So after escaping from Cuba with no
money, dehydrated, and without Internet for 8 days, I arrived at the
Caracas airport, and was already having a bit of hassle, due to the
fact that ConViasa wouldn't print off my on going boarding pass to
Bogota, so once I arrived and went to pass through the one security
point to the connecting flights, the security lady was giving me a
bunch of hassle, even though I showed her my ticket on my computer,
she told me I needed a paper copy! I was getting pretty frustrated,
especially since she didn't speak any English, and there was no way I
could even print off my ticket while I was in Cuba, as finding
Internet/a printer was damn near impossible! After getting a bit
irritated, she finally accepted my computer copy, and let me through.
I had to wait in the airport for the next 7.5 hours, so I caught up
on a few Internet things (fortunately no bad news from the family or
anything), and then tried to sleep a bit near my departure gate, but
the airport was probably the coldest airport in the world! It must
have been about 5 degrees in there, just ridiculous, especially when
I started to look around and see people wearing winter jackets and
toques to try and keep warm. I might have gotten about 1 hour or
sleep or so, and was sitting right near the gate that the TV screen
said we were leaving from, but was beginning to become curious, as
the gate seemed to be boarded off. It was getting fairly close to
departure time, and I decided to wander down some nearby stairs, and
found out that we were leaving from a completely different gate than
the one listed on the TV screens...damn airline!! So after getting my
boarding pass and telling the staff that there were quite a few
people upstairs that probably didn't know that they were supposed to
check in at that gate, I hopped aboard the bus and was on my way to
Colombia, for round 2 of battling customs.
I arrived, and fortunately this time,
they didn't scrutinise my id and try to claim it wasn't me, and I
passed right through. I grabbed my luggage, and found a spot in the
airport that was a bit isolated, and proceeded to sleep about 4 hours
on the hard floor, trying to desperately catch up on sleep. I was
headed to Cartagena in a few hours time, and had been looking for a
place to stay there with no luck, but fortunately Miranda had already
arrived and was looking around for places to stay. It took her
several hours of wandering around, but she managed to finally find a
hostel that had a dorm room for 2 people, so she gave me the
directions and I hopped aboard my flight. While on the flight, I had
my first introduction to Colombian friendliness, as the guy beside me
started chatting with me, and when we eventually arrived, he told me
he would be willing to drive me to where I needed to go if I wanted,
so I said sure. We waited around for his friend to pick him up, and I
think his friend was a bit surprised when some stranger hopped in the
backseat, as I introduced myself but he didn't mention his name or
really say anything. We drove for awhile, and they suddenly stopped
near the ocean for no particular reason, and I thought that maybe I
was going to get mugged or something, but they just talked for a
minute or two and then continued on driving...strange. We dropped off
his friend, and then he proceeded to call the hostel to get a
confirmed address, and then dropped me off a few blocks away, as it
was in the old town of Cartagena, which is pretty difficult to
navigate, especially at night and during the holidays. I hopped out
and walked a few blocks before stopping at a hostel for updated
directions and eventually found the place and checked in. It wasn't
the nicest place, but it was a spot to sleep at least, and I met up
with Miranda and a young German guy named Phil who was on her boat
from Panama to Colombia. I heard about her rather eventful boat ride
over (consisting of sleeping for nearly 48 hours straight, being
tossed around the boat by the big waves, and having some rude French
people drink all her rum). On top of that, she couldn't find a place
to stay in Cartagena, and her New Years eve was spent stuck in
traffic in a taxi, trying to find a bank machine that would work,
poor girl!
We ended up heading out for a bite to
eat and some beers in another part of town where quite a few hostels
were, and the streets were fairly filled, and it was extremely
lively, especially considering it was a Wednesday evening, but then
again, it is South American summer holidays, plus right after New
Years, so it made sense. We wandered around, and ran into two hot
Dutch girls that Miranda knew from Costa Rica, and they invited us to
stop by their hostel before heading out to a hostel called Media
Luna, that was hosting a big party that night. I was a bit run down,
and didn't really feel like having a crazy night, but ended up
tagging along to the hostel, before attempting to go to Media Luna,
however the lineup was pretty long, and there was a cover charge, so
we just opted against it and wandered around. Miranda and Phil were
trying to track down their boat captain, and we found more Colombian
hospitality, as anyone we would ask to pay to use their phone, they
would kindly just give us their phone and let us make calls, and then
chat with us afterward quite a bit. We eventually tracked down the
Captain, who was a 50 year old French Canadian guy who appeared to be
about 35, but was a nice enough guy. We stopped by the Mama Llena
hostel for a bit, where we met some interesting people, including
some drunk Eastern European guy who was pretending to be a boat
captain and the real captain in our group started asking him
questions that only a captain would know, which exposed the dude and
made him quite embarrassed and apologetic. After the hostel, we moved
on to some cool Alternative cafe/bar, where we spent the rest of the
night just chilling out before making the walk back to the hostel for
the night.
 |
| Cartagena Old Town |
The 2nd day is where the
real craziness begun. I caught up on sleep a bit, and then we were
sitting in our room chatting when 2 Colombians popped in to introduce
themselves, as Miranda had met them out in the common area, and they
told us they were going to the Summerland Music festival for the full
4 days as well. Philip, the German was only going for one day, and
Miranda and I were supposed to be going with about 6 or 7 other
travellers, but all of them ended up bailing on the festival, so it
was just her and I for the full event. The two Colombians were named
Marco and Daniela, and we all quickly made friends. They then
introduced us to another 7 or 8 of their friends who were also
staying at the hostel, all of whom spoke great English, and were also
going to the festival. They were all from Bogota and we all became
great friends and party mates over the next few days. I was a bit
intrigued when two of the guys from the group, Marcelo and Lorenzo,
would converse with me in French, as they felt more comfortable
speaking that language than English. Over the next several days, I
think I spoke more in French than I did in Spanish, which was kind of
a backwards idea, but nevertheless cool. The group also informed us
that they had rented a big van to take everyone to the festival, as
it was about 40 minutes out of Cartagena, and taxis were really
expensive to get there, plus they had room for the 3 of us, win! So
after hanging out, and getting to know each other, we all got ready
to head to the festival.
When I had initially tried to get the
tickets to the festival, I had tried to go through the local
Colombian site to order them, but when the payment options came up
and the address, it appeared that the tickets would be sent to my
mailing address in Canada, so I bought the tickets through an
American site that was meant to have a will call at the event. I had
confirmed with the company before this just to make sure. All the
other people in our group already had their tickets, so we hopped in
the van and were on our way. We didn't really get a chance to grab a
bite to eat, so fortunately we stopped at a gas station on the way,
where they ended up buying us a bit of food, and they bought a bunch
of Aguardiente (similar to a sambuca or schnappes), which they all
called guarito or hot water. They all kept passing around the bottle
in the van, and were a bit shocked about how much I could actually
drink in one gulp without getting ill. After about an hour of
driving, we finally arrived at the entry point to the grounds, and
were immediately surrounded by people trying to sell water, beer,
food, etc. At the time it was a nuisance, but if we had known what
was ahead of us, it would have been a great idea to stock up. We
passed through the first stage of the event, and arrived in a huge
lineup, and waited, and waited, and waited. The sun was beaming down,
there was little to no shade, and there was no water or drinks or
food anywhere for sale...and it was scorching hot! Of course someone
had to keep our spot in line, and while people from our group
wandered over to find a little shade or a spot to sit, I kept in line
the whole time. After about 4 hours of waiting, they finally started
to let people in, which was around 5 pm, even though they had
mentioned the grounds would be open for 1 pm.
We filed through the first gate, and
then found that we had to go to the ticket pickup window to collect
our tickets, and that's where the second massive wait began. We found
out that it was a pickup booth for people who had purchased their
tickets through Tuboleta.com which was the Colombian ticket agency
that I had initially looked at buying tickets through, however, a
large portion of us that were in line had purchased our tickets
through the American company Wanttickets.com, so the staff at the
booth (who didn't speak any English) told us that we were supposed to
get our tickets from Cartagena, even though the company had told me
that the pickup location would be at the venue! Fortunately we had a
few people in line who spoke fluent English and could translate this,
but it was still a huge pain in the ass, and the staff seemed to have
no idea what exactly was going on with our tickets, and told us to
wait until the manager showed up. He eventually showed up, and then
they told us that the Wanttickets.com guys were in Cartagena but were
driving out to location to deal with us.....at this point people
started to get pretty frustrated, especially when the booth also ran
out of tickets to give to people who had brought their proof of
purchase from tuboleta.com, so that lead to even more delays. We were
wondering why they couldn't just email the list of all of us
purchasers to the guys at the desk, as they had a computer with
Internet, but that also fell on deaf ears. Meanwhile, the whole
Colombian group we had come with had already entered the grounds
except for Marco and Daniela, who were so kind and continued to wait
for us through the whole ordeal.
Miranda was getting pretty upset, as
were a lot of other people in the line, and I think I was pretty much
the only one to not really lose my cool. Meanwhile, Marco had come
around and spoke to security and the manager, and made a deal where
they would actually let Miranda, Philip, and I in for the first night
without our passes, and then we could collect them the next day, so
we were about to do that, but then finally the representatives showed
up and all the tickets arrived. I didn't want to worry about having
to go through the same ordeal the next day, so we just hung around a
bit longer and finally got our tickets, after about a 6 hour ordeal
of waiting! We went on through, and Philip was so drunk that he was
carrying Daniela on his shoulders, running in front of us and fell to
the ground really hard with her on top of him...hilarious! He had
thought he had a good chance with her, but once he dropped her, felt
pretty bad about the whole ordeal and figured his chances were done
ha ha. We entered into the grounds, and found the techno stage to be
fairly empty with only a few people dancing there, and wandered over
to the trance stage which was a bit more lively. I was starving, so I
found one of the workers who said he could go get me some food, so I
gave him 50,000 pesos ($25) for the food, but couldn't understand my
order, so then I had Marco come over and help translate, but then the
Marco talked me out of using the guy, as I could just walk over and
order the food myself without having to pay the extra fee. Then the
guy gave me back only 20,000 pesos instead of my 50, which I argued
and argued over, but he refused to give me back the full amount,
saying that I only gave him 20....it was a big argument but he
wouldn't give the money back, so I just had to say screw it. Marco
felt pretty bad at this point, as we had been so delayed entering the
grounds, and then I was getting ripped off by the workers, so he was
apologizing for Colombia already, but it was all good.
 |
| On our way to Summerland! |
 |
| New Friends and Hot Monster babes |
 |
| Miranda not impressed with our long wait |
We found the rest of the group who were
right up front of the stage, as it seemed that no one really wanted
to get too close to the stage, which I thought a bit strange, as
every concert I've been to, people are always fighting to get as
close as possible. We just hung out and had some beers and danced,
and enjoyed the amazing but incredibly loud music. The bass was so
hard that it was actually hard to swallow and really really tough on
the ears. I ended up waking up the next day with a pretty bad ear
ache from the pounding bass, it was that crazy. At one point a film
crew was nearby our group, filming the event, so we ended up getting
our few minutes of Music Festival fame as shown here.
You'll notice the guy in the orange hat
make an appearance several times he he (that's me!). After partying
and partying some more, and meeting a whole bunch of girls, but not
having any luck with them, I kept trying to flirt with Miranda, but
she wasn't really having any of it, so I just had fun dancing and
enjoying the amazing music. The artists were damn good, and Steve
Angelo really rocked the house this night, as well as a few of the
other DJ's like Alexa, and Paolo Mojo. Miranda and Phil were really
keen on seeing Richie Hawtin and Magda, which were two techno DJ's,
and Hawtin played pretty late, but I did manage to catch some of
Magda. Unfortunately I was pretty tired, and unsure of how we were
getting back to Cartagena, as the group never really told us if the
van was taking us back as well, or just getting us there. I ended up
wandering outside with Marcelo, one of the guys that I mostly spoke
French with, and we made our way to the exit point and waited to see
if any others would show up, and sure enough pretty much everyone
showed up except for Miranda and Phil who decided they wanted to stay
for the rest of the show. So we all piled into the van and made our
way back to the hostel, arriving and having a pretty bad sleep, as I
think there might have been fleas in my bed, or some other mystery
bug that kept biting me all night and making me itchy. I had
initially feared bed bugs, but I looked throughout the bed and could
find nothing.
 |
| And so the party begins! |
 |
| Wooooo! |
The next day we didn't get up until
around 2 pm or so, and Miranda and I just went for a little wander
out to find a bite to eat, as there was a really good pasta place
nearby according to our new Colombian friends, however, we weren't
able to find the place, but did find a small hole in the wall local
place that was nice and cheap and grabbed lunch there, before
wandering a little bit around the old town. I spent a fair bit of
time trying to find ear plugs for the concert, and was having a hard
time finding them. I tried to describe in Spanish what I wanted, and
was told they were called “dampones” or so I thought, so I went
around to a few pharmacies and stops asking for “dampones” and
pointed to my ears. Hilariously enough, when I pronounced it, it
actually sounded like I was saying “tampones”, which left lots of
curious and puzzled looks on shop keepers' faces, as it seemed that I
was asking for tampones for my ears! Ha ha ha, language barriers, fun
times. I later found out that they were actually called “tapones”,
which might come in handy some day. After being unsuccessful at
finding any, I just returned to the hostel, to hang out with the
Colombians and get ready to head out to the day 2, which I was really
looking forward to, as one of my favourite DJs Armin van Buuren was
playing that night, as well as Markus Schulz. We were all getting
ready to head to the place, early, when one of the girls mentioned
that her friend had arrived at the event, and no one was being let
in, and the official websites, etc, without receiving any answers,
very frustrating! We waited for several hours, even being told that
there would be an official announcement on the local news informing
us of the cancellation. The guys had bought some body paints, so
while waiting around and chilling, we decided to start painting each
other and having some laughs. The hostel owner even got in on it, and
wanted us to advertise an after party at the hostel that evening.
We finally did get word that the
concerts were cancelled for that night, much to our disappointment,
but welcome to Colombia! We'd later find out that the event
organizers had planned for it to be a 3 day event, and then realized
they could get a few more Djs in for a 4th day, but hadn't
obtained the necessary permits for the 2nd night, so the
police wouldn't let them go through with the show! Dammit. We later
found out that Armin and Markus Schulz were just hanging around in a
bar somewhere in Cartagena looking for a party, so Miranda wanted to
go find them, and I liked the idea too, but it would be a bit too
difficult to track them down we figured. After wandering off to grab
some pizza and cash, we came back to the hostel, and I found out
through Facebook that the other festival in Cartagena, called
Ultramar, had posted and said they would be allowing people with
Summerland passes to enter for that night to their event instead. A
few of us decided that would be a cool idea, since we had no other
plans, although the Summerland page did finally make a note saying
their passes weren't good for any other events...so confusing! Marco,
David, Daniela, Miranda, and I finally decided to go give it a shot,
as Paul van Dyk was playing that night at the other festival, and
he's pretty good, so we grabbed a cab and made the 20 minute drive
all the way out there, albeit illegally, as we had one too many
people in the car, which gave the driver a lot of stress, as the fine
was about $300 for having too many people. We passed by the police
several times, even stopping at a shop to try and grab some food and
drinks (it was closed) and had passed through a check point, so the
driver made David walk over to the highway away from the police to
pick him up, so he wouldn't have to risk driving through their
checkpoint with all of us and getting stopped! We picked him up, and
continued on the festival, and had to again hurriedly pass through
another checkpoint, without being stopped again! The driver was
sweating profusely over the worries, but we made it to Ultramar. It
was a pretty cool venue, as it was right on the sea, and we made our
way over to the ticket counter to try and claim our tickets. Of
course, we arrived and they told us they would only be accepting one
day passes from Summerland, so we couldn't enter without paying the
full price! Dammit anyways!! So we just wandered back over to the
area where all the vendors were, grabbed a beer, and listened to the
music from a distance, while chatting. We spent probably about an
hour there, not really doing a whole lot, before deciding to just
head back into town, having wasted $20 on cab fares to go there and
back.
 |
| Wandering Cartagena during the day |
 |
| The newest in large woman fashion |
 |
| Festival cancelled? Body painting instead |
 |
| Piratas y Conojos |
 |
| Ready to plunder |
 |
| On our way to Ultramar |
 |
| Unable to enter, so may as well hang out in the parking lot |
We arrived back in town, and were
dropped off at Cafe del Mar in the Old City, where all the others
were hanging out and partying, but they were shutting it down and
trying to get everyone back to the hostel. Quite a few of us went
back, but by this point I was already pretty tired, and instead of
joining the party upstairs, I just snuck off to bed. The next day I
was up and found that our group had made the local newspaper, as they
had snapped a photo of us when we first arrived at the event, second
appearance in a newspaper on this trip! We went and grabbed a bite to
eat, before returning with some more Fire Water, and started the body
painting again. I decided it was time for an Orange day, so I dipped
into the orange paint and made a sweet handlebar stache! After
getting all painted up, we went and wandered the streets of
Cartagena, trying to find a bus to take us to the event, but finding
a huge lineup for the event buses, decided to go find a supermarket,
grab some drinks for the party, and track down some Venezuelan girls
that a few of the guys from our group had met. They were all a pretty
cool group of girls who all spoke perfect English, and they had
arranged for a bus to take a bunch of people to the event, so after
wandering aimlessly, and not knowing what exactly was going on, a bus
finally showed up, and we all piled in. It was a pretty fun bus ride,
as it turned into a party bus, with loud music, stripper pole, etc.
Fun times! We had even convinced some old Swiss guy to come join our
bus, and I think he probably felt a bit out of place, as we were all
young, painted, drunk, and partying hard, while he just sat in his
seat keeping to himself. We finally arrived at the venues an hour and
a half later, as the traffic was terrible, and entered in.
 |
| What one looks like the morning after a night of body painting |
 |
| We made the local newspaper! |
 |
| Day 3 not cancelled...more body paint! |
 |
| Farah ready to rock! |
 |
| Fathers hide your daughters! |
 |
| We found a party bus! |
While waiting in line, apparently there
were some pickpockets, as Miranda had her camera stolen, I had about
$50 stolen, Marco had money stolen, and a few others from our group
had things taken...damn Colombia! We entered into the venue when
Miranda first realized her camera was gone, so I felt sorry for her
and offered to buy her a beer, but when I went to pay I realized that
I had been robbed too, so I had to go back and laugh about it and
tell her I had no money, so she lent me some money to buy us beers,
sweet girl. I ended up just giving her my camera, as she is a more
frequent photo taker. We had another big crazy night, and the event
turned out to be really great, as they had managed to reschedule van
Buuren and Schulz to play that night, after David Guetta. But before
Guetta even started, Jochen Miller and Cedric Gervais got the party
started, and they were incredible as well! At one point I noticed
that everyone around me was wearing these Cedric Gervais glasses, and
I was confused about where exactly they came from, and was later told
that they were throwing them out to the crowd, yet somehow I managed
to miss this fact....I guess I was just too focused on the
music/admiring the beautiful Colombian girls all over, to realize
that I too could have had some sweet shades. I was also pretty glad
that Marcelo had found some ear plugs earlier in the day, as the bass
was super deep and crushing again, and I don't think my ears could
handle it. I was really shocked to see Miranda right near the front
gate, chatting away with people, when I could barely hear myself
think. At one point I noticed that Farah was pushing and shoving some
guy, and it looked like a fight was going to break out. Security
grabbed the guy and pulled him out from our group of people, and I
just thought he was some jerk trying to start a fight with Farah, but
I later found out that the guy had stolen Farah's iPhone and was
running away, and was saved by security before Farah could get his
phone back...son of a bitch! After that scuffle, there wasn't much
else we could do but just continue to enjoy the music. David Guetta
popped on, and started off with a pretty cool remix of Oasis's
Wonderwall, and then continued on to several of his current hits, as
well as some new stuff. It was pretty wicked, but then it was Armin's
turn after Guetta, and wow, did he just rock the house.
I think he felt a bit bad about being
cancelled the previous night, even though it wasn't his fault, and he
really embraced the crowd and was full of energy and passion. At one
point he even brought out a Colombian flag and jumped on top of his
DJ stand and was waving it and jumping and pumping the crowd up,
which really played well to our spirits. The set was just amazing, as
were the lights and people jumping for joy and love of the music.
After the hour and a half or so, he finished up and came along the
front area, high fiving and thanking people, which was a lot
different from how Tiesto exited the next night. After Armin wrapped
up, it was time for Markus Schulz to get on the stage, but it was
also pretty late and our bus was meant to be leaving around 3:15 am,
so we only got to catch a little bit of the show. On top of that, I
was absolutely parched and had no money, plus my bus ticket to return
was also gone, so I was in a bit of a pickle, although when we were
leaving the venue, I stopped by the Red Cross tent and one of the
guys was kind enough to give me some water, so after chatting and
making friends with him for awhile, I caught up with the rest of the
group, where we found our bus and headed back into town. Fortunately
they didn't check for our return tickets, as they recognized us all,
and we were on our way back to town. I ended up falling asleep, only
to be woken up by our bus stopping and several people getting off. I
thought it was our stop so I was about to get off but was told that
they were actually going to have an after party, and I was way too
tired to join that so I just stayed on the bus. We were dropped off
about 10 minutes from our hostel, and ended up stopping for something
to eat on the streets, although I had no money. Hilariously enough,
while standing near the food stand at 6 am, I looked over and
recognized a Colombian girl that I had met in Cuba on Xmas eve, what
a small world! After catching up a bit, it was time to head back to
the hostel for some sleep.
 |
| Not having fun at all I swear! |
 |
| Where did everyone get those cool Cedric Gervais glasses I wondered |
 |
| Some French DJ...apparently he's pretty good |
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| Colombians know how to party |
 |
| Strong language alert, but gets the point across nicely |
 |
| my bro Marco and I |
 |
| Spectacular light show |
 |
| Armin van Buuren about to rock the house |
 |
| Partying with Venezuelans |
 |
| Me and LoLo |
 |
| Armin asking for some love |
 |
| 6 am return to Cartagena, typical Colombian festival style |
The next day we were up a bit late
again, and Miranda was still out, so I went for a wander with Marco
and a few others to grab a bite to eat, without waking Miranda, which
apparently irritated her, as she expected me to wait for her and tell
her where I was going at all times...kind of strange but oh well.
After wandering around for awhile, we went back to the hostel and
hung out. I decided to start trying to show the Colombians some
tongue twisters, and they tried to teach me some in Spanish as well,
which made for some good laughs. Here's some examples of the fun we
had.
 |
| Charming old town |
Eventually it was time to get ready and
head out to the last night of festivities, so we grabbed some
Aguardiente, and got ready to head off to the venue. We hired another
big van bus and made another big party on that, which was pretty
hilarious, as it must have been used during the day to transport
construction workers, so there were loads of construction worker
clothing and equipment on the bus for us to play with and goof around
with, although the organizer kept a pretty close eye on us to make
sure we didn't take anything, although Marcelo did manage to sneak
off with a neon vest. We arrived at the grounds and there was another
massive lineup, as they were again slow to let people in. Marco
decided to try and see if we could beat the lineup by telling them
that we were both from Canada. We arrived at the gate and I just
started speaking in English to the guy working there, which confused
him and he ended up not wanting to deal with the hassle of the
language barrier and ended up just letting us through ahead of the
lineup, win! We got in just in time to catch Moska playing, which was
again some really really heavy bass, and hard hitting electronic
music. We just continued partying on and then Tiesto came on to
finish off the night, with some more hard hitting and wicked beats.
We stayed until close, and grabbed our van back to the city, where
some of group again decided to go to an after party, but I couldn't
be bothered and just went back to the hostel with a few others. All
in all, the music festival was badly organized at times, but the
music was amazing and the DJs played some amazing tracks, that really
elevated the crowd.
 |
| Follow Miranda to the party |
 |
| Party bus day 2 |
 |
| Stop don't touch me there, this is my private square |
 |
| Tiesto is about to begin |
The next day was a pretty chill day, as
I wandered down with Alberto, Phillipe and Marco to the Exito for a
bite to eat (had a tasty tamale with sides and a drink for $3.50, win!), then wandered around a bit more, including stopping at
some chicken restaurant where they give you gloves to eat the greasy
chicken...why haven't we thought of this in North America??? After
Philippe finished his chicken, the buggers all tried to sneak off
without paying for their drinks, and of course being the honest one I
went up to pay for mine and was charged for the rest of the drinks
that the others were trying to sneak out on...sneaky Colombians..they
paid me back though at least! After those shenanigans we were going
to head to the beach but then just went back to the hostel and hung
out with all the group. Eventually a few of us wandered out for
dinner at a place called Waffles and Crepes, which is a really tasty
and cheap spot to grab a bite to eat, and after that everyone was
going to the Cafe del Mar again to have a party, so we stopped by
there for a little bit, but I was pretty tired and wanted an early
night, so just went back and crashed.
 |
| they give you plastic gloves to eat your chicken...ingenious |
The next day Marco, Miranda, and I
decided to wander down to the beach for a few hours, although Miranda
had to go to the police station to file her stolen camera report.
Marco and I just sat at a little restaurant on the beach where I was
able to get a huge feast for about $5, which included a large fish,
soup, vegetables, fries, and salad. After the tasty and filling meal,
Miranda returned, and we decided to head over to the apartment
building of the Venezuelan girls that we had met 2 days earlier, as
the one girl had a nice building right on the main street of the
beach. We stopped by there, enjoyed the cascade pool and jacuzzi for
awhile, before the place closed down (really early for some reason),
and we wandered out to grab a bite to eat and to figure out what to
do for the evening. We ended up finding out that the hostel owner
wanted to throw our group a going away party, complete with barbecue,
other food, music, and some drinks. So we all went up to the rooftop
of the building, where she had started a fire using old planks of
wood to get a nice fire going, and we had a delicious feast, a few
rums, and enjoyed the music. Most of the hostel was of Latin
countries, which made for an interesting experience, as it was the
first hostel I've ever been in where the main language spoken was
Spanish the whole time. It was mostly Argentines and Colombians, so I
didn't understand a lot of what was being said throughout the
evening, but it was still a nice party. Quite a few of the Colombians
and the Venezuelans wanted to continue the party, after the owner
went to bed, so they found some more planks, which actually were bed
frames and were going to be used by the hostel for making a few more
beds, so she wasn't too happy about them burning those all up!
Eventually I just snuck off to bed, while the rest of the group
continued their party down at the beach and then back to the
Venezuelan's apartment, where they apparently managed to party until
around 9 or 10 am the next day, crazy guys!
 |
| Part of the wall protecting the Old City |
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| Wandering the highway to get to New Town |
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| Sunset from the Venezuelan's apartment |
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| Rooftop party/going away party |
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| Here's my number so call me maybe? |
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| Why are you laughing at me? |
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| Farah is Colombian for Party |
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| Team Venezuela plus Holland |
The next day I just wandered down to
the shopping mall to pick up a few things, before wandering around
the old town a bit, exploring the old town a bit, enjoying the lovely
architecture and scenery that Cartagena provides. It truly is an
amazingly gorgeous city, and well worth a visit for anyone wanting to
start Colombia off on the right foot. After wandering back to the
hostel, and trying to sort out plans to leave for Santa Marta the
next day, which I ended up having Marco help me out with, as the
transfer company (MarSol
http://www.transportesmarsol.net/wp/)
didn't really speak any English. I was meant to meet up with my
friend Jo, who was now living in Santa Marta, and he was going to be
heading off to his beach house for a few nights, and told me that if
I could be in Santa Marta by mid day then I could tag along with him,
so I had to arrange for the 8 am shuttle the next morning, although
they would be picking me up at 7 am, as I was one of the further
pickup points. Initially there were some issues reaching the
Cartagena number, and we could only get a hold of the Barranquilla
number, who then told us they couldn't arrange pickups for Cartagena,
so they gave us some alternate number to call. Eventually we got it
all sorted out, and Miranda decided to come as well, although on a
later shuttle (which would actually not show up to pick her up, damn
Colombian organization!). After arranging for the shuttle, we just
wandered around a bit more, including going to one of the fanciest
hotels in Cartagena, where Lorenzo had been staying before the
festival. Lorenzo comes from a fairly wealthy family, but prefers to
stay in hostels with friends who don't have the wealthy attitude that
a lot of his friends growing up at, and prefers to dress down and be
a casual guy. So we went to the hotel, and he was both shirtless and
shoeless, and of course the staff wouldn't let him in, even though he
had been staying there, and they wouldn't even believe that he had in
fact stayed there. So, he had to borrow my shirt and flip flops just
to enter the hotel to talk to the staff at the desk about some things
that he had left behind, and again they wouldn't even believe him
that he had been staying there, so he had to get one of his friends
to speak on the phone and confirm that he had been there and it was
in fact his stuff (he couldn't provide any ID because the hostel
owner had actually lost his wallet somewhere in the hostel, which
made for more headaches, including trying to catch his flight back to
Bogota due to the lack of ID!). Eventually he got his stuff and we
just grabbed a quiet dinner at the pizza place and then went back to
the hostel for a chill night, as some of the people, including Marco
were leaving that night on a flight, so I said my goodbyes and agreed
to meet up with all of the fun group in Bogota when I made my way
there.
