Columbia - Last stop in South America

 Since coming to Columbia, I've had to make the hard choice to miss out on the Caribbean this time round and head up to Cuba through Central America. I desperately wanted to see a lot of the Caribbean Islands, and still do. However it would take a long time to navigate all the way up to Cuba. Plus the whole trip would be quite pricey. Money and Time are two things I don't have right now. So I made the decision early on, that if I can't see all the beaches in the Caribbean that I'd hoped for, I was going to find next best thing and spend a lot of time on the Caribbean coast in Columbia. However I couldn't come to Columbia without checking out Medellin.

My Columbian experience started in Ipiales, a small town just over the border. From here I booked my 18 hour bus to Medellin. The Bus somehow turned into a 21 hour trip, but nevertheless I arrived in Medellin on the 17^th of May. After an overpriced taxi and a lot of walking I finally found my hostel, The Pit Stop Hostel. After exploring the nearby neighbourhood for a place to get some dreads done, and failing. I went back to the hostel and of course ran into a group I knew, seems impossible to go to a city in the past 3 months and not find someone. It was nice to have some friends to go to the water park with and party at night. But after a few days I was over it and boarded a night bus to Santa Marta, my first stop on the Caribbean coast line.

After a 16 hour bus, I arrived in Santa Marta on the 21^st and checked out a few places to sleep before deciding on a decent, if overpriced, hotel. Santa Marta seemed very dirty, and much more of a port/fishing town than a beach town, with many funky smells all over. There seemed to be a fair amount of crime with a heavy police presence. After just one night I decided to keep moving and grabbed a cab to nearby Taganga, which was meant to be a nice little beach town just 15 min away.

Unfortunately once I got to Taganga I was fast obvious that what once would have been a nice little beach town was now quite touristy and busy. The beach was kinda dirty and didn't feel entirely safe leaving anything on the beach while swimming. However Taganga was very chilled so I spend two nights relaxing there and researching some better beach spots to hit up. On the 24^th I decided on Palomino, a beach town about an hour north of Taganga. This time, I wouldn't be disappointed.

As I arrived in the 'town' of Palomino (a few small shops on the main road) I started walking with only a small idea of where I was going. The only taxis to speak of were motorbikes so I somehow managed to jump on the back of one with my two massive bags and got a lift to La Sirena a small lodge right by the beach. As we drove through rainforest tracks I new I was gonna like this place. When we arrived I was in paradise, It was only a small place with hammocks and rooms to rent but had coconut trees scattered everywhere and was literally on the beach so I loved it. Spend the first night with an Aussie couple on their honeymoon. But when I woke up in the morning they were heading off so I had the entire place to myself. Spent a lot of time chilling in the hammocks, reading (and writing this), and drinking from my bag of water (that's all you could get in town). All was well and I could imagine spending many days there. Then on a walk back from town on my second day I decided it was time to get a coconut from the many trees along the beach. I found a very small tree with heaps of low hanging coconuts, I thought I could grab one just from jumping, and although I got hold of it, it stayed attached and when my feet hit the ground I felt the most excruciating pain shoot up my foot, as I lifted it up I found I'd impaled it on something stuck in the sand, still not sure what it was, I'm pretty sure it was a branch or something like that. Feeling some of the worst pain I can remember, I somehow hobbled the 200m back to the lodge and collapsed into my hammock. Had a horrible night that night trying to sleep, foot was throbbing all night long. Considering I was completely incapacitated I thought it would be smarter to recover in Santa Marta where I could find a cheaper bed for a few days. So I called my motorbike taxi and headed back to Santa Marta.

My Virtual Prison for 8 days.

