Cali and Ipiales, Colombia

After our trek and a few days of recovery and relaxation, we flew from Santa Marta to Cali, Colombia, in order to get closer to the Ecuador border before our visas ran out. We had an unexpected lay-over in Bogota, but were put up in a nice hotel for the night and fed a couple of free meals, so we didn´t mind much - plus it was our first encounter with hot water showers in a whole month! Cali was only a short stop for us, so we didn´t sight-see too much; however, we did make it to the zoo!

Lydia doing her best animal impression...

A lion doing a people impression...

We found some more butterflies, although they weren´t nearly as impressive as the ones we spotted on our hike (they were much slower, though, so we could capture them on film).

We got nose to nose with a cute ant-eater!

Two monkeys contemplating one-another.

The next day we left Cali and made a 13 hour bus ride over to Ipiales, where we would cross the border into Ecuador. As soon as we got off the bus, we both felt the cold and noticed we were a little short of breath. It turns out Ipiales is 2950m above sea level, so the effects of elevation were kicking in.

The town itself did not look like much, but we were told to visit the church a 35 minute drive out of town. We caught a cab driven by a speed-demon (wouldn´t have been one bit surprised if he had a NOS button on his steering wheel) who made the drive in approximately 7 minutes flat! Feeling a little nauseous, and slightly more spiritual, we wandered down the many steps to the Las Lajas Cathedral and were not disappointed!

First off, we were greeted by two of the cutest puppies in the entire world!

And then we were greeted by a view of one of the most beautiful churches in the world!

The cathedral was built in the bottom of a valley atop a river, and one wall consisted of the sheer rock face of the cliff it is carved into, seen below.

A breathtaking view of the Las Lajas Cathedral from across the way.

The view opposite the cathedral.

This must be a very holy dog, as he is the centre of this shrine.

The Las Lajas Cathedral is definitely a hidden gem in a very unexpected place! It was a nice send-off from Colombia, a country we have grown to love and miss!

Ciudad Perdida

After a 4 hour bus ride from Cartagena to Santa Marta, Colombia, we decided to make the 5 day hike through the Teyuna region of the Sierra Nevada to Ciudad Perdida (Lost City). The hike was breathtakingly beautiful, although it consisted of either 'arriba' or 'bajo' (a.k.a. up and down), so we were extremely bushed after the very first day. The first day's hike also consisted of a lot of rain, as the jungle tends to have very hot and sunny mornings, then rains every afternoon, and sometimes all night long.
Tyrone made a little buddy along the way!


Tyrone had the biggest pack of the group, as he carried both our supplies (what a gentleman!), and everyone was impressed he survived all 5 days... they were also jealous when we had our tasty steri-pen purified water and when we were toasty warm with our sleeping bags on the cold nights!



One of the many highlights of the trip was interacting with the local Kogui people who had little grass hut farms along the way. Our guide mentioned that the immediate area in which we were hiking had about 180 Kogui people, and there are approximately 3,000 total Kogui left in Colombia. Although some Kogui speek Spanish, the majority of the people speak Kogui. Of the few indigenous people we passed, most were fairly shy and offered a quick 'buenas' or 'hola'; however, the children were very curious and playful! The first adorable Kogui girl we encountered ran ahead of us on the trail, clapping her hands and grinning... then she popped behind a bush to pick up an orange and chucked it down the trail at us! Bowling for gringos is a major sport in Teyuna for the local children!


Our first camp site offered comfortable hammocks and breathtaking views of the mountains and valley below. We were never hungry on the trip, either, as each camp was fully equipped with a kitchen and tables, offering up 3 large meals and snacks daily! We never thought we would get such hospitality so far away from civilization!

Although we were provided with plenty of chocolate on our journey, Lydia just couldn't help herself from sampling the cocoa pods along the way...

Each day was full of mountain peaks full of vistas better than the last... it made the uphill hike worth it every time!

On top of the high peaks, there were also numerous river crossings. Most were done on foot, but this one required a bit of a mechanical advantage!

