Carnival de Barranquilla

I Arrived to Baranquilla on Friday, just on time for Carnival, the backpackers world in south America is a small one, and in Colombia it is even smaller, you tend to meet people again and again during travelling, It seems that the other backpackers in Colombia have also decided to come here for the Carnival, which created a bit of extra demand for hotel rooms, making it difficult to find one, eventually I found a place at hotel Skal, but I had to pay all four days upfront, which means it is likely I will stay here until Tuesday, the last day of the Carnival, other travelers found this hotel, and I ended up meeting some old acquaintances in there, Laura from England who I met in Salento, and Dan from Australia who I met in Cali and Medellin, they had other friends with them, and we all went out to together, though the only event on Friday was a gay parade, which we went to see, there was a march with gays dressed up in costumes, and bands playing music, it was quite fun, the march ended at a square with a stage, were there was music and huge crowd gathered, we mixed up with a group of locals, the people here extremely friendly and we made some friends very fast, part of the fun involved spraying other people with water, foam sprays, and maize powder (normally used to make maize bread), one time I turned around to avoid some water splashing, only to be smeared with maize powder by some girl, I had it in my eyes and mouth, not very nice, we had a couple of blond people in the group, and at some points they were the main attraction at the gathering, surrounded by ten or more people, trying to listen to every word the were saying, or dancing with and around them, there are no natural blond people here, and this is not touristic city, so the presence of blond people seems to be an extraordinary occurrence, I on the other hand look too much like a local, and lot of Colombian think I am local, a Costeño, that is the name they have for people from the cost of Colombia, one time in Cartagena, I was hanging out with a couple of English guys, and they were asking some local guy in a bar about the best places to go out, and the guy told them why don't you ask your friend here , pointing at me, he is from around here, he should know were to go, when I told him that I was not from Colombia, his answer was "what are you trying to pull here, you are more from Cartagena that I am" !! Anyway at the end of the night we were given phone numbers, by the group of locals we met, and they invited us to meet them the next day, and join them for the festivities, I was quite moved and impressed by this extreme openness and friendliness.

On Saturday we went to see the Batalla de los Flores, but there was no flower fights, as the name might suggest, it is a Carnival march, I found it quite similar to the carnival in the Netherlands, just with diffirent kind of music and people, this match was a comercial march, with trucks carrying bands and dancers, anyway we did not see much of the march, there was too many people, and you need to get there early and pay to get a front line seat to the show, instead we engaged in foam and water battles between us and against the locals, everybody wants to get the gringos, especially if they are blond and tall, so they were soaked with water and smeared with white powder very quickly, we made friends with some local girls, which we met again the next day, going back we had to walk quite a bit before finding a taxi, things were getting rough as everybody else was walking back as well, and a few fights broke out in the streets, but we finally found a taxi and got back to the hotel safely, I started feeling sick thought, I think it was that empanada I had five hours earlier, I only had twice problems with food in south America, and both were from epanadas that I bought on the street, I felt nausious, I went out for some fresh air, and sucked on a limon, I started feeling better, but I decided just to take it easy that night, and get some good rest, the others went to some live music show.

On sunday I finally tried the hotel pool, it was nice and clean, I read a bit, then we went to see the other march, the popular march this time, people waring costumes and accompanied by music, I bought a lot of snacks on the street, to compensate for not eating the night before, we did not see much of this march either, and it was already fading away when we got there, so we head back to the hotel, I was feeling very tired and still suffered the effects of that bad empanada, so I crashd in bed, and was awoken at midnight when the other guys were about to go out, there was a local girl with us and she suggestd a place to go out to, but when we got there, there was no light, electricity cuts in this city seem to be a common thing, so we head somewhere else, la Plaze de Cerveza, we went into a nice pub, with cheap beer, no entrance fee, good latin music with a bit of techno once in a while. The women in Barranquilla, are a mix of black and Carribean, offering a differnt kind of beauty to the inside of Colombia, and unlike the women from Medillen they do not require any artificial breast implants, they are excellent dancers as well, and the traditional way to dance here is to dance very close and intimate, we had blond australian guy with us, who the local girls called mono, monkey, I found it amuzing that they call blonds monekeys here, we stayed there until the close time, then had a snack on the street, I should no better by know than to buy another empanda on the street, anyway I did not suffer any ill effects from it, we got back to the hotel, Lura the English girl had too much to drink, and was talking non sense all the way back to the hotel, which was very funny, we jumped for a final swim on th pool , at 5 am, then went to bed. I went out again the night after, and had a lot of fun as well, but one of my friends at the hotel had his camera stolen, and when I got to Taganga I heard that many other travelers had been pick pocketed, Barranquilla is not a very safe place during Carnival. On Tuesday I headed to Tagnaga, on the way our bus was stoned by children, throwing ice chunks, I guess their idea of carnival fun, there were other childern blocking the road and asking for money to let cars through, although it was all a humorous act, but in general I had quite a good, espcially deo to the opennes and friendleness of the locals, I had not seen much of the carnival actually, but I did learn to dance to the local rythems and in the very close and intimate local style.

