Medellin and the house that would keep me

Traveling is often an uncomfortable situation in which you bounce from hostel to hostel, cursing the demonish snores emitting from the top bunk, and having to pack and unpack and repack your backpack at each location.

Once in a while, you need a bit of a respite from this discomfort. I found my oasis in Medellin at Hostel Antiguo- a dangerously beautiful hostel with more in common to a boutique hotel than a hostel. It was so nice. And clean. And quiet.
And this pristine, quiet location dug its claws in and kept me there, for more than a week.
In that week, I did absolutely nothing. A bit of cooking, oozing from sofa to sofa, and downloading movies.

Eventually, I got around to a bit of exploring around Medellin and discovered that I loved it.

Medellin is nicknamed the city of the eternal spring, a nomenclature derived from its year round mild climate ranging from mid 70s to 80s. Before my fateful discovery of Hostel Antiguo, I stayed in the yuppie neighborhood of Plobado, the city's urban hub of restaurants, bars, and shops, frequented by Colombia´s nouveau riche.

Just twenty years ago, Medellin was named the most dangerous city in the world. Pablo Escobar transformed the town into the largest cocaine producing region in the world. Posing as a modern day Robin Hood, Escobar used his enormous wealth to build churches, schools, and hospitals, providing many impoverished communities with jobs running drug cartels. And despite the infamous bombings which Escobar unleashed during his days of power, many people in Medellin still refer to him affectionately, as El Patron.

In addition to the incredible weather, the location is beautiful. Situated in a lush valley surrounded by verdant mountains, the city is connected by a fluid above-ground metro system, similar to Vancouver's sky train.
There's a great sense of social awareness in Medellin and the city possesses a vibrant culture with an emphasis on education. Today, despite the poverty which still plagues the city, a decided spirit of optimism has taken root.

After a week of relaxing in the loveliness of Medellin, I finally had to tear myself way and begin an interminable 30 hour bus ride to Quito, which ended up being just as awful as it sounds. 

A slice of paradise pie

Before arriving in the Galapagos, I suffered from an insomnia brought on by a hysteria which overtook me as soon as I purchased my plane ticket.

I couldn´t sleep. I was terrified that my plane ticket from Quito was perhaps illegitmate, that I would in some way miss my flight, or that, upon arriving in the Galapagos, I would find that all the animals had left.
Was there truly a world in which little old me could sit down and eat a slice of Galapagos pie?
Oh, friends, there was. And it tasted of the salty sea - that is, delicious.

The morning after I arrived in Santa Cruz, I took a stroll through town and saw, within an hour, perhaps fifteen different species lolling about. The animals in the Galapagos are all delightfully lazy. You can get within an arm's length of them and they only eye you and your camera with disdain.

Of the three islands I visited, my favorite was San Cristobal. Unlike Isabella, which is surrounded by endless beaches and sugary sand but lacks activities, and Santa Cruz which had my favorite beach but suffered, in my opinion, from a serious defiency in sea lions, San Cristobal is just the right mix of sleepy Ecuadorian island and beautiful beaches.

And, best of all, San Cristobal possesses the largest population of sea lions. Thousands of large, lazy sea lions roll around on the park benches midday, wheezing with irritation if you come too close. They have hacking coughs and they leave their children to waddle all over the beach unattended, bleating for their mother's milk. They're amazing, irascible animals, and behave more like homeless people than wildlife.

I also did my first scuba dive in the Galapagos, and now I'm an addict. During my stay, I did six dives in total. The one thing I really wanted to see while diving was hammerhead sharks. And guess what? Just in case you didn't hate me enough already, on my last day diving in the Galápagos, I saw both hammerhead sharks and an enormous mola mola. I'm a lucky gel, I am.

I'll keep this brag post short and sweet. Suffice it to say that that the Galapagos are the highlight of my trip so far and that everyone in the whole wide world ought to go there and behold the austere beauty of the magestic baby sea lion. 

Don't it break yer wittle heart?

Motos no pagan!

