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Small car crash- no Brits injured

This is quite a long email because we’re at the end of our trip and I’m writing this at Bogota airport but sending from Heathrow while we wait for our bus.  It took nearly half the time of flying from Madrid to London to get our bags from the aircraft to collection so we missed one bus by a couple of minutes and now have a one and half hour wait. As you will have noticed if you’ve been reading these, we met up with our friends Bonnie and Newt from Massachusetts and have spent two weeks travelling around together.   It’s all gone very well and they’re a delight to be with.  It seems as if we’ve known them for years but we’ve only spent a few days in India and even fewer days in New England together.   As Newt said “it’s been very easy”.  They continue in Colombia for a couple of weeks and then fly off to Ecuador a month.   Their big news is that they’re getting married and we think it’s about time too. Small car crash- no Brits injure...
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Small Earthquake - no Brits injured

I’ve referred to Columbia all through these travel notes and now I’ve been reminded that it is spelt with an o not a u, so it isn’t Columbia Films or The District of, but the Republic of Colombia. Leaving Medellin today we decide on a taxi.   Most taxis are small cars and when ours arrived there was a bit of head scratching.  Four of us with luggage for 6 weeks for us two and 2 months for Bonnie and Newt plus the biggest taxi driver I’ve ever seen.  Before we set off and rather worryingly for us he inspected the rear tyres in a somewhat concerned manner.    We were nearly introduced to a coach on the journey but arrived at the bus station (the Terminale des Transportes) safely only 5 minutes before our bus was due to leave.   As expected it left dead on time 35 minutes later.   The hotel had told us 6,000 pesos for the ride but all the taxis in Medellin have meters any way.  Halfway there I noticed that the meter was...
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Off to the old Drug Capital

I said all our clothes were wet in the Amazon and that included my hat.   We’d been told Columbia has no launderettes so were resigned to hoping that our hotel could sort out laundry service late Saturday afternoon and have it finished for Sunday evening because we had an early Monday start.   So after a journey from the Amazon backwaters by small boat, fast boat, taxi, plane, bus, transmilenio and shank’s pony we happened upon a tiny laundry near our hotel back in Bogota.  One washing machine, one tumble dryer, one dry-cleaning machine and room for about three customers, it was about fifteen feet square.   By signs, vaguely Spanish sounding grunts and a lot of goodwill (Goodwill always being the lingua franca) we found out that even though it was 5.15 in the afternoon  she could do the lot and have it dry by 7.00pm.  Backpacks were opened up, everything was dumped in a plastic bag including the shirt I was wearing (I had one shirt that ...
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Columbia's Caribbean

Up here in Santa Marta, the big attraction is the Tayrona National Park which sits alongside the Caribbean on what seems a counter-intuitive west facing coastline.  That is unless you really know your Columbian geography.  Anyway, it’s jungly stuff with lovely windswept golden beaches and about an hour and half walk to the first beach.   Caribbean is one of those words that makes me think of golden sands and gently washed beaches where you can frolic and cool off.  Well, not here.  Virtually every beach is dangerous with strong currents and warnings about how many tourists have drownded.  It is definitely a case of not waving but drowning, and yet people walk for hours to sit on sand and just about paddle.   We were quoted COL$160,000 for a taxi round trip, one hour each way and which included the taxi waiting for five hours, then COL$37,500 entry fee each.   So a total of about COL$235,000, about £80 (US$120).  We decided on ...
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Amazon

Well, it is big I’ll give it that.   There’s a relatively short stretch of Amazon which runs between Peru and Columbia and we’re up it.    Two hours (about 50 miles) by fast boat from the town with the airport, Leticia and then another hour in a much smaller boat chugging up a tributary, the River Amacayaco.   The Amazon itself, the colour of weak hot chocolate, moves at a surprising pace considering we’re 4,000 kilometres from the sea and only 96 metres above sea level.  The speed of flow is because of the quantity of water flowing in the rainy season and, yes, we are here in the rainy season.   To give you an idea of the size of this river, at 4,000 km from the sea it’s two kilometres wide (or thereabouts) and huge quantities of debris are being washed downstream.   I say thereabouts because judging the width is difficult.  What seems like the bank is flooded in most places to way past where the eye can see.  Fur...
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To the Caribban

Heading north and getting hotter, we spend an overnight (quite long enough in my view) in Bucamaranga, a ‘gritty’ town as described in Lonely Planet.  Actually we haven’t seen anyone else with a copy since we arrived in Columbia, which is amazing and we’ve seen no tour groups either.  This really is not a touristy place, so far.  I’m writing the beginning of this while we head towards the Caribbean coast away from Bucamaranga on a luxury bus and again we’re the only passengers who are not local.   I’m wired up as if I’m in intensive care.  Computer with a cable to charge the i-pod in my breast pocket and earphones from there while I listen to Bryan Adams because the bus has music plus a film with a Spanish overdub running, both at the same time.  It’s a long journey but we don’t know how long yet.  Our rule of thumb has developed into ‘any bus trip is at least 25% more than anyone says’.    Also we discovered that while “quatros ...
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Villa de Leyva Is a Delight

Villa de Leyva is a delight.  Set out on a grid pattern like just about everywhere else here and low level with virtually nothing bar the church in the Playa Mayor rising over two stories.   Our arrival was just before the end of high season although it still looked fairly empty on Saturday evening.   By Monday it was decidedly emptier.   The streets are narrow in the centre, perhaps 25 feet wide with the buildings flush to the road.  All the roads are cobbled with very rounded, ankle breaking rocks but we still saw some younger women stumbling about in fashionable shoes.   The centre is a bit touristy but still has many cafes and shops for locals and certainly isn’t tarted up for tourists.   Actually at a week into our trip we’ve noticed the lack of tourists.  There are Columbians out from Bogota and we’ve met a surprising number of Columbians who live abroad and who are visiting home.   The lack of tourists ...
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