Scuba Diving in Taganga

Taganga is a very small tranquil town on the Caribbean cost of Colombia, I stayed at the casa de Filipe generally a nice hostel, but infested with mosquitoes, the people of the town are very friendly, the street along the sea es lined with food carts, and restaurants, the restaurant offering great fresh sea food, which I don't mind eating everyday, at one of the kiosks you can get a huge and amazing fruit salads consisting of at least 10 different kinds of fresh fruits for 5000 pesos, I miss that fruit salad.

There are 7 diving schools in town, but not all are very reputable, I decided to do my PADI open water curse, and I chose to go with Poseidon diving school, because they can do my registration for the PADI certificate online, with no need to send any papers by mail, it is run by a couple of german guys, they are very professional, though they are the most expensive in town, 540,000 (around 200 Euros) pesos, first afternoon I just watched an educational video, the next day consisted of exercises in shallow water, which I found a lot of fun, the next two days we did the dives, two each day, during the morning, all passed with no difficulties, the dives were all in Coral reef areas, the afternoon and evening I spent studying the theory book, preparing for the final exam, I was promised two free dives if I did the exam perfectly, I needed to answer all 50 questions correctly, so I took the studying seriously, anyway I did manage to do the pre exam quiz perfectly, 40 questions, but I made two mistakes in the final exam, so I did not get my free dives, it is always difficult to get that last one or two questions right, but I did pass and got my temporary certificate, for three month, and got registered thorough he Internet at PADI, I should be receiving my PADI card in two month. Anyway I want to do my advanced course as well, so I am planning to come back to Taganga later to do it.

Playa Blanca

The beaches around Cartagena are not so nice, you have to go a bit further to find a decent beach, Playa Blanca is one of the popular ones, reachable by boat or by land, but the land trip is quite complicated so I opted for the boat, the beach is very beautiful, with turquoise colored waters, and generally tranquil atmosphere, though there are many people trying to sell you stuff on the beach, sometimes they can be quite annoying, but some of the stuff they offer is quite nice, I had a full body massage on the beach, and those home made coconut sweats that some women sell are just delicious, I stayed at a place run by Gilberto, a french guy, you can order food at the hostel or at Jose's restaurant close by, both serve delicious dishes of fresh fish, you sleep on a hammock, or you can get a bed, but I decided to try for once sleeping on hammock in the open, I slept quite well on the hammock, but in the morning my neighbours mentioned that I spoke a lot during my sleep, I don't usually do that, but apparently sleeping on a hammock does induce extra dreams than usual, apparently one of them was quite emotional and I spoke out loudly during. Although the waters have a beautiful turquoise color, the visibility in them is very limited, I had brought my snorkeling gear, but I gave up on snorkeling quickly because of the bad visibility. The place does not have a proper showers, and generally the whole experience is quite pure, electricity is only on for a couple of hours during the night.

I decided one night was enough for me and decided to head back to Cartagena, the boat fair going back was half that of coming, anyway there is no dock around so getting in the boat is a tricky ordeal, you just have to jump in while the waves are getting you wet and causing the boat to move around, I got half wet in the process, now when you buy a ride on one of the boats, you think you are getting a transport back to Cartagena, what you are really getting is a thrill ride on a speed boat in a turbulent sea that just happens to take you to where you want to go, I got completely wet during the ride, but I guess it was kind of fun.