On day 3, Lydia waged a battle with two Kogui girls (they started it!), throwing little beans at each other... Below you see the truce after a peace offering made to Lydia by the littler of the two girls, which was a handful of beans put in her pocket to take along the journey!

The littler Kogui girl was also fascinated by our camera, so Tyrone had her take a photo of him to try it out!

Bright and early on the morning of day 4, we made it to Ciudad Perdita. We had to conquer 1200 steps to get to the top!

Our guide, Jesus, explained to us that the Tairona people who inhabited Ciudad Perdida (yes, Tyrone believes he is their reincarnated leader!) had extensive carvings of maps, one of which is pictured below. There apparently was no form of writing or pictographs found in the archaeology, however, so it is believed the history of the Taironas is solely oral as well as gathered through anthropological interpretation.

Tyrone sitting on the Shaman's throne with his special stick thing... we don't recall what it was called, but apparently the boys in the region each get one when they reach 17 years of age, along with a wife (who could be any age from 12 to 30). It has something to do with cocaine and conch shells... and that was the best we could interpret, as our guide only spoke Spanish.

View of Ciudad Perdida and Tyrone taken from the Shaman's wife's house plot.

The farthest circle is the Shaman's house plot, and the closer circle next to it belonged to his wife.

We made our journey along with an awesome group of people from such parts of the world as Australia, Zimbabwe, Wales, England, Czech Republic and Switzerland. A few people are travelling in our same direction, so we are hoping to meet up with them along the way! We even met the ancient cat of Ciudad Perdida, held below by Nick.

Tyrone packed a small bottle of champagne around for 4 days for us to finish at the Lost City. Unfortunately, shortly after we cracked the bottle, we were interrupted by a small group of extremely rude French people who actually 'shoed' Tyrone out of their picture just as we were taking ours... as you can see, he wasn't very impressed...
Next to the terraces of Ciudad Perdida, there are a few remaining uninhabited grass huts where our guide explained the rise and fall of the Taironas to us. The city was established in approximately 800 AD, and was extremely rich (based on the gold and treasures found in the 1970s by looters). The Spanish came in the early 1600s and brought with them guns and diseases, causing many Taironas to be wiped out, and many to flee to higher grounds where they succumbed to cold and hunger... And the city wasn't discovered again until 1972 by looters. Local authorities didn't catch wind of the site until 1975 when they figured out where all the treasure on the black market was coming from. Since then, there has been much archaeological research done in the area. In 2003, the National Liberation Army (ELN) kidnapped a group of hikers who were on their way to the Lost City. Fortunately, they were released 90 days later in exchange for the release of some jailed ELN. The site was again deemed safe to travel to in 2005, and 5 years later, we travelled there!

Tyrone became one with the butterflies, as they believed he was descendant of their ancient leaders...

A little known fact about Tyrone is that during his time in Africa, he acquire some Doctor Doolittle-esque skills (seen in the video below):

Day 5 was a gruelling hike, as we made up the same ground back as we covered in days 1 and 2. We still stopped to snap some photos of the fabulously flourescent flora and fauna.

This guy was sleeping, but when he opens his wings, his top half is an extremely bright royal blue... We have both never seen anything like it before!

We made it back to the starting line! Through muchas mud, rapid rivers, relentless rain, scalding sun, malicious mosquitos and annoying ants, we had finally made it back to civilization... Cold beer had never tasted so good... and clean clothes had never been so appealing before that moment in time! But we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves (well, for the most part... there were some rough parts during the 50 km hike, especially for some... no names mentioned!) and we would recommend the journey to anyone and everyone! It was truly an experience of a lifetime!

Cartagena (car-tah-hay-na)

After two or so weeks of fun in beautiful Cartagena, our time has finally come to an end. I´m now sitting in my hostel in Santa Marta, waiting for the bus to pick us up to go find the ´Lost City´or ´El Ciudad Perdida´ (more on that in our next post).