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| Festival is finished, time to sight see a bit |
 |
| Boulevard connecting Old Town with New Town |
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| A few days of festival and this is what your feet look like |
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| Waiting outside one of the nicest hotels in Cartagena |
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| LoLo had to borrow most of my clothing to enter the hotel |
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| A Sask Roughrider fan has been created |
The next morning I was up for my
shuttle, but then had to wait about 10 minutes before one of the
hostel staff would unlock the front door and let me out, which
worried me that I might end up missing my shuttle, but fortunately it
showed up about 5 minutes later. I hopped in, and made the 5 hour
trip to Santa Marta, sleeping a fair bit of the way. When I was near
to Santa Marta I borrowed a phone from a fellow passenger to try and
let Jo know that I was nearby, but the number he had given me didn't
seem to be working...The guy was nice enough to at least let the
driver know where to drop me off and tell me when to get off, as I
was told by Jo to check out Aluna Hostel in case I couldn't get a
hold of him. I popped off there, and asked if I could use a phone
there, but was told to go find one of the juice vendors down the
street to make my call. This is one of the more truly unique things
of Colombia, is the fact that vendors actually sell phone calls. I
can't say or recall any country that I've visited where people
actually sell phone calls from cell phones. There's several different
phone service providers in the country, and the rates are much
cheaper when you phone people from the same provider, so the vendors
will actually have 3 or 4 different cell phones with all the
different provider plans and make the phone call for you to the same
provider. It's a pretty neat thing to have access to, as there's no
running around looking for payphones, and the rates are pretty cheap,
as they'll charge about 5 to 10 cents a minute for the phone calls.
After finding the juice lady, I managed to get a hold of Jo who had
actually just left town, but was willing to turn around and come back
and grab me at the hostel.
I went back to the hostel, and stopped
by their cafe to grab a coffee, and was surprised when the owners
said they couldn't give me one, as they were on their way out to
lunch. It was a very weird business they were running, as they didn't
really seem to care too much about serving people in the actual
restaurant/cafe part, as 2 other times during my stay I wasn't able
to order a coffee even though it was on their menu...strange. So I
sat around, had a beer while waiting for Jo who showed up shortly
after and I hopped in his SUV and was off to his beach house on a
private beach about an hour away from Santa Marta. I had met Jo
several years earlier in a hostel in Sweden, and again in his
hometown of Melbourne a year later, and had kept in contact on
occasion, and found out he was living in Colombia now, and he told me
to come out to Santa Marta and check out the area. It wasn't really
on my radar, as I hadn't heard about the area, but I was glad to find
out that he was there and gave me the heads up. We made the hour
drive to his place, passing by some curious things such as a tank
parked on the side of the highway with several soldiers patrolling
the ditches, as well as a few little confiscation stands where the
soldiers would confiscate illegal gasoline. Colombia is known for the
cocaine trafficking of course, but hilarious enough, due to the
proximity of Venezuela, gasoline trafficking has become very popular
and lucrative. Because of the Nationalization of everything in
Venezuela, due to Chavez's political policies, gasoline is now sold
for about 2 cents per litre, so people will retrofit their vehicles
with storage compartments inside the chassis, and then smuggle large
amounts of gasoline into Colombia and sell it for a tidy profit. The
price at the pump in Colombia is about $1.20/L so there's some large
profit margins to be made! The area that we were driving through also
used to be very dangerous due to the drug trafficking, but Colombia
is now very very safe and secure due to the Military and Government
crackdowns on the drug cartels. We passed through some scenic areas
before arriving at the small dirt road leading to Jo's house, and
quickly stopped at a Surf Camp to check if there was any room there,
as Jo didn't actually have a spare bed at his place, just a hammock
to sleep in, but there happened to be a wedding that was being held
at the surf camp, so it was full, but no worries! We arrived shortly
after at the beach house, and wow, what an awesome spot.
There were 2 houses next to each other,
both built at the same time, one by Jo, and the other by his
Norwegian friend Stig, whom he had met several years earlier while
backpacking around South America. The third house was a small place
owned by the care taker, who had several children who were kind of
like savages, as they would wander around naked most of the day, and
would go to the bathroom wherever they pleased, which lead to some
interesting events, including one of them taking a dump on Jo's front
porch once, and another one taking a dump on the front seat of Stig's
vehicle when he left it unlocked...crazy children! After helping
unload the vehicle, stock the fridge, and meeting the three British
people that were renting the downstairs portion of Jo's house, we
settled in and relaxed. It's a very quiet and isolated piece of land,
with an entire beach to yourself and some beautiful views as seen
here.
 |
| A little bit of heaven and remoteness |
 |
| View from my "room" |
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| My "room" |
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| Private beach |
It's also available for rent and makes
for a super nice spot to spend some time alone, to soak in
tranquillity and mother nature. Here's a link to his rental page.
After
settling in, and doing some reading, I decided to wander down to the
beach to check that area out and chat with the two British girls a
bit. They were pretty friendly, and a fair bit flirty, so we hung out
on the beach getting to know each other a bit, and sharing travel
stories, even though they were only on a 2 week vacation, and hadn't
seen a whole lot. Eventually it was getting a bit dark, so we
wandered back to the house, and just hung out there for a few hours,
enjoying the quietness of the area, until it was time to have a
barbecue. Stig worked as a chef for several years in restaurants in
Oslo, so he was always up for preparing a feast for friends, and we
had some amazing ribs, tenderloin steak, potatoes, salads, etc. After
enjoying the amazing feast, watching Stig walk over the hot coals,
and having our get together interrupted by a massive crab (Jo told us
that during mating season there will be several hundred of them
walking through the yard, making for easy hunting for a crab cookup),
most of the group retired to bed, however, Jo, myself, and the two
British girls stuck around for a bit. The girls wandered over to the
surf camp, while Jo and I had one last beer before getting ready to
call it a night, when the girls showed back up. We had one more drink
with them before Jo decided to go to sleep, and I was about to as
well, but then saw that they were going to wander down to the beach
for a bit, so I tagged along, and ended up watching the shooting
stars and spending the rest of the night with the one English girl (needless to say I had a lot of sand everywhere that took a few days to get out ha ha).
We eventually went back to the house and ended up sharing a hammock,
not getting to sleep until around 6 am. I woke up the next day around
1:30 pm, having slept wonderfully in the hammock, as it was the first
time I've spent an entire night sleeping in one.
 |
| A feast fit for Kings |
 |
| Stig showing off his fire walking skills |
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| Giant Crab that crashed our dinner party |
There
wasn't a whole lot going on that day, as it was just another lovely
day on the quiet beach, so I basically just hung around in a hammock
reading, went and watched Stig install a new solar panel on his
rooftop, and played poker with the others, plus had a few beers. A
super chill and easy going day on the beach, doesn't get much better
than that! Stig managed to prepare an amazing lunch for us, which was
some fresh Red Snapper, along with a few more delicious sides, and
dinner was again some great pork ribs, along with some more steak and
vegetables...life is good! After having had a fairly late night the
previous night, we weren't up for another one, so we ended up calling
it a somewhat early night. I was content to sleep in my hammock
again, but one of the Brits had left that morning, so there was a
spare bed in their room and they offered it to me, so I decided to
take them up on that offer.
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| Lovely Beach House |
The next day we were up before lunch, cleaned everything up, and headed back into town. Jo ended up taking us to a tasty and cheap restaurant near the main market where we ordered these massive bowls of mixed seafood soup, that was very rich in flavour and fat! The server there was a hilarious guy, and when I had tried to order a normal sized fruit juice and soup, he called me a wimp, causing me to order the larger portions, which were way way way too much! After the tasty food and drink Jo dropped me off at the hostel, where I ended up finding the satellite to be carrying the NFL playoff games, so after a quick walk around town, including checking out the beach, a Police Officer graduation ceremony (where they had such a random mix of flags from all over the world, that I couldn't figure out what exactly the theme was...seriously, there would be a flag of Mexico next to a flag of Nigeria next to a flag of Belgium....in such random orders), and some more of the historic centre of Santa Marta. The one British girl mentioned that we should do the Colombian pose, as she had noticed how the women in the country always had a particular pose, and sure enough, now that I've paid more attention to women taking photographs, it's more evident. Below is a fine example of myself and Alex, doing the Colombian pose.
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| Seafood Cauldron...way too much food! |
 |
| Main Square of Santa Marta |
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| Santa Marta beach...meh |
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| Alex and me rocking the Colombian pose |
After
the nice little wander around town, it was back to my hostel, where I
settled into the small “TV room”, I say this because it was a TV
hung on a wall, with a few cement benches that had small pillows on
them that made it somewhat comfortable to sit, and spent the rest of
the evening watching the football games. I had planned to try and
meet up with Jo for a beer or some pizza later on, but by the time
the games were finished, he had already gone home for the night, so I
just crawled into bed and called it a night. I was woken the next
morning by the staff saying they were full and that I would have to
leave, which was a bit of a surprise to me, as the place didn't seem
that full, so I asked if they knew any other hostels in the area
where I could go, and the one guy said he would check, then came back
5 minutes later and said they did in fact have room that night, and
that I wouldn't have to check out. The place was so unorganized, with
the restaurant/cafe that never seemed to be serving anything and to
the room system where they never really knew who was staying or
going. I decided to give the cafe a try for the food, and was rather
disappointed in the taste, so I made note to not eat there again, but
at least they finally had coffee available, which ended up being
good. After lunch and coffee, I wandered around for a little bit,
before getting back to the hostel to try and watch the football
games, when I noticed that the channels that they had been shown on
at the hostel were suddenly unavailable...something very strange. So
I chatted with Jo and he mentioned that another hostel named La Brisa
Loca would probably be showing the games, so I wandered over there.
It took me awhile to actually find the door to the place, as it isn't
exactly well advertised, plus there's a restaurant right next door
that almost appears to be something that would be attached to a
hostel, but they were in fact separate establishments. After finding
the door and buzzing in, I enquired about the game and was told they
were watching it in the TV room.
The
hostel itself is really really nice, as it's in an old Colonial
Mansion, comprising of 3 floors, with a nice bar, a huge TV room
(with a beautiful TV and loads of movies and satellite), a pool, and
a wicked rooftop patio. I'd definitely recommend staying at the place
if you're ever in Santa Marta, here's a link the their webpage:
http://www.labrisaloca.com/ It's also a really good party hostel, especially with the bar in the
place. I settled into the comfy TV room to watch the first game, and
could recognize a few American accents on the guys watching the game.
I ended up chatting with them a little bit, and found out that the
one guy was the actual owner of the place, while one of his friends
was a chef who owned a few restaurants in town, including a place
called Ouzo which has Santa Marta's best pizza...so damn good!
http://colombia-information.com/santa-marta/restaurants/ouzo
We watched the first game together, but
then the guys took off to watch the second game at the owner's house.
At this point, one guy who was staying at the hostel came into the TV
room and I thought he was going to watch the second game, but then
started putting on a movie, so I asked what was going on with the
second game, and he said he doesn't watch football, it was only on
because the owner was in there. So after not being aggressive enough
with the TV, I had to go up to the hostel bar to see if I could watch
the game there, and I arrived there and it wasn't on yet, so I
enquired about watching it, the bartender said I'd have to fight some
other guys for the remote, which they said they had no problems with
what was on. Almost immediately, another guy grabbed the remote and
said that some local Colombia league game was on and that he wanted
to watch...dammit, who wants to watch that crap! If it was Premier
League or something, but it was two super shitty teams playing, and
the guy wasn't even Colombian. So I again dropped the ball on
grabbing the remote, and was out of luck for trying to catch the
second game there.
I wandered out to try and find another
restaurant that might be carrying the game, but when in Colombia it's
pretty hard to find a place carrying American sports, especially when
there's local soccer league games being played, so I gave up after
about 20 minutes of walking around and ducking my head into various
restaurants with TVs, just gave up and wandered back to the hostel for
the night.
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| They are everywhere...watching you |
 |
| Liquid Speed.....weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!! |
I had been planning on heading to the
Tayrona National park the next day, but then decided to stick around
for one more day, do some shopping, and have a low key day, catching
up on some blogging, Walking Dead, photo uploads, etc. After grabbing
some supplies from the Exito for my hiking the next day, I just had a
pretty quiet and uneventful evening, before heading to bed. The next
day I kind of lingered around for awhile, had some lunch, and figured
out how to get to the park from the hostel staff. After packing a
small bag and leaving my large bag in storage at the hostel, I
decided to walk down to the main departure point for the buses, which
was about 12 blocks away. Of course, I ended up getting lost for
awhile, as is usual for myself. And after wandering through a giant
market, ignoring the sales people's calls, and passing by a very
random McDonald's ice cream machine on the sidewalk (might have been
purchased from McDees that was renovating, and turned into someones
personal ice cream business), I found the buses and hopped aboard for
the hour long trip to Tayrona. After arriving at the small entrance
area called El Zaina, I hopped off with 2 other backpackers. We
chatted very briefly, as they were Argentines, and didn't really
speak any English, and my Spanish was pretty limited. After paying
the park entrance fee of $17, I hopped in a little collectivo van
that drives you a few kms to the starting point of the hiking trails.
Of course if one wants to save the $1 ride, they could walk all the
way along the main road, but it was already nearly 4 pm, and I knew I
had at least an hour and a bit of hiking, not to mention a stop for
dinner somewhere, so I didn't want to waste any more time. We
arrived, and I quickly set about finding the walking trail to
Arrecifes, where I was told the food was a bit better, and then would
continue on to a lovely little spot called Cabo San Juan del Guia. If
any traveller purchases the Lonely Planet for Colombia, they'll see
the cover page has a lovely beach, with a cabana on a rock, and you
can actually sleep in hammocks in that cabana, which is located at
Cabo San Juan.
I hit the trail, and was making fairly
good speed, while eating my bag of apples, avoiding all the horse
shit (there's a lot of people who choose to ride horses instead of
walking the trails, so there are some pretty messy spots where the
horses frequently make their bathroom breaks. At one point I noticed
a horse that was carrying a load of material, but didn't have a rider
nor a guide anywhere nearby, it was just wandering along the path,
sort of stalking me! At one point I passed a few more guides with 3
other horses and they started pointing at the loose horse and having
a discussion about something, but never did end up grabbing it and
just let it do it's own business. The horses are mostly used to
transport supplies to the various stores and camps in the park, so
there are a lot of them wandering around, although this was the only
one by itself. The walk itself wasn't too bad, as the canopy from the
trees kept the area cool enough from the hot sun, and the paths were
in pretty good shape for walking, especially since I only had
trainers, no hiking boots. One thing you'll notice while walking the
path is that EVERYONE says “hola”, so after passing about 100 or
so people in the hour of walking, you kind of get tired of saying
“hola”, but at least everyone was friendly. I made the hike to
Arrecifes in about 40 minutes, not really stopping to take any
photos, as there wasn't a whole lot of interesting species of plants
nor animals that grabbed my attention. I stopped by a restaurant
there for a little break and for dinner, which was really expensive.
I went for a middle of the price list dish, which was a rice plate
with lots of seafood, and sounded good. Well, it also looked great,
but the flavour just wasn't anywhere near what I was hoping for, and
I didn't end up finishing the whole thing, but oh well. After my
dinner alone, I set about getting back on the trail, as it was
already starting to get close to sunset time, and even though I had a
flashlight, I didn't really want to be trekking in the dark by
myself, so I set off again.
I did stop to admire Arrecifes beach
for a little while, as well as another gorgeous spot called La
Piscina, but after my quick breaks there, I really needed to get
going, as most of the trail lead me through the trees, where the
light was quite minimal. I arrived at the main camping site when it
was already full dark, and didn't really know where to go, so I just
wandered through to where I saw lots of people mulling about, and
enquired if it was the area to rent hammocks, but was told that it
was actually at the entrance of the place, so I had to go all the way
back and wait in the huge line of Israelis and Argentines. Initially
the staff at the check in told us that there were no hammocks, only
tents for rent, and that deflated my idea of sleeping in the cool hut
that I had envisioned. While the Israelis were all arguing over tent
prices, etc. The staff enquired if I was with their group or alone,
and once they found out I was alone they said they could find me a
hammock, as long as I kept quiet about it. So after getting that all
sorted I was taken over to the hammock area, where there were clearly
several free hammocks still, but I think the staff just wanted to
make more money by selling the tents, so that's what they did. Most
of the people at the campsite were groups of South Americans, and I
was kind of in an anti social mood, so I just ended up reading a book
for a few hours, before heading back to my hammock to have an early
sleep. I couldn't help but wake up a few times and hear some nearby
donkeys making some very loud and foul sounding noises, which made me
think about a story Jo had told us, about how it's common for men in
the area to have their first sexual experiences with donkeys! I
didn't really want to believe it, but sure enough, here's a
documentary on it if you can deal with the outrageousness of it all.
donkeys + Colombians...ewww
So needless to say, I'm hoping that
what the noises were coming from the donkey area wasn't human
related! I eventually nodded off, and it was a pretty comfortable
although a bit chilly of a sleep, but sleeping in the hammocks is
still quite nice. I thought that going to bed early would mean I
would be able to wake up early, maybe even catch the sunrise, but
apparently I was fatigued or something, as I didn't wake up until
11:30 am!! I gathered my things, grabbed some coffee, had a few more
of my bag of apples, and then wandered around the area, checking out
the amazing beach during the day. It was definitely a place I'd
recommend visiting, although I'd probably go with a friend or a
significant other, as going alone was a bit more difficult to meet
people, as everyone seemed to sort of be in their own cliques there,
especially the large groups of friends who were camping there. After
wandering around a bit more, I decided to head back into Santa Marta,
so I made the trek back along the trails, at one point taking a
different way then I took while coming in, which caused me to doubt
my navigation skills for awhile, but I did fortunately make it back
without becoming lost. After another collectivo to the park entrance,
I waited on the highway for the bus back to Santa Marta, although I
did consider trying to hitch hike back to town, but the bus showed up
about 10 minutes after waiting, so it wasn't so bad.
 |
| Two loners on the trail...at least I knew where I was going |
 |
| Still following me |
 |
| Seafood and rice platter |
 |
| Arrecifes Beach |
 |
| Arrecifes again...getting late |
 |
| La Piscina |
 |
| Cabo San Juan del Guia beach |
 |
| Hammock accommodation in Cabo San Juan del Guia |
 |
| my friend Daniel Mora at the beach |
 |
| Ridiculously large fire hydrant I stumbled upon |
I arrived back in Santa Marta, and checked back into the Alure Hostel, and got a hold of Jo to meet up later that evening for a beer at his friend Mikko's new bar. I wasn't too sure if his bar would have food as well, so I held off on dinner and went down around 7 pm to meet up with Jo, who was running late, so I spent some time chatting with Mikko, who was a tattoo covered Finnish guy, who had basically put his remaining savings into opening this new bar, but was also doing all the work himself to build the place and get it up and running. It wasn't the nicest bar by any means, but he seemed to have a good clientele base, although most of them were other ex pats or friends. If you're ever in Santa Marta, check out Seko Bar on Calle 19 between Carrera 4 y 5, and say hi to Mikko for me! We ended up having a few beers, and the rest of Jo's friends from the beach house showed up, so we all just hung out chatting and having a relaxing time, before everyone started heading home early. I still hadn't eaten, so Jo recommended a spot called Radio Burger, which is kind of a 1950s era burger diner, and has some pretty damn tasty burgers as well, definitely another place to check out. After my dinner I just went back to the hostel for the night, and found out that my friend Jamie, whom I had met in Thailand and travelled with for a bit in SE Asia, was going to be showing up the next day with her brother. So I was looking forward to another travelling reunion. I ended up hanging out in the hostel, chatting with some Canadian girl who's father was so worried about her being in Colombia that he had actually given her a GPS tracking device that she had to carry with her at all times ha ha ha! She needed to upload some files to a program called Dropbox and since I wasn't doing anything, I offered to help her out, so I just spent a few hours uploading photos while she went to bed since they were heading off to do a trek to the Lost City the next morning.
After waking up and grabbing some lunch
near the supermarket I wandered over to the super mall to try and
find a clothing shop called Tennis, where they sold some shorts that
Marco had been wearing in Cartagena, and that I really liked the
design on. I found the shop, and was looking in the one section but
couldn't find the shorts until I wandered over to another section of
the store and found them. I looked at them and thought they seemed to
be quite small, but then asked to try them on anyway, thinking they
were maybe sort of little European style booty shorts, and the girl
at the counter was quite shocked and started telling me “no, por
ninos!” (no, for boys) ha ha, and she took them away and pointed
towards the men's section which didn't have any of that style...so I
wandered around the mall a bit more, checked out the theatre to see
if they had anything good, but found nothing and wandered back to my
hostel. The previous day my friend Jamie, whom I had met in Thailand
in January of 2012 and travelled with through South East Asia for
awhile, had mentioned that her and her brother were going to be
arriving in Santa Marta the next day, so I just hung out at the
hostel until they showed up. It was nice to see a familiar face
again, and I went with them to find a hostel, as both places I had
recommended were full (apparently Santa Marta was really busy at this
time of the year, due to summer break for a lot of South Americans.
They found a nice little place just a few blocks down the road, and I
sat in their lobby while they checked in, and was a bit jealous of
John, as it seemed like there was only gorgeous women staying at the
hostel, an absolute gold mine! Once they were checked in, we ended up
going for a little wander, where I showed them around the city a bit,
grabbing some ice cream along the beach, and seeing a few shops.
After a little mini tour, I headed back to the hostel to grab a
shower, before coming back to hang out and have some rum. I arrived
back and we sat upstairs on the rooftop patio at their hostel, where
they had a bar that didn't seem to be open at all, so we figured it
wouldn't be a big deal to have our own rum up there. Well of course
an hour or so later, one of the staff members came over and said the
owner saw us on camera drinking the rum and that we would have to pay
a fine for drinking it....kind of a stupid rule considering the
hostel's bar wasn't even open, but oh well, so we paid the $5 fine
and continued hanging out until it was finished.
I was actually meant to join a poker
game that Jo's friends were having at a tattoo shop next to Mikko's
bar, and was supposed to show up around 9:30 pm, but by the time we
had stopped by Ouzo to order some pizza (which we didn't end up doing
as we couldn't make up our mind) so we just had a few expensive
beers, and made our way to Mikko's bar and found that the poker was
already wrapped up. We ended up just hanging out at the bar until the
police came and closed the place down, due to him being open later
than he was apparently allowed to. They also wanted to fine him
1,000,000 pesos (over $500 USD) for the violation, which he had no
idea he was in the wrong about since he had just opened the place and
wasn't told of any rules regarding opening times. In the end, as is
common in Colombia, the police gladly accepted a 100,000 peso bribe
and let him off with a warning. The remainder of us tried to go find
another spot that was open later, but had no luck, so we ended up
sitting on the beach, having a beer from one of the street vendors
and chatting for 20 minutes or so, before we all made our way back to
our hostels for the night.
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| Colombian icon |
The next day after waking up and
finding out Jamie and John were out for lunch, I wandered down to a
nice little cafe in one of the side alleys, where we enjoyed some
tasty paninis and fruit juice, while trying to sort out plans for the
next few days. We decided we would head to Taganga the next day, as
there wasn't a whole lot going on in Santa Marta. After lunch we just
ended up hanging out in the small and very very cold swimming pool of
Hostel Jackie. After lounging around there, we ended up hanging out
on the nice rooftop, enjoying the comfy hammocks, where I ended up
chatting with an incredibly friendly and lovely American girl named
Mandolin, who probably has the most striking blue eyes I've ever
seen. It was a real nice time getting to know her, and her friend
Hollis. We also ended up hanging out with a rather interesting
Englishman named Pervis, who had some rather hilarious stories,
including a time when he shaved his chest hair into a heart, and died
it bright red for his g/f at the time for her birthday. Upon
unveiling it, she wasn't the least bit impressed and didn't find it
romantic at all, and broke up with him shortly afterwards! We decided
to head out for dinner together, and ended up going to Ouzo to
finally try the pizza there. We stopped there, had a few beers, some
calamari, and I tried the margharita pizza, which was phenomenal! A
good margharita pizza is hard to come by, but when you get one, it's
well worth it.
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| One of the more creative tables I've seen |
.JPG) |
| It's a tough life sometimes |
After our dinner, we were all kind of
tired from the night before, and John and Jamie were just going to go
back to their hostel to watch a movie, and I just felt like retiring
back to my own hostel for the night, and having an easy night. I was
up the next day and checked my messages, seeing that Jamie had
already stopped by the hostel to grab me to go to Taganga with them,
but there wasn't anyone working at the front desk, and she didn't
know what room I was in so they went off without me, but had found a
hostel for us to stay in, so once I had a quick lunch, I wandered
over to the nearby main street where I could catch a local collectivo
van to go to Taganga. Of course, a tourist with a bag waiting on the
main street, draws a lot of taxis who kept stopping and asking where
I was going, but I kept getting rid of them until one of the vans
pulled up. I went to get inside, but the door frame was a bit small,
so my big bag got caught on the top of it, and before I could get
fully into the vehicle the driver started driving, nearly throwing me
from the vehicle. Then, when I got my bag inside I turned to go sit
down in the back, and the driver floored the vehicle, throwing me
forward and causing me to nearly fall on a woman. Then, I dropped my
bag and went up to the front to ask him how much and pay him, and
after I had paid him and turned around to return to my seat, he again
stepped on the gas hard, causing me to fall again! Ha ha ha the fun
they have with tourists I guess! So after the eventful collectivo
ride, I had no idea where to get off in Taganga, so I just hopped off
at what appeared to be a somewhat major intersection. When I had
looked up the name of the hostel, the hostel site had listed an
address but the written directions described it as being at a
different location, which confused me a bit. I wrote the address
down, and when I arrived, I wandered around aimlessly trying to find
the place, stopping to ask several locals where the damn hostel was,
and most of them had no idea where it was and couldn't help me.
After wandering around in the
sweltering heat, with my heavy bag, and lost in the relatively tiny
town, I finally ran into some guy who knew where I was going and was
able to direct me to a girl who was actually out handing
advertisements for the hostel, so she walked me there and I checked
in with one of the most beautiful girls I've seen, a girl from Bogota
who was absolutely stunning, and who would always stare me down over
the next several days that I was staying there. I soon found Jamie
and John, who were just hanging out, doing nothing by the pool, so I
dropped my bags off, grabbed some water and a beer, and just enjoyed
the view of some cute girls at the pool. After relaxing for awhile in
the hammocks, we made our way to find a bite to eat. We were walking
along the main street and had a laugh over one of the restaurants
that had a barbecue on the street and was emitting crazy amounts of
smoke that was flowing towards the main street. I joked around that
they were attracting customers by blinding them with their smoke and
causing them to wander over to the restaurant blind. As luck would
have it, we did in fact end up going towards the BBQ and decided to
eat at a little Palestinian restaurant. It was a bit odd to see that
restaurant there, as Taganga is a fairly common spot for Israeli
backpackers to end up staying, and obviously there's a lot of tension
between Israelis and Palestinians. In fact, the restaurant even had a
sign saying “Zionists not welcome” along with a large Palestinian
flag. The food was pretty good there though, as we had some tasty
hummus and falafels there, but the restaurant was pretty quiet, as
they probably scared off one of the larger sources of business in the
Israelis.
After dinner and a beer, we found a
nearby shop that had some tables and chairs outside so we bought a
few beers and just sat there, people watching. We ended up spending
about an hour and a half there, before deciding to make our way to a
nearby nightclub that was supposed to be good. Unfortunately when we
arrived, we realized that it was pretty much dead, and decided to try
and find another spot that was supposed to be good. While wandering
around trying to find it, we met a group of cool Peruvians who were
also going there, and about to celebrate the birthday of one of them.
We walked to the hotel and found that it wasn't really a crazy party,
just a few tables of people sitting around talking, no music or
anything. We decided to wander back towards the main part of town and
see if we could check out another place, but as luck would have it,
the original place we were going to go to was suddenly very very busy
with good music playing, so we decided to go check it out, but first
had to finish off some Aguardiente that the Peruvians had, sing happy
birthday, and hear some funny Spanish songs that the Peruvians would
sing to each of us before we would take a shot. I only managed to
film one of their songs, but here it is.