Despite Santa Marta not being my favourite town, I was forced to spend 8 very boring days holed up in my hotel room, only limping out a couple of times a day to get something to eat and drink. After 5 days my foot was still killing me, I could kinda walk with my boots on, but not for too long at a time, I thought 5 days was a long time so I started thinking about a doctor when the hotel's cleaner noticed me limping and I managed to explain to her in Spanish what had happened. The next day she told me she'd take me to the Chemist when she finished work, needless to say, I was very grateful. After just 1 day on some tablets she got for me, I think one was non-inflammatory, not sure about the other one. My foot was heaps better and could walk in thongs again. So it was time to get out of Santa Marta finally, until I realised my bank transfer didn't work and I was completely broke. With my hotel manager getting the shits every time I'd come back from the ATM empty handed I was starting to worry about what to do. The manager said I could have one more night, but that was it. The next day I walked to the ATM praying that the money was there and started laughing in delight when I head the machine start to count the money, the sound I'd been waiting 3, very poor, days for. After enjoying a long awaited expresso and cake I went back to my hotel and with great enthusiasm slammed the money on the bench, packed my bag and grabbed a bus to Cartegena at 2.30pm on the 3^rd of June. I was moving again, finally!

After a short 5 hour trip I found myself in Cartegena, and quickly discovered it was vastly different from what I'd gotten used to over the past week or two, a real city and quite big. After sharing a taxi with a English girl I arrived in the centre of town and a friendly local started helping me find a hostel. I was a little worried at first, as to why he was helping me so much, but it was something I was getting used to in Columbia, and this time was no different. After settling into my room I went for a quick exploration around the hostel and found a little casino, after not gambling for ages I thought I'd be worth a try. I ran into my local friend at the casino and he told me to be careful speaking to anyone on the street, I soon found out why. It took 4 months and 1 day, but I finally got robbed in South America! Well kind of anyway, they were pretty crappy at the thieving business. After walking out of the casino I had someone offering me cocaine, I took Steve's ,rather obvious, advice and kept walking. But they are relentless (another thing I've gotten used to all over South America) and they are good at stopping you in a non violent way, which he did, while explaining that I had to keep going he called a couple of friends over, I still wasn't worried, seemed like just another pushy drug dealer which are everywhere. Long story short he explained I needed to give him 150 000 Pesos (about $75) after lying and saying I didn't have that much, that I'd lost it in the casino finally he dropped his price to 50000 again I said I didn't have it and after some discussion with his friends he told me to show him how much I had on me, I reached into my pocket hoping there was enough to make him happy but not too much, I pulled out 25000 pesos (about $12.50) and he seemed happy with that and let me on my way. So I was robbed, but at least I bargained with my thief! Obviously I wasn't a massive fan of this part of town so I moved to another part the next day, which was much nicer. Cartegena is actually a beautiful city, with 2 sections, old town and new town. New town looks like what I expect Miami looks like. While the majority of old town is within a massive stone wall, built long ago to protect the port from the many pirate attacks it used to receive, awesome! After a couple of days exploring Old Town, it dawned on me that I had less than one month before I was due to fly out of Cuba. I knew that wasn't enough time to properly see Central America, Mexico and Cuba, so I shelled out nearly $1000 for a flight to Mexico city.

After 4 months and 4 days, I'd covered 7 countries, made awesome new friends and got to an existing one in Juliano, seen 2 world wonders plus many other stunning sights, Took part in the biggest party in the world with Carnival and learnt a great deal about many things, but on the 6^th of June at 5pm my plane took off and I bid farewell to South America, I certainly hope, not for the last time.

Ecuador

When I started this trip I had no intention of coming to Ecuador, however I'm eternally grateful I did. I had another chance to hang out with an awesome bunch of people, tasted the ocean for the first time since Brazil and fulfilled a lifelong ambition of discovering the Amazon and some of its wonders.

My experience in Ecuador started in Quayaquil, after about a 5 or 6 hour bus ride from Mancora, Peru, with many police and military checks along the way. Upon arrival in Quayaquil I found out it was too late to get my next bus ticket so I was forced to shack up in a cheap hostel for the night and return to the bus terminal the following morning where I bought a ticket to Montañita on the Pacific Coast for a long awaited reunion with a big group of friends made along the way.

