Barranquilla

We were ecstatic to arrive in Barranquilla to the home of Julia's Colombian classmate Natallia in L.A.. Their beautiful, comfortable home was such a sanctuary from the elements in Tayrona. Their entire family was so welcoming and hospitable, asking us our preference for breakfast the next morning, showing us to our own rooms, telling us how to call home, and leaving us with a remote control button for the maids should we need anything.

The next morning we woke up and were presented with an incredible breakfast prepared by their two cooks: arepas, fresh baked breads, omelets, fresh squeezed mango juice and coffee.  Natalia's mother, Viola filtered in and out of the kitchen all morning, talking loudly in Spanish on the phone and giving animated instructions to the cooks. She is absolutely adorable and reminds us all a lot of our mom, youthful, pretty and intense. So far all the Barranquilleros we've met are similarly vibrant characters, speaking loudly and very very fast, yelling, gesticulating, laughing. They are fun and so easy to be around. Their laid back coastal attitude perfectly compliments their intensity. 

Next we headed to a huge, modern mall to do some necessary last minute shopping before we leave. The three of us were delighted with most of the clothing stores, finding the Colombian designs more colorful and extra feminine compared to American fashions. Natalia's family owns a women's clothing store chain called Review.They have ten stores throughout Colombia. We made some cute purchases there!

That afternoon we returned to the flat just in time for a delicious hot meal prepared by their awesome cooks. The rest of the afternoon we were happy to relax and get our nails done by a manicurist that came to the house.

Our last day was similarly relaxing. It included laying out by the pool to catch some last minute rays, some gift shopping, an extravagant middle eastern themed lunch with some of Natalia's closest friends. We definitely did not want to leave Tuesday afternoon! Not only had our entire time in Colombia beyond exceeded our expectations we had really enjoyed our relaxing past few days at Casa Castillo.

Plans are already being made to come back...........

Camping in Tayrona

Our CIA friend had managed to impart to us a considerable sense of caution in regards to our safety in the park. Don't give anyone too much information about your travels, don't hike into the park without a guide....I thought it was all a little dramatic. Julia ate it up and I had to explain to the nina that you can't believe everything everyone says. Plus this guy was borderline arrogant, his advice needed to be filtered. 

So here we are at the entrance of real jungle which we were about to enter sans guide. Our taxi driver insisted it was easy enough to hike in and follow the trail and within minutes we saw for our own eyes an easy enough to follow trail and lots of people hiking it due to the holidays. Nonetheless this jungle was nature, real nature. We trekked through dense forest- palm trees and countless exotic green plants clustered so thick in every direction that that powerful equator sun I've been writing about barely shines through. You best not attempt this hike after the sun goes down. Even still the heat conquers...the air is thick and still. By an hour in we were drenched with sweat and barely half way. Half way through we emerged out of the jungle and reached the beach Arricefes. Because the beach is unswimmable at the first campsite we continued on to El Cabo, a one hour hike down the beach. 

Just as described these stretches of beaches were near empty, tranquil, absent of any human intervention. I mean these beaches look like something out of dinosaur times, unimaginably massive pre-historic boulders border the beach. Not only have I never visited such a beach, I've never seen pictures of such a rare beach. Two and a half sweltering hours later we arrived at our beach camp spot and b-lined to the place to pay for our hammocks.  One minor problem, Angelica and Julia did not bring their passports (at the recommendation of Fabio the hostel owner) nor copies (I did have). They refused to give us hammocks or better yet any sort of campsite. Obviously we had come too far and encountered too many obstacles to get to this park to take no for an answer. I basically told them they were giving us those hammocks, Angelica backed me up. Ten minutes later we were successful, giving them the girls driver's licenses as an alternative. 

The rest of the afternoon was relaxing. We dropped our things off at the hammocks and walked to a quiet beach and spent the rest of the afternoon sunbathing and swimming. We hiked a small ways to watch sunset on an entirely vacant beach heading back before it got too dark back to the camp site for a fish dinner and a few shots of aguardiente to facilitate a night's sleep in the hammocks. 