Funny Peruvians
After we finished off the bottle we
arrived inside, and in typical overly generous and drunk fashion, I
decided to buy everyone a shot to celebrate the birthday, which drew
a bit of a crowd, as buying 8 shots at once doesn't seem to be so
common in backpacker towns. Some Argentine girls came over to start
talking to me since I was wearing an Argentine jersey, and once they
realized I wasn't actually Argentinian, they seemed to take an
instant liking to the foreigner. There was a few really nice looking
girls in the group, and one of the girls kept forcing me to go dance
with one of the girls, and we initially hit it off well, dancing and
making out, but then she just kind of wandered off to find her
friends again, and I never really saw her again, so I just joined
back up with Jamie and John and the Peruvians, as well as the two
cute American girls, Mandolin and Hollis. I had to laugh at Jamie and
John, as she found that everyone assumed they were a couple, so it
made it hard for either of them to meet people of the other sex, and
this night was once again the same case, although the Peruvian girl
seemed to take an interest in John, and he did at least get a make out
out of the deal. We partied until close, and then wandered down the
street, where people were gathered in groups and showing magic
tricks, dance moves, etc. Apparently I walked into the giant circle
and tried to do some stupid dance move and actually kicked my shoe
off, hitting some girl in the circle, oops! We eventually wandered
back to the hostel for a bit of an after party, shutting it down
around 6 or 7 am.
The next day was a lazy day, just spent
lounging in and around the pool. There happened to be a Canadian
family, and interestingly enough, one of the girls was actually
working in Regina, and happened to know several people that I knew
from my University days...small world! After chatting with them for
awhile, Jamie, John, myself, and a cool German guy named Maik,
decided to head down to the beach for some dinner, as there was a
cheap arepa place that Maik had found the previous day. Unfortunately
it wasn't open that day, so I decided to just stop at some rotisserie
chicken place, where i was able to get a half chicken, vegetables,
salad, and drink for about $7, win! I sat down there, and shortly
after the found that there was another cheap arepa place open down
the way, so they wandered over there, while I just ate by myself
(well there was a dog and cat that decided to join me) for dinner.
The cat was pretty impressive with it's leaping and catching skill of
the chicken, much more so than the dog, so it ended up receiving more
of my generosity. At this point I began to think how ridiculous it is
that there's people starving in the streets, and here I am giving
some extra food to a cat and dog....I think I need to be more
conscious of giving left over food to the people who actually need
it, if I'm not going to finish it. After everyone had eaten, we
enjoyed a sunset, then wandered back to the hostel to have a shower,
and grab some beers and Aguardiente
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| Taganga sunset |
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| The lovely Ms Jamie Anderson |
We ended up having a Swedish girl and
an English girl join us, and we all decided to head out that night to
another place called El Mirador, which was a nightclub up in the
hills of Taganga, and provided a nice view of the entire bay of
Taganga. It would be a really great spot to go for a sunset.
Unfortunately the place was really packed and hard to move around,
plus the beers were a bit expensive so we didn't spend much time
there. I happened to spot the Argentine girls from the night before,
but by this point I was already flirting with the Swedish girl a fair
bit and locked in. Because it was so full and hard to move around, we
decided to wander back to the other nightclub, where there was a bit
more breathing room. We ended up partying there until nearly close
again, before wandering down to an area near the beach where people
were having a bit of an after party, and I just ended up hanging out
with the Swedish girl for quite awhile before heading back to the
hostel with her and spending the night together, although we didn't
get to sleep until around 7 am or so, and fortunately John and Jamie
didn't mind me bringing back company to our shared room.
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| Out with the ladies of the hostel |
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| My new Swedish friend found herself a new friend |
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| We were locked out, need to improvise to get back in |
The next day we were up surprisingly early, with only about 4.5 hours of sleep. I ended up being a complete bum the whole day, just sitting on the couch, watching the NFL playoff games, and rehydrating, plus hanging out with the Swedish girl. I don't think I even left the hostel that day, just lounging around. Eventually it was later in the evening, and the Swedish girl and I just went to watch a movie in the room, while Jamie and John also watched their own movie. They were going to the park the next day via boat, and the Swedish girl wanted to do the same, but was told by the hostel staff that there were multiple boats leaving that day, whereas Jamie and John had found out that there was only one boat leaving per day for Tayrona. Since the Swedish girl missed her boat, and I was going into town to hang out with my mate Jo one last time before leaving, plus going to try and sort out a cell phone, as I needed one for when I arrived in Bogota, I offered to go in with her and show her where to catch the bus to Tayrona. We hopped aboard one of the collectivo vans and were on our way into town, getting off pretty much right at the bus departure point. After a nice little goodbye, she was on her way to the park and I was on my way to the mobile shops. I stopped by one that Jo had recommended, and found that they couldn't unlock my phone, but some guy outside that was fixing phones on the street said he might be able to help me out. So he finished his work and walked me down to a nearby local market, where he took me to a guy who unlocks phones, but unfortunately he wasn't able to unlock my phone, as the ones from Mexico are apparently damn near impossible to unlock! So I was stuck having to buy a new phone, and went back to the shop with this local guy, who spoke no English, and our conversations were a bit rough at times. He said he could get me a cheap phone for 56,000 pesos, so we went into the shop and the lady wrote down 48,000 pesos on the receipt, and that's when I should have started to question things. Then he asked for money and I gave him 80,000 as I wasn't quite sure what the Sim card and credit would cost, so he got me a Sim card, and then went outside to some other guy in the street who apparently loaded credit onto the phone, which only ended up being 5000 pesos...so at this point, I was asking how much it all cost, and he was speaking way too fast for me and not clearly...I was doing the math and figured I had given him way too much, so I asked for change back, and he only ended up giving me back 12,000 in total...so somehow I paid 68,000 for a phone with a Sim card and little credit.
I got a hold of Jo, and we agreed to
meet up at La Brisa Loca for some rooftop beers in an hour and a
half, so I just wandered around for awhile, grabbed some delicious
watermelon juice from a street vendor, then a coffee from Juan
Valdez, where I ran into Mikko, who was hanging around waiting to
meet his accountant who would apparently help alter his books to help
him obtain a business visa....in Colombia, if you pay people money,
you can get pretty much anything done, including obtaining visas. Jo
has a shell company that “imports” solar panels, but his company
does no such thing, yet he has a business visa for it so he can stay
as long as he wants in Colombia...so once Mikko's accountant arrived
and he was occupied, I wandered off to meet Jo. We went up to the
rooftop and enjoyed the amazing view of Santa Marta and the
surrounding mountains, and had a few beers, shared some travel
stories, and ended up hanging out with two Dutch girls that I had met
briefly in Cartagena, one of whom was smoking hot and they told me
they were going to Bogota in the next day or two to celebrate one of
their birthdays so I exchanged some details with them and agreed to
meet up in Bogota. After our beers, we decided to head for a bite to
eat, so we went to Ouzo, where I had another amazing Margherita
pizza, and a few Cuba Libres, before Jo was tired and decided to head
back home. I waited around for a collectivo to take me back to
Taganga but they were taking forever, and there happened to be two
Argentines who were also looking to go back, so we just shared a cab
back together as the price was nearly the same. I arrived back and
called it an early night.
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| Santa Marta from the rooftop of La Brisa Loca |
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| Old Amigos meet on the 3rd continent |
The next day I was planning on taking
the 3:30 pm bus to Bogota, which would get me into town around 9:30
am the next day, which would give me time to get to the Brazilian
embassy and drop off paperwork to get a visa to go, as I wanted to
attend the Carnival in Rio de Janeiro, and unfortunately Canadians,
Americans, and Aussies need to actually apply for a visa from the
embassy or consulate, instead of receiving them on arrival like every
other country can...damn inter government relations!! So caught up on
a bit of sleep, and checked to see there was availability for the bus
online (I could have bought the ticket online, but why do that when
you can just do it at the terminal right?!) and enjoyed breakfast and
rehydrated a bit more after the crazy few days of partying. While I
was lounging around and preparing to head into town the Swedish girl
showed back up, and said she was heading into town to catch a bus to
Cartagena, so I figured I'd wait around and hang out with her for
awhile, until it was about an hour before my bus was scheduled to
leave. I figured it would take about 15 minutes to get to the bus
station, so we made our way towards the collectivos, but then found a
taxi that would take us directly to the bus station for nearly the
same price as the two collectivos would cost, so we hopped in with
him, barely fitting all our bags into his little taxi. We were making
our way to the bus station which ended up being further than I
thought, and then all of a sudden he told us that we were low on gas
and he needed to stop at the station to fill up...so he pulled into
the station and told us we had to get out of the car while
there...which was a bit confusing...I then realized that he was
actually filling up his vehicle with natural gas, and for whatever
reason, passengers aren't allowed to be in the vehicle. It was a bit
of a strange experience, as he had pulled up to one pump, they had
pumped in some gas, then he got back in and drove over to a different
pump to get more fuel...it was almost as if there were two different
types of natural gas or something....when he was finally finished
with all this, I had about 25 minutes until my bus was leaving, and
the station was still a bit further to go, so by the time we arrived
there it was 15 minutes until the bus was leaving. I arrived at the
counter and was immediately pushed aside by several very pushy
Colombian ladies...I made my way to the front of the queue with about
8 minutes before the bus was leaving and was told that there were no
more spots left, dammit! So I had to wait another 3.5 hours until the
next bus left.
The Swedish girl had a bus to catch
right away, so we had another goodbye and I just spent the next few
hours sitting around the station watching some Boardwalk Empire,
while occasionally checking out some of the sights of the bus
station, including what appeared to be about 10 pounds of dry soil
spread all over the station from someone who was apparently
transporting it, a stray dog wandering through the hall and pissing
on every bench seat post, and some annoying hippies with some loud
drums who wouldn't stop drumming with terrible rhythm for a good
hour. Finally it was time to board the bus, which was absolutely
frigid! Again, I have no idea why the hell they make the bus so damn
freezing, as you pretty much have to wear a winter jacket on them. I
managed to fall asleep in decent time even though it was frigid, and
slept until we made a pit stop for some food a few hours later. Before
I had left the bus station, I had checked my credit on my new phone
and found that all of the credit that had been on it the previous day
had suddenly disappeared...damn street guy in Santa Marta was a
sheister! This wasn't so good, as I was supposed to arrive in Bogota
by 9 am and go to my friend Marco's place, as well as let him know
when I arrived, but having no credit I had no way to let him know
that I was going to be late. Well the bus ride was supposed to take
about 18 hours, but it ended up taking 22.5 hours instead...welcome
to Colombia!
I arrived around 4:30 pm, having missed
3 of Marco's calls while sleeping on the bus, and wandered around the
large Bogota bus station, trying to find a cash point so that I could
get some money to eat and to try and get some phone credit. After
wandering around the station and trying several banks before finally
finding one that worked for me, I was able to grab some cash and a
coffee and snack before trying to find a taxi. I wandered outside and
asked one of the drivers but he told me I had to go to the official
taxi booth at the other end of the station to organize the taxi and
that he would drive me there, but I didn't really know what was going
on and thought he would end up charging me to drive there just so
that I could be charged again, so I just walked back to the other end
of the station and lined up at the taxi stand. While spending time in
Latin America, I find that workers at all shops have a terribly
difficult time understanding my name and spelling it, whether it's a
Starbucks worker in Mexico, to a restaurant worker in Cartagena, and
the taxi stand woman was no different. I told her my name, repeated
it 2 times, and she finally wrote up my ticket with the name
“Extrangero” which means Foreigner in English! I hopped in my cab
and gave him the address that I had written down, to go to Marco's
house. Unfortunately, I have a problem of writing down address
correctly apparently, and I had written down the correct street
number but the address I had written was 11A-23 instead of
11A-33...well this lead to a confused taxi driver, with a confused
passenger, who couldn't call his friend as he had no credit...I ended
up just having the driver drop me off close to the area where 11A-23
would be..and just as he dropped me off, it so happened that Marco
called me and I was actually in front of his building (11A-33), so he
came out and grabbed me and I was welcomed into his home.
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| "name of user: foreigner" |
After getting settled in and meeting
his Grandparents, his Grandmother being a professional translator and
speaking perfect English, making my home stay easy. After finding my
room and settling in, having a shower, and shaving some dirty
handlebar moustache in (and plugging up the sink with all the beard
hair oops), Marco said he would take me off to the Zona Rosa to meet
up and grab a bite to eat at a restaurant that offered really cheap
food. We went there to meet up with Marcelo, but had to wait awhile
for him, so we went and found Farah and Santiago, and a few other
people that had been at Summerland, who were eating at an all you can
eat Sushi place, so we went and hung out with them for a bit, until
Marcelo and Jorge (another Summerland attendee) showed up to meet us.
We tried to find a spot in a really cheap sandwich place, but were
unable to find a table, so we decided to head to a nearby casino that
had cheap food. After dinner and a coffee there, we wandered over to
another casino that Marco and a few friends used to frequent quite
often, and we played a bit of blackjack there, had a beer, and lost
about $15 so that was the end of that idea. We ended up just heading
back to Marco's place relatively early, as I was fairly tired and
called it a night.
The next day I decided to head to
Marco's University with him and wander around the area a little bit.
The Candeleria is part of the historic centre of Bogota, and is also
quite close to the Los Andes University. I wandered around the area
for awhile, enjoying sights such as the Presidential Palace where
there were numerous check points for pedestrians, and of course
heavily armed military men. One thing one definitely notices while
spending time in Bogota is how many Soldiers are stationed around the
city, at various residential areas, protecting the various
politicians that live around the city (in a Country formerly known
for its violence due to the drug trafficking trade, it makes sense
that all politicians and their families would have protection at
their homes 24 hours). After wandering around and enjoying some of
the architecture, I was caught up in a rain storm that came out of
nowhere, and trapped me under a small metallic structure with another
girl who had been caught unexpectedly in the rain. After waiting out
the storm for awhile, I made my way back to Marco's University, where
I waited around for him to finish class before we made our way to
grab some cheap empanadas at a restaurant near his school. After
enjoying a few of the tasty snacks we made our way back to his house,
where his maid had prepared dinner for us. It is taking awhile to get
used to having a maid, as it's something I've never had in my life,
and it's a bit odd having someone to cook and clean everything and
not having to do anything myself. Typically when I stay at someone's
house as a guest, I at least try and do some cooking and cleaning to
help out to show my gratitude, but here at their house, it's not
possible!
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| Bogota concrete jungle |
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| La Candeleria area of Bogota |
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| Independence Square filled with flying rats ewww |
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| Independence Square |
After dinner, we wandered over to the
nearby mall, where Marco had to do some shopping for his g/f. While
in the mall I came across one of the more blatant rip offs of a fast
food chain, as they had a place called Whopper King that is in no way
affiliated with Burger King! The things that you see in foreign
countries. After wandering around and not being able to find anything
he liked for his g/f, we met up with his mother for a little bit, who
is a very nice woman but doesn't really speak much English as she
once made a mistake while speaking with some Israelis that offended
them a bit, and she's been leery about speaking ever since ha ha! We
just went back to his place, and the Dutch girls that I had met in
Santa Marta tried to get us to come out and party that night, but we
decided to just have a quiet night in and watch a movie.
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| In no way affiliated with Burger King |
The next day I had planned to go to the
Brazilian embassy and enquire about the requirements to obtain a visa,
as Canadians, Americans, and Aussies need to obtain visas before
going to Brazil, whereas pretty much all other nationalities can
obtain them on arrival! I started to do some online research and
realized that they required proof of entry and exit of the country,
which made the application process a bit difficult, as I don't
generally make many plans, especially plans to leave countries. I
woke up early enough to go to the embassy, however, I was so
exhausted as I didn't sleep very well the previous night, so after
having breakfast with Marco, I decided to just go back to sleep for a
bit and head to the embassy around lunch. Unfortunately I didn't set
an alarm, and ended up sleeping well into the afternoon, oops! After
waking up later in the day, I decided to head to the mall for a bit
to buy a hilarious pair of shorts that Marco had bought when he was
in Cartagena, that I really liked. After picking up the shorts, and
some money, I was heading to a Juan Valdez for a coffee when I was
stopped by some saleswoman who put some hand cream on me and then
pulled me into their little shop area where they then put some other
products on one of my fingernails, making it very very shiny and
smooth...kind of gay, but the smoothness of the nail actually nearly
convinced me into buying the product! Ha ha. After grabbing my
coffee, I wandered back to Marco's house and waited for him to finish
his classes.
The Dutch girls were having their big
birthday bash that night at a 30th floor Club where some French DJ
was playing that night, so we decided we would go check that out for
a little bit and see how the party was. Fortunately, Marco's mother
used to be well connected with the Bogota nightlife, and she knew the
owner of the club, so he was able to get us on the guest list, win!
The girls weren't going there until fairly late, so Marco and I just
grabbed some rum from the nearby bottle shop, and had a few at the
house, before hopping in his car and heading off to pick up Marcelo
who was going to come with us as well. We found him in the Zona Rosa,
and he tried to convince us to go to a nightclub where a bunch of the
other Summerland people were partying, but we convinced him to come
with us as I promised him the Dutch girls were hot and worth going to
party with. When we were about to pick him up, some crazy other
friend of Marco jumped onto the hood of our car, and then quickly ran
off. His name was Pezzotti (well last name), and I soon found out he
was the crazy one of the group, as he spent that night in jail after
getting in a fight with a Mexican (fighting is a norm for him during
drunken nights out apparently). After grabbing Marcelo, we arrived at
the underground parking lot of the hotel building where the nightclub
was located, and hung out finishing off the rum before wandering
inside. Marco called the insurance provider for the vehicle to let
them know that he would be needing them to send a driver to pick up
the car later on (seriously how great is that....the companies that
provide you with vehicle insurance also provide you with drivers if
you choose to take your vehicle out and won't be in a good form to
drive!), and we arrived at the entrance where they initially said
that we weren't in fact on the list. This is because the owner
thought that Marco had the same last name as his mother, so he was
marked down as Marco Sanchez, which also made for an interesting
event because the club normally asks for people to be 21 or older to
enter, so Marco has a fake Venezuelan id that has a totally different
name on it...but it all worked out and we were able to make our way
into the club.
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| On our way to the party! |
We got inside and couldn't find the
Dutch girls so we just wandered around for awhile, listening to some
music and picked up a bottle of Aguardiente to pass the time.
Eventually the girls showed up, and we went over to a smaller part of
the club where they had a friend who was playing a small DJ set so we
hung out there with them for a good portion of the night. Because
they are so freaking tall, everyone in the nightclub was kind of
drawn to them, and the women were all jealous because all the men
were so intrigued by them. Fortunately for me, I was in the good
books, and had a lovely time dancing and flirting with Jasmijn, as
she was the one single one of the two. Marcelo was also quite smitten
with her, and I had to laugh when the guys were trying to get rid of
their one guy friend that they came with, trying to claim the girls
for ourselves...silly jealous Colombians! After a few hours of
partying, dancing, meeting some cute Colombian girls (which lead to
awkward boob touch photos on my behalf ha ha), and admiring the
beautiful Dutch girls, it was time to go home as it was already 6 am.
We had already missed our insurance guy who was supposed to drive the
car, but Marco was fine so we hopped in and drove it back to Marco's
mom's house before taking a taxi from there back to Marco's place, as
Marcelo was fighting a bit with his father and wanted to stay at
Marco's place for the night. We arrived back around 7 am..and that
was my first night of Bogota partying in the books.
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| Birthday party |
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| Groucho Marx spotted in Colombia |
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| Attempting to introduce the Mailman to Colombia |
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| Hot Dutch babe |
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| We like to partyyy :) |
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| Awkward boob touch #1 |
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| Awkward boob touch #2 |
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| Why ride in the taxi when you can ride on it? |
The next day after sleeping in until
fairly late we tried to arrange for a night heading to Bogota's best
nightspot, a place called Andres Carne de Res in a nearby small town
called Chia. However, the Dutch girls didn't want to go, and several
other friends of Marco's had committed initially but then the plans
fell through, so Marco and I ended up going to a little Mexican party
at one of his friend's houses nearby. It was an absolutely gorgeous
house, and you could tell the girl came from a very wealthy family.
They had apparently moved there after their previous place, which was
even larger and more expensive was broken into and 100's of thousands
of dollars of jewellery and other items were stolen, so they
downsized a bit and came to a bit more lower key and safer area of
town. We arrived and found that it was all girl's there, including
Marco's g/f, and the food was already cold and old, but that didn't
stop us from enjoying ourselves. There was one really really gorgeous
girl there, but she wasn't overly talkative with me, so I just kind
of sat around listening to the girls speaking in Spanish the whole
time, trying to figure out what they were saying. At times I could
understand it was a lot of useless girl talk, especially talking
about shampoo, makeup, etc etc. The only really juice part was when
they started talking about sex, but again I only understood a few
words, although there was some sort of mention of a jacuzzi party
later without clothing, which peaked my interest. Unfortunately that
never materialized, and after a few hours of just hanging out, not
being terribly engaged in conversations, we decided to head back to
Marco's place and figure out plans for the night. Marco's g/f was a
little upset at him for not really staying with her and spending time
at the party with her, so he had to go back there, and I decided to
head out with Marcello to a nightclub.
 |
| I just really enjoy the contrast between the building and the sky |
Marco drove me over to the Parque 93
area, which is another area kind of like the Zona Rosa, with a few
nightclubs, bars, nice restaurants, etc. I ended up meeting
Alejandro, as well, who I had earlier met in Cartagena, and they were
also with 3 other girls, one of whom had lived in Washington DC for
10 years, as her father had been the ambassador there, so she spoke
great English. We went to a place called BarDot (kind of a dumb name
I think!), and paid the sort of expensive $20,000 pesos cover ($10)
and entered inside. It was a pretty nice place, but really really
small and packed, and had a lot of wealthy Bogotans. The music was
really good, as they had some great electronica music, but it was
just too crowded and I really haven't figured out how to even talk to
Colombian girls...I just keep meeting the Colombian guys who are
really friendly and introduce me to girls, but then the conversations
just stall. This was also one of the first times in a long time that
I've been in a bar without even buying a single beer, but I was
pretty dehydrated from the night before, so I just decided to drink
only water (which was $2 a bottle! Expensive club!). After dancing a
little bit with one of the girls that came with us but not really
seeing much interest on her behalf, we ended up going outside to all
cool down and chat a bit in the streets. Eventually the place was
closing down (most clubs in Bogota close around 3 am or so, so it's a
pretty quiet city as far as late parties go considering the sheer
size). Marcelo and I just grabbed a cab with Alejandro, and went back
to Marco's place, but the door was locked and we didn't have a key.
We kept buzzing the door hoping he would come answer, and kept
calling his phone but it was turned off. The previous day Marco had
showed me how to break into his house with a card, but I hadn't
really learned how to properly do it yet, so we went to ask the
security desk if they had an extra key and around that time Marco
happened to show up in his vehicle and let us into the house where we
crashed for the night.
The next day was a pretty quiet one, as
we had initially planned to go to a nearby town where there's a salt
cathedral, but we slept in too late, and Marco had too much homework
to do, so it was a pretty chill day at the house, before going for a
wander to the mall to do some shopping for Marco's g/f. It was about
this day that I really started to notice the big fashion trend of
Bogota, which is blue pants..seriously, over the next few days I
would count the pairs of blue pants I would see, and after about 3
days and a count over well over 60 I gave up...they are so prevalent
here! Marco kept bugging me about buying a pair myself, as there are
also men's blue pants at some of the stores, but I wasn't going to
fall for it. After wandering a bit longer, with a very painful
process of trying to provide input on what to buy his g/f
(considering I had met her very briefly once and didn't know anything
about her) he finally picked something out, and we just went back to
his house and had dinner and watched a movie, before I spent the next
few hours sorting out all my paperwork for a Brazilian visa. It was
kind of a frustrating event, as they required proof of entrance and
exit, which poses a problem with me on this trip, as I don't really
make many plans, especially exit plans. I had tried unsuccessfully to
book outgoing bus tickets through both Brazilian and Argentine
companies, but both online companies wouldn't accept my cards or
required me to put in local identification document numbers, so I was
s.o.l. I ended up just booking the cheapest flight to Sao Paolo that
I could find, 2 days before Carnival started and booked my outgoing
flight to Uruguay a month and a bit later. After getting all that
paperwork together, I had a tough time falling asleep due to my bad
sleeping habits, and probably didn't fall asleep until about 5 am or
so.
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| Shopping for clothing for g/fs is so painful |
I had to get up early enough to get my
paperwork in before noon, so with the 5 hours or sleep or so, I was
up, and grabbed a cab down to the embassy, which ended up being right
by the Parque 93 where I had been out partying on Saturday night. I
arrived in the embassy and there was probably about 3 people in there
submitting paperwork, including one American dude who spoke better
Spanish than me and I could overhear that he was having problems
getting his visa in a suitable time. After the lady took my paperwork
and gave me a bank draft to go pay my visa fee, I started chatting
with the American guy a bit, and he said they told him the visa
wouldn't be ready until at least Feb 14th, which was several days
after the Carnival was going to end. His flight was for Feb 4th,
while mine was Feb 6th, and he told me I should check with the lady
at the desk, as she made no mention of the visa not being ready in
time for my flight, so I went back to her and she told me they were
very busy and occupied, so it would take a long time to process..I
looked around with a shocked look, considering there were barely any
people whatsoever in the embassy! I decided to take my chances and go
make the payment, while the American guy said he was going to send
his paperwork to the US by courier, as there was a tourism agency
that would process it in 3 days for him so he could go...strange that
you have to go through 3rd parties to have a rush visa done, as the
embassy made no such offers! I did tell him about the carnival in
Barranquilla, that is the 2nd largest in South America, and that that
could always be a fall back option for him, and for myself for that
matter, and we parted way. I paid my fees, dropped off the note and
was on my way. I tried to meet up with Marcelo for lunch, but he was
out of town, so I just picked some nice little Italian eatery to have
a coffee, some delicious gnocchi, and to watch people for awhile.
After my tasty but somewhat pricy lunch, I wandered through Parque
93, which is a nice little spot during the day, with lots of people
mulling about, walking their dogs, eating, having coffees, etc. I was
surprised to hear several people walk past me speaking French,
seriously what is up with Bogota and all the French speakers here!
After my little break in the park, I grabbed a beer at a Buffalo
Wings restaurant (while looking around for advertisements to see if
the posters that my German friends appeared in El Salvador in were to
be found, but they weren't), and just watched some soccer for awhile.
It was a nice enough day so rather than take a taxi back to Marco's
place I ended up taking the hour or so to just walk the streets of
Bogota and make it all the way back to his house, where I just ended
up relaxing for the rest of the day, and watching movies during the
evening with Marco.
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| Parque 93 in the day...nice spot for a coffe or to read |
The next day ended up being sort of the
beginning of my Bogota laziness, as the weather was rainy and bad,
and I just ended up sleeping in, researching some travel ideas and
stocks, and just generally being a bum. It was a pretty lazy day with
nothing at all of any major excitement happening. Wednesday during
the day was a bit more of the same, as we had again thought about
going to see that Salt Cathedral, but Marco didn't have a car that
day, and ended up sleeping in since he didn't have class. We
eventually made our way down to the Zona Rosa to meet up with his g/f
and a few of her friends, before heading to the cheap sandwich
restaurant (100 Montecitos) that we had tried to go to the previous Wednesday. After
settling in there, ordering a wine spritzer and several of the little
tasty sandwiches, as well as the house special French Fries, we
enjoyed our little feast, and I just spent most of the time listening
to the girls talk some more, understanding maybe about half of what
they say or so. After our relatively filling early dinner, we just
wandered around the Zona Rosa for awhile, where Marco showed me the
Andres Carne de Res Bogota restaurant, which is a massive 5 story
restaurant/bar located in the mall, and is full of charm and tacky
flavour on each floor, although he kept telling me that Chia was much
better, so I couldn't wait to see what Chia had to offer. After
wandering around the restaurant for a little bit, and taking a coffee
from the other major Colombian coffee chain Oma (not as good as Juan
Valdez even though the girls in the group claimed it was), Marco,
Sylvana, and I just went for a long walk through the Zona Rosa,
stopping at Marco's mom's place to see if we could get his car, but
she wasn't home, so we just grabbed a taxi and went back to his place
for the night.
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| Shopping area in La Zona Rosa, including Andres Carne de Res Bogota |
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| Even the men wear blue pants, what is with this fashion trend? |
The next day Alejandro had asked me to
come down to Los Andes and meet him for lunch, and then he would show
me around the area to some cool places, so I made that plan to meet
him around 1 pm when he was finished his class, but I kind of slept
in a bit, and by the time I made my way down to the bus stop and
caught a bus, I was over 35 minutes late (Bogota traffic is really
really heavy, so the commute takes at least an hour). I also didn't
know it at the time, but the first time I had gone with Marco he had
put us on a blue bus that was a bit newer and apparently safer, which
stopped near his university. If I had known that all the blue buses
went to the same drop off point, I would have just hopped on one of
the many ones that passed by me while I was waiting, but because I
didn't know for sure what bus to get on other than the new blue one,
I missed several buses that were going to the same spot. I finally
got on the bus, and made my way to the university, and while I was
looking for Alejandro, I happened to come across Marcelo and Jorge,
who were just hanging out at the university, as well. They had both
been students there the previous semester, but had dropped out to
pursue other things, but since they had nothing to do during the
days, they just hung out at the school anyway. I tried to track
Alejandro down with them, but we couldn't do that, although we did
run into a few girls from Summerland, and ended up heading to a
nearby cheap sushi restaurant for lunch, when Alejandro happened to
walk by, so Marcelo grabbed him, but he had already eaten his lunch.