Night out in Cartagena

I met a few travelers at the hostel (Casa Vienna), and we decided to check the night life on Wednesday night en the old City of Cartagena, some guy talked us into checking his club, which was completely empty, except for a couple of hookers, we left the place and went to some plaza, were there are a lot of cafes, and one can sit outside and have a drink, the drinks were quite expensive, and after one beer we moved on to another bar, this time at the Plaza de Coches, where the beer was much cheaper, a couple of hookers were sitting at the bar, lets just say that after a few experiences in Colombia, I am beginning to develop the skill to tell who is a hooker and who isn't, after a beer, we headed out and decided just to sit outside in the Plaza, as the weather is quite pleasant during the night here, we bought a bottle of Rom to drink, there were five of us, three guys and two girls, me, Jason from Alaska, an Argentinean girl (Carmen), a black American girl, a guy from Alaska and another Argentinean guy, immediately we were surrounded by some kids asking us for money, another guy approached us, Emileo Rafael was his name, a half Colombian half Chilean, who was just got here, because he was deported from Panama !, anyway he was quite alright, and told us about the Cartagena underground, which clubs are purely hooker clubs and which are mixed, about the kids in the street, and that they are asking for money just to buy drugs, we then asked one of those kids what drugs he takes, his answer was anything that comes by him, marijuana, pills, crack (the crude kind), he was no older than 14, Jason the Alaskan guy went to take a piss, he disappeared for a while, and when he came back he was with a policeman, who then pointed to the Argentinian guy to go with him around the corner, Jason told us that he had just been strip searched by the cop, probably looking for drug, the Argentinean guy was probably going through the same process at that moment, the cop and the Argentinean guy came back, and I was thinking it's my turn next, but I decided to play it a bit hard, I looked at the cop and he made some hesitated gesture with his hand, maybe asking me to come with him, but I just ignored him, and he went away, maybe after searching two he figured out that there is not much chance he is going to find something with us, and decided I was not worth the effort, he was not going to find anything anyway, since we had nothing.

After this we decided to go into one of the clubs at the plaza which seemed rather full and lively, the club was not bad and we stayed there for a couple of hours, the we left, and as we were walking though the plaza, a man was having an argument with one of those kids in the plaza, and he suddenly pulled out a gun, we hurried our steps trying to get away from the scene fast, our hostel was just five minutes walking distance, and I just suggested we walk it back, it would have been wiser just to take a taxi, that kid we meet earlier in the plaza followed us all the way, asking us for money, it was not funny anymore, he would not leave us alone despite our threats, one block from the hostel, two cops on motorbikes blocks our path, and told us something in Spanish, I think they said that they were going to search us, they were probably thinking : "Five gringos walking during the night in Cartagena, they must have some drugs on them", the game goes like this, if they search a gringo and find some drugs, he would have to give them all his cash saying something like "here is all I have on me, please leave me alone", and they will let him go, however, we were fed up by now, and I pointed at the kid and told the cops, "why don't you check that", the Argentinean guys joined my defiant stand, and told them about the kid
and maybe about the previous searches, I don't know what it was, the fact that we spoke Spanish, or that I look like a native, or our sincere tone, but the cops let us go, the kid meanwhile fled the scene as fast as he could, this has to be one of the strangest nights out I ever had.

The night after I went out again this time just with the two girls, we passed by a restaurant that does local specialties, and we decided to try it out, it served mostly fish dishes, but excellently cooked and delicious, so were the juices and the dessert (I had sea bass in sea fruits sauce with coconut flavored rice, Mandarin juice, and coconut pie), then we decided to take another walk in the old city, but not stay around too late, it was a very nice walk under the moon light, we were back to the hostel by midnight, this time without any dodgy experiences, we had enough of those the night before.

Cartagena

The most touristic place I have been to so far in Colombia, Cartagena has a beautiful and well preserved old city, surrounded by thick walls, designed to withstand enemy assaults, specially from the sea, around the old towns many fortresses were build in strategic locations, like narrow passages, there are a few museums around, one of them is the Inquisition museum, costs 8000 to go on, but has very little things to see, disappointing and not worth the money, just talking a walk around the old city is quite nice, and should be done at least twice, once during the day and once during the night, but not too late in the night, as the old city becomes a very dodgy place, I went to visit the most impressive of the forts, which is at walking distance from the hostel, the fort is very big, and has a tunnel system to connect it's different parts, one of the tunnels was flooded with water, I don't know if that was some kind of accident or a desired feature, there is a Botero exhibition in town, I was quite tempted to see more Botero works again, but did not find the time to do it.

Football and Visa

This picture is from the Boca vs Independiente that I wen to see last year, I had my camera with me then, but without the memory card which I left in the last Internet cafe I was in, I just happened to meet a girl there who I knew before in a hostel in Ushuaya (Maiko Padilla), I asked her to take a photo for me, then I memorized her email, since we had nothing to write it down with, I sent her an email, and three month later I got the picture, me at the big match at the Boca stadium, thanks Maiko.

