Hola Colombia!

It was dark when we landed at El Dorado International Airport, Bogotá, 27 hours after we left San Francisco. After the 10 hour stop in Denver, we flew to Atlanta then down to the capital of Colombia. Very soon after arrival, we quickly realised our brains might take a little bit of time to switch to Spanish mode - either that, or our Spanish was much worse than we expected!

It was surreal physically landing in Colombia - there were so many reasons why we wouldn’t actually end up taking these flights when we booked the very cheap deal on a sunny NZ day in October. With Jelley only able to stay in the US (including all of north and Central America) for 90 days, the original plan was to hit the UK at the start of March, but a month in Colombia provided a much hotter alternative, and aligned with an original 2020 trip objective of getting to South America and improving our Spanish. We thought that surely these flights would be cancelled by Delta (no pun intended), covid restrictions would prevent us from travelling to the country, or we wouldn’t be confident enough to make this journey. Yet here we are!

We had done some sporadic research prior to the flight, quickly reading Lonely Planet Colombia and blogs online, and had a rough idea of how to spend our month here, but landed in a Bogotá with just the 1 hostel booked and minds filled with ideas on where to go next. Our hostel was very cool and designed for the millennial traveller, with an epic rooftop pool, games room and great wifi, located in the university zone next to La Candelaria. It was the perfect spot to start our adventure, catch up on sleep and plan for the coming weeks.

We were really inspired following our friends Jayden & Chelsie’s social media photos throughout their past 2 months in Colombia, and were super stoked that their trip was extended by a couple of days and we would have a chance to catch up, hear about their highlights of travelling here and get an intro into Bogotá with them!

Jayden kindly met us at our hostel and gave us a bit of a walking tour on the way to ‘La Falsa Puerta’ (the false door), an institution in Bogotá known as one of the oldest standing restaurants serving fantastic authentic Colombian food. The chicken ajiaco soup was the best surprise - with corn, avocado and rice inside the soup.

At 3000m above sea level, the altitude of Bogotá makes it a surprisingly cool climate for Colombia, but we didn’t feel the cold having come from our US roadtrip and living in the negative temperatures for the past few weeks. The relative warmth was a welcome change for us, and just a small step into the extreme heat we were heading towards in the Caribbean.

To get our bearings of the city and learn a lot more about its past and present, we went on the highly recommended Bogotá Bike Tour. Led by founder Mike himself, who has lived in the city for 17 years, first as a journalist and now with his tour company, it was an eye-opening experience as we explored areas of the city we would never dare venture ourselves and learnt about the dark past and hope for the future of Colombia. We felt we just scratched the surface, as we learnt about the role of government in peoples lives here, actions that have caused distrust and anger, visited sites of conflict such as the Palace of Justice which is just now being rebuilt, the growth of street art and the part Justin Bieber had to play in this, and went through multiple neighbourhoods. A particular highlight was visiting an inner city coffee roastery, which now has a popular cafe attached for bike tour participants located in a poor area that would never have such a cafe without this new stream of tourists. One of the more confronting sites was the makeshift village in the ‘Central Park’ equivalent of Bogota, which has been housing displaced indigenous people from a town on the Pacific Coast for the past 6 months. The harsh reality of the drug trafficking which is still prevalent in some areas of the country, and forced this community from their land. Not speaking Spanish, used to the warmer climates and unable to adapt to the inner city life, conditions are extremely tough for these people, and it was heartbreaking especially to see the children running around, hoping to return to their homes one day.

It poured with rain as we biked back via a local fruit market - stopping for shelter to try a lot of new tropical fruits, along with a few familiar ones for us that the Americans and Europeans in the group had never tried before (feijoias and tamarillos). We were grateful for what we were able to learn and discover during the tour, and highly recommend this for an introduction to Bogotá and Colombia!

We met a Swiss girl Carina during the bike tour who had also just arrived in Colombia, and met up the next day to head up Monserrate together. We had intended to take the cable car after hearing conflicting reports about the safety of hiking up (and it being extremely steep), but after seeing the queue for tickets, we decided it would be safe enough to hike up together, and straight up it was!