I should have had more aguardiente because I did not find the hammocks easy to sleep in at all. We all woke up shortly after the sun rose, and headed to the "restaurant" for breakfast. About one hour after ordering and no food at our table we deemed this wait too long, even by Colombian standards. You see we had grown accustomed to hour long waits for food by this time but any wait longer you better speak up because they probably forgot about you. While waiting we were approached by an outgoing young Colombian that proceeded to hang out with us at our table while we were waiting (not that he was invited). Turns out his family ran the campground so we asked him to go check on our food and there it was one minute later. Edwin was in love with Angelica and made an admirable effort trying to charm her and convince her to go to the nude beach with him. If you know Angelica you know he did not stand a chance. 

After breakfast we packed a day pack and trekked through the jungle a ways to a secluded beach to spend the day at. By this time Angelica's sunburn from Playa Blanca was still really red so she had to spend the day mostly in the shade with 100 spf. It didn't seem to bother her....Julia and I would be playing in the waves and would glance back on the beach and find her doing various strength training exercises on her towel. She's creative to say the least. Back in Cartagena she used a five liter water jug to weight train in the hotel room. 

By one Julia and I had overstayed our time in the sun, in a big way. We hiked back to the camp to shower our sunburned bodies and got on our way. As we were exiting the park we asked about riding horses out of the park. The price was right so we hopped on. We requested that Julia get the most "tranquilo" horse because she was nervous. I kid you not, I must have been laughing hysterically for the first fifteen minutes of the ride as Julia bounced uncontrollably on the horse looking terrified. The funniest part was that her horse's name was Gringo!

We were thoroughly happy with our decision to ride the horses out, taking in the scenery more intently and arriving to the park entrance ahead of schedule. There we found our favorite taxi driver.....fixing his broke down renault 12!!! We were not surprised in the slightest. There stood three Colombian men all tinkering with the piece of junk. At one point they all tried pushing the car down hill to get it started. One half hour later it was running...we hopped in quickly..afraid it would die again if we didn't act hastily. 

We picked up someone a ways down the road, of course, and putted back to Santa Marta as the sun was setting. Back at Casa Familiar we enquired about getting to Barranquilla. The buses were no longer running so we asked about taxis and were told they would be like $150 usd. Determined to get there that night and for less, we went outside the hotel and started waving down some taxis and asking how much they would charge us. We found one driver for $100 and arranged to leave in about an hour. At 8pm we packed our bulky luggage onto the top of this tiny taxi (wait until you see my picture) and headed to Barranquilla!

En Route to Tayrona

If you were wondering where that beach was at the top of my blog, well, it happens to be our next destination, Tayrona National Park. We left Cartagena Saturday afternoon via a door-to-door private van service. This was the best mode of transportation available to us by American standards and the safest option as we were told repeatedly by all of our Colombian friends and aquaintances DO NOT TAKE THE BUS (I mean normal bus). So we boarded out dark "luxury" van and headed north through arid, desert like open space. The topography reminded me a lot of the baja peninsula in Mexico. The diverse landscapes in Colombia continue to astonish...the are so varied! They have desert, mountains, amazon, coast, and jungle all in a country the size of Texas.

Half-way through the drive we made a pit stop, where Julia and I made a very small investment in a curious snack...salted mango with squeezed lime juice. This snack included gloves, something we found hilarious, and was pretty good. Towards the second half of the four hour ride a gentleman behind us spoke to us in American English. There began an interesting and lengthy conversation with the American government official. Although he refused to tell us what his role/position in the government was, he did reveal that he was working in Cartagena. We were able to infer that he was involved in a military or drug regulation capacity by the informative answers we were able to trick him into giving. From Florida and of Cuban descent, he said that his "profile" lead him naturally to a spanish speaking country to work for the government. He revealed that soon there will be seven, SEVEN new American military bases opening up in Colombia. Our business relations with Colombia also make the country American´s third biggest trading partner in all of Latin America. On to the good stuff.....Did you know that the industry generates anywhere from 600-700 million a month?!!! In a year that all about quadruples Colombian GDP. It's hard to imagine massive amounts of the substance making it so successfully to North American and Europe but according to our friend, the trafficking methods are increasingly innovative. A recent innovation is the use of ocean camouflaged submarines to bring the substance right into our ports and harbors in California. This country is still, most definitely, the controler of the cocaine market. Where does all this money go you may be wondering. Well, lots of different places, like corrupt government officials in Ecuador and Venezuela (how else did that nut Chavez become a multi-millionaire?), FARC (80% of their funding is from drug cartels), highly influencial Colombian government officials (some can be bought) and stashed away in secret foreign investments. This conversation had the three of us captivated and not before long we were in Santa Marta.