It was a decent little spot, very small, but it was about 12 pieces
of sushi for $5, which isn't too bad, and it wasn't the worst tasting
sushi either. After lunch, Jorge, Marcelo, and I just went back to
hang out on the grassy area in front of the school, before they were
able to get me an access card to enter the school. This is another
fairly unique thing I've come across, as you need to have access
cards to enter any of the doors of the university, pretty strict
security! After getting into the school, we went up to the area near
the music and architecture faculties, where Marcelo and Jorge had
studied, respectively, and grabbed a rather delicious coffee and hung
out on the nice little outdoor patio, overlooking Bogota and the
University grounds. After having our coffee and chatting for awhile,
the boys had to go home, while I had to go meet up with Marco and
catch a ride back to his place with two girl friends of his. On the
ride home, I realized how crazy Colombian drivers are, as she was
driving 80 to 90 km/hr in most of the 30 km/hr zones and making some
crazy passes along the way! We were finally dropped off, and had
discussed going out partying that night, but then only one of the
girls was really up for it, and we said we'd talk to them later on,
but never did. Marco had also mentioned we could head out of the town
to watch some drag races, where a lot of people go on Thursdays, and
where his uncle races, but that idea also kind of fell through, so we
just ended up hanging out not doing much, until we were both hungry
near midnight and tried to make a stop at Burger King, but they were
closed. Marco then told me about a unique Colombian drive thru place,
so we went there and I was in for a laugh.
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| Exploring Los Andes with Marcelo and Jorge |
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| Nice views of the city from the campus |
We pulled up on this road, near a large
block of apartments, and several tiny little restaurants below them,
and Marco told me to just watch and laugh. I looked over at these
small restaurants, and noticed several men with menus come running
out of their restaurants, full speed towards our vehicle, with the
first one arriving being the one to hand us his menu and get our
business...it was a full on sprint and was pretty funny to watch. The
restaurants used to have large parking spaces in front, where young
people would come at the end of the night to eat (as these places
were open 24 hours), and they would usually be drunk and listen to
loud music, which caused the residents of the apartments to complain
to the city. The city's solution was to actually put full side walks
blocking the entire parking lot in front of these restaurants, so
that no cars could enter their lots and eat there! So the only
solution for these guys is to now run with their menu out into the
street, take your order, and then deliver it to your vehicle for you
to eat...going back to the old school ways! After our tasty burgers
and arepas, we drove back to Marco's for the night, but I really did
enjoy this strange new restaurant service!
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| The race is on to get to our vehicle first |
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| The winner in our quest for food purchasing...delivery to the vehicle witha a smile |
The next day I tagged along with Marco
to his university, and wandered around there for a little while,
checking out some of the campus before heading over to the hostel
where Jamie and John were staying, as they had just arrived from
Salento via bus the previous day. I couldn't find them anywhere in
the hostel, so I ended up sitting down in the courtyard and chatting
with a few random people. It was a bit funny as one of the guys
happened to be the brother of a girl that I had met in Singapore the
previous year. It wasn't a complete shock to me that I met him, as my
friend Kaisa had mentioned that he was in Bogota at that time and
travelling around, so we chatted for awhile, before Jamie finally
appeared. They had a big party night the previous night at a nearby
hostel, so she had just woken up around 3 in the afternoon. We caught
up for a little while, and I told them that we were planning on going
to Chia that night, and that she should come. After hanging out for a
little while with them, Marco was finishing up class and was ready to
head back to his house, so I wandered off to find him, and we caught
a ride back with some friends of his. Unfortunately Jamie and John
cancelled on coming to Chia with us, as they had a house party to go
to, so we no longer needed to rent a van, as we thought we might have
a good sized group on hand, and decided to take Marco's Grandmother's
SUV to the party. We picked up his g/f, and his friend Luisa, Lorenzo
(our designated driver as he had gone through rehab a few years
earlier and was the sober one of the group), and Marcelo. We grabbed
some rum from a nearby Oxxo for the ride out to Chia, which took
about 40 minutes or so. Upon arrival, you can kind of start to
appreciate a) the sheer size of the place and b) the unique decor and
atmosphere.
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| Andres Carne de Res Chia |
The place was started as a small shop
on the side of the highway where Andres would sell his meat, and
eventually the popularity of his place grew, as did the size until it
became a full blown nightclub/restaurant, and even expanded locations
to the actual city of Bogota as well. The initial thought I had of
the outside of the place was that it sort of reminded me of a Country
Bar with the wooden posts along the outside and the somewhat tacky
lights along the fence. After parking we finished off our rum, and
wandered inside, where we found it to not be as full as usual
(according to Marco) as the entire back area wasn't open, but it was
still fairly packed. Unfortunately, the drink prices were pretty
crazy, as a cocktail, even though it was rather massive, cost about $25! And about $6 per beer..yikes! Needless to say, I don't think I
even bought a single drink. We just hung out on the dance floor for
most of the time, before I was pushed into a group of about 6
40-something year old women, and forced to dance with them...once
they realized I was a foreigner, the only English speaking one of the
group informed me that they were all sisters, and it was the one
sister's 43rd birthday and they were trying to get me to dance with
her, but I really wasn't attracted to her and wasn't going to do it,
so I just ran away from their group since it was nearly closing time
anyway. One of the best parts about Andres Carne de Res is when they
close they have a huge area across the street, where there's parking
and a huge restaurant area where you can get tasty after bar food! We
grabbed some of the soup there, before getting ready to head back
into town. There was one German/Colombian guy who kind of showed up
out of nowhere, and was trying to pick up one of the girls we had
gone with, and wanted to catch a ride back to Bogota with us. I
thought this to be a bit odd, as there wasn't really much room, other
than for someone to sit in the back of the truck, which surprisingly
Marco decided to do. I told him that the new unknown guy should be
the one riding back there, but Marco was more than happy to sit in
the back for the ride home. We dropped Marco's g/f and his other girl
friend off (the German guy didn't get anywhere with her), and then we
drove back to Marco's house, where Lorenzo, Marcelo, and the random
guy caught a cab and went their separate ways, while Marco and I just
crashed for the night.
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| Collared shirt Saturday/party night with Marco |
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| I want a little soup from Andres :) |
The next day we finally made a real
attempt at going to see the Salt Cathedral that Marco had spoken
about so many times to me, and that we kept delaying on going to
visit. We got ready to head out, and at the last minute his Grandpa
decided he wanted to come along with as well, to get out of the house
for the afternoon. So after waiting awhile longer for him to get
ready to go, it was already nearly 2 pm when we were ready to leave,
and we had to go to change cars with Marco's Mom, as gasoline in the
other vehicle was a bit too pricy. By the time we arrived at the new
sub development that Marco's Mom was working on, it was already nearly
3 pm, and Marco said we really didn't have time to make it all the
way to the cathedral at that point. After having a quick look at the
way overpriced lots (the picture below shows what size of a lot you
get for $150,000 US!), we hopped back in the car and decided to go
find something else to do.
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| New residential lots in a forest |
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| No way I'd pay $150,000 for this lot! |
It was a nice enough day, so we decided
to head over to Montserrat instead, which is a church and garden
located on top of one of the mountains overlooking down town Bogota.
After the 40 minute drive there, through the heavy Bogota traffic, we
arrived, and instead of coming up with us, Marco's Grandpa decided to
just stay in the car (I later found out that he preferred to save the
money that he had so he could go to the casino and gamble, and that
he only gets a small amount of money from his wife each week so that
he doesn't go and gamble it away ha ha ha). We thought about doing
the walk up to the top, but then the staff told us the path was
closed as they were doing some maintenance on it, so we had no choice
but to take the cable car. Unfortunately, if we had come on Sunday,
we could have went up for free, but we were already there and I
offered to pay the $7.50 fee for Marco as well. We made our way up to
the top in the gondola (I always am a bit leery about the safety
standards on the devices when they're located in non-first world
countries ha ha), and arrived up top where there were a ton of
Russians. After admiring some of the views (not the Russian girls as
surprisingly none of them were really attractive), we wandered into a
nearby bakery for a little snack and coffee. They had some sweet
cheese arepas, so I had one of those which was pretty tasty, although
kind of weird, since I don't typically associate cheese with
sweetness (other than cheesecake of course). The entire menu was in
Spanish, although one of the items listed was “cheesecake” so I
jokingly asked Marco what cheesecake was, and he thought I didn't
actually understand what it was so he started asking the staff in
Spanish what it was, much to my laughter....sarcasm just doesn't work
here ha ha! After our snack and coffee, we wandered around the nice
botanical gardens of the area and past a few of the nice restaurants,
one of which was robbed a few years earlier by several men who snuck
up the backside of the area with assault rifles and cleaned out the
foreigners! After about 25 minutes of enjoying the view, it was time
to head back down, but unfortunately the lineup to go down was
extremely long, so we were stuck waiting another 20 minutes or so. I
had to laugh as Marco was asking me about Russians, and then then he
was making fun of them a bit, not realizing there was a Russian
couple in front of us the whole time. Fortunately they didn't pay
attention or else understand, so we didn't have any issues with them.
We arrived down at the bottom, and hopped in the car with Marco's
Grandpa, and headed back to the house, with a quick stop to drop off
Grandpa at the casino ha ha.
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| From the top of Montserrate cable car station |
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| Bogota..home to 1/4 the population of Canada... |
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| My Colombian tour guide |
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| A Wise Man once told me |
 |
| Un Castillo |
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| Slovenian tourist overlooking Bogota |
 |
| Marco tired from walking the stairs |
 |
| Great views of the surrounding areas |
After arriving back, we just kind of
hung out until Marco's hairdresser showed up at the house. In
Colombia, you can have pretty much anything delivered to your house,
whether it's a hair stylist showing up, a loaf of bread, or even
condoms late at night...it's a very different culture of service than
other places I've been! I decided I would cut my hair as well, and
decided to go with the previous theme of haircut that I had received
in Central America, so I went with another mohawk...although shorter
than before on the sides...a different and unique look for me, just
need to get some piercings or something next! After the haircut,
Marco was just going to hang out with Sylvana for awhile before
making his way to his good friend Jose Pezzotti's birthday party,
which was being held at Alberto's apartment (another guy I had met in
Summerland). He was going to take awhile, and some of the others were
already at the party and asking me to come meet them, so I decided to
head off on my own with a taxi, which turned into something of an
adventure. First of all the guy took me on some long drawn out drive
to the residence, getting lost several times, and of course racking
up the fare. Then on top of that, he told me the fare was 11,800 so I
gave him a 20,000 note but then he was explaining to me that he
didn't have change for it or something, and asked what other notes I
had, which I only had 50,000 notes or the 20,000. So then he told me
he had change for the 50,000, well at least I think that was the
rough idea of the conversation, I was pretty lost at times and tried
calling someone to translate for me, but no one was answering, so I
gave the guy a 50,000 then he rifled through his money stack and
apparently decided he did in fact have change for the 20,000 so he
gave me the 50,000 back and change for the 20,000......this whole
episode was very confusing until several hours later when I realized
what actually happened!
So several hours later we ended up
going to a McDonalds for breakfast around 8 am or so and I tried to
pay with one of my 50,000 notes and the staff told me it was a fake!
I was a bit shocked and thought that it must have come from the bank
machine where I had taken money out earlier, but then I realized that
slimy taxi driver had switched them earlier in the night, preying on
a foreigner. I have a theory that states that “taxi drivers and
politicians are the two most corrupt people in the world”, and
seriously, I've been ripped off by taxi drivers everywhere in the
world....it's terrible, and this was just another fine example. So
after the strange taxi ride, I was out front of the apartment
building, but I had no idea what apartment the party was in, nor
who's apartment it was so I sat outside trying to call several
people, while the security guard sat there asking who I was looking
for and I couldn't describe it. Meanwhile, several groups of people
came through and went inside, presumably to the party, but I had no
idea. Finally I just told the security guard I was there for a
birthday and he was kind enough to just let me in and tell me what
apartment it was
in. I ended up at the door knocking for about 10
minutes before someone finally answered the door, as there was really
loud music and everyone was far from the door and couldn't hear the
knocking or door bell ringing, but I finally arrived inside and found
a huge party, and a very very nice apartment. Apparently Alberto's
family has a fair bit of money, as evidenced by the very nice
apartment. I arrived inside and found pretty much the entire group of
people from Summerland plus another 40 or 50 more new people and made
several new friends quite quickly, as everyone is just so damn
friendly in Colombia! After an hour or so of being forced to drink
lots of Aguardiente, we all made our way to some nightclub called
Magnolio.
The club itself was pretty different,
as it was sort of a restaurant/chill out area on the downstairs, then
more nightclub like on the top 2 floors....we partied there, and I
ended up meeting a really nice American Colombian girl and chatting
with her for quite awhile, before exchanging numbers and being
dragged off to some other party that I had no idea about. All I know
is that I was in Marco's car, Lorenzo was driving, and we went to
some super nice apartment with expensive liquor and cigars, and were
there with a few girls and a lot of guys, but then the girls all were
scared off so it was a party of about 25 dudes, so someone suggested
we go to a club that was still open (which ended up being the 30th
floor club where we had been the previous weekend) so a bunch more of
us piled into the car and were on our way there! We arrived there,
and there was one guy with our group who apparently was a friend of
Marco's mom, and his wife was out of town for the weekend, so he
wanted to have a big night and kept buying bottles of scotch at the
bar for us....geeez....it was a pretty wild time, and before we knew
it, it was already 7 am and the place was closing down, so it was
time to head back. After dropping off a few of the random people who
were in our car, and making the fateful stop for breakfast at
McDonald's, we were back at Marco's place around 8:30 or 9 am and for
some reason I stayed up until 10 am doing nothing of any real
importance.
 |
| Colombian haircut |
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| Youngins' can't handle their late nights |
The Sunday happened to be Super Bowl
Sunday, so I was looking forward to watching the game somewhere, and
Marco had suggested we go to TGI Friday's, since that's where most of
the ex pats hung out to watch football...unfortunately we didn't get
up until around 5 pm, and I had a pretty nasty hangover, first one in
quite sometime really....so after barely being able to get out of bed
and shower, we went and picked up Pezzotti, who was celebrating his
actual birthday that day, although in a much smaller and quieter way.
Along the way we also picked up a really cute and lovely woman named
Juliana, who I had a bit of a crush on upon meeting, as she was tall,
really pretty, and super relaxed and kind, but nothing ever
materialized out of that. We made our way to the Parque 93 area where
the TGI's was, and grabbed a table there, expecting another 4 or 5
people to join us, but in the end only one more person came and
joined. None of the group really knew anything about the NFL, so they
just asked what team to cheer for, and a bit about the rules, so I
tried to explain what I could, but they were definitely more there to
just have some beer and dinner, and I was the only one really
spending any time paying attention. I did decide to buy Pezzotti a
shot for his birthday, and tried to describe a muff diver shot to the
bartender, with Marco's help, and they managed to sort of create it,
however, the shot glasses are too big in Colombia, so we couldn't
even fit it inside the whipped cream which took most of the fun out
of the shot. Jose did his shot but barely got any of the cream on his
face, so I decided to push his face into the cream to at least
achieve more of the desired effect....well Pezzotti is the type who
won't just take a move like that, so he instantly grabbed a handful
of the cream and threw it into my face, and then proceeded to
basically cover the whole table in cream, and throw cream at the
restaurant staff ha ha ha....needless to say, it was a messy but fun
little disaster, and several of the patrons were having a laugh at us
as we all made our way to the toilet to clean ourselves up. We
watched the rest of the game, enjoyed an American experience with
chicken wings, big hamburgers, and quite a few happy hour beers
before clearing off the tab. Jose wanted to continue on with the
birthday night, so he talked everyone into stopping by a place called
the Bogota Beer Company. At this pub I told the others about my
counterfeit note story from the night before, which resulted in them
hatching a scheme, where at the end of our beers we would just leave
the fake bill and go grab the car and head off. I felt bad about it,
as I would rather have ripped off another taxi driver, but they
insisted we do that, so we did just that and made our run for it! We
escaped without the staff chasing us down, but I had to put it on my
“do not attend” list! We just dropped everyone off and called it
a night.
 |
| Super Bowl Sunday at TGI Friday's...American style |
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| Super Bowl with Colombians |
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| Pezzotti's birthday shot...fail |
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| Aftermath of birthday shot |
The next day was a pretty quiet day, as
it was super rainy and crappy weather, so I didn't even bother
leaving the house. I was planning on going to meet up with Jamie and
John as they were leaving for Medellin that night on a cheap flight,
but by the time I touched base with them, it was already too late, as
it would take me an hour to get down to meet up with them, and they
were going to be leaving within an hour and a bit for the airport so
I just sat at the house, waiting for Marco to get back from school.
When he eventually got back, I ended up having a late dinner prepared
by his maid, which ended up being a bit of a disaster. I had gone
into the kitchen to grab the food, and something just didn't smell
right, but I ate the pasta and tomato dish anyway, and hung out for
awhile watching a movie on Marco's TV, but then decided to go to bed.
Well about 15 minutes later while laying in bed, my stomach really
started to hurt....and this lasted for the next 2 days, as well as
numerous body aches and terrible diarrhoea. A really nice and pleasant
time indeed...especially not being able to eat anything really.
Fortunately two full days of rest helped heal me up, but on top of
the illness, I also didn't receive my visa for Brazil in time to
catch my flight to Sao Paolo, so I had to cancel that. In true
Colombian fashion, it took the company over 2 weeks to email me back
and confirm that I would be reimbursed for the flight cancellation,
even though they said they would let me know within a day or two! So
after the few days of illness, Thursday was another pretty low key
day, as I was supposed to go meet with the American Colombian girl
for a late lunch and coffee near Marco's house, but then she was busy
with school and ended up cancelling on me, saying that Friday would
work better. So I just spent another quiet evening at Marco's house,
just continuing to recover and watching hockey games.
The next day after sleeping in once
again, and I made plans to meet up with the girl, but had to wait for
her to get home from her internship and get ready, which took until
around 7 pm in true female fashion. I went to go try and find a cab
to go pick her up, but being a Friday night, it was very very
difficult, so I took about 20 minutes to get to pick her up, when she
lived about 5 minutes away from Marco's place. We went and had a nice
dinner in a nearby area of town called Usaquen, which has lots of
nice restaurants, bars, and shops. That night also happened to be
Marcelo's going away party, as he was leaving for China within the
next week, so he was having a large going away party at Andres Carne
de Res in Chia that night. I thought the dinner went quite well with
the girl, and Marco came to pick us up and head over to where the
party for Marcelo was being held. I thought I had had convinced the
girl to come with us, but then at the very last minute when we
arrived to drop her off at her house to change, so just suddenly
decided she wasn't going to come...difficult women here I tell you! So
I said my goodbye, tried to go for a goodnight kiss, but was given
the cheek, oops! I tried to make plans with her several times over
the next few weeks, but she cancelled on me several times, so I just
gave up on that plan, c'est la vie! Meanwhile, Sylvana, Luisa, myself
and Marco grabbed some rum and made our way over to a house where
everyone was having the pre-party, arriving just in time to catch the
buses to Chia that Marcelo had ordered. Well, we had about 15 minutes before
they showed up, where I caught up with Miranda, who had just arrived
in Bogota the previous day, and whom I hadn't seen since Cartagena.
Once the vans showed up...well the truly cheap nature of all my young
student friends started to kick in!
There had been an email going out and
asking who needed a van and who didn't, so they were ordered
accordingly, and there were enough people to fill up both vans, but
suddenly several people decided they would take their cars instead,
leading to one van being mostly full, and the other one half full.
Well this changed the price per person from about $7, to about
$10.....which a whole bunch of people weren't happy....also, keep in
mind that this is a van that was driving us 45 minutes out of town
and would pick us up and deliver us door to door after the party was
done....helluva deal I thought, but quite a few people were raising a
stink....and then I got dragged into one of the cars, as people in
that car wanted me to come with them, whereas other people in the van
wanted me to go with them.....foreigners are absolutely loved here in
Colombia apparently! I ended up in the very packed car, and
eventually people came to their senses and took the 2nd van, although
it took us about 20 minutes to finally leave, once all the arguing
was done. When leaving the house, I had forgotten to grab the bottle
of cola to mix with the rum, and the one girl, Luisa, wasn't too
happy with me about that, as she now had to have the rum straight, so
I offered to buy her a drink at the bar when we arrived...not knowing
how damn expensive drinks were! We arrived, and wandered inside, and
the place was certainly busier than the previous weekend, and I went
to check out the cocktails and beer prices with Miranda and her
friend, and found the cocktails were about $15-$25 each..ouch! A beer
also was a bit pricy, by Colombian standards anyway, as they were
running for $6 each.....so I sucked it up, bought one beer and one
cocktail for the Luisa girl...probably the most expensive drink I've
ever bought for a girl, and we weren't even on a date!
We partied pretty hard there again that
night, as our group was now a lot bigger than the previous weekend,
and I was thoroughly enjoying myself and the beautiful women of
Bogota. One in particular seemed to take a liking to me and kept
chasing me around all night, but I was also kind of chasing after the
Luisa girl for awhile, giving her a hard time about the previous
weekend and her “German lover”, which was making her mad. I was
especially bugging her about holding hands with him, and she tried to
say that he was only holding her hands, she wasn't holding them back,
which lead to a fairly large debate over whether one can hold
someones hand, or both people are holding hands....I insisted she
could have let go of his hands if she didn't want to, while she
defended her position saying she wasn't holding back...pretty
meaningless banter, but still funny....I told her later that night
that I wouldn't be holding her hands, that she could only hold mine,
which eventually happened to the point I actually did try and kiss
her but she shunned me...how embarrassing! Ahhh not really. We
continued to party and dance, and act like fools with the various
props and costumes that Andres had to over...that's another really
fun part about the place is that there's not really any dress code,
and there's loads of masks, hats, and various other items located in
the bar that you can grab off the wall and wear as you please.
Eventually the place was closing, and we all wandered outside to get
our food before leaving the place, but this time they were sold out
of the delicious soup unfortunately, and I didn't want to pay the
high price for the hamburger, although Miranda couldn't finish hers
so I ended up just helping her out with that, while we enjoyed some
random musicians who were playing a free show outside in the
restaurant area....Meanwhile, I looked over and saw a few of the guys
in our group, with the police and one guy bleeding badly from the
face, and everyone assumed it was Pezzotti who had started it, but
surprisingly it was actually Lorenzo who had punched the guy.....a
bit strange especially considering Lorenzo doesn't drink, and never
struck me as the fighting type...somehow he didn't get in any trouble
with the police for the punch, and we were all ready to get back in
the vans and head back to town. When I got into the very back seat,
the girl who had been chasing me around earlier in the night decided
to come hop in the back and make her move on me, much to the delight
of a few of the people sitting in front of us. Unfortunately, after
about 20 minutes of making out, she felt very sleepy and fell asleep
on my lap.
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| Marco recommends...you get your ass to Andres Carne de Res Chia |
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| Just another night in Chia playing with props |
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| The great parties of Chia |
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| More props and fun |
I didn't really know what we were doing
or where we were going, but apparently one of the guys in the van,
“El Paisa” (a nickname for someone from the countryside, which in
this case was a guy from Medellin...not exactly the countryside!),
decided to host us at his apartment for an after party...so quite a
few of us arrived there, and I thought the girl would come inside
with us, but then she decided she was too tired and was going
home...shoot there went my chance for any Colombian romance! We all
went inside, and had the after party with about 10 people or so,
although Miranda and her friend did eventually show up, as well as a
few random others. There wasn't much to the place, as it was more of
a typical bachelor apartment, and I distinctly recall Marco saying we
would stay there and party until Sunday, and several people being in
agreement...well come about 7 am or so, several people were sleepy or
had already left, so a few of us, Marco, Maria Paula (MaPa),
Santiago, Farah, and I decided to go find some breakfast somewhere.
We left the house, with El Paisa going to sleep and thinking we were
all going to sleep there and continue partying the next day, and
ended up making our way to the McDonalds about 15 minutes
away....this was proceeded by myself being a stupid drunk tourist,
speaking English with random people along the way, trying to have a
conversation with some guys at a petro station over the size of the
engine in their vehicle, asking people that were entering a gym if
they could take me with them for a spin class, etc etc. We finally
arrived and had our breakfast and coffee, before Marco was too tired
to continue and wanted to go home, so myself, MaPa, and him hopped in
a cab, dropped MaPa off, and made our way back to Marco's place,
arriving around 9 am....this is a typical night out in Bogota
apparently! When I arrived I had to laugh when Farah checked in on
his Facebook and told me that he had forgotten that he had classes to
attend that day, so he was now sitting in a class until 3 pm, without
any sleep and barely able to function! Poor guy. I just drifted off
and caught a few hours of sleep.
 |
| Marco can't handle the late nights |
Upon a late wake up around 5 or 6 pm (my
sleep schedule is seriously messed up), I didn't really know what to
do for the evening, as Marco was going to spend the night with his
g/f. I ended up chatting with Pezzotti a bit, and he invited me over
to his place for awhile before heading out, so I decided why not, as
I really had begun to like the guy and his crazy antics....he did
keep telling me I had to spend a weekend out partying with him, as he
got involved in some real crazy stuff, as opposed to quiet and
trouble free Marco......I definitely am more like Marco and enjoy
staying out of trouble with him, but it was also nice to have a new
friend with a bit different of a personality to contrast my own. I
caught a cab over in the pouring rain to his place, but I didn't
realize that the cab had taken me to the wrong street, so after
wandering around in the rain, asking at a building that had almost
the same address and being laughed at by the security guard, I
realized that I was on the wrong street. Fortunately, the cab driver
was also aware of this and honest enough to come and grab me and take
me to the right address without having to pay extra. Unfortunately I
was standing at the right building, and trying with my very poor
Spanish to explain to the security guard that I was going to
Pezzotti's house, and he tried ringing up but there was no answer,
plus I didn't have his phone number stored in my phone either, so I
waited and waited until finally he was able to get a hold of Jose and
let me into the building. His description to Jose was “there's a
foreigner at the door for you, and he speaks terrible Spanish” ha
ha ha. I arrived inside and met another new friend of Jose's, a nice
girl named Kathy who had happened to be Santiago's ex g/f....she had
family in the US so she spoke really great English, and they tried to
keep most of their conversations in English, but like most of my
foreign friends, they soon reverted back to their native
tongue....it's one of those things you just deal with if you make
friends with locals, as they will pretty much always speak in their
native tongue when you are around, unless they are directly
addressing you. Eventually another girl showed up, named Juli, who
Pezzotti was interested in, but she had just broken up with her b/f
that she had met in rehab, and wasn't really looking for anything.
Her English also wasn't very good, so there was limited conversation
with her.
We ended up buying a few import beers
from a nearby Carulla Supermarket, as they had a special on for
import beers....thinking this was a win, we picked up a large
Heineken keg can, and I decided to grab a strong Belgian beer as
well. We soon realized why there was a deal on import beers, as it
seems that during the transportation of said beers, they must have
shaken the hell out of them for several days, because each pour
resulted in about 80% foam, 20% beer....and a very long waiting time
for the foam to settle. Frustrating, but oh well. After finishing up
our foamies, chatting about random Colombian things, and about my
travels, we decided to head out to Magnolio, once again....Pezzotti's
favourite place it would seem! We hopped in the cab and were on our
way, arriving and finding the place relatively quiet. Because
security was pretty relaxed and not checking bags, purses, or coats,
instead of spending too much money on drinks, we decided to head out
into the streets and try and track down one of the street
salespeople, where you can sometimes buy a bottle of aguardiente for
cheap, however, all of the salespeople weren't selling it, so I
thought that I sort of recognized the area from the previous night,
and that I would be able to get us back towards the McDonald's where
we had eaten breakfast in the morning, as I thought I remembered
there being a nearby liquor store...so we made the very lengthy walk
towards that area of the town, and of course found that there wasn't
in fact a bottle shop, just some boutiques and small
restaurants....oops...so we made the long trek back, and it was
already getting late, but we decided to buy a bottle of vodka
anyway...why not right? So after splashing out the $35 or so for the
bottle of Smirnoff, we had a few drinks there but the place was
closing, and we had barely put a dint into the bottle. We hopped into
a cab, and they dropped me off at Marco's where I had to break into
the place with a key for the first time, which may provide me with a
lucrative career as a thief, but highly unlikely, and I just crashed
for the night.
