagoons & plateaus, rocky cliffs & reddish-hued sand dunes rolling right into the sea. Temperatures are extreme but that’s the alta Guajira and Punta Gallinas is the Northernmost tip of Colombia & South America.
Cabo de la Vela is the most visited place in alta Guajira. In fact, I met many people in Cabo de la Vela who fell in love with it (& kite surfing) & have therefore stayed for 1wk to 1mo but haven’t bothered to head N on the trek to Punta Gallinas. Even kiting instructors who’ve been there for months haven’t ventured N… “no time & I hear the road is terrible”. Those fools clearly don’t know what they’re missing. Well the “road” is terrible. I’m not sure you can even call it a road. The 4hr drive is in a massive 4WD w a seriously insane driver ripping through the desert, sometimes following prior tracks & sometimes creating new. The drive, which starts at 5am, leads to a 30min boat ride on a wooden skiff before you arrive at 1 of 2 hostels in Punta Gallinas. Then there’s not much to do right around the hostel but for a beach 2km walk away w a stunning view of Bahia Hondita providing for lovely sunsets. To see what Punta Gallinas has to offer, that involves piling in an even more massive 4WD on a day tour. So again, it’s more work while at Cabo de la Vela, the shack you’re staying in overlooks the water. But wow is it worth it as my jaw dropped further & further in wonder & awe with each stop.
There’s no one around in Punta Gallinas. Only 8 Wayuu families live there & operate the hostels & run the tours. Not too many tourists venture this far N & those that do, are awfully cool. You bond rather quickly, even at 5am, when you’re crammed in a 4WD together, getting bounced & thrown nearly on top of one another w each turn & rut. We banded together over the next 2 days exploring during the day, enjoying sunsets at dusk, & playing rousing hands of cards at night. Surprisingly, the lodging conditions in Punta Gallinas were an improvement over Cabo de la Vela. I was expecting worse due to its difficult accessibility but it actually had running water & electricity (solar power & generator). It really makes me question what’s going on in Cabo de la Vela. While it has 50 Wayuu families & 1500 people, the ratio of tourists is probably consistent so I can’t believe the worse conditions are due to a cost issue. Sleeping conditions were the same but I sleep so well outdoors in chinchorros, I don’t mind it. And I hit a record for cheapest lodging per night as a chinchorro cost the equivalent of only USD$7 (Cabo de la Vela was a whopping USD$8).
Definitely one of my fave trips ever.
One set of headlights following us on the early morning drive to Punta Gallinas.
It was a bit bumpy on the drive
https://youtu.be/mzLF5gdDxSQ I just couldn’t get over the color mix – orange / red sand against the aqua sea & bright blue sky
Arriving by boat through the mangroves
The craziest coolest lagoon in a desert I’ve ever seen. https://youtu.be/M2Hlbjze54o This was the showstopper… we walked up & over the biggest, steepest sand dune that rolled right into the sea below. Running down the steep incline & face planting into the water was really a terrible time.
https://youtu.be/glDXDiNZuXg
It felt as if you were walking over the edge of a cliff as you couldn’t see the very bottom til you’d committed
Palomino was in the low region of La Guajira. The high region or alta Guajira is like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Riohacha is the launching point (i.e. not a destination in & of itself) for the alta & its highlights include Cabo de la Vela, population 1500, & Punta Gallinas, far smaller. The region is home to the Wayuu tribe & bc they live in the desert, they can’t grow anything so while they sell their beautifully handmade chinchorros (large hammocks) & bags, they have also welcomed tourism. They invite you into their homes to stay. You sleep in chinchorros outside under a wooden roof for protection from the unusual storm & typical winds but in full view of the starry sky featuring more stars than I’ve ever seen in my life x 10. It’s hot during the day & cold at night thanks to the desert climate. It’s a brutal environment that scares away most tourists. So of course I wanted to visit.
