Day 285: Walking Around Cartagena

On my first day in Cartagena, I just wandered around in the historical center, taking in the beautiful facades greeting me on each and every street, and the small parks on many corners.



Seeing the beautiful houses, balconies often overflowing with flowers, I understood why people throughout my trip have recommended going to Cartagena. It is simply insanely beautiful! This city alone would make a visit to Colombia worthwhile.



While wandering, I found that entrance to the Palacio de la Inquisición was free that day, so I stepped in. The museum was rather small, but housed in a beautiful building:



Besides some exhibits showing the history of Cartagena, they also had a room specific to the building's original purpose: the inquisition. More specifically, there were torture instruments, information about witchcraft, and a guillotine. At the entrance to this room was a sign: "Don't touch the exhibits, danger of accidents!" A very apt warning - a visitor accidentally beheaded by a guillotine would indeed be... unfortunate ;-)



Aside from its beauty, Cartagena is also very hot and humid. The air conditioning in the room is set to 28 degrees, and it's a huge relief stepping into that room. But then again, I'm not a big fan of air conditioning - it takes away any chance for the body to ever adapt to the climate. I also have a feeling that the temperature display is off - 28 shouldn't feel that cold at night ;-)

Day 284: To Cartagena

Today I made my way up to the Caribbean coast, to visit the famous port city Cartagena. The day didn't start too well, however: I was told that my 8 am bus wouldn't run because it had to be repaired. Instead, they put me on the 9 am bus to Sincelejo, a town about two thirds on the way to Cartagena. Later I wondered - was the bus really in need of repairs, or did they cancel the service because there were only two passengers? In any case, I couldn't help but feel that some kind of apology would have been nice; a packet of cookies, a coffee, or a soda - all of these would have cost the bus company virtually nothing, but would have significantly increased my sense of satisfaction with them.

In the end, the journey worked out well enough: in Sincelejo, I caught a minivan to Cartagena that even dropped me off in the center instead of the bus terminal, for about the same price as the original trip. At lunch break, surprisingly, there were even some beautiful flowers to be seen:



On the road, I noticed that highways - or roads bypassing villages - are virtually unknown in Colombia. As a result, every single collection of houses along the road has a set of speed bumps installed; otherwise cars and trucks would just speed through and put everybody's life at risk. As it is, the only life at risk is that of the traveler who gets annoyed to death by his bus slowing down to almost zero and then speeding up again - the procedure being repeated every five minutes.

Something else I'm quite fed up with on the road is seeing stickers that say 'dios es amor' (god is love) on cars and buses. Somehow I'm suspicious of drivers who put their life into the hands of a god like this - will they drive less responsibly because they believe he's gonna save them anyway?

Another thing I noticed in Colombia is that Colombians have yet another distinct Spanish accent. In some respects, it resembles Argentinian Spanish. For example, the 'll' in Medellín is not pronounced as a /j/, but rather as a /ʒ/ (Argentinians would use /∫/ instead).

They also use a different expression to respond to somebody thanking them than the rest of Latin America. Everybody else so far said 'de nada' (it's nothing). Colombians say 'con gusto' (with pleasure) instead - which appears a lot more friendly to me :-)

Something that Colombians seem to be proud of is that their tap water is drinkable, at least in some parts of the country, including the metropolis Medellín. Indeed, since I left Argentina and Chile behind, Colombia is the first country that has drinkable tap water. Looking at the wealth and development of Latin American countries, I guess that drinkability of tap water could even be seen as an indicator for progress. All things considered, not a bad source of pride, wouldn't you say?

Day 283: Parks in Medellín

On my last day in Medellín, there were some parks left that I wanted to see. One of them, Parque Arví, is connected to the metro system via two cable cars. The first of them is even included in the metro fare - you pay 90 cents once and get to go on a train and a cable car, isn't that amazing? This is the first cable car seen from the base station:



The second cable car ride took a really long time, and when I finally arrived at the park, there was no trace left of the big city nearby; no faint car noises, no smells, and certainly no visual. Just pure nature!

There was a visitor center right next to the cable car station, and it turned out that they offer free guided walks every thirty minutes. So I decided to do with a guide instead of on my own - and promptly had him to myself! Apparently nobody else was interested in learning more about the nature in the park. But then again, most of the other visitors looked like they were on a day trip from their retirement home - they even had shirts saying 'Club de vida / tercera edad' (club of life / third age) - so I'm guessing they had their own people to guide them.