My plan with to leave Medellin on Monday night, but I had this strong feeling I did not want to go yet, so I decided to stay for one more night, what a lucky decision that was, somehow the subject of visas came up during a conversation, I had though that I had an 8 week visa, because that was what I requested in the immigration form when I entered Colombia, but apparently they only gave me 30 days, like everybody else, without telling me that, and I never bothered to check the stamp on the passport, anyway that meant that I spend the day illegally in Colombia. The next morning I head to the DAS office, where they told me it was alright, as long as I file my extension the same day, where I got a form to fill and list of requirements : Passport photos and Photo copies of various documents and passport pages, I filled the form got the Photos and the çPhoto copies, and went back in the afternoon, but I was refused, because I was missing one thing, a ticket out of the country, which I did not have, they told me it could be a plane or a bus ticket, so I went to the bus terminal and purchased the cheapest bus ticket to the border (Ecuador), this time I had everything, but before I got the visa, I had to get finger printed, three times for each of my ten fingers, I was never finger printed before, but I got my 30 day extension. There was a 60,000 fee for the extension (25 Euros), and I paid around 35,000 for taxi fees, going back and forth between DAS, the terminal, the bank and the hostel, the bus ticket cost me 74,000 pesos, but luckily I got it exchanged for a ticket to Cartagena the same night, just had to pay the differences in the fairs, without any extra charge or any fuss (the company was Bolivariano), the bus ride was a bit rough at some parts and I did not sleep that well, but I made to Cartagena.

Medellin

Medellin called the city of the eternal spring, due to it's moderate weather all year long, not much of a tourist attraction though, a very modern city, which I came to visit mainly to check out the night life, I arrived on Friday night, just in time for the weekend, we decided to go out to Mangos that night, a place recommended by everybody and the lonely planet guide as well, turned out to be one of the most disappointing nights out I ever had, the place is just a big show with dancers doing acts all night (impressive performances actually), dwarfs in cowboy clothes which greet you when you come in, and people with amputated hands, dressed in hospital ropes, being dragged around on a stretcher, to promote selling some needles blue alcohol filled with some blue alcohol, I found that last bit kind of sick, we tried to hook up with some group of women, who mostly ignored us, and later turned out to be hookers (or at least some of them were), anyway it might have been different if we went first some other bar or club, and then came to Mangos after 2 , when all the other places close and everybody goes to Mangos or to the other two clubs in the city that stay open after 2. Saturday night we went out with the two sisters who work at the hostel, their friend and pretty much everybody who was staying at the hostel, we went out to this close by town, where there is a big concentration of clubs and bars, can't remember the name of the club we went into, but it was good music, and I danced all night, but the place closed at 2, just when things started to get really going.

The hostel I stayed at is called the black sheep, very luxurious hostel, with a very friendly staff, and great atmosphere, it is really easy to get comfortable and spend a week here.


During the first three days I basically seen nothing of Medellin, except the hostel, a supermarket and couple of clubs, so I decided to visit the center and the main museum in the city, which is mainly dedicated to Botero, the artist who is obsessed with depicting and sculpturing fat people (sometimes animals and trees as well), the plaza outside the museum is decorated by many of his sculptures, I found his works quite fascinating.


Entering the museum one is greeted by a large painting on a wall by Gomez, another famous artist from this region, the painting is called "La problema del petroleum y la energia" (the picture above) , it is ironic that seventy years later we are still talking about the problem of the petrol and energy, it just happened that they had a temporary exhibition of his works. Gomez works generally depict the problems of the Colombian society, specially the suffering of the working class, while Botero liked to paint his characters fat, Gomez often depicted them naked. It was really refreshing for a change, to enter a south American musuem that is not dominated by religious art, the second floor was dedicated to Boteros paintings, and contained a lot of his brilliant works, even included a couple Jesus painting, and one depicting Pablo Escobar being killed, both characters painted exaggeratedly fat, there were many paintings of bull fights as well, again both people and animals were painted fat. There were also a couple of brilliant paintings by Brasseur, a Belgian artist, who was invited to Medellin to join the art school, and was the mentor of Botero and other Colombian artists.


At a near by Plaza a sculpture of a bird symbolising peace was placed, ironically the original monument was blown up by a bomb placed by guerrillas (the picture above on the left), in symbolic decision the original sculpture was left as is, but a new one was created next to it (the right sculpture).

Manizales

Manizales is the capital of the coffee region in Colombia, build over typical green hills of the region, it was cloudy most of the time I was there, with light rain showers now and then, the city has a nice center, with an old cathedral and some monuments, but generally the city is quite modern, and most of the people are white, it reminded me a lot of Argentina. I stayed at the mountain house a new hostel, run by two very friendly and dedicated young Colombian women (Cristina and Angelica), the place very nice and luxurious, the most luxurious hostel I been to in Colombia, and close to many pubs at the avenida Santander.

