Bogota

           

Botero Museum

first meal in Bogota

We did a bit more walking around on Tuesday then hopped on an easy 45 minute flight from Medellin to Bogota, sure beats a 10 hour bus ride.  We arrived and quickly noticed the temperature change from high 90s to low 60s. We bundled up, and headed out to dinner in the cute area of Candelaria where we were staying.  I had a delicious beef loin with yucca fries and a salad, and the chef sent out  complimentary yucca mashed potatoes, which were amazing.

Bogota Beer Co.

            Wednesday we headed out early to explore the city.  We were surprised at how cute, clean, and walkable this city was, almost the opposite of what we had heard from others.  We first went to the center plaza, then we went to the Fernando Botero museum and enjoyed his many paintings, sculptures and drawings.  The museum also had other paintings and art pieces from Salvatore Dali, Pablo Picasso and others.  I really enjoyed this museum, which was free of charge.

coffee break

Guinea pig race

police street performing

            After, we grabbed lunch at Parilla & Pan and got patacones with beef and mazorcas with ham.  They were both absolutely delicious, like nothing I've ever tasted.  The patacones, which is like a sweet plantain with cheese and meat was one of the best things I've ever eaten.  After, we grabbed some coffee at this well known hole in the wall coffee shop, Cafe San Moritz.

         

top of the city

  Being charged up with Colombian coffee, we headed to the Museo del Oro (the gold
museum) with a reasonable $1.50USD entrance fee.  It was cool to see some of the pieces and read some of the history, but Adrienne and I weren't too interested in this museum and we zipped through the 4 floors in about an hour.  Being a bit “museum'd” out we cruised the streets of Bogota stopping to watch some of the street performers, chalk artists, saw a guinea pig race (so random), Bogota police officers street performing (very strange), and then walked to the area of La Macarena, which is  compared to the SOHO of NYC.  It was really cute with nice apartments, condos, restaurants and bars.  We stopped at the popular restaurant, Bogota Beer Company, and each got the local Candelaria Clasica draft beer.  On our way back, climbing the hills and cobbled stoned streets, we made a quick stop at Cefiro Tejido, which is a little boutique for young Colombian designers.

overlooking the city

patacones and mazorcas

Medellin and Guatape

cable car

            Sunday we took the metro to the cable cars that take you to the top of the city about 30-40 min to the top, when you get off its cute little farmers markets and stands selling fruits, flowers, plants, vegetables, snacks etc.  The rest of the day we walked around, did some site seeing then headed back to our place, grabbed dinner and some drinks with others staying at our hostel. 

 

            Monday we woke up bright and early to take a shuttle about 2 hours to the small town of Guatape.  We first walked to the top of La Piedra Del Penol (The Rock of Guatape) which was originally 675 steps to the top but then they added on a tower making it a total of 740 steps.  It was a long and slow climb up but well worth it when you got to the top and had spectacular 360 degree views of the beautiful town and country side. The walk down was almost harder than the walk up, with our shaky legs feeling like jello. 

 

740 steps up

            When we got to the bottom we took a car to the actual center of Guatape.  Super cute small town on the water, with vibrant colors, murals, and little cafes and restaurants.  For lunch we had steak, rice, eggs, beans, plantains and a small salad for $3 USD.  Delicious and cheap!!

Guatape

Taganga and Medellin

          Wednesday we had to walk the 2 hour hike back to the entrance of the park and headed back to Santa Marta to get our large packs and then hopped on a local bus about 15-20 minutes to Taganga.  We really enjoyed camping out on the beach, but it sure felt good to have real beds and take a real shower!  We then headed out to grab some dinner, drank some beers and checked out this small beach town of Taganaga.  After about a 7 minute walk from one end of the beach to the other, we had pretty much walked the “town.”  There were cute little bars, restaurants, about two clubs and mini bakeries along the way, super cute.

           

            The next day we went to the beach for a bit which was about a 2 minute walk from our place, then later hadf fish tacos and watched the sunset, it may have been one of the most beautiful sunsets I have ever seen.  It was so big and so bright over the ocean, it was outstanding. 

 

 

            Friday we left Taganga, which was sad to say goodbye to,  we loved this place.  It was nice because it wasn't a huge city, where you had to walk around to do all these “must see sites,”, it was a great spot to just chill and relax and meet people.

 

            We then took a shuttle back to Santa Marta center, then took another taxi to the bus terminal to hop on a bus to Medellin.  We would have loved to take a flight to Medellin, but we waited too long to check the prices, so it made more sense to take the 14-16 hour overnight bus ride.  We of course were told we would be stopping for dinner 4 hours into our trip, which they lied about at the ticket counter. Our first stop for food was 15 hours into the trip.  It wasn't so bad because we kinda slept through our hunger.  The entire trip took about 16 hours, which wasn't bad at all.  There was a/c (actually it was really cold), we had our own seats, which were pretty comfortable and they played movies (no subtitles, so we got to practice our Spanish).  Much better than our bus trip 4 years ago from Chile to Argentina, when we were told the trip would take 14 hours and it was almost 26 hours.  It was raining and the windows were leaking, the toilets didn't work and were overflowing, there was a newborn screaming baby on our bus, and we didn't have the correct currency, so we weren't able to eat for almost 24 hours.  This was nothing compared to that!!!

$4 meal

 

            When we got to Medellin we checked in, and headed out for a delicious steak, eggs, rice and sweet plantains brunch, about $4USD.  We immediately loved this city and the area that we were staying.  It was really cute, residential, lots of restaurants, bars, a supermarket nearby, and right by the metro.  After brunch we took the metro a few stops away to the Poblado area called Zona Rosa, which was the area where everyone went out.  We walked around a bit and we couldn't believe the amount of huge bars, lounges, restaurants, boutiques, you name it, it was probably there. 