In the recent past, few tourists ventured as far as Riohacha. Now most tourists who head further NE to Cabo de la Vela & further to Punta Gallinas do so courtesy of 3-day organized tours from Santa Marta in fancy SUVs for a lot of money, much of which does not make it into the hands of the Wayuu. I decided to do it on my own on the cheap & devoted 6 nights, although I wasn’t sure I’d need them all (or could stand them all). For the first time ever, & leveraging my Chicago-honed taxi hailing skills, I flagged down a bus heading E on the main road near the Palomino center, told the driver I was headed to Riohacha & he waved me aboard. 1.5hrs later I made it to Riohacha & pulled out the trusty LP to guide me the rest of the way. Hailed a taxi to run a few errands including cash as Riohacha is the last place I’d see an ATM for a week & everything operates solely on cash up N. Taxi then dropped me at a corner w colectivos looking to fill rides to Uribia. It took about 2 mins to find one w a spot for me, negotiated price & we were off, arriving 1.5hrs later. My colectivo driver seemed most concerned with helping me find the next transport heading to Cabo de la Vela & thankfully his other local riders didn’t seem to mind.
Now this was the fun part. I was loaded onto a 4WD (bc that’s the only kinda vehicle that can make it any further) & “enjoyed” a bone crushing, teeth chattering 2.5+hr journey to Cabo de la Vela. The truck was like those you see in movies. A big cab w a metal frame in the bed containing wooden bench seats along the side & thankfully metal safety guards to keep you from bouncing out. Then on top? It’s piled high w anything & everything the driver is bringing back to Cabo de la Vela on behalf of various business owners along his route. This includes massive styrofoam containers filled w ice & refrigerated items (bc there’s no refridgerators & barely electricity in Cabo de la Vela), gasoline (a LOT of gasoline including a massive drum that traveled w us in the rear – I chose not to consider what would happen in the event of an accident – bc there’s no gas stations beyond Uribia), various food items & a massive amount of beer (noted). Perched atop everything was my backpack secured w rope. The driver’s 3 sons served as the packers who piled things perfectly in a mound atop the frame & rode atop it until each delivery stop where, in a jenga-like game, they had to carefully remove the intended package without everything else toppling over. It was really quite fascinating. All the while, I’m crammed in the back as the only tourist accompanied by 11 Wayuu women & 5 children on laps w more packages, fruits & veggies, eggs & the massive gasoline drum in between us. It was a trip. We must’ve looked amazingly ridiculous bc all of those rich DBs who paid USD$1k for a 3-day trip were racing up in their fancy SUVs as we neared Cabo de la Vela just to get photos of the circus on wheels & the gringo along for the ride.
The driver kindly dropped me right at my hostel located a 10min walk outside of town right on the water bc of course, it was on his delivery route. The hostel was recommended by the coffee finca owner & is owned by a couple who’ve been in the area for years & operate a kite surfing school. So my plan in Cabo de la Vela was to finally learn how to kite. I was sure it probably wouldn’t go well but I was down for a challenge & always some laughs. Unfortunately, the owners left last minute due to a family emergency & left the place to some overwhelmed volunteer backpackers & the remaining kiting instructor was far too busy &/or did not excel at time management. He was unable to accommodate all of the kiters on his own so after repeated promises that kept falling through, I decided to call short my time in Cabo de la Vela & head N to Punta Gallinas via a supposed even more harrowing trip. You see, while Cabo de la Vela is a lovely place & the hostel was located right on the water, there is really nothing going on in that town unless you are very into kite surfing. The desert heat leaves you constantly seeking shade & while waiting & hoping for my lessons to begin, I wandered the town, watched other kiters (but that just made me envious), made friends w some local Wayuu kids & of course bought some Wayuu bags.
After the rustic nature of the accommodations in Cabo de la Vela – showers by bucket, toilets as you can imagine (SE Asia prepared me well), no / minimum electricity, few resto options so cooking on your own in a rustic kitchen, occasional mice & cockroaches – given the fact Punta Gallinas is far more remote, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but I was down for it & excited.
