Circo fantastico!
We’ve been in Colombia less than a week now and we’ve hit up Cartagena, Medellin and we are imminently heading to Manizales for some snow-capped volcano hiking action.
In some ways there was a massive culture shock, in others my expectations had been realized. Our first hostel was very different to what we were used to … we’d been spoiled prior. There were 8 bunk beds and 0 privacy, a shared bathroom across a courtyard, which for lazy me was a pain in the ass having to pack a day bag just to get dressed and brush my teeth. There was one guy who is backpacking like us and has 6 hats. Big ones! It’s ridiculous, I can’t believe he’s carrying them round with him- I saw him wearing a straw one, but last night I saw him SLEEPING in a blue one.What made our arrival so bewildering, and it’s completely our own fault, was the fact that Dan and I did not make the effort to learn Spanish like we’d promised ourselves. Obviously the locals don’t speak English, but nearly everyone in our hostel speaks Spanish fluently- which doesn’t make us look very good. We made a few attempts with the phrasebook which is fine to ask a question, it’s when you get a fast reply that everything comes undone! We have managed; we booked bus tickets to Medellin and ended up in… . Medellin not Venezuela. The bus journey was interesting too… the seats were super comfortable and we slept a little, but the journey scheduled to take 13 hours took 17, probably because our porky driver stopped what seemed like every 40 minutes to feed. I got to eat some yummy Pan de Coco, bread similar to naan filled with sugar and coconut. We saw some beautiful countryside and discovered the Colombian’s love of Jason Statham films (we watched enough, dubbed of course), and I cracked out the Christmas music!
The weather has been great- lovely warm tropical climate after freezing LA, and there are amazing thunder and rain storms every afternoon you can set your watch by. I love Medellin’s vibe, big big city that’s incredibly green. As always the people are wonderful, we sat in a mall huddled over the phrasebook wondering how to ask about international phone calls when we were accosted by a woman with 3 kids and her husband in tow. She asked us what we needed, conferred with her husband, took us under her wing and helped us. She took us to where we could make a call, waited with us to make sure we were ok and gave us her phone number and invited us to call her if we needed anything or anyone to show us around the city. We walked around for the rest of the day with a warm feeling inside. We got the metro into the city centre and as any city centre on a Saturday it was coco loco. Stalls lined the streets, clothes, cigarettes, coffee (coffee fact of the trip #2+3: Coffee is the world’s second most traded commodity after oil and Colombia is only the world’s 3rd biggest coffee exporter) make up, leather goods, carts with food, donuts and pastries delicious cream-fruit sundaes. People were out on the streets drinking beer milling about; Dan got his bottom smacked by a small kid as he was being wheeled past on a pallet cart, Spanish music floating up into the ether. What we’ve encountered so far has been an atmosphere unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before, and it’s wonderful.
A little bit of Cartagena
A little Carribbean sunset