 

            After dinner, we grabbed some drinks and enjoyed open mic night at our hostel ,where we met the super cool owner from the US and some German backpackers, so around midnight we all went out to Zona Rosa, danced, drank and sang the night away.  For our post bar snack we got “the best empandas in town,” then hopped in a cab and called it a night. 

 

 

 

 
 

 

Tequila!

 

making bulldog friends

 

 

Santa Marta and Tayrona

   

local man

street empandas

After 5 days in Cartagena, we decided its time to move onto a different place.  We took a “4 hour”, bus ride, ended up being 6 hours (not so bad)  from Cartagena to Santa Marta, which is along Colombia's Caribbean coast.. Nice air conditioned shuttle bus (can't ask for more).  We got dropped off at the place we chose to stay beforehand but quickly realized there was nothing around, that it wasn't exactly in the center of Santa Marta.  We ended up taking a taxi to a place closer to the center of Santa Marta with more shops, restaurants, street carts, nightlife etc.  We decided to stay here for 2 nights, its more of  a lay over spot to go to the  Parque Nacional Natural Tayrona (National Park of Tayrona)

            As soon as we arrived we headed out grabbed some empandas from a street cart, where he plopped down some white plastic chairs and we ate in the street with the other locals.  We went out around 11:30pm to explore the nightlife and ended up at La Puerta(a popular bar for locals and travelers) and found a plaza along the way with lots of people outside drinking, eating, and going to the nearby clubs.

hiking to el cabo san juan

            The next day we walked around the city, not much to see here in Santa Marta, we walked along the beach and enjoyed some of the local dishes of arepas, empandas, jfruit uices, etc.  We also headed to the grocery store to prepare for our stay in the Parque Nacional Natural Tayrona, because there isn't many options there for food.  We bought canned tuna,  snacks, fruit, snorkeling gear, bug spray and a flashlight.  We headed back to our place to pack up a smaller pack for our 2 day stay in the park, because we were going to leave our larger packs since we had to hike to the beach and then we'd come back to Santa Marta for our packs after our trip. 

camping grounds

            Monday morning we woke up bright and early at 6:30am took a local bus about an hour to the entrance of the park paid the entrance fee of $18 each and started our hike to the beach of El Cabo San Juan, which was the best beach in the park we had read. We had heard that the hike to El Cabo would be about an hour and a half, we figured it would be a nice easy walk.  Boy were we wrong.  It took us about 2 hours to get there and it was a very very hard hike.  We were climbing huge hills, rocks, going down steep steps, sliding down dirt hills, moving out of the way of horses passing by, all in 90 degree heat carrying our belongings and food.   It definitely was not the easy walk we were expecting. 

journal writing 

Adrienne

        

Tayrona Park

 

            When we arrived we rented our “beds” (hammocks) on the beach under a hut, and headed for the beach.  We hung out here for 3 days 2 nights it was very relaxing and peaceful and the hammocks weren't too bad to sleep in.  We walked to different beaches and hung out and caught up on sleep since lights were out by 10pm.  We woke up early every morning so we got some good full days on the beach.  

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Cartagena, Colombia

Cartagena we have arrived!!! We got into this beautiful city on the northern coast of Colombia in the afternoon, so we found our place, threw down our packs and headed out to eat and explore.  Obviously I can't complain after the winter we had, but boy was it hot.  The humidity is really what we weren't used to, but as soon as we started walking around, we understood why everyone loves this city so much, its beautiful, people are friendly and its very clean.

top of the castle

steak

The Old City, which is where we stayed in Barrio San Diego is walled in, and surrounding the wall is the sea and an outer neighborhood called Getsamani.  So, after we arrived and had a steak, rice, plantain, salad lunch (all for about $4 USD), we walked along the wall overlooking the sea and watched the sunset.  We strolled around some more up and down the streets enjoying the amazing colors, trying some of the local food and chatting it up with some tourists and locals along the way.  Not many locals here speak English so we were excited to start practicing our Spanish.

The next few days we went to El Castillo (the castle), we ate Colombian arepas, empandas, steak, fish, watched a few sunsets, walked through the streets of Getsamani enjoying the vibrant graffiti, went to the artisanal market at Plaza de Los Bovedas and did lots of salsa dancing with locals!  We loved the salsa dancing here.  We learned that different parts of Colombia do different styles of salsa, so I'd say we have Cartagena salsa down pretty well!!

Best street food ever!

arepas

fish

Beach

streets

Our favorite salsa club was Donde Fidel.  It is in the plaza right beside the clock tower, great salsa music, and pretty much only locals go there.  The second we walked in the locals were asking us to dance.  There was no sitting down here, it was so much fun and quite the workout.  We also heard that Havana Club in Getsamani was a good salsa place.  We went on Friday night, it was so so.  Great live music, but it was too crowded, so we went to a local bar/club down the street with less people, not so many tourists and a DJ who played salsa, hip hop and reggaeton... our favorite.

local mans stand

One of the best foods that we've had so far was this family recipe that this man was selling out of a cart on the street called patagon relleno.  Adrienne swears its the greatest thing she's had... EVER! It's a fried plantain cut down the center (almost like a hot dog roll), stuffed with pulled pork, beef, many different cheeses, french fried sticks, and salsa, it was delicious and only about $1.75 USD each!!

Another day we walked about 20-25 minutes to Boca Grande also known as “Little Miami,” (many high rises along the coast)  We stayed there for 4-5 hours on the beach and had a nice relaxing day.  The beach here isn't that beautiful, its a regular looking beach, but its nice to get away from the heat for a few hours and be able to get in the refreshing Caribbean to cool down a bit.

salsa dancing