The ride from Uribia to Cabo de la Vela w my backpack at the top of the heap. Being chased down by the lazy well-off gringos in their SUVs. They’re missing out on half the fun. You appreciate it more if you work for it.
Video of the drive:
https://youtu.be/fxskFbcpiGk Tracks to nowhereCabo de la Vela’s main strip The hostelSleeping conditionsView of town from my hostel. If you’re going to do remote, you might as well go all in. My headlamp was critical on this trip.View from other side of town, towards my hostelThe 2 Wayuu bags, or mochilas, I bought in Cabo de la Vela as well as a bracelet made by a fun 13yo boy. I made him tell me about school & what he was learning & we talked for 30mins before I’d buy a bracelet. Then we made up our own secret handshake he was always so excited to show off the countless times we’d run into each other. The bags are so interesting. Each pattern has a special meaning. Upon a girl’s first menstrual cycle, she’s locked away w her mom & grandma for 6mos to 1yr as they teach her how to be a Wayuu woman which includes learning how to crochet these bag & the meaning behind the patterns. Don’t ask me what my patterns mean. All I know is the white one is about 2x cost of the multi-colored one due to the quality of the materials. I think they’re gorgeous. I’d have bought 20 if I could to bring them home for everyone. But they weren’t super cheap. Many Colombians carry them – all Wayuu do – both men & women.
I think perhaps I found the beach I searched for long & hard in Cuba only to come up empty handed. It’s in Palomino, Colombia. It’s on the Caribbean in the middle of nowhere beneath the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountains, the highest coastal mountain range in the world. It’s beaches are white sand, wide & gorgeous. It’s super chill. There’s no one here. No resorts of any kind. The town consists of a few dirt roads barely big enough for scooters. The surf is a bit aggressive & would rightfully scare off some folks, as do the red “swim at your own risk” flags posted everywhere (it was yellow one day), but I actually kinda prefer to get knocked around a little bit as it keeps things interesting. Those visiting on the weekend included quite a few locals as well as foreign travelers. You’ve got the hippies w their packs & guitars camping of course, you’ve got hostels whose spot on the beach in front of “the center” is the happening spot if there is one, & the relatively higher priced huts & bungalows further down the beach. It’s so quiet everywhere in a really good way. Palomino is flanked by 2 rivers, one of which you can rent inner tubes & tube down, although you don’t cover much ground as the current is nearly non-existent. So I got a lot of R&R, posted a lot of blogs & rested up for the trek North to alta Guajira.
I of course can’t take credit for Palomino. My arduous research revealed Taganga, 2+hrs W of here, could be a good spot but the more I read, the more I found it USED to be a good quiet spot but now hordes of tourists have overrun the small fishing village. I came across Palomino for an untouched beach in an online Rough Guide article listing the top 10 places in South America you’ve never heard of. Umm. It’s like it was written for me. As for the rest of the places on that list? I’d actually heard of several others, but you can bet your ass I’m keeping many of them in mind.
Sunrise. The cloud cover burns off by 9. Sunset The main strip Restaurant row The tubing river that lets out on the sea. Note Colombia’s version of the beach umbrella.
I was a bit indecisive when it came to choosing lodging for my Parque Tayrona visit. I tried a couple spots but they were shockingly booked up. Meanwhile, I had been emailing w this dude for a couple weeks… at first regarding availability about one of his properties (booked) & then regarding my questions on Tayrona. He was pitching me a room in another property that was more than I wanted to spend, but I found him to be helpful as he offered to buy my Tayrona ticket & coordinate the taxi. So I decided to splurge a bit on a room in Casa Playa, only a 10-min drive E from Tayrona right on the beach near where a river intersects the sea. I had the bus drop me at the drive & found the lovely casa w it’s private pool perched atop a bluff directly overlooking the sea to the front & the river to the rear, flanked by crazy ridiculous beaches & equipped w a house man Benedicto. Best part? I was the only one to rent a room so not only did I get the best room but I had the whole place to myself which was perfect after an exhausting day at Tayrona. Only downside? The house was so close to the sea, the waves crashing below were pretty darn loud at night. I can’t even type that with a straight face. No the downside is I only had 3 days / 2 nights here.