We were basically dropped off in the middle of the city, at night, with our chunky suitcases, carry-ons and an awkward box I've been lugging around with me. With no reservation but a sort of plan we started rolling our suitcases and various other luggage pieces in the direction of a hotel we picked out of our travel guide. We were relieved to find Casa Familiar had a room for us and a was run by a very friendly owner, Fabio. We went on a recommendation from our American gov friend and had dinner at Burukuka, a steak house overlooking the ocean. The view was spectacular. Our taxi ride back had us all screaming as our lead-foot driver passed car after car through the one lane mountain pass into Santa Marta.

We set out early Saturday morning with another memorable taxi driver, this one arranged by our hotel, to the entrance of the park. This driver was special. He had a "renault 12". I don't know anything about the model but it must be older than me!

So there we are in our beat-up, tin can, renault, Colombian music blasting out of the back speakers, putting along at a whopping 30 mile an hour through the mountains. I kid you not, this car could not drive any faster. Thirty minutes in our driver honked at someone, we pulled over on the side of the road in the middle of a small roadside town and someone hopped into our taxi. Our driver continued to honk and say "hola amigo", I'm not exaggerating, like every few minutes. After an hour and a half (what should have been a half hour drive) we arrived at the entrance of the park, dropped off the driver's amigo, picked up a new friend, and drove the last stretch of paved road into the park. After arranging for our driver to return to get us the next day we set out into the veritable jungle.

Playa Blanca

With no more that four hours of sleep I woke up Angelica and Julia at 8am to leave for Playa Blanca. It was reputed to be the prettiest beach in Cartagena and the Argentenian swim team invited us to come hang out with them :) Seasoned by our previous trip to the islands we had the port experience down. We showed up and talked the pushy tour guides down from 50,000 pesos to 40,000 (about $20), waited no more than 15 minutes and we were speeding off to Playa Blanca on a small speed boat.

We arrived at what we considered to be a far superior beach that the island we visited Tuesday. Here was the white sand, clear water, palm tree adorned beach we had been searching for!  We found three sun chairs under a canopy and waited for Damien to come find us. After a short while we spotted Damien and Frederico walking down the beach in colorful speedos. We giggled but were happy to see them. They took us back to where they were staying of the day to have lunch with them. There we waited for an hour for a truly authentic and delicious meal of fresh fish, patacons and arroz de coco, cooked in a little shack, on a fire grill a few meters off the beach. After lunch the two Argentenians headed back to our part of the beach where we spent the rest of the afternoon conversing in our own mix of Spanish/English, sun bathing, swimming and joking around. We were having so much fun (except for maybe Angelica who by this time was becoming all too affectd by the sun) that we almost missed our boat back to Cartagena. Spotting our boat at the end of the stretch of beach we grabed our things, sprinted down the beach, said our goodbyes and literally jumped onto the departing boat to ride home through wild adventurous waters.

A little red, and very sandy we quickly showered in order to reach Cafe Del Mar before sunset. Thank goodness we did because this was one of our favorite experiences in Cartagena. The view was breathtaking looking out on the water and the sun went down.
There was a dj playing a perfectly fitting electronic/xylophone/ambient music. The crowd was good looking. The pina coladas were yummy. There was a strong breeze. A perfect way to end our stay in Cartagena.

On to Tayrona National Park next.......

Cultural Explorations in Cartagena

Thoroughly wiped out from our island excursion we decided to stay out of the sun Wednesday. We began our (late) morning by venturing out of the immediate tourist zone to eat breakfast at a very typical and highly recommended Colombian restaurant, Narcobollo. We arrived at what can best be described, I feel, as a open-aired, colorful, rustic colonial house. The first floor was dedicated to the wonderfully simple restaurant, set up in buffet style for breakfast. We composed a plate full of typical Colombian breakfast items: arryepa, tamales, chicharron, fresh fruit juice (the friendly guy serving the juice let us sample all of them) and cafe con leche. Looking around us it was easy to see we were the only tourist there; we considered this a victory. When I went up to pay the bill the two Colombians conversed between them referring to us as "las gringas". 