Interestingly enough, the part of the park that I saw consisted mainly of pine forest. If it hadn't been for the big eucalyptus trees standing between the pines, I could have believed to be right in the middle of Germany. It certainly smelled like home!



The way back offered a nice view of Medellín from above. You can really see the predominant building material used throughout the city: red bricks. And who would care to paint their house, anyway?



My next stop, just a couple of metro stations away, was the botanical garden. They were in the process of mounting a big orchid exhibit scheduled to coincide with the huge flower festival in August (which, sadly, I'm going to miss). As a consequence, the orchid garden was closed - what a shame! I would have loved to see it. But the rest of the gardens was very pretty, too. For example, I found this gorgeous red flower:



Finally, I had read about a barefoot park in downtown Medellín. I think I had expected something a little bigger, but for my tired feet at the end of the day, the park was just perfect. There was mainly a kind of rough sand or gravel to walk on, plus a water basin to cool your feet. The basin was fed by a big fountain, and the sunset light combined magnificently with children playing near the fountain. Beautiful, isn't it?

Day 282: El Peñon + Guatapé

About two hours by bus from Medellín is the small town of Guatapé, easily doable in a day trip. Close to Guatapé is the main attraction in the area: El Peñon, also called La Piedra, The Rock. The Rock is a huge black monolith, sticking out of the otherwise relatively flat countryside. An amazing sight, isn't it?



But it gets better: 740 steps lead up the monolith and the little tower on top - no elevator shortcut available. All the way to the top, there were plants clinging to the vertical rock and somehow making a living out of sun and humidity.



The views from the top were simply stunning, revealing the fjord-like lake surrounding the monolith. That would be an awesome place to have a holiday home!



I couldn't get enough, looking down at the lake and the green hills making little islands and bays. Wonderful, and well worth the effort of climbing a few steps ;-)



About an hour's walk further, I reached Guatapé, a small town consisting of colorful houses like this one:



Walking around the streets was a real pleasure for the eye, with bright colors and flowers everywhere. More cities should be like this :-)

Day 281: Pablo Escobar

Pablo Escobar was the most famous, influential - and dangerous - drug lord in Colombia. He was head of the Medellín cartel, responsible for shipping two to three tons of cocaine to the US - every day. Since he was shot in 1993, the situation in Medellín has improved a lot: no more car bombs, no more drive-by shootings. At least during the daytime, it is safe to walk around most parts of the city.

To show visitors what Medellín was like in Pablo Escobar's time, there are two companies offering Pablo Escobar tours. I joined one of them today.

The tour showed us various houses that the Medellín cartel had built. All of them were white - allegedly as a reference to the color of cocaine, as the rest of Medellín is built with red bricks. This one was bombed by the cartel's rivals just after it was finished. And this is what a car full of TNT does to a house:



Some people in Colombia seem to believe that Escobar is not really dead, and consequently there is graffiti like this, saying "Pablo lives:"



During the time car bombings and shootings were daily business in Medellín, our guide was in school. Nobody knew how to deal with the constant fear, many had lost friends or relatives, and so their way of coping was to invent jokes. This is one of them: Do you know what Pablo Escobar's daughter will receive as a Christmas present this year? - Barbie Car Bomb!

In 1993, Pablo Escobar was shot to death. There are different stories around as to who did it - rivals, the police, the CIA, he himself as a response to being cornered - but the result, his death, is almost undisputed. This was his aunt's house where he passed his final hours:



We also visited his grave in Medellín's cemetery:



After his death, the Medellín cartel suddenly found itself without a leader. As a consequence, its rival, the Cali cartel, took over the business. Today, Colombia still is the world's biggest producer of cocaine, but the violent cartel wars seem to have shifted to northern Mexico. According to our guide, the situation there today is very similar to the one in Colombia before Escobar's death.

All is not well in Colombia, however. There are still high levels of corruption among police and government. Just recently, our guide explained, police confiscated four tons of cocaine. Two days layer, it was scheduled to be destroyed - but had been replaced with flour in the meantime.