There are few ways better to spend your day than hugging the hairpin curves of the Andes, bolting through the cloud and mist, with Animal Collective blasting through your headphones. Doesn't that sound deliciously dangerous?
In my brief experience of global gallivanting, I've learned that some modes of travel are superior to others. The optimal mode of transport involves a small motorcycle, a helmet, and hand that isn't afraid to grip the throttle as tight as it can.
This being said, my friend Cornelius and I decided to rent scooters in Medellin and take them for a brief spin through Colombia's coffee region. We rented them from an easygoing Austrian who asked for $600,000 (less than $300) for two bikes for the period of a week. The price was so low, in part because one bike was on its last leg in what had undoubtedly been a long and productive lifetime. In order to start, it demanded to be brutally kickstarted until it would finally sputter back into a bitter existence with an alarming hacking and spitting of the motor. This bike was to give us a great deal of trouble on our journey, but it possessed a wry sense of humor and valiant determination that ultimately earned our respect.
The first day, it broke down after only 3 hours  of driving in the small town of Santa Barbara. We stayed for an hour in the main square, attempting to ease the stubborn machine back to life with the assistance of the entire village. It was a bike that presented us with many opportunities for meeting the locals and practicing our Spanish. Through its sudden bouts of narcolepsy, we learned that every town in Colombia possesses a vast and innummerable amount of unlicensed mechanics, all of who are eager to lend a helping hand.
After we had  exhausted the entirety of town's mechanical knowledge, the bike started suddenly, and of its own accord, back to life. It then smiled fliratiously, winked, and said, "Let's go." And we were off.

Originally, we planned to take the bikes as far as Manizales, a city nestled on the outskirts of the coffee region of the Andes, but each day, the temptation of the open rode drove us further - through Santa Barbara to Santa Rosa de Cabal, past the smoggy resonance of Armenia and Pereira, up to the heart of the coffee region, Salento.

On our way to Salento, we encountered a terrifying lightening strom that rumbled and shrieked through the peaks of the Andes. The lightening awoke a biblical deluge, soaking us to the bone in scarcely five minutes of driving. The road was a long, wet ribbon of terror and each bolt of lightening forced my hand to twist the throttle tighter as the bike sped over the shimmering asphalt. I'm terrified of being struck by lightening, but ultimately, there are less eventful ways to die. A puddle of icy cold rain water accumulated in my lap as I squinted through the visor of my helmet. The conditions were worsened by my near complete inability to see the road. It was a tricky situation, because if I pulled my visor up too high, rain would hit my face in cold, biting pellets. Too low, and I couldn't see through the blurry, rain soaked plastic. The storm worsened with each second, and we were left with an ultimatum: either spend the night in the middle of nowhere or beat out the storm and drive as fast as possible to Salento.
And so, we drove on and arrived like two sad, wet cats, shivering from an icy cold that possessed our bodies like an uninvited guest.
I took what may have been one of the longest showers of my life, slowly rotating, like a rotisserrie chicken under the feeble stream of warm water.

The next time we saw storm clouds looming on the horizon, we equipped ourselves with garbage bags as we had seen the locals do. Perversely, it did not rain, and we drove for two hours in the weak sunlight with garbage bags billowing out behind us like capes of shame.

There is a special place in my heart for Salento, a sleepy town of 5000 residents which caters to backpackers in their scope of familiar cuisine (finally, I enjoyed some spicy food and escaped, if only for a few days, the notorious blandness of Colombian cooking). The streets are lined with drowsy dogs, curled in the middle of the road in resilient slumber. The town residents spend their days peering out their windows, watching the minutiae of ordinary life pass by with an air of solemn perspicacity.

Originally, we had no intentions of going as far as Cali and we had been duly warned by our Austrian friend who had mumbled something along the lines of, "Don't take the bikes to Cali, it's too dangerous."
But the idea of danger became an oblique concept as soon as we saw the words "Cali 256 KM" towering over us on the freeway.
"It's so close!" I said, "Let's go!"
 And away we went.

The road between Salento and Cali is a vast, and open, forged with wide, forgiving curves and surrounded on all sides by the preprosterous vastness of the Andes. It was a pleasant drive, careening along the coffee plantations and cornfields.