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| 5% beer, 95% foam = 20% off beer price |
 |
| some lovely ladies and I |
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| Pezzotti's maid blew up their stove one day oops |
We didn't get up to a whole lot that
day other than going down to the Zona Rosa to meet up with Miranda
before she took her night bus to Ecuador. She had a terrible Saturday
night, as she was trying to get a hold of people to go out and party,
and apparently my phone didn't ring when she tried ringing me. Marco
had rang me and told me she wanted to come meet up with us, so I told
him where we were at, but she never did end up making it. While she
was out in the streets using vendor's phones to call everyone,
someone stole her wallet...poor girl...and she couldn't track anyone
down to make a party, so she was ready to get out of Colombia. I felt
bad for her, and she seemed angry with me, as if I was out partying
and ignoring her by not answering, but I didn't actually receive her
call....we had a quiet dinner at an Irish pub, met a new Colombian
friend of hers that she had met in the hostel, and caught up a bit
before saying goodbye. Marco's mom then came and picked us up, and
took us back to his place, where he showed me how to break into his
house using a card once again, so that I would be able to make my way
in if I was locked out in the near future, and we just had a pretty
quiet night watching some movies and TV.
 |
| Marco demonstrating the finer points of lock picking |
 |
| Checking out some sweet Bogota graffiti |
The next day was a pretty quiet and
lazy one, as I just wandered down to the university for a little bit
to try and meet up with Juliana and Pezzotti for lunch, but then was
unable to get a hold of either of them, since Pezzotti didn't have a
phone, and Juliana took too long to respond to my message. I ended up
just eating lunch alone in a little student cafe, while working on
some Spanish exercises, before meeting up with Marco who had finished
up his first class and had a bit of time to kill. He obtained a
visitor pass for me, and I just went and hung out at a coffeeshop
with him in the University, while he worked on some homework. I ended
up spending the next 3 hours there, just listening to people talk,
and working on some Spanish, before he was finished up class and we
headed back to his house for the night. The next day I decided to
finally make my way to the Museum of Gold, as I had heard it was one
of the more decent museums in Bogota, so I hopped on a bus and made
my way down to the museum, where I spent the next 2 hours wandering
around, and checking out the history of gold in Latin America, and
some of the ceremonies and rituals performed with jewels. It was
pretty interesting to find that there was a tribe with a Shaman or
holy man, who would go out into a lake with a raft full of emeralds
and gold pieces, and bless then throw all the jewels into the sea, as
an offering to the Gods, which resulted in the legend of the El
Dorado
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Dorado.
A replica of the raft, covered in gold was one of the more
interesting and exotic pieces of the museum, it was quite a sight to
see. After wandering around a bit the place was closing down, so I
took a quick walk around the surrounding area, before making my way
over to Marco's University to catch a ride back to his house with
some of his friends. We arrived back there and had another pretty
quiet night.
 |
| Gold figures |
 |
| large Emeralds thrown into lakes as gifts to the Gods |
 |
| coca leaves, in case you are wondering what they look like |
 |
| raft that influenced the tale of El Dorado |
 |
| Downtown Bogota at dusk |
The next day was more of the same, just
sitting around the house mostly, as the weather was kind of
bad...Bogota is not exactly known for it's amazing climate, with
fairly cold weather and lots of rain. Other than just sitting around
the house, practicing Spanish, and watching The Wire, it was a pretty
quiet Wednesday, other than a drive into town to go to Marco's
University late at night, because he had forgotten to print off some
papers he needed to study for his exams, I barely left the house if
not for that. The next day, being Valentine's Day, I was hoping for
something a little more exciting. I had spoken with the girl from the
previous Friday, and we had made plans to go do something that
evening once she was finished with her school, so to kill the time, I
ended up going into town with Marco, to hang out at his University
for several hours. I had to laugh when we arrived at the “cheap”
parking lot, that was run by a few guys near the university.....the
lot that they were using was packed full of cars, and I really can't
imagine trying to get a vehicle out of there....the amount of moving
cars and hoping for no scratches or dents is nearly unimaginable!
After dropping the car off, we went and grabbed me a visitor pass,
and Marco went off to class while I just cracked open the Spanish
exercise book and got to work for awhile. I was eavesdropping a bit
at a nearby table, where a French student was practicing English
lessons with a Colombian girl, who was explaining the English words
in Spanish, which kind of provided me with a bit of a lesson as
well...she kept looking over at me, and I was hoping she wasn't
thinking I was a bit of a creeper or something by intently listening
in on their conversation. Eventually the rain started to come in
strong, and we all had to move under a nearby building, where we all
began chatting a bit, and I explained I was there to learn some
Spanish, while her and the French guy were working on learning
English...it was kind of a funny sight, as I was speaking in French
to the French guy, while she was speaking in English to me, and he
was speaking Spanish with me...talk about a mixed group of lost
linguists! After a chat, they were on their way, and I ended up
chatting with another girl who offered me some cupcakes, but I
declined...she seemed actually kind of interesting, but when asking
her about her Valentine's Day plans, she said she had none, since her
bf was off in Uruguay for several months...it could have been an
opening, but around that time Alejandro ended up showing up and
saying he was going to drive me, since Marco couldn't leave for a few
hours, due to restrictions on driving times and days to help control
traffic. I ended up hopping in with Alejandro, not really knowing
where we were going, and we ended up going to his house for a few
beers and to make dinner.
I was expecting to hear back from the
Colombian girl who I was supposed to go out with that night, but she
never did get back to me or respond, so I was a bit disappointed, but
such is life. We ended up just hanging out at Alejandro's along with
Marcelo, having a few beers and some food, before Marcelo and I
caught a cab to head home. For some reason Marcelo was quite worried
about me being in the taxi by myself, as he said he had felt a bad
vibe from the taxi driver, when the guy was talking to him as we
dropped him off, so he kept calling me every 5 minutes asking where I
was and if I was back at Marco's place yet. Initially my phone was in
my pocket, but after having to pull it out every few minutes, I
eventually set it on the cab seat, which of coursed proved to be a
bit of a disaster, as upon arrival at Marco's place, I forgot to grab
it, and voila! After having mobile phones for around 11 years, and
never once losing one, I finally lost one, dammit! I realized about 5
minutes after getting out of the cab that I had forgotten it, and
tried to get Marco to call it, but he didn't have any credit, so he
had his g/f try calling it, but of course there was no answer, and
the cab driver scored himself a free phone...although it was a pretty
cheap and rather basic phone, it was still a bit frustrating to lose
it. I ended up just calling it a night, and slept in the next day
rather late.
 |
| Cat burglar |
 |
| Colombian parking lot |
 |
| Bogota skyline from one of Marco's studying locations |
It was Marcelo's official last day, as
he was flying out to China that evening, even though he still hadn't
obtained a visa! He was supposed to apply earlier, but put it off,
and then when he went to apply, it was Chinese New Years, so the
embassy was closed. He was pretty lucky in the end, as his father was
well connected and was able to help him get the visa processed in one
day! At this point, I had already been waiting over 2 weeks for my
Brazil visa, with no end in sight, and he was able to get what should
be a much more difficult visa in one day! We all went over to
Lorenzo's place to say our last goodbyes and hang out there. I was
supposed to stay at Lorenzo's place when I arrived in Bogota, but
they were doing some painting in the house, so I ended up at Marco's
instead. The house was absolute gorgeous, and we ended up enjoying
the nice sunny afternoon out on the deck, before Marcelo had to
leave. Quite a few of us ended up sticking around, and having some
beers. I ended up meeting Lorenzo's mom and a few of her friends, who
were quite nice and spoke really great English, so I had a nice chat
with them. Eventually we decided to play some Spanish
charades...which lead to a fairly difficult time for me considering
the language barrier....of course the other team called me up first,
but fortunately they gave me a relatively easy subject, as I had to
act out the Kama Sutra ha ha ha ha.....my team ended up getting it
quite quickly so that was good....after about 45 minutes or so of
playing, all of a sudden the room was kind of silent when one of
Lorenzo's mom's friends said something...and next thing I knew, all
of our group was getting ready to leave and said we had to go....I
was of course confused, but said okay and we left.
 |
| My Bogota amigos |
I soon found out that Pezzotti had been
trying to distract our team during our turn and the older woman, who
was a fair bit drunk, told him to shut the hell up hahaha....Pezzotti
doesn't really like to be told off, and has a bit of a temper
problem, so that's why we all had to leave, as he didn't want to
cause a big scene ha ha! So we wandered outside and decided to head
to Juan David's place, where we had been the previous Friday for the
pre-party before going to Marcelo's going away party. On our way
there we picked up some Aguardiente and some snacks, and stopped at
Juan's place for several hours. While there I witnessed one of the
stranger Colombian party games, a thing called Ninja. Basically
everyone stands around in a circle and you try and chop at the arms
of the people to the left and right of you, but if they dodge your
chop, you have to freeze your position after you have swung at
them....at first I didn't quite understand, as I thought the game
went counter clockwise, so I was quickly eliminated, and then I
realized that there was no specific turns, you just make your move
whenever...duh! It was kind of entertaining to watch though, as
people would maneuver themselves around to get into better chopping
positions...all in all, pretty hilarious. Eventually Alejandro showed
up with the girls that I had been out night clubbing with 2 weekends
earlier, but they were kind of stand offish and not overly friendly,
so they ended up leaving and going to a nightclub. The rest of us
hung around until it was getting late, and then a few of us went to
Alejandro's place for a little while, until he was tired and wanted
to go to sleep.
Pezzotti and I then hopped in a cab and
we went back to Jose's place, and realized we were hungry so we
decided to go grab a bite to eat. On our walk over to the place, the
police were patrolling a nearby park, and seemed to figure that two
people shouldn't be walking at a late hour of the night and called
over to us. Of course, being a bit of a wise guy, I replied to them
in English, which probably made them think that they would be able to
get us for some sort of ill behaviour, and get a bribe out of
it....so of course they came over and searched every pocket and thing
we had. I had to laugh when he found a condom in my pocket, and then
said in Spanish that I wouldn't be needing one in
Colombia....hahaha....burn! After riffling through our personal
belongings (likely trying to find drugs or something they could get a
bribe out of) and also trying to make a big deal about me not having
my passport, which was still at the embassy, they finally let us go.
We continued our walk, laughing at the ridiculousness of the
situation and decided to stop off at a nearby Hot Dog restaurant
called Mario Bros (complete plagiarism of The Mario Bros video game
series, complete with same fonts, Mario Bros logos and characters
everywhere, etc.) pretty funny stuff...Jose claimed it was the best
hot dog in Bogota, and I actually would have to agree with him, as it
was rather delicious! After the tasty dog, we walked back towards his
place and crashed for the night. I was woken up by him around lunch
time, and was told that his housekeeper had made us breakfast, so
after a tasty meal, we ended up just bumming around for a few hours
watching some Spartacus, while Jose told me his father would take us
to a place called San Andrecito, which is sort of an underground
market. He also mentioned his father would be able to get me a new
phone for relatively cheap, so eventually his father stopped by and
we were on our way to the market. He gave me a phone, which was a
pretty brutal old Nokia, and I later found out that the speaker
didn't really work very well, making for very difficult
conversations! We made the drive to Andrecito, where we stopped by
one of the vendors that Jose and his dad had a close relationship
with, and where they would buy their alcohol from.
Marco had told me about Andrecito, and
how the prices are so cheap because a lot of it is bootlegged or
smuggled...he also mentioned that sometimes people think they are
buying a bottle of vodka or something, but it actually has moonshine
in it, which has caused a few people to go blind from
drinking...damn! Fortunately, if you know the vendors well enough,
you won't get a bad bottle. I had to laugh when Jose's dad decided on
a bottle of Glen Livet 12 year old (which only cost $35!), and then
proceeded to pull out a massive bag of coins and pay for it with the
coins....the bag was huge...and the vendors weren't overly thrilled!
Jose and I decided to get a bottle of Absolut which was about $15
compared to $35-$40 in other stores. We also wandered around a bit,
looking at some of the counterfeit electronics, and the pirated
movies...It was pretty funny to see Blue Ray quality DVDs of movies
that were still in theatre and hadn't even been released on DVD!
After our little shopping adventure there, they dropped me off at
Marco's so I could clean up a bit, before heading to Alejandro's for
a pre-party. I ended taking wayyyy too long to get ready and go, and
then once I arrived it was a bit of a headache getting into the
building, as the security guard didn't recognize me, I couldn't
really explain what I was doing there, and when I tried calling with
my phone, I couldn't hear what Alejandro was saying, but fortunately
they came down and grabbed me.
 |
| one bottle of Scotch please, hope you don't mind that I pay in change |
I arrived inside and had to laugh, as
Pezzotti had invited a whole bunch of girls to come party that night,
thinking only half of them would show up, but a very large amount of
them did, and he was kind of panicking, as there weren't really any
guys to entertain them all ha ha ha.....I popped inside and had a few
drinks with the group and admired some of the pretty girls that were
there...one was flirting with me a fair bit in particular, but I soon
found out that she was kind of with Alejandro, which was a bummer, as
I'm not really one to cut another man's grass so to speak. After
about an hour and a half there, we decided to head out to a
nightclub, thinking we would go to Magnolio again, but then decided
to head to BarDot again. Alberto had his personal driver that night,
and we all piled into that vehicle, barely fitting, and were on our
way to the club, but had to be dropped off a block away so that the
police wouldn't stop us for being over capacity. At this point we
lost a few of the girls, as they decided they wanted to go check out
a different club, but we still had a fairly large group. We arrived
in line, and one of the girls didn't have any id on her, but the
doorman was willing to allow a copy of her passport to be shown on
her iPhone to gain entry....technology these days! We wandered
inside, and had a pretty big party, where I met a few more super cute
Colombian girls, but once again never really got anywhere with
them..shoot! After several hours of expensive beers and party, we
lost quite a few of the people, and Alejandro, myself, and 3 random
girls went back to his place for a little after party, but they
weren't overly talkative with me, so that never went anywhere as
well....they eventually left, and I just crashed for the night at
Alejandro's.
The next day he had to get up a fair
bit early, as he had to teach some squash lessons, so I was out of
the house, and grabbed a taxi back to Marco's place, where I filled
him in on the details of the weekend. He was going through a bit of a
rough patch with his g/f, and didn't have much money for going out,
so he was focused on spending more time with her over the next little
while. I was meant to go on a date to Montserrat with the
American/Colombian girl that afternoon, but once again she cancelled
on me as she was too hungover!! What is with these Colombian women
and their lack of following through on plans!! Marco explained that's
just the Colombian way though, as no one really commits to
anything...that's just life eh! So once that plan fell through we
didn't do a whole lot that day, just hung out at his place, until he
went off to his g/fs for the evening to study, while I just hung out
watching hockey and movies. The next day I woke up pretty late, and
decided to go wander around the Usaquen area of the city, which is
fairly close to Marco's house. Marco told me a funny story about how some Bogotans think that because Usaquen is pronounced "usahquen" that when they tell their family they are going to the USA, they will say they are going to "Usah" ha ha. Anyway, Usaquen is a pretty trendy area, with some
great graffiti, as well as some awesome restaurants. Marco had
mentioned a restaurant called Balsimico, which was in the Santa Marta
Mall in Usaquen, so I went there to have a coffee and a bite to eat.
I tried unsuccessfully to find a stationary store in the mall to buy
a new pen, as my pens had all run out, but this proved to be
impossible...kind of strange that you can't find a place to buy one,
but oh well...so after borrowing the pen from the waiter at the
restaurant, I just spent the next few hours enjoying my food and
working on Spanish exercises. Unfortunately the guy wouldn't let me
keep the pen though, so after my dinner was finished, I just wandered
back to Marco's place and had another quiet night in.
 |
| Usaquen graffiti |
The next day I once again tagged along
with Marco to his university, where we met up with Lorenzo and a few
others at a hamburger restaurant near the university called Randy's,
which is a pretty popular spot for the students to grab their fast
food fix. After a quick lunch, Marco had to go print off some copies
of some books for his class, and I had to laugh a fair bit as there
were several copy shops near the university where you could print off
complete textbooks for any class you were studying...talk about
blatant plagiarism, but this is how it goes in 2nd world
countries....I had to explain to Marco how the plagiarism of textbooks
effected the authors, as they weren't receiving any compensation for
their work, and had an interesting discussion on tuition prices, and
how much I had to pay for my textbooks back when I was a student.
After the little copy shop stop, we just went back to the school
where I hung out for the next few hours, working some more on Spanish
exercises, and drinking coffee, generally just hanging out and being
a bum. When Marco was finally finished class, we caught a ride with
another friend of his, and were back to his place for the night.
 |
| What Colombians think a German hamburger is |
 |
| Want to save money by not buying textbooks? Why not go to the print shop and print them off for a fraction of the cost |
We finally were able to make the trip
to the Salt Cathedral that he had talked about so frequently, and
that we had planned to go visit several times over the previous few
weeks, the next day. However, we had a bit of a late start to
leaving, and he soon realized that we had a very limited time frame
to drive there and back, as it was one of the days where his licence
plate numbers only allowed him to drive on the streets from 10 am
until 3:30 pm, so we made the quick drive out to the nearby town of
Zipaquira. Marco in typical Colombian driving style was absolutely
flying the whole way, as they have a bit of a crazy driving standard
here, so we made it in relatively quick time. Upon arrival, we found
several exhibits and bonuses we could partake in, but with our
limited time frame, we only wanted to enter the caverns and explore.
The price was a bit high, as it was 20,000 pesos, which is only about
$10, but kind of high by Colombian standards. Upon entry, there was a
pretty remarkable LED display on the top of the cave entrance, which
would display the various flags of the world....it was kind of
remarkable, but at the same time surprising, as the Canadian flag
never appeared, yet countless other less known and random flags such
as Iran, Ghana, and Iceland would appear....after hanging out for a
bit, and not seeing their version of Canada, we just entered the
caverns and wandered around for about an hour.....it was pretty
impressive, as they had bored out several large chambers and carved
out various religions symbols and altars, and when combined with
fluorescent lighting, it made for a rather remarkable and impressive
visual display.
One of the more impressive spots was a
rather large altar carved into a massive room, where many people are
wed...I can imagine it would be a fairly unique wedding to have,
being several hundred feet below ground in a large salt
cavern...something very unique indeed! I ended up losing Marco for
awhile, as he had wandered off to get some food, and of course being
that far down, there was no signal for our phones, so we couldn't get
in touch, but we didn't stray too far from the central point, so we
eventually tracked each other down, and had a coffee and a few
empanadas to kill the time. After admiring the caverns, and finding
an amazing carving with an Owl in a tree in one of the corridors
(perfect spot to do some owling!), we were running low on time and
had to hit the road. He was chatting on his phone the whole time, and
I had to laugh, as he didn't notice that we were on a one way street
to get out of the city, and he started making turns off the street
even though I kept telling him to keep going straight...here the
tourist is telling the local where to go! We finally escaped from the
city, and were on our way back to Bogota, where we had a quick stop
for some petrol and coffee, before arriving back at his place just in
time to avoid the traffic fines for driving illegally after hours.
 |
| Entrance to the caverns |
 |
| Impressive light presentation |
 |
| I thought Mary was his Mother, not Holly |
 |
| The main altar room |
 |
| How the hell did Damian, son of Satan get into the church! |
 |
| Really quite amazing and impressive creativity |
 |
| A rather impressive place to get married if you want a church wedding |
 |
| Incredible rock carvings |
 |
| Two owls spotted |
 |
| Marco enjoys eating chocolate cake with mayo??? |
 |
| Extremely difficult maze I had to solve |
 |
| stray dogs have to get water wherever they can I guess...nasty |
After barely making it back to the
house in time, Marco had to go over to his g/fs place, and left me
alone at the house. I didn't really have much planned, but then MaPa,
a girl I had met several times before asked if I wanted to come hang
out at her place for awhile, since she had nothing going on, so I
made the trek over to her place to hang out for a few hours. We
mostly just wandered around the area awhile, before hanging out at
her house for the next several hours. It was kind of a strange
experience, as she would flirt lots with me, but then if I tried to
make any move she would pull away, so I stopped trying but then she
would start making her move...it was a very strange game that really
ended up leading nowhere, other than some brief making
out....Colombian women are a strange strange type...I really don't
have any idea how to read them! After several hours of goofing
around, it was getting late, so I just grabbed a cab and headed home
for the night.
The next day was another pretty quiet
one, just sleeping mostly, and watching the Wire...I decided to try
and track down the embassy and see what the hell was going on with my
visa at this point, so I called and asked if they spoke any English,
and I was told to hold for one second...this turned into 3 minutes of
being on hold, and then suddenly the phone was just hung
up...arghh....so I tried calling a second time, and this time the
phone was picked up and then promptly hung back up....what the hell!
Undeterred, I called a third time, and tried using Spanish to get an
answer, and was told that they couldn't help me and didn't know the
status of my visa....what the hell Brazil, get your shit together
arghhhh!!! After that phone fiasco, I figured I would just go down
there in person the next day and try and sort things out, as it had
been over 3 weeks now and still no response from the embassy. The
rest of the day and night was pretty quiet, just hanging out at
Marco's place and trying to sort out some travel plans for when I
finally did have a chance to get out of Bogota. There was a law
student party that night that Alejandro asked me to go to with him,
but I wasn't really up for a party, and wanted to get up early the
next day, so I stayed in (surprisingly!).
I managed to get up early the next day
and make my way towards the embassy to check things out, so Marco
hopped in my cab with me, as he was running a bit late for class and
didn't want to be stuck in the bus and be late, so we dropped him off
closer to his university, before I finally arrived at the
embassy...and of course they were closed for their 2 or 3 lunch
break...lazy Brazilians! So after killing another 2 hours in a nearby
coffeeshop and restaurant, having a cheap lunch, I arrived back at
the embassy, and was able to finally get the damn visa to Brazil.
After getting the visa, I wandered down to a nearby coffeeshop, and
tried to get a hold of a few people to see if anyone was up for
meeting up. Alejandro didn't have class on Friday, so he told me to
stop by his place for a bit, so I made the 20 block walk, enjoyed
some fresh air, and arrived at his place, where we hung out for
awhile. He had mentioned there was another party that night out at
Andres Carne de Res in Chia and that he was thinking of going, so I
mentioned I would probably be interested and I would head back to
Marco's for a bit and grab some dinner, so I walked over to the main
street and caught a bus back towards his place. I kind of bummed
around there for awhile, watching a hockey game, when Pezzotti got a
hold of me and told me to come by a nearby house for a birthday
party, so since I had some time to kill I decided to go check that
out. On my way there, I stopped at the nearby supermarket to grab a
dinner and some aguardiente, and then began walking towards what I
thought was the direction of the house. I had Google mapped it out,
and it appeared to be West of the supermarket, so I continued on
walking there when Pezzotti kept calling me and asking where I
was...of course because of the poor quality of the phone I couldn't
really understand him, but I thought he was saying to return towards
the supermarket, so I ended up doing that, and sure enough, I could
see them across the street waving at me....damn Googlemaps giving me
the completely wrong direction!
Once they finally grabbed me we went to
a gorgeous girl's house, where it was her birthday party, and hung
out there for about an hour....of course most of the conversations
were in Spanish, but also I'm starting to get the hang of the
language so I'm not completely lost in translation....just mostly ha
ha! We were there for about an hour and a half, before it was time to
head out to Magnolio, as Alejandro had mentioned that Andres Carne
wasn't looking like a good plan after all, and he wasn't going to go,
but said he might meet up with us later on. We ordered two cabs, but
only one showed up, so after the first group of people, whom I didn't
really know, grabbed the first cab we sat there waiting for awhile,
before deciding to just go into the street and grab a random cab...of
course as soon as we did that, the one we ordered showed up, but such
is life. We arrived at Magnolio, and couldn't find the first cab, as
they had apparently been side tracked somehow....we later found out
that the birthday girl's uncle had to be picked up by them, as he was
too drunk at another place and that she ended up having to take him
home, which kind of ruined her birthday party! The rest of us just
hung out at Magnolio, where MaPa randomly showed up with her cute
friend, who gave me an interesting compliment...I had mentioned how
everyone in Colombia had been so friendly to me up to that point, and
she told me that it was because a) I was a foreigner and people there
wanted to meet foreigners always and b) that I was gorgeous, so that
helped my cause ha ha...she mentioned that for her and other
Colombians, it's actually quite hard to meet random people and
befriend them....strange I guess. We hung out there for a few hours,
with our bottle of Aguardiente that we managed to sneak in with
Juliana's purse.....at one point I kind of lost everyone, and was
upstairs, and decided to come downstairs when a man stopped me and
asked if I was Dutch, as I was wearing my Holland football
jersey....he was a fairly sharp dressed individual, and asked me if I
wanted a real drink (apparently my beer wasn't a real drink), so I
said sure why not, since I couldn't find anyone from my group anyway.
I ended up going up with him and meeting a big group of his friends
who had the VIP lounge to themselves and bottle service, so I ended
up hanging there with him and several Colombian girls and a few other
businessmen...it was a pretty funny and random time, especially since
he was the only one who really spoke any English there....at one
point, Esteban, one of the guys from our group showed up and was
wondering what the hell I was doing in there, so I introduced him as
my translator to the group ha ha...they totally bought it too and he
ended up getting a few free drinks from the group as well.
Eventually it was kind of getting lame
as everyone in the group was talking Spanish and not really with me,
and Esteban was too drunk and had to go home, so once MaPa called me
and said they were looking for me, as they had moved across the road
to a different club, I went and joined them. I of course ended up
over there too late to really enjoy the place, as it was shutting
down, but did overhear a few Canadian guys talking, and began
chatting with this cute Colombian girl who wanted to practice her
English.....we were talking about the guys and Canada, and I asked
where she thought they were from, and she figured Vancouver, but I
thought their accent sounded more Toronto like, so I made her a bet
that they were from Toronto, and sure enough, when she went over to
ask them, they were from Vancouver ha ha ha...I can't even recognize
my own country's accents...fail! After that, the Dutch/Colombian guy
from the other place popped over and invited us to go to the after
party with him and his friends at a club called Radio Berlin, but
Jose didn't really want to go all the way there, and neither did
anyone else from our group, so we just ended up catching a cab and
dropping a few people off. Jose wanted to take me to another place
for some great late night food near his place, which served more
traditional country style food, and was pretty awesome I must
admit....after our late night eats, and a rather surprising
revelation from Pezzotti, telling me that the birthday girl had
mentioned that she was quite attracted to me and was interested in
spending the night with me (dammit, worst luck ever that she never
made it out to the club!) we caught a cab and I went back to Marco's
for the night.
The next day I wasn't up until quite
late in the afternoon, and didn't do a whole lot other than watch
some hockey and start some trip planning....I found out that a friend
of mine from Canada was going to be going to Manaus for March 4th, so
I had thought about heading down to Leticia in the next week and then
taking the boat to meet her, but then of course the flights were too
expensive, so I tentatively booked a flight to Medellin to go see a
different part of the country, and then was going to fly to Leticia
from there, however, I only booked the flight, I didn't actually pay
for it, as I had 2 days to pay for it, but of course that didn't end
up happening, so I lost that flight. Alejandro was having a few
people over, so after talking with Pezzotti and him, I decided I
would head there for the night. Marco was going to have a hookah and
fondue night, but it was meant to be pretty quiet, and since I had
tentatively booked the flight, I figured it was my last night to go
out and party in Bogota, so I decided to go with that option. After
grabbing some Aguardiente, yet again, I wandered over to Alejandro's
place, where a few of us hung out, before once again deciding to go
to BarDot, even though we had all discussed going to another place
called Armando's....we arrived there and it was again nearly the same
as previous nights, very full, very hot, and full of great music, but
seemingly difficult groups of people to approach....c'est la vie I
guess......there was a large group of girls that Pezzotti knew, and
eventually he was paired up with one of them, so it was just me and
Alejandro, but then of course he was paired up with one, and I was
kind of the loner...I met a few nice girls but again didn't really
get anywhere with them. At one point I did recognize El Paisa, who
was hanging out there with another friend of his, and he was pretty
excited to see me again...such damn friendly Colombians! He also had
a girl so I was just the lone man left out. Jose eventually lost his
girl, as she was sort of with another guy who was glaring at him a
lot, and he wasn't really in the mood to fight that night, which is a
bit of a different theme for him, as he usually loves to fight to
release his anger, and was thinking we should leave, but then we
decided to do one more lap, and found a big group of girls near the
bar who were with one guy. As a courtesy I started chatting up the
guy, and found him to be a pretty nice guy, and that the whole group
was from Barranquilla. He said none of them were his g/f, and that he
would gladly introduce us, so we got to meet the whole group, some of
whom were very very cute....for some reason, when I do meet new
Colombian girls, they always ask me what I think of the women here,
and I'm always kind of struggling to find an answer....yes, they're
beautiful, but they're so difficult that I don't really know how to
go about my business...I guess I just have to improve my Spanish
enough....so after chatting with their group, the place was closing
down, and they offered to take our numbers and maybe go out the next
day for an ice cream or something, so I we exchanged numbers, and
they were on our their way. We were waiting outside for a taxi, when
another big group of girls, who were on a bachelerotte party started
chatting us up, and once they realized I was a foreigner, they kept
trying to get one of the girls to kiss me....of course I didn't know
this, as it was all in rapid Spanish, but Jose was having a good
laugh about it. Eventually the girls left and we wandered over to buy
a hamburger at McDonald's where I witnessed a huge brawl, similar to
a one that I had seen in Ireland several years earlier....I thought
only the Irish knew how to brawl in fast food restaurants, but
apparently the Colombians do too....eventually the police came, but
they weren't really that active in stopping the fight, to be
honest...they were kind of useless as a lot of them just sat around
talking and not really doing anything...strange....so anyway, the
fight eventually ended...we grabbed some food and found El Paisa and
his friend, and joined them for a bite to eat and a chat, before
making our way home for the night.