Drug usage also seems to be a problem. Although the consumption and acquisition of drugs is not legal, Colombians are allowed to carry one gram of cocaine and an ounce of weed for personal use. There seem to be tolerance zones in the city where it is ok to smoke weed, as long as you do it after five. And then there are the basuco addicts. Our tour van passed one street corner where people were smoking cocaine paste, or basuco, in broad daylight. Extremely cheap, and extremely addictive - these people live only for the next smoke. Presumably, this is an area tourists should refrain from exploring on foot ;-)

Day 280: Medellín

In the morning, I explored the neighborhood El Poblado, where my hostel is located. My primary goal was to find an ATM, but since the street with all the banks on it also had a few malls, I also looked around in some of them. The entire neighborhood is very modern and western, full of banks and office buildings, coffee houses and fast food restaurants, malls and casinos. Santa Fe mall is the biggest and fanciest of them. It is a huge airy place with a roof that opens and a big flower garden on the ground floor.



It also had a store of my favorite fashion label - the first one I'd seen in all of South America! I indulged in this eye candy for a while, but refrained from buying anything - the prices above and beyond 100.000 pesos seemed a little intimidating ;-)

In the afternoon, I took the metro to go downtown. Downtown Medellín seems a little more run-down than rich Poblado. The metro station in the center, Parque Berrío, is not really a park, but rather a concrete desert littered with souvenir and food vendors, beggars, people working as mobile phone booths, and police; my nose registered the smell of weed in several of the adjacent streets.

Not everything is bad and ugly, however. There was this cool building, in the eclectic style, serving as a cultural center - which incidentally had a small photo exhibit about Medellín's 2011 gay pride parade :-)



Across the street was the museum of Antioquía (Antioquía being the province Medellín is located in). They had some more Botero artwork (fat midgets, if you remember). More interestingly, they also had some other modern art, like this one that I liked very much:



By the way, I find it fascinating that every single museum in Ecuador and Colombia - even art museums - allowed visitors to take pictures, only advising them to please not use flash. I seem to remember that museums always used to be very restrictive about photography - but with the ubiquity of smartphones nowadays, maybe this is changing slowly?

Day 279: To Medellín

In line with my continuing efforts to avoid nighttime travel, I spent much of the day getting from Salento to Medellín. The six-hour bus trip was really nice: gorgeous landscape outside the window, and an excellent book on my Kindle (currently Terry Pratchett's newest book The Long Earth) - what more could I want?

My first impression of Medellín was very favorable. Beautiful warm weather, a modern metro, and a big supermarket close to the hostel. I'm curious to see how the rest of the city holds up to its still tainted reputation ;-)

Day 278: El Valle de Cocora

Today I went for a day hike in the valley of Cocora. Locally, it is advertised as one of the most beautiful landscapes in Colombia, so I was curious to see it. Of course, I'm no judge of Colombian landscapes yet, having been here only for a couple of days. But I have to say that the hike was definitely worthwhile!

The hike went along the valley for a while, then up through cloud forest until almost 3000 meters of altitude, and then back down again through meadows with huge wax palms.

Through all of the cloud forest, there was a variety of butterflies around, and some even sat still long enough for me to take a picture.



At the first rest break, an ecological farm called Acaime, they had put up bird feeders - but for a special kind of birds. So instead of the usual grains, the feeders contained sugary water to attract hummingbirds, who feed on nectar, not grains. When I was standing still close to the feeders for a while, the hummingbirds started humming around my head. Hearing their wings flap so close to me was pretty amazing!



The way back down offered spectacular views of the valley below, the hiking path being clearly visible even from up there.



And then, the final highlight: wax palms! They are palms that grow as tall as sixty meters, making them pretty hard to photograph from up close.



The last part of the hike then went through this lovely valley with green meadows and wax palms scattered all over.



I even got to walk up to the palms and examine their bark up close. Along the entire length of the stem, there were rings where some kind of moss or lichen grew, alternating with regular bark. I figure the rings are where branches used to be attached before the palm got taller and the lower branches dropped; now these rings seem to offer something in terms of nourishment that regular bark doesn't. Interesting, isn't it?

Day 277: Fincas in Salento

As I wrote yesterday, Salento is in the middle of Colombia's Zona Cafetera - which was declared a world heritage site by the UNESCO, by the way. So today, I decided to visit two of the coffee-growing fincas close to Salento.