Beach 1
Cool ass jelly that washed ashore https://youtu.be/1QQK3xQfn20 Beach 2 (& the river). As I was going to Tayrona, I asked the driver what beach was her favorite (intending of Tayrona’s beaches) & she indicated Naranjos was her fave… the one I’m staying on. https://youtu.be/iJ7MJcULEHsYes there are crocodillos in the river & I was told to look out for them. This skinny little path is right by the river & the path to the beach so I’d walk pretty quickly & keep an eye out.
Hammock video especially for Cash
Parque Nacional Natural Tayrona in Colombia was quite possibly the most highly anticipated stop of my entire South American adventure. I think I may have even showed a photo of Tayrona to my Chi crew before I left… as in, “Holy shit!!! This is what I get to see!!!”. It’s a national park located on the northern Caribbean coast of Colombia about 5hrs drive E of Cartagena. It’s run by local Colombian tribes who wisely charge admission to visit their paradise. It’s a lush green mountainous region whose jungles just explode onto the coast in these amazing rock formations & mesmerizing beaches. But you gotta work for it. The deal is you hike through the jungle, up & down foothills from beach to beach – I think there’s upwards of 7-8 beaches accessible from the main El Zaino entrance although a few are deemed unswimmable & even come with warning signs indicating “hundreds+ have died” trying. So you feel as if you’ve earned this massive reward by the time you reach the beaches & witness the views.
They tried to make it difficult for me to visit. The tribes must grow weary of the visiting tourists (although they do limit visitors daily so you must get an early start) & every so often they suddenly decide to close up shop for a month to purify the land. They announced in December they were closing as of Jan 27 but I didn’t get word until just as I was leaving so I had to rework my trip to accommodate & thank goodness I did, as I do believe this may be my single favorite travel day EVER. The sailing trip from El Nido to Coron in the Philippines was my fave trip-within-a-trip but I think this was my fave single day. I’m not sure my photos do the views justice & they certainly don’t capture the feeling of joy once you’ve completed the hike & get to enjoy it… before of course you do the hike again on return. I just love it when shit works out.
A few things I learned based on my pre-hike research & on-the-hike experience:
Buy your ticket in advance. The park’s website to do this is a joke & doesn’t work. I asked the manager of the casa I was staying at to buy one in my name & he obliged. This assures you a ticket & the privilege of avoiding a massive line to get tickets the day of & given the park limits daily visitors, on busy days, I’ve read the park stops entrants by 10am, so travelers have been known to wait in line beginning at 4am. That’s just not for me. The fact the park was closing made this that much more important, although I’d do it again visiting on a normal day. A little advanced planning goes a long way.
Hire a taxi to drop you & pick you up in accordance w park hours (8am-5pm). There are public buses you can take to the entrance of the park. What the park doesn’t advertise is the 5km walk to the point at which the jungle hikes begin. From that point, it’s a 3-hr minimum hike past all the beaches. Adding on a 5km walk? No thanks. Thankfully I found this advice online before I went.
Stay offsite. There’s a couple places you can camp in the park. One at the “furthest beach” & biggest draw, Cabo San Juan de Guia, & the other at one of the closest, Arrecifes. I previously read about these options… bring your own tent (yeah right, even if I owned one, it’s NOT making the backpack cut), rent a tent or rent a hammock. Let’s just say, by staying overnight, you’re not blazing a new trail. It’s like tent city. A sea of tiny little tents placed nearly on top of one another in the beating hot sun. The hammock situation didn’t appear much better although you at least had some sort of structure as a cover. If you want to really treat yourself, Tayrona has these 14 ecohabs (i.e. somewhat fancy thatched huts) perched on the hillside; only thing is, they are at the start of the hike & located on an unswimmable beach. So for >US$200 more per night over what I paid for my baller digs (see next post), you haven’t cut into your hike at all. Offsite there is a whole range of options and besides, one doesn’t need any more hot equatorial sun than a full-day hike provides. Believe me, it’s plenty.