The next day was another pretty quiet
one, although I did make plans to meet up with one of the Colombian
girls from Marcelo's going away party, and try and have dinner, but
then she kept pushing back the time frame on me, until it was a bit
later in the evening. We did end up meeting up for an hour and a half
which was nice, but then she had to run off to another obligation
with her mother, so we didn't even end up getting to have
dinner....but at least we had a nice chat for awhile, but then she
had to head off, so I was back in a cab and on my way back to Marco's
place. Since I hadn't actually eaten dinner I decided to make my new
Arepa recipe that I had created while staying at the place. Arepas
are a corn bread type of biscuit that the Colombians will fry and
sometimes put various ingredients in between. While staying at their
house over the few weeks, I started to experiment with them a bit,
and came up with a fairly delicious recipe that I had shared with
Marco, who was quite impressed, as was his grandmother. It sounds a
bit odd, but I would put both Dijon mustard and pesto sauce on the
arepa shells, and then fry ham and cheese in between them, and then
top it off with some fried egg with ketchup, a bit of hot sauce, and
some pepper...delicious.....so after making 2 of those, I just had a
relatively quiet night looking into flights again for Leticia, and I
ended up finding a cheap one for the upcoming Tuesday, but when I
went to book the flight, the company's website was having errors
processing my card, and then of course when I went to try and book
the flight with a different card, the cheap flight had
disappeared...dammit! So I just resorted to watching more of The
Wire, which I had become fully addicted to by this point, and of
course due to my poor sleep habits, I ended up staying up until
around 5 am, ughh.
The next day was a pretty quiet one, as
I slept in fairly late, and really didn't get up to a whole lot, just
mostly hanging out at Marco's place, working a little bit on some
Spanish and just bumming around. It was another hockey game/movie
night, so nothing really exciting. The next day I had spoken with a
friend of mine from Central America, Jimmy, about possibly meeting up
for dinner that evening, as he was in town but leaving on a night bus
for Medellin, so we agreed to try and meet up at Hooters, but never
really had a time in mind. I spent most of the afternoon just bumming
around again, until it was nearly 6 pm and hadn't heard back from
Jimmy yet, who had gone to the Salt Cathedral....I decided to just
get out of the house at least, and wander down there to see if they
were kicking around, and managed to grab a taxi driven by a fairly
nice guy who was honest and told me to call him for any other taxi
rides, as he knew how badly other foreigners were treated by the taxi
drivers. The traffic was a bit heavy, and I didn't get to Hooters
until around 7:15 pm, and couldn't find Jimmy anywhere there, so I
figured they had gone to a different restaurant and had no way of
contacting them, so I just decided to eat there by myself and enjoy
the scenery a little. I later found out that Jimmy had in fact been
there, but had left around 7:10 pm, so I literally just missed him by
5 minutes...damn traffic! After my expensive dinner, I stuck around a
bit longer before deciding to just head back to Marco's since no one
was really around or doing anything else that evening, and had
another quiet night in.
The next day after sleeping in way too
late once again, and bumming around, I got a hold of Farah, who said
I should go and meet him for some cheap food at 100 Montecitos, and
then go out to a party that night. MaPa had also invited me to the
party, which was some Red Party associated with her University, so I
figured getting out of the house would be a good idea, since it was
likely my last week in Bogota, as I had looked at flights to Medellin
for the upcoming week and was pretty sure I was going. I went down to
the Zona Rosa, and of course the taxi driver didn't have change for a
50,000 peso note, and I immediately was worried about another
counterfeiting scam, but managed to find some guys on the street who
had change for me so that I could pay my taxi and then proceeded to
sit and wait and wait and wait at the the restaurant, wondering where
the hell Farah was....he had said he would be there in 10 minutes and
it was already 45 minutes and no sign....eventually Santiago showed
up, and then Farah but not for another 30 minutes or so, as he had
randomly met his cousin who had just flown in from Miami, for one
night for a visit, before returning back...apparently she had a lot
of money and would sometimes just fly down to Colombia for random
visits like that..strange indeed.
So after our huge and cheap meal, MaPa
and her new b/f showed up, with a ticket for me to this red party,
and we wandered over there but it was super dead, and decided to go
to a different club owned by Farah's brother and his best friend,
where we didn't have to pay cover....this was an upstairs club, which
wasn't too big but had some good music and a lot of hot hot women, so
I couldn't complain....I ended up meeting a few, but the language
barrier was a bit too difficult again...ah c'est la vie. We ended up
buying 2 bottles for some reason, and without mix, which lead to
wayyyyyy too many shots....MaPa passed out, Santiago had to go home
early, and Farah and I somehow made it until the end of the night,
but barely. We thought going to the casino for some late night
blackjack would be a good idea, which it wasn't, as I lost all my
money, and was feeling pretty blurry....eventually I made my way back
home, and had to get up in 6 hours time to go and do a graffiti tour
of Bogota with some American girl who was friends with another girl
that I had met in Bogota earlier....Unfortunately, when I woke up and
started walking to the bus with Marco, I wasn't feeling good at all,
aaaaand it started to rain, so I scrapped the idea of the walking
tour, and ended up going back to bed, sleeping until nearly 5 pm!!
Farah and Santiago wanted to go out and party that night again, but I
was feeling waaaay too rough...second real bad hangover of my
Colombia trip...oh well. So it was another night in, and early to
bed!
The next day Marco wanted to go for
some afternoon drinks at a Hookah lounge in the Zona Rosa with his
g/f and a few others, so we hopped in his car and drove down there,
thinking it would be a few cocktails and nothing more...so of course
I didn't dress accordingly, as if I would continue out on the town,
but that's of course what ended up happening. The cocktails were 2
for 1, came with a free hookah pipe, and were STRONG....while sitting
at the table listening to near endless Spanish, and occasionally
throwing in some English, a girl behind me who was sitting at a table
by herself leaned in to enquire where I was from, as she was
American, and wasn't used to hearing English being spoken out in the
pubs, as she had been there for 8 months now, teaching English. It
reminded me of a funny cartoon Marco had showed me where a man is
walking amongst a bunch of people in a foreign country and turns
around when he hears some words spoken in his native tongue, and is
accordingly curious as to where they came from. We had a decent chat
for awhile until her cousin showed up, and I reverted back to my
table, when several more people showed up, so we had to increase our
table size and end up playing Uno....apparently Colombians quite
enjoy Uno, although their rules are certainly a bit different than I
recall the rules of Uno being, but oh well....so after enjoying some
Uno for awhile, and a few more cocktails, Marco was pretty drunk and
unable to drive, and Farah told us to come to some other nightclub
that he was going to be buying some ownership in called Pompa Pompero
or something like that....before we could make it there, we stopped
at some other pub for Marco's gf to meet some friend of hers, and we
ended up meeting 3 pretty cute girls that Marco knew from school, who
seemed to take a liking to me as they wanted to practice their
English.
We ended up convincing them to leave
the one pub and come with us to the other place, and somehow managed
to convince the security guard that we should be able to take in an
entire bottle of aguardiente....strange! So we wandered inside, and
it was a fairly small venue, but kind of cool because they had a beer
pong table, which leads to some fun social games, although being a
relatively small bar, it was fairly packed and difficult to move
around....Farah and I ended up losing to some other guys, so we had
to buy them a box of aguardiente, but they were pretty cool guys and
wanted to share it with us....I really don't know where the boxes
kept coming from but it seemed like every 5 or 10 minutes there was
another box of the damn stuff....we ended up hanging out there until
the place was about to close, and apparently someone offered to have
an after party at their house, so a whole bunch of people I didn't
know, myself, Farah, Santiago, and another Cartagena guy named
Phillipe went to this after party.....well it was a decent enough
ratio, but then suddenly all the girls left except for Farah's best
friend, and there were about 20 guys and her...so being a nice gal
she ended up cooking all of us food ha ha ha..so random....it was
probably about 6:30 or 7 am by the time most people had left, except
for a select few of us, and Santiago and I were pretty much the only
ones who hadn't passed out, which lead to our inner devils coming
out, and obtaining nail polish and lipstick from the mother of the
guy who's house it was, as she had just gotten up for work or
something....and she obliged surprisingly! So we began painting
Philippe's fingernails and toes, some of Farah's nails, and then
Santiago put lipstick all over one other friend of his...well first
his face, but then for some reason he started putting it all over his
white shirt! Then he slipped and got it all over the white chair that
the guy was passed out on, and while painting Farah's nails, we also
spilled nail polish all over the white couch...yikes...at this point,
both parents were now up, and I figured it might be time to get out,
so we woke up Farah, the one girl, the guy with lipstick, and left
Philippe to sleep, and wandered outside....
Well this wander turned into an hour
long walk to try and find food, which took us to areas of Bogota that
I had no idea about or where we were....and we couldn't find anything
open, so we decided to go try and get on the TransMilenio bus system
and head back towards where we came from...well we hopped aboard one
bus, and I decided to pretend to be a flight attendant, giving
English instructions to the passengers about the bus...well
apparently either the bus driver, or someone else didn't find this to
be as funny, and soon the police were asking us to leave the bus..at
this point I just started playing the foreigner card and asking
repeatedly in English what the problem was and if someone could
explain to me what was going on...well the Colombian police are very
bad with English, and soon they were all kind of confused and didn't
really know how to handle the situation, nor communicate what was
going on, so they just told us to get back on the bus and to be on
our way...ha ha win! So we took that bus, got off near some
McDonald's, had our breakfast, and then ended up back at Santiago's
house somehow, around 10:00 am, still not having slept....at this
point they figured it would be fun to start playing with his DJ kit
on the computer, and playing some loud music and mixing tracks...well
this lasted until about 10:30 am, when I decided I was just going to
crash, and crawled up on one of the bunk beds, sleeping until about
4:30 pm.
Upon waking up, I was just told we were
leaving, and started walking, with of course no real idea where we
were going...well we ended up walking back to the Zona Rosa, where we
retrieved Farah's car...well at least waited quite sometime to
retrieve it, as he had lost his valet stub, so that took awhile to
convince the place that his car was in fact there, and once we
managed to do that, I thought I would be going back to Marco's, but
Farah just told me that we were going to his place, and then going to
a party with his brother before going out again that night...oh
great! But after stopping at his place for awhile, and then walking
towards the party, we all kind of realized we were actually fairly
tired and wanted to at least go home and get a change of clothing and
a shower, so I just hopped in a cab with the lipstick covered guy who
lived right by Marco's place, but who also conveniently didn't have
any money, so of course gringo here had to pay for the cab..ah well,
it wasn't too expensive. I tried to have a little nap, but couldn't
fall asleep, and then Alejandro said he was going to come get me to
go for a beer before going out that night, and that I had 20 minutes
to get ready...so there went my ideas of sleeping a bit. After
getting ready, he showed up, and I hopped in, not really knowing
where we would be going, other than for a beer....so we started
driving along the main roadway towards his house, when boom! We hit a
huge pothole, resulting in a flat tire...ah damn...so after pulling
over, and changing that out (while other cars with drunks drove past
us either honking or cursing), we started driving again, and were
behind a car that was going really slow...well as we passed it, we
saw that it too had a flat tire...that pothole got two cars in the
span of 15 minutes! After the laughter over that, we just went to
Alejandro's....grabbed some beers, and he invited a few girls
over....after finishing our beers and a bit of aguardiente, we
decided to head out, but then reached a few discos that were way too
packed, and the lines way too long, plus it was already after 1
am...so after wandering around for awhile, and not really finding
anything worth entering, plus trying endlessly to get ahold of Farah,
Pezzotti, and several others to see where they were partying, I ended
up giving up, and just going back to Alejandro's for awhile, making
some arepas with one of the cute girls there, and then catching a cab
back to Marco's place for the night.
The next day I decided it was time to
leave Bogota, and found a cheap flight to Medellin for Tuesday, and
found a flight to Leticia from Medellin for the following week. I
spent a pretty quiet day just hanging out with Marco, until he had to
go off to study at his g/fs place. In reality, my last 2 days of
Bogota went out with kind of a whimper. I managed to run off to at
least buy a going away gift for the house, as a sign of my
appreciation for all the family had done for me, but other than that,
had a pretty quiet day. The next day was more of the same, just
sorting out a few last minute things, getting all packed up. It was a
pretty quiet last day really, considering I didn't see anyone, or get
a chance to really say goodbye to anyone, but oh well I've never been
one to make a big deal of out goodbyes. It was an early night, and I
was up the next day, ready to make the trek to the airport, although I
didn't have to be there until a fair bit later on in the evening.
Marco had said he would probably be able to drive me to the airport,
but then he was stuck in traffic coming back, so I ended up having to
grab a taxi without actually getting to say a proper goodbye to one
of the most kindest and amazing people I've met throughout my
travels......Marco is the definition of a stand up guy, who has a big
heart and is kind and generous without expectations....he left a
lasting impression on me about Colombians in general, and I hope
there are many more men out there in the world like him. I managed to
catch a cab that had just dropped off a passenger at the building,
which was a bit of luck, as I had the house keeper try calling for
about 15 minutes to order me a taxi, and that proved to be
unsuccessful. I hopped inside and was on my way on the lengthy ride to
El Dorado Aeropuerto......the only thing I could hear was the news
channel talking about the death of Hugo Chavez, which should bring
about some very interesting changes in Venezuela and South America in
general.....all of the Venezuelans that I've met had nothing good to
say about Chavez, and think that he has completely ruined their
country....should be interesting to see what the future holds.
I arrived and checked in, and was on my
way to Medellin. I had only written down my hostel address, but
didn't really write any good directions. When I had looked at a map
of Medellin, I saw there was an airport extremely close to the place,
and figured that it must be the airport I was flying into, and that a
taxi wouldn't cost very much....well of course I was wrong, as the
airport I flew into was actually a very long way out of town. I hung
around for a little while, enquiring about taxi prices, and they
wanted around $30....no thanks! I eventually found some random
shuttle van that was going into town, and not really knowing where I
was going, but knowing that the price was good, I just hopped aboard
and was on my way in.....it was a pretty scenic drive, as we had to
drive through some mountains to get into Medellin....one interesting
thing was the amount of motorbikes all over the side of the highway,
as it appeared to be a popular hang out place for all the
bikers....well shortly after noticing that, 3 bikes went flying by
our van, zooming down the hill, and I soon realized that people were
there to race...crazy buggers! The van eventually stopped at a rather
large taxi stand area, and still not really knowing where I was
going, I just hopped off and grabbed a cab from there.
Well apparently my hostel is kind of in
a quiet area, and since taxi drivers don't have GPS systems, the guy
was sooo lost...it took so long to find the damn place, with numerous
stops to enquire from random people on the streets, or security
guards at buildings in the area....this would be a sign of things to
come over the next few days... So finally he found the location, and
I checked in, and found it to be pretty quiet. My friend Gael had
travelled through Colombia several years earlier, and had really
enjoyed a hostel called the PitStop Hostel, so that's why I picked
it. He had mentioned it was a fun party hostel, but I found that the
bar actually closed really early, so it was kind of dead, plus when I
arrived, there were a few people getting into taxis to go out, but I
didn't know anyone so I didn't bother asking to join. I just ended up
finding the nice TV room, settling in there to watch some of The
Wire, and didn't really do anything. Sitting in a TV room late at
night at a hostel can provide one with some pretty entertaining
things to see. First of all, some girl came in and sat behind the
couches, near the hostel dogs and was just kind of hidden behind
there for about 10 minutes or so before finally getting up and
leaving...I had no idea what she was doing until I actually met her
the next day and realized she was rolling a joint there, as the
hostel had a fairly strict drug policy, and she wanted to not be seen
rolling it by anyone else....then, around 2:45 am or so, a drunk man
and woman wandered into the TV room, probably looking for a place to
get it on or something, as I could ear them kissing and they kept
looking over at my direction...initially I was going to just grab my
stuff and leave, but then I figured the private rooms weren't that
expensive at the hostel, so I decided I just didn't care and remained
until I finished my show, then just wandered off to bed for the
night.
I ended up sleeping in longer than I
wanted to the next day, and found the place to be relatively quiet
again, so I enquired at the desk where I could get some local food,
and was directed towards a nice little restaurant called Patio Verde,
which was a few blocks away....While walking there I was soon
approached by a local man who was genuinely friendly and wanted to
know where I was from and what I was doing in Medellin....he had
lived in New York for quite some time, but was back in Medellin now,
and wasn't trying to sell me something, or anything on those lines,
just a genuine kind stranger...love those Colombians! I also had to
chuckle a bit when I noticed several little baggys littering the
streets, obvious signs that people had been using drugs and just
throwing their containers out on the roads...welcome to Colombia I
guess! I arrived at the restaurant and found it to be a very quiet
and small hole in the wall, with friendly enough staff and some
decent food. The serving size was quite nice and it was a typical
Colombian dish, with meat, rice, salad, and plantanos, plus some
fresh fruit juice...not too bad at all, and quite filling for $4.
After hanging out there for awhile, I went for a little wander around
the nearby area to find a supermarket to buy some things and then
returned back to the hostel, where it had become a bit more busier. I
met a few new cool people, including a pretty nice Swiss guy, and a
Canadian dude whom I actually remembered seeing in Bogota, when we
were at the hookah place on the previous Friday. After bs'ing with
them for awhile, it was time to go meet two really cute girls that
were sitting on the volleyball court, but I soon found out they both
had bfs...ah well, no worries.
We soon had a decent size group of us
all sitting on the volleyball court (which was basically a cement pad
with felt covering, not very comfortable at all on the ass) and we
spent most of the night there, chatting, telling funny stories, and
enjoying the happy hour beers from the hostel bar. Being a Wednesday,
I didn't really have much faith in the nightlife, so I wasn't too
keen on going out, although there was a few people from the hostel
who wanted to go out, but most of us never left the place. I received
a bit of a shock at one point, when suddenly my arm was wet, and I
realized that one of the bats hovering around us had shit on me! I've
had birds shit on me a few times, but a bat was definitely a new one!
Once the bar shut down at 12, it was just a relatively quiet night,
with everyone kind of retiring to either the TV room, or to bed for
the evening. I tried to fall asleep but couldn't because of my whack
sleep patterns, and because of the guy below me who had the worst gas
ever ha ha ha...oh the joys of hostel dorm rooms I guess! It was
already sunrise before I could finally get some sleep!
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| Empty bags of drugs in the streets |
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| Parque Poblado area of Medellin |
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| Lance Armstrong's scandal hasn't stopped the Colombians from selling hi equipment |
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| Bat shit....really? Come on! |
Due to the late sleep time, I again was
the last person in the room to actually get out of bed, although
there were several other very late sleepers in the mix. When I
finally dragged myself out, the place was again pretty quiet, so I
decided to go check out the famous Medellin cable car, that everyone
talks about. I noticed there was a place called Arvi Park at the top
of one of the two cable cars, and figured that might be a nice spot
to go check out, since I assumed it was a park on the top of the
mountains and would provide a nice view of the city. So on I went,
first on the Metro, and onwards to the cable car. The nice thing
about the Metro in Medellin is that a ticket gives you access to the
cable car as well, so no need to pay extra...well at least to a
certain point. Upon arriving at the Metro, I found an absolutely
massive lineup, but then realized that if I walked past the line,
there was an extremely short lineup to get tickets...apparently
people weren't too aware of the two ticket booths....so I grabbed my
pass and was on my way. While riding the metro, I did notice a large
exhibition sign for a Darwin exhibition, and noted that, figuring I
might check it out at a later point in time. I arrived at the one
station, and went and joined the queue for the cable car....at this
point I was quite excited when I saw that a midget would be hoping
onto the same cable car as me....how many people get to ride cable
cars with midgets!! hahaha....so I rode that one to the top, but then
realized that it stopped at a station where I could continue onwards
with another cable car presumably to this park...it looked like the
car went all the way to the top of the mountain, so I went and found
that I had to pay extra to take it....at this point I probably should
have wondered why there weren't really any people lining up to go,
but oh well, so I bought my ticket and was in the car with a family.
This cable car provided a really great
view of the city, however, I soon realized that it wasn't going to
simply stop right at the very top of the mountain...oh no.....this
time damn thing was going way off into the countryside! I think the
family in the car was kind of wondering why the hell a gringo was
riding this particular car, so late in the day, as I was looking at
all the cars returning from my destination, and they were all full of
people, but it was just me and this family and no one else in any of
the other cable cars going onwards to where we were headed.....after
about 15 minutes i was really starting to reconsider my choice to
ride this car in particular....as it was going way the hell out to
the middle of nowhere ha ha ha! It was also getting late in the day,
and I really hadn't planned at all for where I was going. We finally
arrived at the park, and even the staff there were already closing
down their little shacks and desks...oh damn...so I went for a quick
little wander around the area, but soon realized it was a park that
was more meant to be visited during the early day, as there were a
lot of hiking trails through the woods...but with the day ending, and
being solo...I didn't think it was a great idea to start wandering
off along some trails, so I spent all of 10 minutes up top, being
chased by stray dogs, before deciding to just head back
down....lesson learned! I spent the next 20 minutes riding back by
myself to the next cable car station, where I had to buy another
ticked to continue on.
The area with the cable car station is
actually in parts of the more poor neighbourhoods of Medellin....and
it's not so common for gringos to be in that area of town, especially
late in the day...I didn't stick around too late to find that out,
but did find out from another group of people that went a few days
later that a lot of the people were giving them the “you really
shouldn't be here this late in the day” look...ha ha! I ended up
meeting a cute girl on the next cable car down, and chatted a bit
about Medellin, before she walked me towards the train I should be
taking and made sure I got on the right one...such kind people! I
managed to make it back and make the long trek back to the hostel,
just in time for happy hour..! phew! The placed had picked up a bit
more and there were quite a few new and fun people kicking around...I
ended up hanging out with two pretty cool Brits, as well as two
Swedish brothers, and a Swiss Canadian dude, and of course several
people from the previous evening. We had talked about heading to some
super crazy nightclub called Mango, that was apparently one of the
most intense nightclubs in the world, but it was also quite far away.
Instead, the two British guys said they had a Colombian friend who
was going to come and take us out to some place fun....he eventually
showed up, and I had to laugh, as it was the same guy who I had met
in Bogota several weeks earlier, who was friends with Miranda...small
world.
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| On my way to the middle of nowhere |
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| So much for stopping at the top of the hill for a nice view of the city....where the hell am I going??? |
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| Well the park had some nice flowers at least? |
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| One of the poorer Barrios of Medellin |
So after a few laughs and explaining to
others how we had met each other, we continued on with the
Englishmen, the Swedes, and a few others having some beers and
cocktails, before Sergio, the Colombian, told us we should go check
out a place called Babylon, that had 15,000 peso entry for men, and
all you can drink, plus free entry and all you can drink for women,
so we convinced a few others from the hostel to go check it out. We
hopped in a cab and arrived and found a pretty large lineup with some
beautiful Medellin women, with the typical boob jobs and big
asses...ha ha ha it's a very common look for the ladies of the city.
We soon lined up and then Sergio went to the front of the line and
found out that only the women had to wait in line, and that the men
could skip the line and pay their cover to get in.....talk about a
backwards system! So being the gentlemen that we were, we ditched the
3 girls we were with and skipped the lineup ha ha ha.....upon entry
we found the place to already be fairly busy, with some nice groups
of girls and settled up at the bar, getting a pretty quick start on
the free beverages....myself, the Swiss Canadian, and the two Swedes
probably got our money's worth within the first 30 minutes and just
hung out enjoying the scenery.....we were getting the eyes from a few
of the girls, but when trying to speak with them, we soon realized
that English was not an option, which kind of deterred most of us,
since we all weren't terribly confident in our Spanish except for the
Swiss-Canadian guy. After some brief moments of dancing and terrible
attempts at communication with the local girls, we all kind of found
foreign girls..lame I know. There had been one girl staring several
times at me by the bar, so eventually I wandered up to chat with her,
and found she was Austrian, so English was an acceptable option...we
hit it off pretty well, and pretty much spent the rest of the night
together, other than a few brief moments where two Colombian girls
that were staying at our hostel kept grabbing us to try and salsa
dance with us.....they were actually pretty cute, but the Austrian
girl made a bit more of a play for me, so I ended up going back to
her.
Meanwhile, the Swedes found some
Panamanian and Swiss girl, the English guys found some Colombians,
and several more people from our hostel showed up, quite late,
missing out on most of the free drinks, as the bartenders kind of
stopped serving the foreigners and were mostly only taking orders
from the locals.....in this case, the early bird did actually get the
worm! We were pretty much shut down to about 1 drink every 30 to 40
minutes at this point, but I already had found my lady so I was good.
We had talked about heading off to her hostel or mine, but of course
the whole dorm room situation is never good for anyone.....and then
we just kind of came to a stalemate, especially as the place was
closing. We wandered outside and found a few people telling us to go
to an after party at another club, and after quite some time of
deliberation, we decided to go ahead and do that. We arrived at the
after party and it was in a massive disco called Fahrenheit, that
would have been a great place if it was full but it was pretty much
empty....just several big boobed Colombian girls and some rich old
men buying bottles at their tables...I didn't really feel like
forking out big money for the beers there, so I ended up just hanging
with the Austrian, while an Italian guy and Swiss guy that we went
with took their turns taking a crack at the local girls without much
success.....I was a bit shocked when one of the big boobed and very
attractive girls came up to us and asked if we were married, which we
were a bit surprised about and said definitely not, so she then just
grabbed me and took me over to her table where she began some very
very naughty dancing with me....I guess the girl just liked dancing
with foreigners as she grabbed the other guys after me and was doing
the same kind of dancing....quite hot and heavy....I like! Eventually
the place was shutting down, and we were all tired, so we wandered
outside to find a taxi, and found a huge semi trailer pull up and
tried to barter with him to drive us back to our hostels, and he kind
of played along and seemed rather interested, but soon realized it
would be pretty difficult to navigate the tight streets where our
hostels were, so he declined. We ended up finding an actual taxi, and
had him drop off everyone at their respective
hostels....unfortunately the Austrian didn't invite me to stay at her
place for the night, but I said I would come by the next day to hang
out, so we said goodbye and I was on my way back to the hostel for
the night.
The next day I struggled to get up at a
decent hour to go to the Austrian's hotel, as I hadn't gotten back
until 6:30 am and said I would be at her place at 2 pm....I managed
to crawl out of bed, once again the last one in the room, and grab a
quick shower before heading out to the Casa Kiwi. It was one of the
other hostels recommended to me, but I couldn't find it on Hostelworld when I was looking for a place, so I ended up with the
PitStop. I caught my cab and showed up about 10 minutes past 2, and
of course I couldn't find the girl, plus we hadn't actually exchanged
names so I couldn't enquire at the desk if she was around...oops. I
ended up just hanging out for 20 minutes in case she was still asleep
or out, and she did eventually show up, shocked that I was actually
there. We ended up heading out to take the metro to the Darwin
exhibit that I wanted to see and had told her about the previous
night, which she claimed to be interested in....well we arrived and
she immediately started laughing, realizing that she had actually
been to the exhibit earlier in the week, and just hadn't realized
what I was talking about....so she started laughing and said that she
didn't want to pay to enter again, but that I could and she would
wait around...so we went to the entrance, and found that it had
actually closed for the day...damn tardiness!
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| Medellin graffiti, just as great as Bogota's |
So we decided to wander over to the
nearby Botanical Gardens, and walked around there for awhile,
observing some plants...I guess...and some ducks, and other
people....nothing too crazy exciting, although it was nice to have
company with me, as visiting Gardens are typically something I seem
to always go do myself....I think we had a nice time together,
although she wasn't really acting the same as the previous night, so
I could tell it was more of a drunk one night thing but oh well. We
wandered around for awhile, and then went into the city centre to
grab a bite to eat, and to see some Boltero statues. He's a famous
Colombian artist who makes all of his subjects fat...it's a unique
style and quite funny. Of course, since the backpacking trail is
relatively small, we ran into a few people from my hostel in that
area, and went to a cheap local restaurant for dinner together,
before they headed off to take the cable car to see the sunset, and
myself and the Austrian decided to head back to our hostels for a nap
perhaps. We arrived at the train station nearest our hostels, and I
could have walked but she was taking a taxi and said I could just hop
in with her to save the walk, so we tracked one down and right away
had problems with the asshole....we told him two stops and showed the
addresses of them, but he was getting all worked up because the one
address was too close to the station, and he didn't feel like it was
worth his time to drive there, so we kept trying to tell him that
there were two stops..but he was being a total jerk about it and then
he just suddenly stopped and pointed towards my hostel and said you
can just walk up there to your place, I'm not taking you any
further....so basically he had driven me parallel to where I needed
to go, not getting my any closer, nor the girl....so we got out and I
told her to not pay the guy, but she did anyway, and then we started
walking, trying to find another taxi, which took forever....when we
finally did, we again told him two stops, showed him the addresses,
but then the idiot drove us all the way to her hostel, even though
mine was closer...and when we arrived he was surprised when I stayed
in the vehicle...apparently he couldn't understand that we wanted two
stops, so I again showed him the address and the map, but he kept
pointing at the metro station from which we had recently came from,
and I told him “no, I want to go to this address” and pointed
again to the address and he started driving and kept talking about
the metro station...well sure enough, the idiot drove me all the way
back to the metro station, so by this point, I had been in two taxis,
had taken over 30 minutes and was back to square one, even though it
would have taken 10 minutes or so just to walk straight to the
hostel...arghhh why are taxi drivers such idiots!! So I basically had
to step by step explain where and what streets to turn on to get me
back to the hostel..what a dumbass....and when we finally arrived I
told him he should get a gps and he just laughed...idiots.