I arrived at the 'bus terminal' (a small patch of road) in Montañita on a Beautiful, sunny day and immediately found Kelly, waiting for her bus then Jack and Sam walking down the street and finally found the rest of the group, Sam and Syd, Alieshia, Sally and the Great Danes. After almost a week of solo travelling it was a great feeling to have a group of friends to chill with. Made even better by the fact we were chilling on a beautiful beach on a perfect beach day, I could have stayed there for weeks, perfectly content. However I soon found out the group was splitting up the next day, some staying in Montañita and others making their way to Quito to start an Amazon tour. I was left with a hard decision, but decided to leave the next day with our jungle crew, based on the fact that as beautiful as the beach was I had many amazing beaches awaiting me in the Caribbean and of course back home in Oz. It was election weekend in Ecuador and by law drinking alcohol was banned 48 hours prior to election day, but as always, seek and you shall find, and find we did. We had a 'fiesta grande' that night as I knew it would be my last night in South America with a lot of good new friends. The following morning at breakfast we had a strange man with a driver and bodyguard, and money to burn, offer to drive us all the way to Quito, almost 24 hour drive. However he gave everyone the creeps so we decided to board the bus we'd already booked to Quayaquil. At midday I said 'hasta luego to Jack, Aliesha and Sally, and Sam, Syd the Great Danes (Matthias, Matthias and Daniel) jumped on the bus to Quayaquil.

We were completely unprepared for our arrival in Quayaquil, we expected to easily book our next bus to Quito and leave the same night. Instead we were confronted with absolute chaos in the bus terminal. As I said, it was election weekend and every Ecuadorian has to be in their home town to vote. As the doors to the terminal open we stood there gobsmacked with the sight before us, hundreds upon thousands of locals queuing to find a bus to their home town. You could feel the body heat in the air and to walk through the crowd meant being ruthless everyone pushing to get though to were they needed to go, lost children crying everywhere and when finally at the other side of the crowd I was covered in at least 50 different peoples sweat...awesome! After a fruitless search for a private vehicle to drive us to Quito we decided to bunker down in a hostel in Quito for the night and try again the next morning. The next day Sam and Syd managed to find another smaller terminal and got our tickets to Quito, due to a crappy taxi system we missed our bus and had to pay again to catch the next one, however finally we were getting closer to the Jungle!

We arrived early in the morning, we learnt quickly that taxi drivers in Quito have no idea about where they're going as we couldn't find the hostel I booked anywhere, after trying a few hostels that were full we had to go to a hotel in the centre of town. The next day we started looking for a place to book our Amazon adventure. This didn't quite go to plan as it was Sunday and every tour place was closed, we found out that we'd have to wait for the morning and then leave the next day, however the Danes were flying home in a week and so it meant we'd have a very short jungle experience. We all gave up looking for places when and started walking home when we stumbled on the only jungle tour place open in town. After booking a better tour than we'd hoped for and for $100 less than we expected to pay we thought we should celebrate, so celebrate we did! After a hilarious night we woke up all a little groggy but got to work organising everything we'd need for the jungle and boarded a bus north-east at 11 o'clock that night.

 

Upon arrival in a small town (unsure of the name, opps) we had a 3 hour trip by car and arrived at the Amazon River! We met our guide 'Beaver' and jumped into a motor canoe. Our adventure started with a two hour boat ride to our lodge in the middle of the Amazon jungle. We had 4 days in the jungle and loved every second of it. I hadn't anticipated seeing so many animals but we saw everything from tarantulas, ridiculously huge insects and heaps of birds through to monkeys, river dolphins and a sloth (kind of) just to name a few. Spend a lot of time swimming in the river, even woke up to a swim everyday, nothing like a dip in the Amazon to wake up! We also went fishing for piranha and visited a local village. Proving its a small world, we ran into our friend Kelly in the middle of the Amazon and got to spent a fun night in the Jungle. The Amazon is defiantly a place I need to visit again.

After arriving back in Quito, we only had one night together as a group, so we made the most of it. We finally made it to a Karaoke bar after saying we should go way back in La Paz, over 1 month and 2 countries later we made it. The next day was full of sad goodbyes, I knew I see them all again somewhere in the world which made it a bit easier. From here I'd be travelling alone, something that made me excited and anxious at the same time. After finally finding the right bus terminal and waiting 4 hours I jumped on a bus to the Columbian Border. After being forced to spend a night in Tulcán, I took a cab across the Border and said goodbye to Ecuador.