Bring real hiking boots. Some fools were hiking in flip flops & when that didn’t work, they resorted to bare feet. I’m not sure if those people are stubborn, foolish or lazy & failed to do the research, but the hike is not for pansies as it requires some scrambling up & down boulders & obstacle courses to avoid massive mud baths, especially given the torrential downpours the night before. I was happy I had my hiking boots & put them to good use. Sure, at times you hike through sand & across mini rivers but I’d just kick off my boots & walk barefoot til I needed to don them again. 90% of people came similarly prepared so the 10% sure did stick out.
Take time to enjoy the hike. Life is a journey not a destination. All of the travel guides rave about the “furthest beach” Cabo & it’s photos justifably serve as the parque’s advertisements so you can imagine its popularity. But it’s 3 hours before you reach the beach & along the way, you pass 4 other breathtaking beaches & views. Although I think many people missed those. I’d take the long way, stopping to find the perfect views & surveying each beach; while most others seemed to just beeline straight for Cabo, not pausing for a second to enjoy the journey. When I arrived at the exalted Cabo, I realized why. While the other beaches were scantly crowded, this one was teeming with people. Yes, it was drop dead gorgeous & I went a little overboard w the photos (a couple different times 3hrs apart bc, you know, the sun changes), but my goodness, finding a little square piece of sand to plop down upon seemed like a daunting & unwelcome task. After round 1 of photos, I spied a path on the further end. I recalled the travel books saying there was one beach after Cabo but it was a nude beach (gasp). Hell, at this point, I was excited for the nudes in order to escape the Cabo frenzy. So I continued on & thankfully so bc there were 2 further beaches that were hardly touched by tourists save for hippies hiding out & taking pot naps. Perhaps the travel books’ mention of the nude beach scared folks off. Regardless, I found a happy isolated spot to chill & rest before my 3hr hike back (& round 2 of pics at Cabo).
If anyone is inspired by this post & wants to visit in the next 5 months, not only can I help you with planning the details, but I’m also happy to re-route my trip & do it all over again to play tour guide. That’s just how incredible it is.
Might as well start backwards at the money shot at the money beach, Cabo San Juan de Guia. It really is freakin gorgeous. And it’s actually 2 perfectly shaped crescent beaches that meet at one lookout point. OK, enough about el Cabo (it really is stunning tho). This is the NO NAME beach past el Cabo that I crashed at for 3hrs. Not too shabby. A sign indicated over 100 people have died here but I’m pretty sure that was a scare tactic. Tide wasn’t that bad. The path from el Cabo to La PiscinaAptly named La Piscina as it’s great for swimming given its a big deep bay w minimal waves. And then we continue along the hike back…
Videos of the beaches bc I am a real dork. This is for me.
I was super excited to see Cartagena, a gorgeous Spanish colonial city on the Caribbean Sea. I thought I’d spend 5 nights here. I was planning to until I had to move up a future destination. So I only had 3 nights. It was enough although I had to cut out a jaunt to some outlying islands where I probably could’ve found some decent scuba diving (I need my fix).
A couple things about Cartagena:
(1) Cartagena is an outlier in Colombia as it’s expensive with prices nearing US levels. Which is a bummer.
(2) I was forewarned in the coffee country about the heat. I spent months in SE Asia so I admittedly shrugged it off. It’s MF hot in Cartagena. When you’re on the equator, that sun is just so goddam strong. So my schedule in Cartagena went something like this: sleep til 8, eat breakfast & hit the city by 9am before it’s scorching hot. Lunch at 1ish & then spend the rest of the afternoon in the shade on the rooftop of my hotel or lounge by the pool. Anything to get out of the sun. I’d come back to life around 5 & head out again to wander & enjoy the night.