The climb was totally worth it once we got to the top, with epic vistas of the city, helping us grasp the sheer scale of Colombia’s capital city. We enjoyed coffee with a view, and listening to the singing from the church. Grateful that the daily afternoon downpour of rain didn't arrive as we descended, we went together for more excellent Colombian food for lunch, at a restaurant owned by the parents of a family friend Carina had met locally.

Bogotá had come to an end for now, a surprising introduction to the country, as we rushed to the airport to catch a flight up to Cartagena.

Arriving into Cartagena at 9pm on a Saturday night, the city was in full swing. Our hotel was located on an extremely busy intersection of Getsemanni, a gentrified neighbourhood just outside the walls of the Old Town. We braved the crowds and went exploring for some dinner, finding an excellent Mexican restaurant, and loved the local street dancers and festivities on the return home. The ‘chivas’ (party buses) main route went right past our window, holding up traffic and creating an orchestra of horns (the bad kind) as taxis tried to navigate the section all night. It was an awesome location to be in the thick of it all, and our earplugs definitely came in handy.

Our first taste of the heat of the Northern part of Colombia, and Cartagena was HOT! We took a quick walk around Getsemmani to admire the street art, beautiful winding alleyways and iconic umbrellas, before retreating to AC for the peak of the day, and returning at 4pm for a dusk walking tour of the old town.

Our guide Jesus, was exceptional (although we didn’t realise just how great he was until a terrible guide led our next walking tour in Santa Marta). Many tourists only impression of Colombia is Cartagena, where they fly in, take some pics for the ‘gram of the colourful buildings, day trip to a beach and fly home again. We are glad to have had a chance to learn about some of the history behind the vibrant city, its dark past and various occupations by colonists, the imports of 1 million Africa slaves over 200 years who built the city, the various declarations of independence and earning the title ‘La Heroica’ (or The Heroic). It was also insightful to learn about the different mixes of ethnicities in Colombia, as indigenous people, black people and European people grew together, and how today it is near impossible to differentiate the mestizos, mulatos and zambos as they are locally known.

We were keen to try some local cuisine called ‘arepas’ (which are similar to empanadas) but failed miserably. Sometimes going to a busy, popular and well-reviewed restaurant is a bad idea, and 1 hour later we gave up, as Luke took one for the team finding a local street vendor ‘WTF’ fast food.

It was a brief but insightful visit to Cartagena, and we did intend to return again before heading down to some nearby islands. As it happens, we have just 10 days left as this is being written, and heading in the opposite direction, so perhaps we will return on a future trip.

We took a shuttle to Santa Marta, Colombia’s oldest city, and we were surprised the journey actually took less than the scheduled 5 hours. We had gone with a slightly more expensive air conditioned van, offering a more direct service than the public bus and bypassing a longer stop in Baranquilla.

Surrounded by the Sierra Nevada mountain range, Santa Marta city is a hopping off point for many tourists for both the Caribbean coast, its famous Tayrona national park, and La Ciudad Perdida (the Lost City) trek. We were excited to be exploring both of these places in the next week, and a little apprehensive about how the humidity of the region would impact our ability to complete the upcoming ‘Lost City’ trek.

We had several errands to run here to prepare for the 4 day journey, including getting the essential local mosquito repellent ‘Nopikex’, and it was our last reliable wifi for a week. We had a productive day getting organised, and we also managed to fit in a walking tour - although the guide was terrible and the heat way too much to complete the tour. A quick stop to the local Museo del Oro (gold museum) for a bit of pre-Lost City background, and we were ready to embark on the hike of a lifetime. Jelley had her classic travel sickness arrive just in time for 4 days of strenuous activity, so our final meal before heading to the wilderness was an exceptional wood-fired pizza from the highly rated Ouzo restaurant - some familiar food before rice & beans dominated our menu again.

The Lost City trek was a real adventure, we’re still buzzing from it and we can’t wait to share more details on this in our next post.

Until then,

- A Kiwi and A Cali

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