Next we set out to walk to Castillo San Felipe, a fort built during Spanish rule in 1536 to ward off frequent attacks by the English and pirates. It´s actually considered not only the largest fort on the South American continent but the largest ever built by the Spanish in their colonies. We enjoyed wandering through the enormous fortress and taking in some spectacular views at the top.

Next we wandered over the bridge into the barrio, Getesmani. Technically, we were told to stay out of this barrio but it was day time and several guards present. I actually need to take back the whole police with semi-automatics comment I made earlier. We´ve seem military with semi-automatics everywhere in Cartagena. Especially in the barrio we chose to walk through today. It´s not scary though. They are all young Colombian men and are friendly. And they give good directions :) They are a constant reminder, nonetheless, that you are not in Kansas anymore.

Getesmani certainly offers a very different glimpse of Cartagena. It´s residents are mostly darker, black Caribbean Colombians. A lot more hissing, whistling and comments like "ohh la reina" and other creative cat calls. Beyond that no one bothers you though. Exiting Getesmani we entered the walled city, returning back to the tourist sanctuary. Until now we had never seen the old city during the day. It was alive with street vendors, small shops, city inhabitants and tourists. We wandered aimlessly before decided to return to the hotel to call our contact in Cartagena about watching a polo game.

Alberto, Victoria`s uncle, put us in contact with friends of his in Cartagena that run a polo club. Sofia is the Swedish wife of Juan Paolo (Alberto`s polo friend) who set up a ride for us to the outskirts of the city where the polo club is. To our delight three young Colombian polo players picked us up in an SUV and we headed out into the country side to watch a polo match. We arrived at a ranch about 30 minutes outside of the city and were greeted by a very friend and outgoing JP and his wife Sofia. They both studied at Perdue in Indiana and met playing on the polo team there. The ranch was actually belonged to JP`s family and is a place for them to retreat to ride horses and play polo. They`ve created a indoor polo league in Cartagena. It`s actually outdoors but is an indoor field (about one football field vs nine in the outdoor version) and they only play 3-on-3 instead of 4-on-4. The men changed into their white pants, collared shirts, and high brown boots, saddled up and commenced playing. Having never watched a polo match before all three of us were absolutely thrilled by the entire game. It´s fairly simple to understand and EXCITING. Think field hockey on horses but with some more rules. To my surprise the game is pretty heavy on the physical contact. At times the players would gallop on their horses, sprinting for the ball, a virtual thunder storm of hooves hitting the ground in attempts to wack the wooden ball first. They played 3 chukkas (three seven minute segments) and we were offically in love with the sport.

Thoroughly rinsed off and from the dusty polo match, the three sisters headed into old city to enjoy dinner at Cartagena`s finest restaurant, La Vitrola. Previously our hotel was unable to get a reservation there for us. We had a suspicion, however, that we could walk in and we were right. After a short wait at the bar we sat down to a leisurly Italian meal complete with live Colombian music and fascinating people watching. The restaurant was full of good-looking Colombian tourists all in Cartagena for Semana Santa (holy week). Upon finishing dinner, one of the polo players, Nico, met up with us to go out dancing. Nico was the most outgoing of the polo boys, adept at English and often times surprising us with how well he could relate to us Americans. To our surprise he arrived with his identical twin brother. Our first option, Barbara was completely packed so we moved on to Tu Candela, a dark bar/club to dance salsa.

As we walked in we all noticed a super attractive group of young men wearing Argentina jerseys. Nico, being the outgoing chap that he is, started talking to them and found out they had just finished competing in swimming the Latin American Olympics. Eventually one of tall, handsome swimmers introduced himself and I found a dance partner for the night. Damien, like most latin American men, knows how to dance. Alternating between my flawed Spanish and his very basic English we conversed and danced the entire night. We all had a blast, even Angelica succombed to taking shots of Vodka :) Only at four am did the three sisters settle into bed for the night.