Cali is the Colombian city that is synonymous with one word - salsa. Every guidebook I've ever seen illustrates Cali with the picture of a woman decked in a vivid salsa gown, a gaping smile frozen on her face and and a bunch of fruit on her head. This is Cali, salsa city,  the heat and attitude of all Colombia.
I didn't find the woman with the fruit on her head, but I did find the salsa dancing. Indeed, it would be hard to miss because salsa is everywhere. And even though Im the first to loudly decry how much I hate salsa because when I want to dance I simply don't have the patience for any rules or - God forbid - steps.
However, I'd give anything to master a form of dance other than the macarena. And so, I decided to commit myself to the dance floor with all the perseverence I could muster.
I believe I danced with half of Colombia that night. It took seven hours, one bottle of rum, a number of beers, and the blasting of a thousand horns until, at around 4 in the morning my partner enthusiastically exclaimed, "That´s it! You´re dancing salsa!"
And I was. I knew it. And so I danced, possessed with my new fire of salsa, heating up the dance floor. I would live in Cali forever. I would out salsa all the senoritas with the fruit on their heads. I was an anomoly, a gringa calienta! and I could dance salsa.

This illusion  lasted only until the morning of the next day when I asked my friend, "Did you see the way I danced at the end of the night? Didn't it look like I had finally mastered salsa?" And he replied that I looked, frankly, ridiculous. "We were all laughing at you." he said. And so, all that remains of this story is a testament to the powers alcohol.

Driving in a foreign country always seems to evoke a kerfuffle of activity and confusion from the local police force, and, true to from, we were stopped once or twice a day by the police. They would wave us over officiously from the parked corner on the side of the road and press us, with furrowed brows for documentation. Their mannerisms would switch erratically between stringent professionalism and jovial curiosity. When we produced  our passports, there would be more questions, but these would be friendly. "How long have you been traveling?", "How do you like Colombia?",  and once, to me, "Do you like Colombian men?" and "Do you want to go to dinner?"
And then, after these brief, humane interactions, they would return to their roles of faceless authoritarians. They would search Cornelius (women cannot be searched by male officers in Colombia) with a discomfitting thourougness. It always seemed that they wished to detain us longer using whatever conversational pretext they could muster. Inevitably, they would wave their goodbyes and resume their bored postures alongisde the freeway, watcing with envy as we drove away into the wide, open road.

It was with great sadness that we returned our bikes. I'm hoping to see Ecuador by bike as well, but maybe graduating to something a little bit...faster.

Finding the Lost City

[I survived the jungle, but I don´t have pictures to prove it. Unfortunately, the business of taking pictures was left to a deranged Dutchman, who advised me to leave my SLR at the hostel. The trek is notorious for sudden bouts of rainfall which drench your clothing and backpack, and so I decided to rely on his digital camera for pictures. He has yet to send them to me, but my hope of retaining pictorial evidence has not diminished.]

"Welcome to inferno verde," our guide Carlos, says, grinning beneath his brilliantined mustache. He glances back at our group of thirteen travelers, and, with the  air of Virgil leading Dante on a happy traipse into the inferno, adds, "Are you ready for a journey into Green Hell?"

Lonely Planet warned me about this, I think. Sure, it's no Mount Kilimanjaro, but the trek to Ciudad Peridida (the Lost City) is notoriously difficult. Bloodthirsty mosquitos. Knee-deep sludge. Impossibly steep mountains. Rock climbing the face of a slick mountain wall. Sleep-inducing heat. What could be better?

The trek began at the mouth of the Rio Grande, a river which I was to grow deeply acquainted with over the forthcoming days. Our group was comprised of an increasingly unprepared-looking group of travelers, our sombrero-bedecked guide, Carlos, and Johnathan, the camp cook, who sprinted ahead of us each day at a pace which I found alarming in its alacrity.

During the first hour, we crisscrossed the Rio Grande three times,  trudging forth with sopping wet shoes into the unrelenting heat. At first, the journey was pleasantly level, a fact that incited some nervousness within our group. "It can only get worse," a gargantuan Australian confided to me, fearfully.

