From City to Beach

Hello from Santa Marta!

After a rough trip getting to Colombia, we have finally adjusted and really started enjoying the country! We spent about 3 days in Bogota recovering from jet lag and seeing the sights.

We stayed at a hostel called Alagria located in La Candalaira district on the south eastern part of the city. The streets are beautiful: red cobblestone with multi-colored buildings rising up on both sides and people buzzing around in the streets. Quite a contrast from our 2am introduction to the city. I immediately felt at ease upon leaving our hostel for the first time. Colombians are happy people and generous and helpful to even the most ignorant traveler (which I hope we are not).

Highlights in Colombia included some museum trips to Museo del Oro (Gold Museum) and Museo Botero. The latter was free and full of paintings and sculptures of very large people. The gold museum portrayed the interesting history of gold in Colombia and was filled with beautifully intricate pieces of golden jewelry and sculptures.

We also hiked up to a church on top of a giant hill (or small mountain, however you want to look at it): Cerro de Monserrate. Even though the hike was only supposed to take an hour or so, we knew it would be no easy feat at the altitude we had just flown into: some 8,000 feet or so. We had been warned at first that the hike might not be safe, but we decided to not bring any packs to tempt theives and see how it felt. The trail was a stone stepped road all the way to the top and was busy with many Colombians walking or running up. We spotted some other white people in front of us with backpacks, and upon catching up to them realized they were our Dutch friends we had met in the Bogota airport a few days earlier, Sebastian and Elane. We hiked the rest of the way up with them and got stunning views of Bogota, which is a way more expansive city than we thought! We spent the rest of the day with Sebastian and Elane, visiting a fruit market and el Museo Botero.

We decided on Saturday to catch an overnight bus up to Santa Marta, 17 hours north of Bogota on the Carribbean coast. The bus ride was quite an adventure. We wound down the mountain side in our charter bus, constantly turning and braking and changing gears. With my queasy stomach, I resorted to the fetal position and almost paid a trip to the toilet in the back of the bus. Eventually we leveled out onto the straighter roads and flat land. There was a constant thunderstorm raging the entire night; at one point Jon pointed out that we probably didn´t even need headlights with the country-side lit so consistantly with lightning strikes. Rain came down in curtains and shattered against the bus windows. We were in the front seat and had a view of the road in front of us. During the heaviest rainfall, I couldn´t even see the blurry center line, but hoped the driver below could as he passed several trucks at a time on windy roads around blind corners. We just tried to get some sleep and hoped they knew what they were doing.

Santa Marta is incredibly humid and hot. We like the hostel we are at but don´t appreciate all the ants in this warmer climate, or the rats. Jon had an incident with a raton jumping on him from a windowsill; I don´t know if I was laughing or screaming myself as the rat scurried between my legs and across the room.

Today we went up to a waterfall in the coastal mountains with a group of travelers just outside the village Minca. We were able to swim in the pool beneath the waterfall and were joined by many local Colombians having BBQs and enjoying time with their families. Tomorrow we hope to hit the beaches for a couple of days and then head south San Gil, a town about 5 hours north of Bogota and known for its hiking and white water rafting!