Cartagena is a georgeous colonial city of about 2 million inhabitants. Although by our standards, this is a very large city, Cartagena actually has a small town feel to it. The central section of Cartagena is sectioned off from the rest of the city with a giant fortified wall (and ocean). This area is composed of three parts: Getsemani, San Diego, and Central. The landscape in this area is absolutely stunning. Picture Spanish city from the 1800´s, with cobble stone streets, horse drawn carriages, white-wash buildings that are painted bright colours, which is frozen in time, and you have Cartagena. This area is reasonably small, meaning it´s quite possible to walk from A to B, and even though you can cab anywhere for about $2, we found walking was the best (to enjoy the people and the sights).

In Cartagena, the people are very friendly, very inviting, and for all you nay sayers, Colombia is absolutely safe now (at least Cartagena, from our experience)! Lydia and I spent our time in Cartagena mostly taking Spanish lessons, walking around the city, and enjoying the beaches (Bocagrande). We confirmed our notion when we first arrived in Colombia that strong Spanish skills are drastically needed here, so we thought a good way for us to ramp up our Spanish was to take two weeks of lessons at the BABEL school. We found the teachers there to be really friendly and quite good at what they do. Unfortunately, it takes a little more than two weeks to learn a language, so we´re still pretty useless when it comes to conversations, but we´re getting much better at reading and putting piecemeal sentences together!

Cartagena's most famous monument is a statue of the 'old shoes', which is a tribute to Cartagena paid by the local poet Luis Carlos (and sculpted by Tito Lambrano). Not having read the poem, I can't give you any idea why this comparison is made (and taken with such pride, given the fact that he compares the city to OLD SHOES), but all I can say is that they must have been some damn fine boots as it is on proud display in front of the city's main attraction - the castillo de San Felipe de Baras, a colosal 16th century fort designed to protect the city from pirates.

On one of our first days in the city, Lydia and I toured through the fort. After the tour, Lydia and I decided that we were not going to be able to sack Cartagena for all of its booty, so we were just going to be beach bum tourists instead.

The view from atop of the Castillo de San Felipe de Barajas.... Nope, no pirates approaching!

During our time in Cartagena, Lydia and I stayed at Casa Viena, a local hostel. To put things into perspective (with respect to cost of living here), Lydia and I paid about $20 a day to stay in the room, and about $5 each for terrific meals (i.e. crepes for breakfast, roast chicken for lunch, and steaks for dinner). That being said, we shouldn't have too much trouble stretching our budget without starving here. The picture above is our buddy 'Laundry Cat' who used to sneak in through our balcony while we were away for spanish lessons and sleep on our clothes during the afternoon. He was very cute, but was a little annoyed each day when we would have to kick him out to get our clothes whenever we got back.

A splash of a Cartagenian street. Colourful, historic, beautiful!

One of the many beautiful churches or iglesias within Cartagena (from outside and within). This particular church (San Pedro Claver Cathedral) had to be rebuilt after Sir Francis Drake bombarded it with cannon fire until the locals handed over all their city's fortune. Sir Francis Drake then skipped town with all the wealth, neglecting to pay the neighbouring army that helped in his seige. This then led to a second attack of Cartagena by the army that wasn't paid for the first attack. Unfortunately, Sir Francis Drake had all of Cartagena's gold by that time, so there was little the locals could do. I'll have to remember such tactics if I ever want to become a nobleman (such as SIR Francis Drake): armed robery + cut and run = highest honour from the queen!

Apparently, the cannon fire blasted out the Cathedral's colums (pictured above), crippling the church. A couple hundred years and a few coats of paint later, the church is back in fine shape.

The statue above may look familiar to the style of the Berlin statues shown in our Germany blog. This work is done by the Colombian artist Fernando Botero, or as I like to call him, Sir Mix-A-Lot. His work is depicted in statue and painting form across the world, but in particular in his native Colombia. Personally, both Lydia and I are huge fans of his work, and will likely have to fit at least a few replicas in our pack on the way home.

