The next morning we made our way to a place where we could go paragliding. It was really cheap, only 100k COP which is roughly £25 for half an hour. We had a bit of a faff trying to find an ATM which would accept our cards and so that, coupled with heavy traffic, meant that we arrived at the place in the afternoon. Kay went up first, we had both paid extra to get the use of a GoPro while up there but when she landed, her pilot informed her that the memory card was faulty and that no pictures had been saved, which was a bit of a gutter for her.
I went up next with a different pilot, and thankfully, a different GoPro. The view from up there was amazing, a birds eye view of the city and all the hills surrounding it. We were up for about half an hour when he asked if I wanted him to do some tricks? I instantly agreed and he immediately started swooping and twisting to the chorus of my screams.
We tried to land after that but, the wind had died down so much that my pilot, Alejandro, was struggling to gain the height again to land at the top of the hill. We stayed out for another hour and a half before he finally decided to try and land half way up the hill instead. I definitely got my money's worth and I also got to help pack up (and carry back) the parachute which was an experience. Poor Kay had to wait all that time for me and had only been told that I would probably be landing in the city instead. We had made plans before that if this happened to either of us, we would just make our own way back to the hostel, but luckily for me, Kay decided to wait it out - she had my bag with all my money in it!
We went for a few drinks that night with some people from our hostel. We started at a hostel close by for a couple, where we also met up with some American guys we'd met at the paragliding, before heading to a club. We later went to a bar where they were playing salsa music, and I got free salsa lessons from some locals. After the clubs shut we went back to the 'park' to carry on drinking. Every city in Colombia seems to have a square in town where everyone, locals and tourists alike, congregate to have pre and post club drinks. We stayed there until the very very early hours of the morning.
The next day was the inevitable write off.
We booked a tour to a place close by called Guatape, it's a lovely colonial town with a lake and also a huge rock that they've made into a view point with over 700 steps to the top. We started out day bright and early as Guatape is a couple of hours drive away. We were first to be picked up and found out very quickly that we had inadvertently booked ourselves on a tour with a Spanish speaking guide who had little to no English. She gestured that we would just need to look at the things she pointed at but it was obvious we weren't going to be able to get any information, which was a shame. She did luckily mange to find someone on the tour who could speak some English and he was then forced to be our interpreter for the day.
We started the tour by going on a boat trip around the man made lake. I know that they flooded the town in order to create this lake but I have no idea why. There are a lot of nice houses up on the hills surrounding the lake and, again, I can't be sure, but I think she was pointing out famous people's homes. A bit like lake Como or something...kinda.
We then went to have lunch, and after lunch, we climbed the 700+ steps to the top of the rock/view point and were greeted with a wonderful view of the lake. ( see pic below)
It was then off to Guatape town where we were given some time to wander around and our lovely interpreter did his best to keep us in the loop.
We managed to book ourselves onto what has been described as the best walking tour in all of South America for the following day and we weren't disappointed. We spent 4 hours waking around medellin where we were shown the sights but also given loads of interesting information about the history of Colombia and medellin which used to be the most murderous city in the world but you would have no idea of that now.
We left Medellin that evening on a very expensive, albeit very luxurious, night bus to Cartagena. It wasn't until after this bus that we found out that it is usually cheaper to fly in Colombia than taking the bus.
We arrived at the bus station in the morning and took a local bus into Cartagena. We managed to get to the hostel using the sketchy directions they had given to us and also getting a bit of help from some Mexican guys who were on the bus with us. They did abandon us at one point but thankfully, and weirdly, we bumped into the couple who had helped us in our hour of need all the way back in Panama City airport. Our guardian angels it would seem!
The hostel was lovely, clean and modern, they also gave us a refreshing cold beer to have while our beds were being made up. We spent the day with an English guy from our dorm walking around the wall which surrounds the city.
The next day we went and did a walking tour of the city with an Australian couple and a German girl who were staying at our hostel too. It was really good but not a patch on the one we'd done in Medellin.