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| Posters in English too, kind of a big deal apparently |
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| Downtown Medellin |
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| One of the Botero babes |
So after that ordeal, it was already
happy hour time, and I had no time for a nap, so I just joined
several people from the previous night for that, and shared some
stories. Myself and one Canadian guy had wanted to go check out
Mango's that night, but weren't really having much luck with that,
and the Swedish guys had suggested we go check out a place called
Blue instead....so after a few beers, it looked like the majority of
people would go there for the night. While in the hostel bar there
was a large group of Colombian locals having drinks and a
party.....we had been told earlier by some staff that there were
often Colombian women coming to the hostel on weekends, looking for
foreign men...they were called Gringo Hunters ha ha...so I thought
this group might be one of them, but they weren't. I ended up meeting
one particularly drunk and crazy girl there, who was with a friend
and were planning on going out that night to some other club and said
we should tag along...she was pretty touchy feely, and soon her
friend had left without telling her, and she was alone, so she
convinced me and a few others that we should go to a different club
called Baren with her, that was an electronica style bar in the Zona
Rosa. After rounding up a few people, including the Aussies, a random
Croatian, a Belgian girl, Swiss guy, and the one Canadian dude. The
Colombian girl was absolutely a drunk mess, and I soon found out that
she had just broken up with her bf that day because he was cheating
on her, so she was on a bit of a drunk floosie rampage! She was all
over me most of the time, but would also go over to the one Aussie
guy, alternating flirting back and forth....at one point she even
fell into a nearby table, spilling drinks and glasses all over the
place...I didn't put much effort in because I honestly figured we
would be sending her home in a taxi by 12....but somehow she
prevailed!
After about 1.5 hours at the Baren
place, which was more of a lounge place although it did have a DJ, we
decided to head on to the next place. As it so happened, it was a
nightclub called Mansion, which also happened to be where a girl that
I met in Cuba and then again in Cartagena liked to go, and told me to
check out if I was ever in Medellin. Well sure enough, as soon as we
arrived at the club, there she was, sitting out front of the place ha
ha....we caught up briefly, but she was just on her way home as it
was already 1:30 am, but told me to come back the next day, as she
would be there again. I tried to chat a bit longer, but crazy drunk
Colombian girl came running outside, and grabbed me aggressively and
took me inside. We arrived to find a rather small club, but with some
wicked DJs playing and a pretty young and fun crowd. People were very
friendly, and we ended up making a few new friends. I had to laugh
when I noticed a guy in the corner in a wheelchair, and then several
people walking up to the guy beside him, and receiving packages of
drugs, as the apparent drug dealer hid his drugs inside the
wheelchair and would just grab them out as needed. Crazy place! We
continued to party and for some reason I thought the group could use
a bottle of aguardiente, although I only wanted a small bottle, I
somehow ended up with a large one..lost in translation I guess.
Needless to say, it was way too much for our group to drink, and I
just ended up giving some away to the locals. Of course drunk and
crazy Colombian girl loved the aguardiente, and me accordingly, and
was soon running up, taking a shot and aggressively kissing
me...crazy crazy woman. Then she would run back to the Aussie guy,
dance with him for a bit, kiss him a bit, and then back to me...like
a yo yo....eventually the place was about to shut down and I noticed
a local girl pointing at me and smiling, and then soon realized it
was the g/f of Fabrice, a Frenchman that was staying at the beach
house next to Jo's in Santa Marta...crazy small world. So we got to
talking, and the place was closing but he said he knew where the
after party was and would take us there. The rest of our group was
too tired/drunk to continue on, so they wanted to go home, but the
Aussie, myself, and crazy Colombian girl were still up for heading
out so off we went, with the others telling me to take care of the
Aussie.
He was pretty drunk and on something
but I agreed, and we walked over with Fabrice to this pretty shady
looking house with a giant sheet metal door....and we stood there and
then someone inside moved the sheet metal out of the way and quickly
hurried us in...kind of dodgy but pretty funny. We walked through
some kitchen to grab beers, and then went up the stairs. I had to
laugh when I saw the wheelchair from the previous club, being carried
up the stairs....convenient drug dealer going everywhere! The room
was quite small with a little DJ set, and it was very very hot, plus
mostly guys so I didn't really feel like sticking around too long.
Fabrice and his g/f stayed about 10 minutes or so and then left, and
the crazy Colombian girl was too drunk and high to have any sort of
conversation with, so after about 20 minutes of the after party I
decided to get out of there. I told the Aussie guy that I was
leaving, but he thought he still had a chance with the girl, so he
stayed, even though he had absolutely no idea where he was and where
to go. Hilariously enough, his group had also checked into a
different hostel that day...rather than pay the taxi, I didn't think
it was terribly far to walk back to the hostel, so I began walking,
and found a little restaurant open, so I grabbed a bite to eat there
and chatted with one of the friends of the owner for awhile, before
continuing my walk back to the hostel. It took me a good 30 minutes
or so to make it back, and when I arrived I found pretty much
everyone sitting outside of the hostel, having beers and
chatting...they were a bit worried about me, as I was the only one
who hadn't came back yet, and hilariously enough, the one Aussie had
no idea where his new hostel was so he just took a taxi back to the
old one, and was fortunate that his friends were also there. We all
hung out laughing about the evening's events, until around 6 am or
so...crazy late nights non stop.
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| Lovely new style modelled by the Aussies |
The next day was another pretty quiet
one, as I woke up pretty late and just hung around the pool, ordered
a pizza and hung out with the hostel people. I ended up meeting some
cool French guys and chatting with them for quite awhile, practicing
my French, and not really doing much else. Fabrice happened to find
me on Facebook, and said he wanted to go out that night, so I told
him to stop by the hostel later in the evening, and ended up just
spending the whole day there chilling out until Happy Hour again
rolled around, and more of the same as the previous nights. I didn't
have any cell phone reception, and was worried that Fabrice might try
and get a hold of me, but would be unable to, but sure enough I saw
him walk in with a friend and look around the hostel bar for me. We
grabbed a seat and had a few beers and rums while alternating between
speaking English, French, and Spanish amongst ourselves, as his
friend only spoke Spanish and a little English. Everyone from the
hostel wanted to go check out the Blue nightclub that night, as Mango
apparently was no longer open according to Fabrice's local
friend...bummer......so once the bar closed, a decent size group of
us started walking towards the Zona Rosa. Unfortunately, we kind of
split up at one intersection on accident, and lost most of the group,
so Fabrice took us to a cool shot bar before we would make our way
over to the other nightclub. We arrived at the shot bar, and a couple
that had come out with us from the hostel couldn't get in because
they weren't wearing shoes..lame, so they left and it was just
Fabrice, his friend, and one of the Frenchmen and myself remaining.
We grabbed two shots at the shooter bar, which was fairly
entertaining as they covered the whole bar in flammable substances
and lit everything on fire. After the quick stop there, we did a bit
of a pub crawl, wandering around for awhile, before Fabrice decided
to take us to a more interesting and shady part of town, just to show
us the area.
So we hopped in his vehicle and drove
there and cruised around a bit, before leaving. Unfortunately,
because of the notorious nature of that area of town, the police
often assume illicit acts are committed, so they pulled us over
shortly after.....and were pulled us all out of the vehicle to search
us. We didn't have anything on us, but because Fabrice had a few
drinks, and myself and the Frenchman didn't have our passports on us,
they were trying to say we were going to be in trouble...so Fabrice
and his friend did what most locals commonly do and offered up a
bribe...it was about 100,000 pesos or $50 to make the police leave,
which they gladly took and we were on our way. It was probably 10
minutes later when we passed another large group of police, and sure
enough, they chased us down, stopping us again ha ha ha! This time
they didn't search us at all, but could smell the beer on Fabrice,
sooo another 100,000 peso bribe was provided, and again, we were on
our way....fun times in Colombia. So rather than driving back to the
Zona Rosa, Fabrice wanted to take us to one of the local strip clubs,
but rather so we drove over there and spent about an hour there,
admiring the lovely ladies of Colombia, and laughing at the old
creepy men....wait a minute...maybe we were also the old creepy men
ha ha! After our time there, it was closing down, so we drove back to
our hostel, as Fabrice didn't want to risk getting stopped and having
to bribe anymore, and the Frenchman had kind of had enough of our
adventure, so he stayed behind, and the rest of us grabbed to the
Zona Rosa to try and get into the Blue Nightclub, but it was closed
down unfortunately, so we went back across town to find the after
parties.
We arrived there, and found a nightclub
that was pretty posh and full of groups of people, and girls that
were beautiful but all with men...so after a few quick beers, we were
ready to get out of there, and it was already pretty late, so after
grabbing some late night street food, it was time to head back for
the night. I said my goodbye, and had thoroughly enjoyed my random
night out with Fabrice...full of adventure as always! The next day I
had hoped to go on the Pablo Escobar tour, but of course I slept in,
since I didn't get back until around 6 am once again....terrible
terrible sleep schedule. After struggling to get out of bed around 3
pm, realizing that I was already well past check out time, I packed
up and ended up hanging out around the common area for the next few
hours, before officially checking out very very late....fortunately
the hostel was pretty cool about it and didn't charge me an extra day
or anything. I said some quick goodbyes, and caught a cab to a hotel
where I could catch the bus to the airport. I was just told the name
of the hotel, so my taxi took me to the hotel, but the staff there
was good enough to direct him to where the actual bus stop was, as it
was actually a block behind the hotel, and I grabbed my ticket and
hopped aboard. It was a relatively quick ride to the airport, as I
met a nice Dutch man who was teaching in Mexico the last few years,
but had been travelling around Colombia visiting some old students.
We chatted the whole way to the airport, and then said a quick
goodbye and I checked in and was ready to head off to Bogota.
 |
| Late night food stand visit mmm |
 |
| Who actually has seen anyone use a remote control car on an airplane?? |
The
flight was quick, and I had booked a hotel for the night, close to
the airport, at the Hotel Postibon, which ended up being a pretty
decent place for a cheap price.
http://www.hotelfontibon.com/home.htm
Rather than wait
in the large queue for the official taxis, I found another guy
wandering around asking if I needed a taxi so I hopped in with
him...of course the prick tried to rip me off, wanting 25,000 pesos
for the 10 minute drive to the hotel...whereas my taxi from Marco's
house, taking 50 minutes, was 20,000 pesos...the driver kept trying
to say there was an extra charge for driving from the airport, which
I agreed with him, but the charge was 3500 pesos and he kept pointing
at the card...of course I argued back repeatedly, and said I wasn't
giving him any more than 15,000, as he was a cheat, so then he told me
to ask the hotel staff what the taxi should cost, so I did just
that...sure enough the doorman said no way that it should cost
25,000, that at most it should be 17,000, which even then was way too
much, but I told the driver that, and he bitched and moaned but took
the 17,000.....minor win for me...but still....once again confirming
my belief that taxi drivers and politicians are the most corrupt
people in the world.... I f***ing hate taxi drivers they all most of them are pricks. So after that affair, I checked in, and had a pretty quiet
night in, getting to bed at a decent hour, although struggling to
fall asleep because of my bad sleep patterns.
I was up early the next day for
breakfast, which was probably a good thing, as it started me back
into a decent sleep cycle...breakfast wasn't anything special, but it
hit the spot, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that the hotel
offered a free shuttle service to the airport, so I took that and was
on my way to Leticia! I caught my flight, and met a pretty nice
Austrian guy who ran a “Colombian style” restaurant in Austria,
which meant they didn't actually serve Colombian food,, they just had
a Colombian style...funny and weird. We got along pretty good and he
said to stop by sometime if I was ever in Graz, and we went our
separate ways in Leticia. Of course, in typical fashion, the airport
had some mysterious “tourist tax” of 20,000 pesos for arriving in
Leticia.....the dodgy taxes, tariffs, etc never end. I paid that and
found a cab to a hostel that I had booked into, and was on my way.
Leticia is very very very hot and very humid, as it's in the jungle
and is on the tri border of Peru, Brazil, and Colombia. I wanted to
take a boat on the Amazon from there to Manaus, Brazil, so upon
arrival at La Janganda Hostel
http://www.hostelbookers.com/hostels/colombia/leticia/71752/.
The girl working there was pretty kind, and had some quick
information for me about the boat trip and about the immigration and
emigration procedures. Of course, I found out that I should have
gotten my exit stamp at the airport...I knew I should have looked
around when I arrived there, but thought that I had read about
receiving it from the police station in Leticia. It was something to
look into the next day anyway. I met an Aussie guy and a Swiss guy
who had been in Leticia for a few days, and said it was a pretty
boring place, with not much to do, other than a few tours. There also
happened to be two guys who had just arrived and were from
Saskatchewan! In 2 years of travel, I've probably met about 4 people
from Saskatchewan, which when you consider how many people I've
met...it's quite a shock to meet two in one hostel..and of course one
of them knew several people that I knew from back home...small world.
 |
| Good visual representation of Leticia |
The next boat to Manaus was on
Wednesday, so I figured Tuesday would be my day to get that all
sorted out, and Monday I didn't really have any plans, so the group
of us just sat around the hostel, drinking beer and trying to stay
cool in the intense heat of the jungle...a few beers and a few hours
of chatting and hearing some funny stories about the two Saskatchewan
boys and their adventures. They were quite the duo, as they had just
come from Cartagena, where they had been in trouble with the police a
few times.....one of their nights in Cartagena resulted in some guy
asking them on the streets if they wanted to go party, so they went
with him to some strip club, where some other guy sat down with them
and brought over a few local girls who couldn't speak any English,
and the guys couldn't speak any Spanish...so after about 10 or 15
minutes of them sitting with them, the girls left, and they returned
the bottle of whiskey that the random guy had brought over, since it
wasn't opened. At this point the random guy told them that they owed
him 350,000 pesos because he paid for the girls to get in and for the
whiskey, which wasn't even opened. At this point the guys just told
him to get lost, and that they weren't paying for anything, as the
girls didn't even speak to them, and the entry to the place was free
anyway...so they tried to leave and he became very agitated with them
and started yelling at them...so they quickly jumped into a cab, but
then one of the guy's friends jumped into the front seat, while the
other guy was banging on their window and trying to get into the cab
with them. They quickly took off but then the police pulled over the
taxi 5 or 6 minutes later, and the guy in the front seat jumped out
but threw a bag of cocaine into the back seat, which the police then
found and tried to blame the guys for. They said it wasn't theirs,
and were arguing, when the angry guy showed up and started yelling at
them some more, and the police tried to take them into a back alley
with the other guy, but they told them to get more police over as
they weren't going into some back alley with 2 policeman and some
crazy local. So more police men showed up, and they were put in
handcuffs while the local guy was yelling in their face that they
were in big trouble, and that they now owed him $3500 USD, which
pissed the Sask guys off and they kept telling him he wasn't getting
a single cent, and that they would rather pay for a lawyer than give
him money. This infuriated the guy further, who then told them that
he was going to get his friend from immigration to come, so he caught
on the phone and some guy showed up in party clothing, looking like
he had just come from the nightclub and had no papers or identity to
say he worked for immigration.
At this point, they were in handcuffs
and being screamed at by the local, and thought they were going to
get into a fight for sure, but then the police just ended up taking
them to the police station, where they sat for another 5 hours, and
the angry local kept coming back every 30 minutes yelling at them and
saying they owed him money.....after about 5 hours of this, they
asked the police if they could just pay a bribe to leave, and they
said sure, so they paid about $50 to get out, but wanted the police
to drive them to their hostel, as they feared the local guy would
jump them if they got outside..the police wouldn't drive them but did
call them a taxi, and they made their way back to the hostel for the
night. The next day some friend of the local guy showed up at their
hostel and told them that Joseph (the local guy) wanted his money,
and they promptly replied that Joseph could go screw himself and they
weren't paying him anything....so they ended up remaining in their
hotel for the rest of the day until their flight that evening to
Leticia, glad to be escaping from Cartagena before anything worse
happened. We kept making jokes over the next few days, saying that
Joseph would randomly show up with his “immigration” friend and
hunt them down to get his money ha ha...what a wild time!
After we finished up our dinner at a
nearby restaurant, we returned back to the hostel, had some rum and
cokes, and decided to head over to the Brazil side for a few beers
since there was more happening on that side of the area. There's no
formal border control, so we walked right into Tabatinga, Brazil and
found a nearby pub....illegal immigration win! Being a Monday, it was
a pretty quiet night, with only a select few locals having some ice
cold beers. While buying a round of beers, we saw one very very very
drunk local try to get on his motorbike and drive home....well as
soon as he sat on the thing and tried to start it, he fell off the
curb into several other bikes, and was pinned underneath this bike.
The guys helped get the bike off him, and the guy was bleeding
heavily from the head, but wanted to continue on...so he went back
into the bar to buy another beer! After drinking that, he tried to
get a mototaxi to take him home, but couldn't even sit on the back of
that bike without falling off, so the mototaxi had to grab a second
passenger to sit behind him and hold him up between the driver to
drive him home. After this hilarious event, we then found a local
homeless looking guy lingering around, so we decided to give him some
beer in exchange for tricks...he didn't really speak any Spanish, but
we tried unsuccessfully to get him to do some backflips or something
else, but he wouldn't do it, he would only do stupid dancing.....well
we should have never given him any beer in the first place, as he
just wouldn't leave us alone for the rest of the night....it was
getting late so we decided to head back to the hostel for the night.
The next day I walked down to the
airport to get my exit stamp, and arrived back at the hostel, when
the guys told me they were taking a boat on the river to Monkey
Island, and that I should join them for the afternoon. I asked the
girls at the hostel if it would be a problem if I went the next
morning to get my Brazil immigration stamp, and they said it wouldn't
be a problem, so I decided to head out with the guys...we went down
to the docks and found our boat driver named Dario, who had Dario #1
written on his boat...we assumed he must be the best and fastest boat
driver out there, so all was good. We were also told it would take 45
minutes to get to Monkey Island from town, and being 2 pm, we thought
we should have enough time to get there and wander around, so we were
ready to go. It was pretty funny when Kip, the Aussie went to jump
into the boat and landed one of the wooden seats, breaking it in
half...all the locals and the boat owner had a pretty good laugh over
that, and the driver didn't seem to care too much. Fat ass! We were
on our way, but first had to make a stop in Peru, just across the
river, to get some fuel....well that took a bit longer than expected,
and at one point the boat actually started to float away from the
fueling station, while our driver was inside the building...he came
out just in time to grab an oar and stick it into the boat to pull us
back before we were lost at sea...which probably would have turned
into a fun adventure I'm sure. After the refueling we began the drive
to the island, and it noticed some river dolphins swimming in front
and behind us....cool.
 |
| After 2 days in the Jungle, this is pretty much what I look like |
 |
| Nothing particularly special about this, but I just liked the look of it |
 |
| Dario #1...pfsssh yeah right |
 |
| Good job Kip, way to break the seat |
 |
| the Amazon |
 |
| Apparently there's Amazon cruises |
We were probably about an hour into the
drive, and Kip kept saying “oh we must be close”...by this point
we had all wished we had brought a beer or two, and had grabbed
something to eat, as we were beginning to become hungry. We spent the
time sharing travel stories and getting to know each other a bit
better. Well it was over 2 hours when we finally arrived at Monkey
Island, where we found that a) it was 30,000 pesos to enter and b) it
was closing in 15 minutes....what the hell! The guide said there
weren't any monkeys nearby, and that we would have to walk 4 kms into
the island to see any, and that there wasn't enough time to do
that...so we grabbed some snacks and sat around doing nothing. We had
already paid 45,000 pesos each for this damn boat ride, and found out
it was for nothing...the friendly staff told us we could come back
tomorrow of course! So, it was back into the uncomfortable boat, and
another 2 hours more back to town...not too impressed! But, we did
manage to make a small stop on the way back that somewhat salvaged
the day. We were passing by a small village on the river, and our
boat driver mentioned something about giving a “propina” or
Spanish for tip, and pulled up on shore at the village. We hopped out
of the boat, and were soon met by several villagers, and weren't
quite sure what they wanted or what we were there to do, but then
they went back into their homes and emerged with others, all
carrying various animals of the Amazon, that they seemed to keep as
pets. There were Sloths, crazy mutant looking Turtles (think of Toka from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2), Birds, Caimans
(a type of crocodile), and one guy who had a Praying Mantis with a
small rope tied around it's body, much like a leash. My favourite was
by far the Sloths..seriously, how cool are they?! They are so slow
moving and so lazy, but they have this cheeky smile that you can't
help but love. The villagers would pass us to them, and they would
ever so slowly move their arms and grab around our necks so that we
were holding them like babies...it was pretty funny. The one that I
held, kept grabbing for my silver chain and trying to take it off,
probably the slowest thief in history, but it eventually realized it
couldn't get it off and gave up..hooray for laziness! After hanging
around for about 10 minutes taking some photos, we gave them some
spare change we had and were back in the boat and on our way.
 |
| Well we didn't see any Monkeys, but at least there was a nice view |
 |
| How awesome are Sloths!! |
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| Toka from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 |
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| Look at my animal, give meeee money! |
 |
| Caiman |
We arrived back at the hostel and told
the staff that the island was closed or nearly closed when we
arrived, and they said “oh yes, you had to take the fast boat to
get there in time”...well they had organized the damn boat for us
in the first place! You would think they would have organized a fast
boat when they knew the slow boat would get us there over 2 hours
later and not in time to see anything...ughh. The guys had planned to
do a 3 day jungle tour the next day, and the one Swiss guy was going
to be taking the boat to Manaus on Saturday, and since I liked
everyone and we were having fun together, I spontaneously decided to
stay a few more days in Leticia and delay my boat trip to Manaus for
Saturday..which of course would result in disaster, but I'll get to
that later.
So there was nothing else to do but
make fun of the situation and realize that shit happens. Since we
were all starving, we went to a nearby pizza restaurant for dinner,
but I didn't have any money, and neither did the Swiss guy, so after
wandering around trying to find a bank that would take my shitty bank
card, and being walked to the banks by some local kid (who of course
just wanted money for “showing” us where the bank was, even
though it was 2 blocks away and we already knew where they were) we
grabbed some cash, and the Swiss guy was nice enough to actually give
the kid some money..but I only had large bills so I wasn't giving him
anything. We went back to the pizza restaurant, where the guys were
having a hell of a time ordering, as the woman working there spoke
some sort of messed up hybrid of Spanish-Portuguese and couldn't
understand nor speak anything that made sense to us. We miraculously
did end up with beers, but the pizzas that we attempted to order were
all messed up, but fortunately there was enough to go around. After
our dinner, we went back to the hostel to confirm the jungle tour,
and to go grab some supplies. I again enquired with the hostel staff
if there would be an issue with my immigration, since I was now an
illegal immigrant, and they assured me there would be no problems. We
had a pretty quiet night in, as we had to leave at 8:30 am the next
day on our tour.
Being Colombia, 8:30 am meant 9:30 am
the next day, so after waiting around for our English translator to
show up, we had all our gear and were out the door, going down to the
piers to get our boat that would take us to the Peruvian jungle
(another country I would now be illegally immigrating to). Well we
arrived at the harbour, and guess who was our boat driver....Dario #1
oh f**k! We were surprised to see that he had actually fixed the
broken seat from the day before, but were definitely not looking
forward to another long ass ride.....his boat had a decent sized
motor, but I'm pretty sure the guy chose to drive a lot slower than
he could, to save on fuel and maximize his profits....we told our
translator Jose about the previous day's ordeal, and he had a good
laugh. He was a nice enough guy, who had lived in Leticia earlier in
his life, moved to Bogota for several years, and had returned back to
Leticia as he preferred the small and wild feel of the city, compared
to Bogota. He was teaching English in Leticia, and also doing
translating work for tours, and hoping to open a small hostel in his
house at one point. We began our long drive across the Amazon and
onto a smaller river, passing through thick jungle full of vibrant
and colourful wildlife and vegetation. Some of the more impressive
sights were the very bright blue butterflies that would swoop near
our boat at times (Jose told us they were an official symbol of the
Amazon), some Parrots, Eagles, and a pretty colourful lizard that was
out sun bathing. We stopped for a few photos of the lizard, and were
lucky, as old reliable Dario told us that the lizards are normally
quite shy and will jump into the water when they see people, but this
one in particular was pretty relaxed and cool, giving us ample time
to take photos. We ended up taking a few shortcuts, and were in some
pretty narrow streams that normally wouldn't be passable, but since
it was rainy season, we could take the boat through them, saving us
time...thanks for that, as I can't imagine having to sit in that damn
boat for the full time frame, if we couldn't take the
shortcuts....the streams were so narrow that when other boats would
be coming towards us, it was a pretty difficult event trying to pass
them without crashing into them or into the nearby trees.
 |
| Don't mind me, I'm just chillin' |
 |
| One of many Spiders spotted |
We were travelling for about 2 hours
and 45 minutes when Jose suggested we stop to eat lunch, and this is
where we realized that there were quite a few piranhas swimming near
our boat, as we would throw pieces of chicken into the water, and
they were quickly snapped up by the hungry fish. Jose assured us that
if we were to swim or fall into the river that they wouldn't attack
us or try to eat us, as shown in movies. After our lunch break we
continued on, arriving probably 15 minutes later at our
accommodation....not too sure why we didn't just drive the extra 15
minutes and eat there, rather than in the wobbly and uncomfortable
boat (seriously, if anyone moved from one side to the other, the
thing would damn near capsize....the Colombians apparently aren't the
greatest boat builders. Also, half the time of the boat ride Dario
was busy using a cup to scoop out all the water that was leaking into
the boat...glad we didn't sink). We arrived at the “rustic”
jungle camp, and had to laugh as we could see the remains of soccer
nets, or at least the tops of them poking out of the water.
Apparently during dry season, they actually could set foot on ground
in the area and play football, but during rainy season the water rose
2-3 m. We checked into the simple but comfortable guesthouse, and
found our rooms, and the hammock room. After storing our bags and
gear, we just lounged around the hammocks and had a nap and asked
Jose if there was a place we could get a beer or some cachaca, the
Brazilian rum used to make Caipirinhas, and he disappeared for a bit
and returned with a bottle of the cachaca. It came in a beer bottle,
and we managed to trick the Swiss guy into thinking it was a beer,
and he took a pretty big swig of it, resulting in a a funny face and
a little cursing towards us. After some time relaxing it was time to
head out for some fishing.
We had some pretty rudimentary fishing
rods, just long wooden sticks with a bit of line and simple
hooks...we arrived at our first fishing spot, where the Piranhas were
quickly taking all of bait, and we couldn't catch anything. Jose for
some reason was able to catch a few, but the rest of our boat was
shut out. Of course, with the poor construction of the boat, any
sudden movements, not to mention standing up while fishing, would
cause wild rocking and I nearly fell into the water 3 times..fun! The
lack of catching anything was rather unpleasant however, so after no
luck we moved on. We found a spot where we could spot the river Dolphins, and that was a fairly neat experience. Compared to the
river Dolphins in SE Asia, these ones actually appeared a lot more
appealing physically, although still not as cute as ocean Dolphins.
The coolest feature of these river Dolphins was the bright pink skin
that some of them had. Others had grey and pink skin, and apparently
they became fully pink as they aged. At one point a few of the people
jumped into the river to swim around, and the Dolphins, although shy,
did come a bit closer to the boat, being curious, but never close
enough for any of us to take a good photo, as most of us didn't have
high quality cameras with great zoom features.