He was right. Not long after, we began to climb. For more than four hours, we hiked uphill, deep into the rugged terrain of the Sierra Nevadas.  Soon, it began to rain, and the thick red earth grew slick and muddy. Every step forward was a struggle as we slid backwards into the implacable clay. Just as we reached the summit, the sun set, plunging our small group deep into the unremitting darkness of the jungle. Guided only by the slim beam of our flashlights, we waded through yet another river and finally arrived at our campsite, exhausted and hungry.

Carlos urged us to keep our valuables close. Several years ago, the jungles were infested with guerrillas who wouldn't hesitate to claim your life for the pesos in your pocket. Now, the trek is purportedly safer. While guerrilla presence goes by relatively unnoticed by hikers, there have been stories of theft deep within the mountains.

The next day, we awoke at dawn, and began to walk. And walk. And walk. And climb. And walk. And climb. And walk.During the next few hours, we passed several small villages of thatched houses, home to the Wiwa Indians. While the adults eyed us with unwavering irritation, the children ran forward with hands outstretched, asking for candy. Several of the girls, who looked no more than thirteen years old, carried their babies in cloth backpacks slung across their backs.

The third day was interminable. A member of our group hurt her knee and had to hire a donkey in order to complete the trek. We stopped in a small enclosure for lunch and I immediately fell asleep on the wooden bench. After my slight siesta, we continued forth into the implausible afternoon heat. Soon our group was fragrant with perspiration and DEET.

I was impressed by the variety of the landscape: we trudged through open pastures, past swinging vines, and deeper into the inescapable red sludge of the jungle. Clouds of blue morphos traced our path as we made our way through several streams.

By the eighth hour of walking, I was exhausted. Everything hurt. After a while, the path became monotonously hypnotic and I grew dizzy from staring out at the ground ahead. I sat down to rest, and for a moment I  considered sitting there forever and refusing to walk a step further. However, the moment passed, and I tightened my backpack and continued forth.

As the sun set behind the mountains, the path ended in front of a slight waterfall. "We go up, now," Carlos told us, with a confident smile, pointing towards the waterfall. And so we climbed, clinging to the slippery cliff as water splashed down over our heads.At the top, we were met with our campsite, which was dubbed deceptively, "Paraíso"-- Paradise.

The next day, we woke, bandaged our blisters, and hiked for another hour. Finally, we reached the 1200 stone steps leading to Ciudad Perdida.  Panting in the early morning light, we arrived at a plateau encircled by several trees. I was struck by the city´s enormity, which had once been home to over 2000 Tayrona families. Hundreds of corridors  wound deep within the jungle, each one leading to a clearing of stone foundations.

Finally we reached the main square, the city´s highest point. Against the vast, impossibly verdant backdrop of the Sierras, Carlos told us the fascinating story of Ciudad Perdida's discovery.
In the late 60s, an impoverished father and son from the neighboring town of Minca, scaled the mountains. Their purpose remains unclear; from Carlos's account, they were searching for land that was ripe for vegetation. other stories say that the two men were attempting to find ground to plant marijuana, while Lonely Planet suggests that the men were already practiced grave robbers, searching for buried treasure in the jungle. Whatever their purpose, they discovered the steps leading to the Ciudad Perdida. Tales of gold hidden deep within the mountain emboldened the two men to journey deeper into the overgrown brush. Aided only by machetes, they cut away at the dense jungle fauna for nearly three years, before they finally discovered a grave. They exhumed the tomb's contents and aside from a few skeletons, discovered heaps upon heaps of...gold.

In celebration of their riches, they returned to Santa Marta to display, with great indiscretion, the accumulation of their sudden wealth. Together, they drank the finest wine and bought the most beautiful prostitutes the town could offer (the beauty of the prostitutes was repeatedly emphasized by Carlos, who, with gleaming eyes, reiterated this fact several times).The locals, suspicious of the mens' sudden good fortune, questioned them about the origins of their wealth.The men let them in on the secret and struck an agreement: in exchange for their services clearing the ground they would receive a portion of the riches.

This arrangement lasted only a few months, when it was determined that the father was pilfering more than his fair share. His son, along with several other men, conspired to kill him, and he was machine gunned down one night in the very place he had discovered. After three years of searching for the buried treasure, he enjoyed his wealth for only three short months.