We decided the next day to get out of the city and go to a beach called Playa del Blanca which wasn't too far away by local bus. Myself, Kay and the Australian couple spent the day lounging on the beach, having some drinks, and being harassed by local ladies who wanted to give us massages or put braids in our hair. We managed to catch one of the tourist boats back to the city and on our way back to the hostel we saw an amazing dance competition going on. We went out for drinks that night with some people from our hostel, we all started at the park/square for our pre drinks and got to see some of the dancers from earlier in the day strutting their stuff and also a voluptuous drag queen who was belting out Mariah Carry songs for us. We then all headed for the famous salsa bar called Havana Club, who claim to make the best mojitos in Colombia. The place was cram packed with people trying to get their salsa on, and the mojitos weren't all that, so after a while we decided to head to another club. We danced the night away at the second club and then finished our night where it had all began - in the "park" with everyone else in Cartagena.
The next day was quite quiet, we spent the day with the German girl from our room, Dominika, and wandered the lovely streets of the old town in Cartagena.
Myself, Kay and Dominika left the next day and made our way up to a small village outside Santa Marta, called Taganga. We left bright and early but waited over an hour for one of the shuttle buses to the bus station. We eventually gave up and walked back a bit and got a local bus in a few seconds. When we arrived at the bus station we were ushered off our bus and straight onto another local bus which would take us to Santa Marta, or so we thought anyway, but it actually only took us half way before we were chucked off, and onto another bus. We did arrive in Taganga around dinner time thankfully and checked into our hostel. Kay and I had booked a private room which turned out to be in a different building a wee bit up from the main hostel, the wifi didn't work, but it was nice to have our own space for a few nights. We had some cheap but delicious Mexican tacos from a street vendor for dinner and then had a quiet night.
We met a nice American guy while having breakfast at the hostel and he later came for lunch with the three of us. We all went for the grilled fish set lunch, which was soup for starter, a different type of tasty grilled fish each, coconut rice, salad, plantain and homemade lemonade, all that for about £2.50. We then all walked over the hill to another beach which was supposedly nicer that the one in the village, but I personally couldn't see any difference. We spent the day there and then wandered back over to the village to have more yummy street food for dinner and then helped the American guy drink a bottle of rum that he couldn't take on a flight with him the next day.
Myself, Kay and Dominika went to Tayrona national park the following day and spent the night there in hammocks. We had hoped to use our now expired student I.D's to get us into the park for cheap but the guy behind the desk was the first person ever, to really scrutinise them. He was having none of our "it's only the credit card that has expired, we're still students" chat. The park was absolutely stunning, we had our pick of beautiful white Caribbean beaches which were only a short twenty minute walk from each other. We spent our first day at the closest beach that you were allowed to swim at, and only ventured back to our accommodation when the sun set. Myself and Kay had a bit of a mis communication which resulted in us only taking half the money we had planned to. Luckily, we had brought a load of food and water with us so we managed on what we had...just.
We ventured a bit further the next day and walked about an hour away to one of the most spectacular beaches I have ever seen. I could have lived out the rest of my days on those beaches but my back wouldn't have taken another night in a hammock so we left late afternoon and made our way back to Taganga.
Now that we knew that flights were so cheap, Kay and I took a flight the next afternoon from Santa Marta down to the capital, Bogota. What a temperature shock that was! It had dropped to about 10 degrees at night which was not nice. We shared a taxi from the airport with two English guys who it transpired, were fresh out of high school. One of them was asking us for tips on getting a job in the corporate world. I'm not entirely sure what he thought Kay and I did that we could help in that matter, maybe we just seemed very old to them?!
We checked into our hostel and they made us a lovely cup of sugarcane tea and showed us where we would get really good pizza for dinner. We were invited out for drinks with some Koreans that were staying in our room but we were pretty tired, and freezing, so decided to get under the covers and watch programs on YouTube instead.
