Colombia

This is what my Lonely Planet has to say about Colombia: “…you’ll discover that Colombia is so much more than the old clichés of kidnapping, narcotics and plastic surgery. Check your preconceptions at the door and uncover more than a few surprises in this accessible and utterly thrilling destination.”

Dylan and I fell hard for Colombia, so hard that we are already dreaming of coming back to it sometime in our future to live and work in Bogota for a year or so. What did we find so seductive about Colombia? It has beautiful landscape and wildlife, there is a diversity of cultures, the cities we visited were a vibrant blend of old colonial and very modern and the people are stylish and very friendly (ex. a police officer approached us on the street to chat, to give us his cell number in case we ever needed help, and to invite us to add him on facebook – instant amigos). We were in Colombia for 3 weeks in total. We spent about 1 week in Colombia’s capital city, Bogota, about 1 week exploring a couple cities/towns around the Caribbean coastal region, and about 1 week relaxing on the beaches of Tayrona National Park.

Bogota

To me it felt like cool things were always happening in Bogota. It is a hip, edgy and welcoming city unlike any I have been to before. There is so much energy and its streets and plazas always feel full of people bustling around, selling things, playing music, etc. Our first impression of Bogota was that it reminded us a bit of Toronto. The thing that made our time in Bogota extra special was having friends there to show us around and tell us a bit about Colombia.

The end of a street concert we ran into

Bogota is famous for its beautiful graffiti 

This is the street we stayed on both times we were in Bogota. It is in the historic colonial downtown where most of the buildings felt like cozy country bars to me.

We visited Bogota's Gold Museum that has one of the largest collections of gold artifacts on the continent 

We took a day trip with Nico to a nearby town to visit the Salt Cathedral 

The Salt Cathedral is in one level of a huge salt mine that is still being mined today. We all got a chance to help mine for salt. All of the walls tasted like salt.

The slat in the water of this pool make it so still and reflective that we all thought it was a hole in the ground at first.

Nico in the main hall of the salt cathedral. To me this place looked more like the Mine's of Moria than any other church I have ever visited.

Dylan and I out for a night of Latin dancing and hat wearing. It is a tradition in Bogota to try different hats on all night.

Nico and I taking a break on our 1 1/2 hour walk up to Monserrate. Monserrate is a mountain on the edge of Bogota with fabulous views over the city.

Looking over the mountains from the top of Monserrate

The whole gang (Dann, Diane, Nico, me, Dylan) at Monserrate

Cartagena

Cartagena is famous for its beautiful old colonial city center and its history of pirate attacks. We were only here for 2 nights but we really enjoyed walking around the old city in the evening.

These are the walls that were built to keep pirates (like Sir Francis Drake) from plundering the city

Mompos

It was a last minute decision to come to Mompos. It is a small out of the way town that few tourists find the time to visit. But when Dylan read that this place was “Straight out of a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel” we decided it was worth the trip. Mompos used to be on a main Spanish trade route until the river silted up and it was left more or less lost in time. It took us a whole day by bus, boat, and taxi to get to this town and when we arrived we spent most of our time wandering around the streets, taking siestas, and sitting in plazas watching time stand still.

We hung out by the river

We hung out at this restaurant in a beautiful colonial house. It seemed like every house in Mompos was huge, had a long garden courtyard, and was full of wooden rocking chairs.

We hung out in this square every night eating tasty street food

Most of the streets looked like this - rows of connected colonial buildings. In the evening there were bats flying around and many houses had people sitting outside in their rocking chairs.

Mompos is so lost in time that this tree has had time to eat this bench.

 Tayrona National Park

This is a large national Park on Colombia’s Caribbean Coast. We meant to stay for 3-4 days but we ended up staying for 7. The beaches were beautiful and not too crowded, the jungle was full of lizards and the camping was cheap. We even slept in Hammocks for a couple nights. If we hadn't had to catch our plane back to Quito we probably would still be there.

The views were amazing and the beaches were covered in large rounded boulders - and to this day, I don't know how they got there.

The swimming was fabulous

There were plenty of coconuts to keep us well fed and Dylan figured out how to open them using large rocks (like a monkey).

Our ocean view campsite

There were lots of iguanas (above) as well as small lizards with bright blue markings. We also saw one 2 m caiman just off the path to the beach one night and Dylan caught sight of the allusive giant night lizard on 2 of our night hikes. He says it looks like a large monitor lizard that slunk away into the bushes very silently before I ever got to see it (but he says it is real).

Dylan exploring the boulders at the edge of a beach (looking for crabs, parrot fish, and birds)