Walking there took about an hour, but it was pure pleasure to walk in this lush tropical landscape with surprising views opening up from time to time - such as this wonderful view of the valley where Río Quindío flows:



After a while, I arrived at the finca of Don Elias. And this is Don Elias:



Doesn't he just look like the prototypical Colombian coffee farmer? I couldn't believe it myself ;-)

Don Elias' finca is rather small: he said he has 8000 coffee plants that yield about 12 tons of coffee per year. Everything on his finca is done manually, without elaborate machinery and without chemicals. To keep the farm healthy, and to produce natural fertilizer, there are bananas, plantains, avocados and a few other plants mixed with the coffee plants. Among them, I saw - for the first time in my life, I believe - a pineapple plant! Surprisingly (for me), pineapples don't grow on trees, but rather very close to the ground, on plants that look slightly similar to agaves.



Wonderful red flowers like these were also scattered between the coffee plants:



The main plant on the farm was, of course, coffee. On the coffee branch in the next picture, you can see a few white flowers. The flowers bloom only for a few days, and after that they fall down, revealing a tiny green seed on the branch where the flower used to be.



The seeds then grow until they reach their final size, and ripen until they have a nice red color (or yellow, depending on the plant).



The seeds don't all ripen at the same time, so the harvest has to be done manually over a period of time. After the harvest, the beans are separated from the peel, washed and dried. When they are dry, another shell is separated from the beans, which are then roasted and ground.

After Don Elias showed me the entire process, his wife prepared the ground coffee in a typical Colombian coffee machine:



The coffee was excellent, very soft without any bitterness that is so often found in coffee.

Don Elias sells the roasted and ground coffee only locally on his finca, to visitors who take his tour. The majority of his coffee, however, is only dried and then sold to the coffee collective for export (coffee roasting companies abroad want to roast their coffee themselves, so they only buy dried, non-roasted coffee).

After drinking coffee and chatting with Don Elias, I said goodbye and went to a neighboring finca, El Ocaso. With about 52000 coffee plants, they were much bigger, needing sixteen permanent employees to take care of the finca. Another difference between the two farms was that El Ocaso relies heavily on machinery to process the coffee after the harvest, leading to a much less human impression overall. Having seen El Ocaso, I'm really happy that there are people like Don Elias!

Day 276: Independence Day

I only realized yesterday evening that today would be Colombia's independence day. Consequently, I had made plans to travel to Salento today without considering of travel on independence day was a good idea or not.

On the way out of Bogotá, I thought it was a terribly bad idea; it took ages to get out of the city, and for a few hours, the street trembled one big traffic jam. But later on, I saw all the construction sites along the road - apparently they are building many new bridges and tunnels - and the fleet of construction vehicles parked at one of the sites. If it hadn't been a holiday, all of these would have been out on the street, no doubt creating traffic jams of their own. So in essence, I think independence day really didn't have any influence on the duration of my trip. Who would've thought?

Salento is a small village in the so-called Zona Cafetera - the area where all the good Colombian coffee comes from :-) I was happy that, after ten hours on buses, I managed to arrive in daylight to get a first glimpse at the village and its plaza.

Day 275: More Bogotá

On my second day in Bogotá, I visited several more museums. The first was the Botero museum, dedicated to the Colombian artist Fernando Botero. He seems to be committed to paint and sculpt people as fat midgets. Just look at his representation of the president and the first lady:



All of his work looks like that - and he has been pretty productive, filling an entire museum and then leaving some for other museums in the city.

In the same complex as the Botero museum were three more museums, all free to visit. The buildings alone would have been worth a visit, very beautifully done!



In one of the museums, I found this photograph - and it made me realize how much I miss Japanese food! Maybe I will have to go back one day, just for the food ;-)



My next stop was the colonial art museum. They mostly had religious artwork which I didn't really care about, but one of the rooms had a wider focus, looking at the Colombian society in the 18th century. One of the displays was interactive and let visitors find out if they would have been eligible to enter a university back then. There were almost twenty conditions you had to fulfill, such as being white, male, not born in the Americas, strictly catholic, without any non-catholic or non-white relations, and so on and so forth. Luckily, we have come a long way since then!

On my way to the last museum for the day, I passed the Plaza Mayor with the huge cathedral on one side and the Palacio de la Justicia on the other.