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| Quiet time in the hammocks |
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| Life in the Jungle, check your towel before use |
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| Kip showing off our amazing fishing rods |
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| I'd rather be working |
After the Dolphin watching, we went
back to another fishing spot, where again none of us caught anything
except for Jose, our English translator, as he seemed to be the only
one with any skills. We kept the few fish that he caught, and headed
back to the lodge, where we sat around relaxing in the hammocks until
the staff had prepared dinner. There were 2 other groups staying at
the lodge, and the kitchen staff did a pretty good job preparing huge
meals for everyone, and that food was actually quite excellent. I was
pretty tired, and ended up having a sleep, and had to be woken up to
grab dinner, and found that everyone had already dipped into our rum
stash, and had nearly finished dinner. We had a whole array of tasty
food, including the piranhas that Jose had cooked, which were fairly
tasty, although a bit bony, as well as some salads, vegetables,
soups, juices, and chicken. After the tasty dinner, we didn't have
any activities planned for the evening, so we all just had a few rum
and juices, and then made our way over to the hammock area, where we
spent the next few hours listening to music, chatting, and enjoying
our rum. One of the benefits of being in the middle of nowhere, and
closer to the equator was the absolutely incredible views of the
stars. I have been pretty fortunate to spend time in remote Northern
Canada where there's no light pollution and I could witness some
incredible sights in the sky, but being at the equator and in the
jungle was even more awe inspiring. I have never ever seen that many
stars in the sky at once, it was an absolutely incredible experience,
and if I had a better camera I would love to have been able to catch
a few shots of the sky, wow. Everyone else that took a glimpse of the
sky agreed with me as well that it was something truly special that
night. All in all the night was was going pretty well until it was
close to 12 when one of the Saskatchewan guys became a bit too drunk
(he had mentioned earlier in the day that he actually was a bit
allergic to alcohol), and suddenly he was very emotional for no
apparent reason. He played some song that reminded him of a friend of
his that passed away, and when Kip asked him about the song, he
suddenly became really weird, and started saying how much the song
meant to him and that he didn't want to have to fight, but
would.....well this continued on for the next hour and a half or so,
as he was just really drunk and suddenly thought everyone wanted to
fight him for no apparent reason. We were meant to go on a sunset
watch the next morning at 5 am, so we were all trying to go to bed,
but this guy was all worked up over nothing.
I tried to calm him down, and say we
should all just go to sleep and relax, but he didn't want to, and
started just walking into random doors, telling people to come out
and party and that he didn't want to fight anyone, but would...he
ended up irritating the Swiss guy a fair bit, who was telling him to
shut the hell up and go to bed, which didn't make matters worse, and
then the guy ended up crashing into another door where some people
from one of the other groups were staying, and they didn't speak any
English, so they were up suddenly and cursing and swearing in Spanish
at the guy ha ha ha...oh boy....Kip was the only one who was willing
to stay up and continue trying to talk the guy down, and I guess he
eventually did, but it did take another hour or so, and the guy was
really really loud, probably waking up the entire lodge, as there
wasn't any partitions at the top of the walls dividing the rooms, so
sound carried quite far, but he finally went to bed. Probably around
2 am or so, I woke up to very very heavy rain, and managed to doze
back off, and was woken up for breakfast around 7 am...apparently the
rain was much too heavy for us to go out for our sunrise tour, so we
had been allowed to sleep in. When we had first checked in Kip had
mentioned that he didn't trust the roof to hold back any rain if it
did come, but sure enough, the thatched roof held up very well, and
we didn't see a single drop of rain in our room. We had breakfast,
and were laughing a bit over the previous night's events...you could
tell that the Sask guy was a fair bit embarrassed over things,
although he claimed to not remember anything, we slowly filled him in
throughout the day, and gave him a pretty hard time over things.
While eating breakfast, I couldn't help
but be surprised when our guide told Michel, the Swiss guy to watch
out as the parrot might bite him....we both turned to look behind us
to find a parrot just sitting there staring at us and then jumping
onto the table near our food...well one of the workers quickly came
into the dining area and grabbed the bird and took him back into the
kitchen, apparently it was the pet of the house. We finished up our
breakfast, and after using the toilet, we were pretty much all ready
to go. Well it was probably 10 or 15 minutes after I had just used
the toilet when two of the local guides came out of the thing with a
9 foot long Anaconda...what the hell! They told me in Spanish they
had just found it in the water bucket in the toilet, but I certainly
hadn't seen it in there, so it must have crawled into the room
shortly after I had been in there....they took the snake with them on
their boat and were on their way with it, to who knows where.
Britany, the one girl in our group was probably the most shocked as
she had been the last one in the toilet, probably about 5 minutes
before they pulled that thing out of there! After some laughs, we
hopped on our boat and went for round 2 of Piranha fishing.
This round was a lot more successful,
although not for me at the beginning, but everyone else was doing
just fine. Jose and our local guide were the first ones to snag some,
and after not much luck for everyone else we were wondering what they
were doing, but then Britany started catching them...and kept on
catching them. I think in the 2 hours or so she pulled in about 9 or
10 fish, some Piranhas, some big mouthed fish, and some Sardines.
Everyone else was catching things except for me, but I finally got on
board and started snagging a few, after over 1 hour of bites but no
catches. When you catch the Piranhas, which weren't that big and not
really that scary compared to the Hollywood movies, they make this
funny little “erp, erp, erp” noise, and do attack the hooks quite
violently, which made it quite hard to get the hooks out of them
without ripping them up badly. I also was the only person on the boat
to catch one of the so called “White Piranhas” that our guide had
only seen caught once before, so even though I didn't catch anywhere
close to the most fish or the biggest fish, I had one lone bright
spot. After our catches, we went back to the lodge for lunch, where
they cooked up all the fish, and a few other things for another tasty
meal.
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| About time I caught one! |
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| White Piranha |
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| Our edible haul for the day |
It was pretty surprising to see exactly
how much it had rained during the night storm, as the hammock area,
which was built a little bit lower than the sleeping quarters, but
still had a good 6 inches above the water the previous day, was now
nearly level with the water and water had started to leak over the
edges a bit...I would imagine that if they had one more heavy night
of rain, the whole hammock area floor would actually be
submerged...crazy amount of water! After lunch the two guides also
brought back the Anaconda from the morning for everyone to
see...quite the sight...I didn't end up holding it, but Michel did,
and the guides told us that it could possibly kill a small child. The
children of the family that owned the place certainly seemed to be
frightened by the snake anyway. After a bit more lounging in the
hammocks and a quick siesta, we were off to do our next activity.
Because it was rainy season, we weren't able to do a jungle walk like
you'd normally be able to do during dry season, so the area that we
were going to explore would have to be done by canoe. I didn't have
much faith in the canoes, so I didn't even bother taking my camera,
and neither did anyone else. We got into Dario's boat, dragged the
canoes along, and arrived at an entrance point, where we were split
into groups of 3, with the local guide taking one boat, and Jose
taking the other.
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| Anaconda found in the toilet |
I guess myself, Michel, and Britany
were a bit luckier as we had the more stable boat that leaked less
water, but it still was a pretty poorly designed canoe, as it was way
too narrow, similar to Dario's boat, such that it would easily tip
over if we made any sudden movements. We fortunately didn't tip
throughout the canoing trip, but we did take in water a few times as
it nearly capsized. Fortunately we had a cup to remove the water from
the boat, but unfortunately the other boat, which leaked more water,
had to borrow our cup, as Kip had dropped their cup in the water on
accident while removing water from it, so they had to keep borrowing
our cup ha ha. Jose, had only been on the tour as a translator 2 or 3
times, so he still didn't have much experience in the guiding
process, and our Spanish only speaking guide in the other boat, would
often paddle too fast and get away from us, and be explaining things
to his boat, where two of the guys knew no Spanish at all, and Jose
wasn't close enough to hear what he was saying to translate for all
of us, so it wasn't a very fun trip. Plus Jose's canoing skills
weren't the greatest, so he would be able to dodge trees and bushes
for the front of the boat, but then of course the back end where I
was sitting would almost always smack into the trees or bushes, so I
was constantly getting hit in the face with branches, leaves,
spiders, ants, etc.....Not the greatest of times, plus the seats were
terribly uncomfortable and we couldn't really shift around too much
in fear of tipping the boat. We did see a few very cool things
though, including the world's largest leaf, the lotus pads, several
small but poisonous snakes, many large spiders, and even an anteater
way way up in the canopy....some pretty cool things, but it would
have been a lot better to go during the dry season so that we could
get the full experience from the guide, and be able to stop and look
at the animals longer than 2 or 3 seconds, as our boat couldn't
really be stopped in time to get a good luck at things.
Jose did keep telling the guide to slow
down and wait for him, but the guy wouldn't really listen and just
kept going off at his own pace, leaving us struggling to catch up
most of the time. I did mention it would probably be more beneficial
to have two oars in each canoe so that the passengers could at least
help out with the navigating so that the ones in the back weren't
always getting hit by everything. After the two hours or so of ant
bites, spider webs in my eyes and face, branch scratches, nearly
tipping, and a very sore ass, we finally were back at the boat and on
our way back to the lodge. We had some time to just sit around and
relax again, so it was back to the hammocks and time to read a bit
until dinner was prepared. The food was again quite tasty, and after
dinner we had a bit more quiet time until we went out for a night
boat ride to catch some Caimans. There was a large lake behind the
lodge, that normally wasn't connected to the river in front, but
because of wet season it was all connected, so we could take our boat
from the front of the lodge and drive through the backyard until we
reached the lake. It was very dark of course, and sure enough old
reliable Dario rammed our boat right into the walkway that connected
the house to the outhouse in the back yard ha ha ha...after some
cursing he managed to back out and get back on course and get us out
into the lake, where the guide was pretty damn good at spotting the
tiny Caimans and getting Dario to get close enough to the reeds where
he would then quickly snatch them up and bring them into the boat.
They are a pretty gnarly looking
reptile, and we were told that they can grow to up to 7 m (21 feet)
in some cases, but they were not known for attacking humans at all,
so we didn't have to worry. The ones the guide was pulling into the
boat were only about .3 m long, so we took our turns playing with
them and taking photos before releasing them back into the reeds.
After 35 minutes or so of this, it was back to the lodge where we had
a pretty early night, well at least I did, as I think I was in bed
and asleep by about 7:30 pm (it gets really really dark pretty early
in the jungle, especially with limited power and light in the house).
I was woken up around 4:30 am for the sunrise tour, and I did
contemplate just staying in bed and not going out for it, but managed
to crawl out for the boat ride. The day was cloudy and the sunrise
wasn't very nice at all, so it was kind of a pointless endeavour but
oh well. We didn't really see anything else either, as there was a
chance we might see some monkeys or birds, but it was pretty quiet.
After the sunrise, it was back to the lodge for breakfast, and to
kill some time until we went to visit a nearby village. After
breakfast and while waiting around, I noticed our guide fishing in
the back of the lodge (basically right where the toilet empties into)
and catching a few Sardines and Piranhas...yum! We packed up our bags
and piled into the boat and were on our way to a village about 50
minutes away.
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| Sunset from the hammocks |
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| playing with Caimans |
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| the pet of the lodge |
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| Our accommodation |
We pulled up and were greeted by a
friendly man who was the one in charge and who actually did speak a
tiny bit of English, but mostly just Spanish and Portuguese. We were
also greeted by his pet monkey named Chico, who was a pretty fun
creature to watch. The monkey was certainly playful, and really
seemed to enjoy teasing the one dog, as he would sneak up on it,
smack it on the ass or grab it's tail, and then quickly run off and
climb up to safety...cheeky little bugger! We wandered back into the
back area, where there was a large pond, with some wooden logs
isolating a square area, and the old man brought over a large fishing
stick and a bucket of fish, where Dario had put the fish he had
caught earlier. The man then told us a bit about these massive fish
in the back pond called Pirarucu, which are the largest river fish in
the world, and considered to be quite the delicacy. He tied a fish
onto the rod and slapped it into the water and suddenly “slurp!”
this massive fish came up and snatched the fish and thrashed about
with it until it was off the hook....damn was it ever huge! We were
told they can grow to be about 6 m long, and we each took turns with
the fishing rod, teasing the massive things. When it was my turn, I
tried to pull up on the rod like an actual fishing rod and heard the
thing snapping! I was told to just let the rod down and let the fish
pull at it until it had ripped the fish off the hook, so that I
wouldn't break the rod any further..oops. We were also given some
scales from Pirarucus that the man had caught before, and they were
massive. He also showed us some Jaguar paws (highly illegal of
course), as he had killed a few that were killing his livestock. Jose
also explained a bit more about the Pirarucu and how they didn't
actually have any teeth, just a giant tongue, so they couldn't
actually attack or kill a human being, meaning we wouldn't have to
worry about them if we went swimming in the river.
After the Pirarucu fishing, we went
over to a pond where he had some younger and smaller Pirarucu, so the
local man willing grabbed a night and jumped in with them, fishing
out and bringing them out to show us what they looked like when
smaller. They have a unique characteristic amongst fish, in that they
actually need to come to surface to gather oxygen, much like marine
mammals, so they can remain out of water for a fair amount of time
before having to be put back in. After a few minutes of looking at
them, Chico decided he wanted to play with all of us, and started
hanging off the the branches or wood of a nearby structure, grabbing
at our hair, biting our cheeks (and my ears), and trying to steal
cameras or iPhones (he was probably trained as a thief, to help make
the village some extra money ha ha ha). We had some good laughs with
playing with him, before wandering down to the dock to see a rather
large and very ugly turtle, similar the smaller ones we had seen two
days before. We then went for a bit of a wander where we were shown
the village's garden, which included coca leaves, for medicinal
purposes of course ;), and some of the children. There was this large
turkey like bird, that the village actually kept as a bit for the
children, as it acts as a defacto babysitter, scaring off larger
creatures such as Anacondas that could harm the children..great! The
kids tried to chase it down and catch it to show us the bird, but it
was too fast and elusive for them. After 15 minutes or so of
wandering around, it was time to head back towards Leticia, with a
stop for lunch in a Brazilian town on the way.
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| Was a nice kitty |
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| Chico monkeying around |
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| Another ridiculous looking Turtle |
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| What a coca tree looks like |
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| Chico helping himself to some coconut juice |
Being a Friday afternoon, we arrived in
the town to find nearly no one working, several people drunk, and
everyone else playing on the beach...gotta love the Brazilians. We
took a quick walk looking for a nearby restaurant that Jose had heard
was good, but couldn't find it, and after asking for directions,
realized we had walked right past it. After heading back towards the
pier, we settled in for lunch there, with the option of either fish
or pork steak and a few other buffet items. The lunch was rather
tasty and after an hour, we were back in the boat and on our way
back. It seemed that our boat just kept getting slower and slower as
the days went on, with Dario likely holding back on the speed to
conserve fuel some more and again maximize profits. Sure enough, he
did start giving it some more gas and sped up a fair bit once we were
getting closer to Leticia, but hilariously enough, the motor then
gave out and he had to let it cool down...oooh the pain! After 3 long
hours or so, we finally arrived back in Leticia, glad to be done with
the damn boat! We got back to the hostel, happy to be able to grab
showers and beers, and of course catch up on civilization. After a
few beers, we all headed out to dinner at a nearby restaurant, where
Jose came and joined us, before Michel and I wandered off to buy some
supplies for the boat ride the next day. Unfortunately we held off a
bit too long on our shopping and didn't buy our hammocks in time, so
we would have to get them the next morning. I also realized that St.
Patrick's Day was coming up, so I scrambled around town to try and
find some Jameson's whiskey to celebrate the day, but wasn't able to
find any so I had to settle for a small bottle of Baileys.
After the quick shopping, we returned
back to the hostel where everyone was having some beers and rum, and
getting ready to head out for the night, since it was our last night
all together. We went to a nearby bar to start off our Leticia pub
crawl, having some rum there, before moving on to the only real
nightclub in Leticia, which was very large and very empty. Apparently
Leticia isn't really so great for nightlife. Jose told us that it
would get busier later, even though it was already 12 am. While
sitting in our booth, chatting, I caught eyes with a cute girl
nearby, and she ended up coming over to ask me to dance, although she
was speaking Portuguese, so I had no idea what she was saying, but
put two and two together. She pulled me out for some salsa dancing,
which I'm quite terrible at, but somehow managed to make a go of it.
She didn't speak any English whatsoever, only Portuguese and a bit of
Spanish so that was the medium of communication. The place was
starting to pick up a bit, but was still quite empty, so the Sask
boys wanted to go elsewhere, so Jose took us to the next place.
Surprisingly the girl that I had been dancing with decided to come
with us, after Jose had spoken to her for awhile, and I found out
that she was actually from Manaus and on vacation, visiting some
friends in Tabatinga and Leticia. Unfortunately my
conversation/language skills were lacking compared to Jose's, as were
my dancing skills, and I could soon see her losing interest in me and
likely going for Jose, so I stopped caring too much. We arrived at
the next place, and it was even more empty than the previous, with
about 7 or 8 people there...we still hung around for awhile, before
the guys wanted to go find the strip club to end the night. By this
point it was already 2 am, and Michel and I had to be up at 7:30 am
to go get the boat stuff all sorted out, so we said goodbye to the
group and wandered back to the hostel. I later found out that the
Strip Club was quite far out of town, and was terrible as the girls
weren't even dancing there, and when they were about to start, the
police came in and shut the place down, or at least kicked all the
customers out and apparently stayed inside for their own dances ha ha
ha...gotta love the Colombian police!
I had a fairly short sleep and was
woken up by one of the staff asking if I was still going to take the
boat or not, got packed up and wandered out to buy a hammock, which I
was able to get for a surprisingly low price of $7, after assuming I
would probably be ripped off as per usual. After the hammock run, I
grabbed some Lechona for breakfast, as it was being sold all over the
streets for some reason (I later found out that on Saturday and
Sundays it is quite common to see people selling it), and tracked
down Michel who had sorted out his Colombian exit stamp, and we
grabbed a tuktuk to head over to Brazil and get our entry visa. I had
been worried earlier about the fact that I had stamped out of
Colombia but hadn't received an entry stamp to anywhere for the last
4 days, and was thus an illegal immigrant in all of the places I had
been, Peru, Brazil, and Colombia, but the staff had assured me it
wouldn't be a problem. Well we arrived at the Brazil police station,
and Michel had no problems getting his stamp, but the police officer
looking at my passport raised some issues and didn't speak any
English. I asked if they spoke any Spanish, but they didn't, and just
kept talking in Portuguese, even though I didn't understand anything.
Fortunately, Michel understood some Portuguese, and told me that they
told me I had to have an exit stamp from Colombia for that day, that
my 4 day old one wasn't a valid way of receiving entry to
Brazil....dammit!!! They told me I would have to go back to Colombia
immigration and ask for an updated stamp. Michel said I could
probably have just bribed the Brazilian police to get an entry stamp,
but I really had no idea how to go about it, especially with there
being two officers there (maybe if there had been one officer and I
spoke the language I might have been able to get away with it).
So we were in the tuktuk, off to the
port where he went to catch the boat and said he would buy me a
ticket and wait for me to return, as I still had time. Figuring I was
already in enough trouble, I told him to not worry about it and just
buy himself a ticket. Of course the tuktuk guy absolutely ripped us
off, wanting 25,000 pesos for the drive....which Michel willingly
paid...and I had to go all the way back to Leticia airport to try and
plead my case. I arrived there, and went into the immigration office,
where there were 3 officials working (I was hoping for one in case I
could bribe). I explained to them my situation, with some little
white lies sprinkled in, telling them that I had been in the Peruvian
jungle and had thought there would be an immigration point there, and
that was the reason I needed a re-entry and exit stamp. They
initially told me that I had to go to Peru to get that matter sorted
out, but I was able to explain well enough the situation, all in
Spanish of course, and they agreed to give me re-entry, but told me
it would be impossible to get an exit stamp for that day, and that I
would have to return the next day to get an exit stamp. I think this
is sort of a ridiculous system, as it is completely feasible that
someone may fly into Colombia earlier in the day, obtain their entry
stamp and then want to leave later that evening for another country,
but apparently this wasn't a possible scenario according to the
Leticia immigration officials...so I had to just accept my situation,
and I guess be happy that I wasn't fined or anything for being an
illegal immigrant and accept the fact that I wouldn't be making the
boat that day.
I went back to the hostel, and wandered
back in, explaining to the staff what had happened, and just kind of
spent the next few hours lounging around, as the rest of the group
slowly woke up and came out to see me and were all wondering why I
was still there. Everyone but Britany were flying to Bogota that
night for a few nights, and being St. Patrick's Day the next day, I
seriously considered flying to Bogota that day as well, and started
looking around to see if flights to Bogota and then on to Brazil
would be comparable in price to taking the boat and then flying out
of Manaus to Rio, but I found the price difference to be still a fair
bit higher than I was willing to pay, so I decided to just stick
around Leticia until the next boat left on Wednesday. After lunch
with the boys at the Pizza restaurant, where the same girl who spoke
that weird Spanish-Portuguese language was working, and seemingly
hating her job and serving us, we went back to the hostel, where I
ended up just spending the next few hours sleeping in a hammock,
while the rest of the group went to Jose's house to hang out in the
swimming pool and have some beers for a few hours. Britany, Kip, and
I went to a restaurant recommended by Jose for dinner, where they
made pizzas using Yuca as the base to make the dough....yum! The
service did take forever, and Kip barely had time to eat before
heading off to the airport. Britany and I said our goodbye, finished
off dinner, and went back to the hostel, having a pretty quiet night
in.
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| Lechona for breakfast |
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| Yuka based pizza |
The next day I started off breakfast
with coffee and Baileys, which Britany partook in, but being a small
bottle, we finished it off fairly quickly. It was a pretty hot and
lazy day, and I did try and get a hold of Jose to see if I could come
couchsurf at his house, which he eventually did reply back to and
tell me I could, but then he never did stop by the hostel to come
grab me and show me where he lived, so I just stayed at the hostel
for the rest of my time in Leticia. The day was pretty quiet, just
catching up on some blogging and not really doing much else, other
than chatting with a Dutch guy about his experience taking Iowasca
the previous day. It was a fairly interesting experience for him, as
he had a few questions answered about his life, but did say the whole
experience was pretty weird, and that 3 Canadian guys who were there
with him, didn't have such great experiences. We all ended up going
out for dinner at a tacky restaurant, where I had some very delicious
Pirarucu ceviche, which was a massive serving and enough that I had
to take half of it back to the hostel for lunch the next day.
Unfortunately they didn't have any Irish beer or Whiskey to
celebrate St. Paddy's day, and I spent the first St. Paddy's day in
the last 10 years without finding an Irish Pub and having a real
celebration.
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| St. Paddy's Day breakfast |
The next day was rainy and bleak, so
there wasn't a whole lot going on once again, other than just sitting
around killing time. A Colombian guy did check in, and tell me that
he was going to be taking the boat on Wednesday to Manaus, so I at
least made a new friend to travel with. Once the rain did subside, I
went for my wander off to the Leticia airport to try for round 2 of
immigration to Brazil. I didn't make it too far into my walk, in the
excruciating heat, when a mototaxi drove by me honking, so I figured
I would at least check out the price to travel around. He said he
would do it all for 15,000 pesos initially, but I only had 10,000 and
that was all I was willing to pay so he agreed. It was a bit funny,
as there was a taxi strike going on, and earlier in the day because
of the strike, the hostel owner or manager had to take 3 Swiss people
back and forth between the airport, hostel, and to the docks to get
their immigration work done, which collectively took longer than it
would have taken all 3 of them to just walk to the airport, get it
all done, and then walk back. When my mototaxi was close to the
airport, we found that Colombian police had set up a large roadblock,
and were only letting through local traffic due to the taxi strike
which was taking place at the airport...I'm thinking they didn't want
any illegal taxis taking people there, causing more issues. So I had
to get off my bike, but the police were actually driving people to
the airport in the back of their vehicles, so I was on my way to the
airport with several other people in the police truck.
We arrived, and I received my exit
stamp quickly, and was back outside, but the police weren't driving
people back to the roadblock, so I had to walk that and found my
mototaxi still there waiting for me. Because I had to do some walking
I told him we would have to renegotiate the price which he
surprisingly did. We made our way to the Brazilian police station,
and I finally was able to get my entry to the country, although I may
have messed up a bit in that I said I would probably be in the
country for 30 days, and even though my visa gives me 180 days per
visit, they only marked down 30 days, which will probably result in
me having to go back to immigration and asking for an extension, but
I was just happy to get my immigration problems with Brazil out of
the way finally. I arrived back at the hostel to find that Martin,
the Colombian guy was going to a different hostel where his friend
was staying, but said he'd see me at the port the next day. Well
about 2 hours later he was back, as the other hostel was filled with
a bunch of loud Hatians and was a pretty dirty place ha ha ha...After
a few hours of hanging out, practicing Spanish with him, we went to a
restaurant across the street where they had some tasty Mexican food,
had a nice dinner, and then another relatively quiet night in.
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| This is what a taxi strike looks like |
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| Get back to work you corrupt bums |
The next day after sleeping in a bit,
Martin wanted to know if I wanted to go with him to a place that had
some ziplining and canopy walking, and not having really any other
plans, I decided to tag along. We stopped at a small restaurant along
the highway for a quick little lunch before heading to the canopy
place. Being a Tuesday, and low season in Leticia, we were actually
the only two people there that day, so after signing our release
forms, we followed the guide through the jungle, stopping to see some
interesting frogs, including one poisonous one, and another one that
predicts when it will rain, we arrived at a massive tree and looked
up to find where we would be climbing to. It was a 100 foot high (35
m) platform with several ropes hanging from it, and we were soon
harnessed in, connected to some climbing equipment and given some
quick instructions on how to make our way up. I hate heights, and
climbing ropes 100 feet into the air is a bit terrifying, so I just
tried not to look down. There were two pieces of stopping equipment,
one device on the top, and one below. Basically, I would slide the
top piece up until I couldn't reach further, and it would lock onto
the rope, then I would bend my knees and slide the bottom piece up
until it was lined up horizontally with my knees, and then slide the
top piece up. At a few points when I was really high, when I slide
the top piece up and thought it locked and let go, it actually
slipped which caused me to slide down into the bottom piece...a bit
freaky, but the bottom piece always held, so all good I guess!
After probably 10 minutes I was at the
top (the guide said they could make their way to the top in about 45
seconds, yeah I suck), Again, being terrified of heights, I was quick
to swing over to the platform where one of the guides pulled me in
and unhooked me...phew. I waited for Martin to arrive up top, while
the one guide prepared the first zipline across, which Martin took
first. It wasn't too far, maybe 30 m or so across, but of course it
was very high up, and when he got to the other side, he didn't hook
his leg onto the stopping point, and the guide decided to have some
fun with him and let his momentum carry him backwards into the middle
of the line where they let him hang 100 feet above the ground for
awhile..eventually they reeled him in, and it was my turn to go. I
made sure that when I arrived at the other side I hooked my foot into
the stopping point so they wouldn't let me slide back out and hang!
They had a good laugh over that at least. Then it was time to do the
next and much much longer zipline which was probably 100 m or so.
Martin went first again, and then I had my go. It was pretty fun, and
I just made sure not to look down, and trust the safety standards of
Colombia (likely not very high!). I managed to make it across of
course, as I'm writing this now. Then it was one last clip in on the
harness, and a 60 foot slide down the ropes to the jungle floor.
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| Rain predicting Frog |
 |
| small but toxic Frog |
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| Hammock tree |
 |
| So I have to climb all the way up there?? oh damn |
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| A bit tired from the climb...what's this exercise business |
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| I think my car keys are somewhere in here |
After our fun ziplining, we just
wandered back to the main staging area, and were on our way back to
Leticia...well at least we had to wait for a collectivo fan first, so
we had time to grab a beer and try and cool down from the intense
heat. Once our collectivo showed up, we hopped aboard and arrived
back in Leticia 25 minutes later. The rest of the day was pretty
quiet, other than going to a Lonely Planet recommended restaurant
that Martin had read about (the food wasn't that great, typical of a
guide book recommendation), and it was early to bed since the next
morning was an early one. Britany had a 3 am boat ride to Peru, so we
said goodbye to her, and were up around 8 am the next morning to
check out, grab some mototaxis to the Brazilian port, and catch our
boat. Of course my mototaxi somehow got lost on the way to the port
and charged me double what Martin had to pay, since I'm the obvious
gringo and they just love screwing us over on prices...I tried to
bargain but without avail. I paid my 100 Real ticket cost, got aboard
the ship, was vigorously searched for drugs, contraband, whatever
else...probably the most frisked I've ever been, the Brazilian guys
don't screw around and check every inch of skin! Once I was done with
that, I went to the second floor where Martin had saved me a spot to
put up my hammock next to an older German man, and another man nearby
showed us how to tie the hammock knots and I was all settled in and
ready for the upcoming 4 day boat ride down the Amazon......and
that's where I'll continue on from in the next posting!
It was over 2 months spent in Colombia,
by far the longest period of time I've spent in any country in any of
my travels. It was longer than expected, but the time flew by very
quickly, and the people of the country made it well worthwhile
visiting. I definitely hope to make it back in the near future, and
will forever remember my amazing time here, and the incredible people
I've met. Sorry for the very long delay in getting this post done,
I'll hopefully be a bit more timely with the next one!
Adios,
Senor Bigote/Mr. Nap (my new nicknames
from Martin, my new Colombian friend)
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