The thing to do in Cartagena is wander. Wandering photogenic cities just so happens to be my favorite thing to do traveling, taking pitstops along the way in gorgeous chill plazas at coffee shops, restos & bars. It’s impossible to get lost as long as you stay in the old town as it’s fortified by large stone walls. The city is lovely & it reminded me a bit of Havana with its picturesque winding streets although the difference is Cartagena is a pristine colonial town unlike the dilapidated Havana (which in my opinion, just adds to its romanticism). I’m not sure there will ever be a more charming city than Havana so I should probably just remove it from any future equations.
Although I didn’t read it anywhere, the city should be known for its big imposing wooden verandas. Just gorgeous. These bags are made by the Wayuu tribe in La Guarija in N Colombia. They also make these ridiculously amazing large hammocks (chinchorros) that are so warm & could fit 3 of me. I’m going there. I’m going to want to bring one home. Bag & chinchorro. Chinchorro will be tricky.Believe it or not, I actually asked permission to take this photo. Boy have they got their posing down. One of my far-too-many-to-count fresh fruit juices
Thinking about Colombia, what comes to mind? Cocaine & coffee right? The country’s heyday on the former is thankfully past so tops on my list was most definitely to dive into the latter. No better way to do that then actually stay on a coffee farm in La Zona Cafetera, the Arabica-growing coffee mecca of Colombia, located just a 5hr bus ride South from Medellin near Manizales. The bus was more of a van jammed w 9 people plus the driver. Thankfully I had a bucket seat so while legroom was severely limited, there wasn’t anyone sitting on either side. I managed to convey to the driver before leaving that I wished to be dropped approximately 20 mins before Manizales at a pedestrian bridge with a restaurant nearby as I was going to a coffee farm, Hacienda Venecia. I was a tad bit anxious about it as I was unsure whether myself or the driver would recognize the site but turns out, there was nothing to worry about as it was very obvious. The driver swung over, dropped me & my backpack in the middle of nowhere & I wandered into the charming little restaurant near the bridge in order to call the ranch for a pickup & enjoyed fresh fruit juice while waiting. As an aside… Colombia is justifiably known, in addition to coffee, for its freshly made fruit juice & it has become a daily staple in my diet featuring both known & previously unknown fruits (guanabana???). I’m more than a little obsessed. Back to the coffee… the ranch driver scooped me & we were on our way down a rutted rough one-laned road into a valley surrounded by lush hills. The coffee farm was lovely. Three different accommodations including expensive main house, middle-of-the-road guesthouse & economical dorm bed hostal. I chose the middle-of-the-road featuring private rooms & baths & super cool travelers along w a pool & great indoor/outdoor communal area. House breakfasts, lunches & dinners features delicious local food & all the coffee you can drink. The coffee tour the next morning was really interesting & informational but I may have tuned out for a second as it dawned on me I’d done similar (but not as in-depth) tours in numerous wineries throughout my years but had never thought before to learn about the coffee process. I drink quite a lot of coffee. Perhaps I drink more wine? The balance of my 3-day stay was spent lazing about in hammocks, eating, drinking coffee & to stay somewhat active, going on hikes into the hills for pretty spectacular views of the valley. As a special treat, the owner kindly showed off the cacao he’s now growing on the farm. We picked a fresh cacao & sucked the pulp off the beans which to my surprise, tastes quite fruity. To make chocolate, the beans are dried for days (so flash forward like those magic cooking shows), then roasted til they popped, peeled to separate the bean from its outer coating, smashed & then ground for 24 hours. We tasted the cacao frequently as the grinding would constantly change the consistency & taste of the chocolate. By the next afternoon, it was a real bitter flowing dark chocolate. We first added sugar to make a proper bitter dark chocolate, sampled quite a bit, & then added milk powder to make a milk chocolate. We finally poured the chocolate into molds, cooled in the refridgerator & enjoyed our freshly made milk chocolate bars that evening for dessert. Pretty damn great if you ask me. Although I’m clearly not used to “manual” labor as the 2hrs spent peeling the cacao beans left me w borderline blisters. I’ve got a lot to do before I take up farming. The bonding coffee experience brought us together as did shots of the local Colombian anise flavored liqueur, Aguardiente, & local Caldas rum. All in, a phenomenal trip to the coffee region.