We went on a graffiti tour the next day which was really good! The graffiti artists there are so talented. After the tour we had some lunch and then retraced our steps so that we could take pictures without having 30 people in the way. When we were heading out for dinner that night, we bumped into Dominika, she had arrived that morning and was staying in the hostel next door to ours.
The weather in Bogota is so annoying, one minute it's clouded over and freezing, and the next minute the sun is out, 3 layers of clothing are striped off and sun cream is needed, but 5 minutes later the layers will be back on because it's clouded over an freezing again.
We took the cable car up to the top of Monserrat hill where we got an amazing view of all of Bogota. We went for a really nice Middle eastern meal that night which consisted of chicken shawarma with rice, falafel, hummus and paprika chips...yum!!
The next day was Sunday which meant that everything was shut and there was nothing to do. We had a nice lie in and then did a bit of shopping in the afternoon. We left for the bus station about 9pm for our bus to Armenia where we would get another bus to Salento in the morning.
We arrived in Armenia at 4am which was a bit earlier than expected. I went for some breakfast and got speaking to a nice Colombian guy who had come off our bus too. He kindly showed us where we would catch the bus to Salento and we were on our way by 5am. We were thankfully able to check into our hostel at that time and after a second breakfast and some lovely coffee we were able to have a wee nap. We just caught the owners leaving when we arrived but they left their 3 very capable sons in charge. The one checking us in was hilarious, it's quite a feat to not only speak another language fluently, but to have a sense of humour in that language too! We slept until lunch time and then went to a cute wee vegetarian place for lunch. We walked around the lovely town in the afternoon and then walked up some steps to a view point. We got chatting to a Colombian who had moved to Germany and was just back on holiday to visit family and friends. He tried to engage us in some conversational Spanish so that we could practice but our Spanish really wasn't good enough for that. We can get by with what we have but that's about it. We went to a place called Brunch for dinner, it had been highly recommended to us by Zoe, who we'd met at San Blas. She told us that we had to try the peanut butter milkshake but by the time I finished my enormous burger and chips there was no way I was going to fit anything else in.
We took a 'Willy' the next day to a national park close by called Cocora. The trek was only 13km but it took us 6 hours to complete the whole thing. We stopped for quite some time at a hummingbird sanctuary where we had some hot chocolate and attempted to take pictures of the beautiful hummingbirds. Probably over 100 photos were taken and I only managed to get one or two decent ones. The only difficult part of the trek was the the last 1km to the top of the hill where it suddenly got very steep! The walk back down the other side was nice and easy since it was all down hill, this was the part with all the huge rubber palm trees. We took a Willy back into Salento and went for some dinner and well deserved early night.
We did a coffee plantation tour the next day after checking out. We walked the 3km down into the valley to the plantation. The tour was really good, they showed us the whole process from planting to roasting. I even got to plant my own coffee seedling and we got to try our hand at picking the cherries. We got to have a cup of the coffee at the end of the tour but I actually didn't enjoy it very much, I think it was too smooth for my taste. After leaving the plantation we saw some horses tied up, presumably the transport of someone on a tour. We asked if we could take them back to Salento because we couldn't be bothered walking all the way back up the hill. It was a really great hour long ride which was made all the better by the fact that both our horses wanted to be in front. Any time Kay's came near mine it would start cantering away. After getting back to the hostel we found out that the journey to Cali only took 3hrs and not 7 like our book had told us. This scuppered our plan to do an overnight bus and so we just stayed put for one more night.
The next morning we were up with the birds to catch the first bus to Armenia and from there managed to get a bus quickly to Cali. It wasn't a long wait there either before we were on our final bus to Ipiales which is the small town at the border. It was only supposed to take 8hrs from Cali but it ended up taking almost 12 hours which meant we arrived at midnight. We would be crossing the border the next morning into the 12th country of our trip, Ecuador. I was very sad to be leaving Colombia but I had already decided that I would definitely be back, and soon!