The project was then passed down to his son. The son too, was killed by the same men he had employed (it was then shyly related by Carlos that he had at one time worked for the son, which led to speculation among our group of Carlos's own involvement in the son's death) and the cycle of bloodshed continued through each subsequent successor.  When the government intervened in 1976, the police force and military stepped in.

There is believed to be another city, not some 400 meters away, which has yet to be discovered.
It is rumored that the Wiwas alone know its exact location. However, despite the promise of unforetold riches, it is illegal to clear the jungle land which is regarded as sacred by the tribes.

Despite the trek´s ardour, it was by far one of the best things I've ever done while traveling and I´m eager to find another trek within the Amazon.

I could barely walk after I finished the trek, but I regained my strength while resting poolside at a hostel in Santa Marta. I figure I got my exercise in for a while.

Along the Carribean: Bonitas, bugs, and beaches

Colombia is renowned for its bevy of beautiful women - Medellin, a city in the west, claims to possess the most beautiful women in the world. And so, there is perhaps no better place to witness the country's infatuation with good looks than a beauty contest itself.

I arrived in Cartagena a week before the country exploded into a craze with Colombia's largest beauty contest, Miss Colombia. While I didn't make it to the finalist event, I attended the pre-selection phase of "Miss Cartagena" with some other travelers. We were told that the event began at 4pm, and so we caught a taxi around 3:30 and headed to the plaza. A line of avid bystanders snaked from the entrance of the plaza several kilometers down.
We later realized that we had waited in line for over two hours - but we didn't notice the passing time because the line was a party of its own.Vendors pushed carts of cold beer up and down the line as the crowd swayed to the thrum of horns and maracas.

I was amazed at how much the contest reminded me of a sporting event. The crowd's raucous enthusiasm was remniscent of shouting fans at a soccer match. Each contestant was supported by a noisome group of fans wearing t-shirts which bore the name and photo of the contestant from their designated district. We sidled up to the loudest group who screamed for the victory of "Obrero" beneath streams of silly string and an enormous banner held up by small girls. Amid the blaring of the vuvuzelas, someone passed me a fistful of balloons and, aided by a large box of aguardiente (Colombia's national anise flavored liquor), we matched the crowd's enthusiastic roars.

The girls were all stunning. 40 or so contestants paraded about the stage in  bikinis and high heels for over 3 hours, while the crowd danced in the night's persuasive heat. A man pointed out his daughter onstage, a gorgeous, lanky woman with a billowing afro. "Her chances aren't good," he explained, knotting his hands nervously around a handkerchief, "she has the darkest skin."
A quick internet search reveals the lack of diversity among contest winners - in the years since the competition's inception in 1934, there has only ever been one Afro-Colombian winner. 

We lost interest somewhere amid the endless mirage of bikinis and left, wandering haphazardly back toward our hostel.

Perhaps ill-advisidly, we had booked a bus for a 5 hour bus ride to Tayrona National Park at  4 am the following morning. I woke to the sound of pounding rain and a throbbing headache. I quickly packed my bags and headed downstairs to wait for the arrival of the bus. I hadn't read up on Tayrona at all and anticipated white sands, blue sea, and a comfortable hostel on the beach.
When the bus pulled up into the entrance at the national park, we were instructed to board another bus. After riding for half an hour more, the bus stopped in an enclave of rainforest with no beach in sight. In its place stood a slight manger where several skinny horses gazed out impassively beneath the hum of mosquitoes.
The sleepy-eyed guide explained that we could either hike for 2 hours through the jungle or reach the coast in 1 hour on horseback.
We opted for horseback. As I winded my way through the humid rainforest on the back of my horse, Mona Lisa, I looked up to see a tiny squirrel monkey peering down at us.

We arrived at dusk, just as the local insects buzzed hungrily, ready for their evening meal. Tonight's entree? Gringa fresca.

Even at the cost of the bugs, the beaches made it all worthwhile. The days were spent swimming with mercurial fish in the clear warm waters of the Carribean. Each night we ate fresh, fat shrimp for dinner and drank wine on the shore.
After a sudden rainstorm soaked my entire wardrobe, I was ready to return to Cartagena and civilization.