While I was enjoying Medellin, it struck me the end of day 2 that it was a truly modern city & unlike a lot of places I visit on my travels, it was a bit devoid of culture & history as most old buildings had been razed. To get a little culture, I decided to take a day trip to Santa Fe de Antioquia & try out Colombia’s bus system. An advertised 2hr bus trip was really 1.5hrs through gorgeous mountains to Santa Fe, which is the oldest city in the region & has maintained its colonial history. I visited on a weekday when prices are significantly cheaper as I read it was a key weekend getaway destination for Medellin locals. It was pretty empty which is just how I like it. Nestled in a valley, it was stunning & perfect for wandering the streets snapping photos, interacting w the locals & enjoying long lunches & great views.
Due to a plane’s flat tire, my flight left 3.5 hours late from Miami to Medellin. The upside is I was able to watch most of the Packers playoff win vs Dallas. The downside is I didn’t land in Medellin until 1:30am & the airport was dead but for pre-arranged taxis which seemed like a really good idea in hindsight. Travel books say avoid private taxis for security reasons & only use official yellow Medellin taxis. Well that wasn’t an option so I found a man, who seemed like a very nice man, who operated a private taxi, and I talked to him in my elementary Espanol for 10 minutes about generalities & where I was going to ensure he was familiar with the area & he didn’t come across as an overt murderer, rapist or thief. He was nice & charming & it thankfully all worked out just fine as I happily arrived safely at my digs only a 3 block walk from the center of El Poblado, the supposed hip & trendy but oftentimes noisy hood in which I was staying, at 2:30am. So first trip snafu conquered with ease.
I happily explored much of Medellin for the next 3 days & despite its somewhat recent sordid history in cocaine trafficing courtesy of the late Pablo Escobar, it’s really come quite a long way in a relatively short time. The neighborhoods are interesting & welcoming. The metro system is the only one of its kind in Colombia, includes metro cables (cable cars) to its relatively impoverished barrios up in the hills & is far nicer than Chicago’s el. From what I can tell, it’s a happening modern city that’s very safe, accommodating & livable. The best part was the people. My recent trip to Cuba revealed the machisimo that’s a part of everyday Latin lives. I had heard & was expecting it to only ratchet up a notch in South America. To my very pleasant surprise, I’ve come across none of that so far in Colombia & I’m going to choose to believe it has everything to do with the kind, respectful nature of the Colombian people & nothing at all to do with the fact that I may have overreacted by chopping all of my hair off & dying it from platinum blonde to my more natural brunette.
City views
Houses atop housesEl centro
Botero sculpture in main el centro plazaView of El Poblado from metro station El Poblado neighborhoodWhile staying at a $20 per night Airbnb, I realized how much good food was in Medellin & despite my unemployment & rough travel budget, I decided to treat myself in El Poblado bc while I don’t have a paycheck nowadays, I choose to spend my money on things that give me joy (Cubs season tix, the boat, good food). Turns out I picked a trendy spot & the attire of the locals put my travel outfit to shame. But apparently Colombians can figure out whether you know good food & wine despite how you’re dressed. So much so, that the head chef brought out a comped dessert HERSELF, asked me how my dinner was & thanked me. I didn’t know the chef was a SHE until Laura introduced herself. I felt blessed I randomly ended up at one of the top 5 Medellin restos that is owned & run by a woman!!! In a typically male-dominated South American society. So I asked Laura about this sign very clearly displayed as you enter the resto & turns out it’s a local campaign to try to dissaude traveling dirty old men or good ol’ US expats from bringing in their underage prostitutes (age of consent in Colombia is 14). Apparently it’s been a big issue so its great to see it highlighted.
amusemusings 