My last museum for the day, then, was the national museum - another museum with free entry! It covers all of Colombia's history with a fascinating collection of exhibits: pottery, paintings, sculptures, models, daily objects, newspapers, etc. Detailed explanations for each and every piece are provided, but unfortunately my head was too full and my time too limited to take it all in ;-)

Day 274: Bogotá

On my first day in Bogotá, I decided to start by visiting the two museums that interested me most: the museum of modern art and the gold museum.

The gold museum has a huge collection of gold work from all over Colombia. The exposition is grouped into three thematic aspects. First, the techniques of gold working are introduced, then pieces are displayed according to the region or culture that produced them, and finally their spiritual purpose is explained.

The part I found most fascinating was the explanation of the different techniques. I didn't know a lot about gold working, and the explanations were an excellent opportunity to learn more. They even included a video where the techniques were demonstrated.

The lost wax technique, for example, starts with the creation of a wax model of the final product. This model is then covered with clay. When the clay is heated in an oven to create a mold, the wax melts and flows out of the mold. In the next step, metal is melted and filled into the pre-heated mold. The mold has to be hot to make sure that the metal doesn't become solid too soon. When mold and metal have cooled down, the mold is broken and removed to reveal the final metal product. The amount of detail the goldsmiths achieved using this technique is amazing - just look at this earring:



Another technique was hammering and embossing. For this, the metal had to be heated repeatedly to prevent it from breaking during the hammering process, much like what blacksmiths always do in the movies ;-) This is a piece created using this technique:



Another thing you can see in this picture is how small breaks - caused by long and heavy usage of the object - were repaired using small metal bands.

One of the most elaborate exhibits in the museum was this boat, apparently designed to be an offering to the gods:



There couldn't have been a bigger contrast to the centuries old world of mythology in the gold museum than the museum of modern art.

I particularly liked the part where the real-world sun added a light-and-shadow dimension to these three black-and-white pieces:



On my way back to the hostel, I saw a graffiti sprayer at work. Apparently, sprayers are not frowned upon in Bogotá. The many walls adorned with graffiti are witnesses to this.

Day 273: On to Colombia!

Last night, I got on a bus to Colombia. I decided to skip the south of Colombia to have more time for the north. I therefore went straight to Bogotá - a thirty-hour journey, including two nights and one entire day on the bus.

We crossed the border at about 4 in the morning - which had the advantage that there were no queues and the process was rather quick.

I was the first to come back to the bus from Colombian immigration, but unfortunately the doors were closed. So I just stood around shivering - and what did I see? One of the drivers opened the luggage compartment, a man climbed out of there and got into a waiting car. The car drove off towards Colombia, presumably without the man ever going through migrations. Had I just witnessed illegal immigration? And if so, how much had the man paid the bus drivers for their services?

A couple of hours later, I woke up to the feeling of sun rays warming me - as always, the bus drivers loved their air conditioning just a little too much. The landscape that went by outside the window was fantastic, full of lush valleys, creeks and banana plants.



Along the road, I saw quite a few police and military checkpoints. They did check some vehicles and inspected cargo, but always let our bus pass without a second look. After the incident at the border, I wonder if that was the wisest strategy - who knows what else the bus was carrying?

Anyway, the bus ride continued rather uneventfully, and I continued to watch Colombian landscape pass by until it got dark again.

Day 272: Quito from above

On my last day in Ecuador - and the last day on the southern hemisphere - I finally took the Quito tourist bus. The bus was very convenient because it went to a few places that I still wanted to see, but that would've been difficult to reach otherwise.

First was the Panecillo, a hill that overlooks the historical center, and that once served as Quito's southern boundary (those days are long past, however).



On top of the hill, a huge replica of the virgin of Quito holds watch:



My next stop was the telefériqo (many things in Quito have the odd 'q' in them where you would usually expect other letters), a cable car that goes up the side of the Pichincha volcano, yanking the visitor from about 2900 meters of altitude to 4100 meters. The views of Quito and the surrounding countryside were stunning, although the temperature was a little too cold for my taste ;-) This is Quito's southern end, surrounded by gorgeous green hills:



It was only from up there that I realized what a long city Quito is - it measures about 23 kilometers from north to south. Being located in a valley, it isn't very wide. This may even be an advantage, because it makes Quito very easy to cover by public transport: where other cities need a web of fast transport, Quito only needs a line.