And now, I'm ready (hopefully) for the wild again. Tomorrow I  embark on a 5 day trek through Cuidad Perdida (the lost city), which is described in my Lonely Planet guide with the following compelling depictions: "some travelers have returned with hundreds of mosquito bites," "be sure to bring masses of insect repellent," "the terrain is rough," and "you will often hike through waist deep creeks and your clothes will be soaked for several hours after."

I just stocked up on bug repellent so...I'm ready?

Also- I have to mention my new favorite breed of cat, The Carribean Cat, a docile, quiet breed that loves to eat roasted peppers and warm white rice.
MEooooooooooW!

Beginning in Bogota

Aside from the Candelaria district (the quaint post-colonial area of dangerously cobbled streets and crumbling 300 year old houses), Bogota reminds me more than anything of Terry Gilliam's set for Brazil: a post apocalyptic wasteland of fumes, seething crowds, and 80's style blockades of huge industrial towers.

The air downtown is so polluted you can taste it. Passing cars cough up huge clouds of noxious black smoke that clings to your clothing and hair. There are about three policeman on every corner, and they all look to be no more than fifteen years old. Some are accompanied by narcotics dogs, others carry AK47s. It's mandatory for Colombian males to serve two years in the police force after graduating high school, and so security is accomplished through quantity, not quality.

Las Policias

On a walk through downtown Bogota, I spotted a few women with bandaged noses, flaunting their recent plastic surgery. Colombia has the third highest rate of plastic surgery in the world, and undergoing the knife is often considered necessary for a woman to advance professionally. It's close to impossible for women who have never had plastic surgery to recieve any high profile jobs (such as newscasters, etc.) and in towns like Baranquilla and Cali, fifteen year old girls are often gifted with rhinoplasty and breast implants for their quinceaneras. Apparently some of the bandages are fakes: plastic surgery alone is perceived as so great a status symbol that some women will bandage their noses for weeks and flaunt them in public.
A chat with some locals in Bogota revealed that Colombia's obsession with beauty originated during Escobar's prime, when wealthy drug dealers would pay for women to have plastic surgery. In some cases, surgery was a means of smuggling cocaine into the United States. Colombian beauty contestants would receive breast implants filled with cocaine, and then swap the cocaine for silicone implants upon entry to the US. Sometimes the plan went slightly awry, however, and many women were caught in the act. This began the bizarre tradition of beauty contests within Colombian prisons, as evidenced by this video: http://youtu.be/FLDWHuL_EMI

For the most part, Colombians are a jovial, easy-going lot. Everyone I asked for directions in Bogota (about 30-some people, owing to my innately terrible sense of direction), obligingly showed me the way. The Candelaria district is a Sisyphean nightmare of concentric circles that inevitably always spit me out on the wrong end. Even though I spent several days winding through the city's labyrinthine knots  I still couldn't make sense of it in the end. No matter how many times I tried, I'd lose my path in the hopeless confusion of Calles and Carreras (also, there's my permanent sense of bafflement when it comes to city layouts that are anything other than grids).

Casa Bellavista

One of my favorite items in Bogota was the Botero Museum, a delightfully weird collection of works by Fernando Botero, a figurative artist and sculptor who is self described as "the most Colombian of Colombian artists." Botero paints in an exaggerated form, and the museum is filled with his enormous renderings of reality; or, as Botero himself described, "fat figures." This included ponderous cats, a rotund Jesus Christ on the cross, a bloated Hitler, and several gargatuan still lifes.

Bogota is representative of Colombia's counter culture and the Candelaria district is brimming with muralists, graffiti artists, experimental hair salons and circus schools. I went on a "graffiti walking tour" in the area and learned that graffiti is becoming increasingly accepted in Bogota, with business owners commissioning local artists to paint on their buildings. While many artists paint  politically neutral works in order to ensure their longevity upon the city's walls, many pieces were subtlely provocative and revealed the darker aspects of Colombia's past.

Profits of war

Painting of a photograph - peasant carrying gringo

All the brightly colored paint lend the Candaleria a vibrant and cheerful appearance.

After three days in Colombia, I'm headed to the warm seas of the Carribean coast. VAMOS!

Circus school

Mis Patas are ready

I'm going on an adventure!

                                                         My feet are ready