The first day I went to visit the center, which was nice, even walked up to the top of the Chipre neighborhood to see an artistic monument, took a taxi to go back, but the hostel address on the information paper of the hostel was incorrect, so when we got there of c ourse there was no hostel, and when I asked the driver to just drive me to the avenida Santander, he reset the counter, and demanded I pay two separate fares, son off a B%$#%, anyway I paid but only after a very unfriendly exchange of words. The next day I wanted to visit a coffee finca (farm), I did not have a good sleep at night, and ended up waking up quite late, anyway I took a bus to Chinchani, a near by village, then took a taxi, which even though I gave him the right address, drove me to the wrong place, some shop which was closed, so I went to have some launch, and went back to the shop, this time the shop was open, it was the wrong place of course, but the man was kind enough to point me to the right house down the street, there I met Carlos, the owner of the finca, only to be told that he was too busy today to take me on a tour to the farm, bummer, so I just headed back to Medellin, without seeing a coffee farm, I was just going through one of those periods where everything I do goes wrong, for some reason that is not my fault, I decided not to try again the next morning, and just went on with my original plan to go to Medellin, I hope my experience there will be better.

Salento

Salento is a small relaxed old town in the coffee growing region of Colombia, there is a very nice hostel there "the plantation house", where most backpackers stay, that is where I also stayed, for three nights, the atmosphere was quite friendly and relaxed, people where cooking all kinds of food and delicacies and offering me some, can't complain about that, one of the Colombians working at the hostel, Andreas, is a chess addict, so were some of the backpackers staying there, and they started a kind of chess tournament, it had been a while since I played any chess, in fact the week before was the first time I played chess in maybe a year, but I joined the activity, and got hooked on playing, between eating, drinking and playing chess, my first full day in Salento was spent.

The town of the Salento is old but well preserved, it has a nice central square lined by Colored Colonial houses, men ware cowboy hats, and often stroll around town on beautiful horses, or hang around the pool bar, enjoying there favourite past time activity of French billiard, which some of them are exceptionally skilled at it. Trout fish cooked in different creative ways is the specialty of the restaurant around there, my favourite was Trout cooked in milk and garlic sauce, it comes in a bowl with a big flat Patacón (deep fried Banana like fruit called Platano).

The areas main attraction though are the very long slim palm trees, discovered by some guy during the 19th century, not that discovering these trees requires exceptional effort, they grow to a height of tens of meters, and there are a zillion of them covering the hills. There is not much transportation between Salento and Coroca, were the Ecological path for viewing the Palm trees starts, works on the road meant that there was even less traffic than usual, so I had to walk all the way to Coroca, which took me more than two hours, then I waked the path to see the Palm trees, which took about three hours, but it is quite worth it, the scenery on the way was simply stunning, walking along these unusually elongated trees, although in the beginning there was not much of a view, as I got to the view point at the top of the path, everything was shrouded in mist, only as I went down the path, did things started to clear up, and the palm trees came out of the fog, I had to pass through a finca (coffee farm) on they way, got attacked by two aggressive farm dogs, luckily the owner was close by, he called on them, and they backed away, after completing the circle and returning to the starting point of the path, I still had a two hour walk to do back to town, including a steep climb out of the valley were I was, I had to walk most of it, but luckily I manged to get a ride in one of the trucks working on the road, which saved me the last part of the walk, which was the climb back to the town.

Cali

Cali is a hot place, with friendly people, but with little to do during the day, the main reason to come to Cali is for the weekend night life, there are some beautiful Cathedrals, a nice park, a zoo, and a modern shopping center, all nice but nothing really special. For going out there are a zillion pubs and clubs, and it is hard to choose which one, there is not so many single women in the clubs, and if you meet one you should be cautious, some of them are hookers, and others are just looking for some one with money to buy them drinks. The Caleñas dress sexy, and dance even sexier, hot weather seems to go with hot women. Most clubs play a mix of Latin music : Meringue, Salsa, Reggie tone, etc, some play Electronic music as well, I can dance to all of them except the Salsa, somehow I find it's rhythm unnatural, it can be frustrating sometimes since Cali is considered the Capital of Salsa of south America, and some club play only Salsa. Hookers are common on the corners of the streets of the center, specially at night, though most of them are men with breast implants (Colombia is one of the cheapest places in the world for plastic surgeries in general and breast implants in particular), though it is really hard to tell who is what with a just a fleeting glance.