Lydia and I attempting to become like Botero works of art via eating golden chocolate cake.

One of the most surprising things that we found out in Cartagena was that our good friend Verity used to be a Colombian emerald model while she was in high school! Verity, why didn't you ever tell us about this?!

Unfortunately, our time in Cartagena wasn't all sunshine. By about the fourth day in the city, the storm clouds started to roll in, and stayed for the rest of our time in the city. Daily violent thunder and lightning storms, coupled with terrential rain resulted in city-wide flooding. The storms didn't come as much of a surprise to us, as we knew it was the tail end of the hurricane season for the region, but the lack of city-wide irrigation, contributing to massive flooding was a hard one to grasp. How a city with obvious wealth can go without a basic irrigation system is beyond me.

The storm is a coming!

A video of the flooding in Cartagena (taken 2 minutes away from our hostel).

The flooding depicted above is just the tip of the iceberg. One of the teachers from our Spanish school described the region of Cartagena where he lived as being under about 3 feet of water. The man was devastated at the fact that the storm hit while he was at school, meaning he was not able to return home to help his sister and mother save their belongings from the flood (as all transportation routes were flooded as well). The next day, he said that the flooding in his house was chest-deep, and that all his family's belongings were destroyed in the flood. He was enraged by the fact that the same thing happens every year in Cartagena (as well as many other regions in Colombia), yet aside from a few charitable donations to those affected, his government does nothing to solve the problem (i.e. create a bloody irrigation system).

Our last days in Cartagena were spent celebrating the Miss Colombia pagent (held annually in Cartagena, tied in with Cartagena's Independence Day celebration on November 11th). Colombia goes absolutely nuts over the Miss Colombia pagent! The city errupts into a week long party for the girls (and for Cartagena). Lydia was disappointed, because we found out after the fact that Shakira gave a free concert for the event! Above you can see the Miss-Colombia-to-be clones (all of whom were about 5'9, 110lbs, long brown hair, etc.).

One thing I can tell you for sure about Colombians is that they know how to party! Like all good Colombian parties, we started out our Cartagenian Independence Day celebration with a bottle of rum.

.....well, maybe a few bottles of rum ;)

The Cartagenian Independence Day and or Miss Colombia pageant turns into a city-wide foam, paint and flour fight. Watch the video above for a better description, but long story short, everyone in the city is armed with giant shaving cream bottles of foam, bags full of flour, handfulls of paint, and absolutely everyone is fair game.... especially gringos!

Lydia and I must have gone through about 10 bottles of spray foam to protect ourselves from the foam carnage within Cartagena that day. I can't express how much fun it was at this event. Young and old, rich and poor, locals and foreigners, EVERYONE was spraying everyone all day. It didn't matter if you were off to work or heading for the parade, you were going to get sprayed.


Foam-rambo Lydia!



One of Lydia's many victims of the day.


This little kid thought that the 'spray the gringo in the face' game was especially fun, so he decided to follow me around for the whole day and continually launch sneak attacks on me. At the end of the day, when he ran out of foam (finally), I managed to hunt him down and get him back!

If you notice the military presence in the background, it is to be noted that it is a good idea not to take too many valuables with you to this celebration for two reasons. One, it is a giant foam, water, flour, paint, etc. fight, so your belongings are bound to get ruined (I protected my camera with a waterproof case). Two, there are a lot of pickpockets that pray on people during the festivities. First, someone sprays you in the eyes with foam, second, someone throws flour in your face, then, before you know it, you have five dudes going through your pockets (searching for your wallet). This happened to just about everyone I knew (including myself and Lydia), but we knew about it ahead of time, so we didn't have anything on us). There's worse ways to rob someone than this slap-stick snatch and grab, so I still wholey recommend this festival as a must do!

Cartagena is a beautiful and vibrant town full of colour, music, and fun! Lydia and I managed to both have a lot of fun, take in a lot of beach fun, and learn a lot about the Colombian people, history, and language while we were there.

Next stop, Santa Marta and La Ciudad Perdida!