Life on the bus - plus pics from Barichara

When Gemma and I started our trip three months ago in Lima, Peru I asked the owner of the first hostel we stayed at how we should travel about South America. What I meant by that question was given that we started in Lima and wanted to see Bolivia which was to the south and Colombia which is to the north, which way should we head first? A smartass hostel owner from Panama was in the room and answered ¨By Bus¨. Yeah thanks buddy, we got that.

But traveling by bus is pretty much a twice weekly occassion for us. There is basically no rail system in South America and my sense of direction is too awful for us to try and drive. We spend ALOT of time on buses. The person in the seat in front of me ALWAYS extends their seat back as far as possible immediately when they sit down, even if its not time to sleep. Gemmas seat never reclines. The air conditioning is always on full blast making it freezing cold. The people selling the bus tickets lie about how long the journey is, usually subtracting at least an hour or two. The roads are usually terribly bumpy and Gemma gets motion sick.

One positive of life on the road is that we get to see alot of stunning scenery along the way. I usually don´t take pictures through the glass because they rarely turn out well but the one below was taken from the bus. Its not the best example of the scenery we see, but its decent.




Onto Barichara, a stunningly beautiful quiet little Colombian town just north of Bogota. We only spent the afternoon there because there isn´t much to do. Its just a really beautiful town that the guidebook described as a picture perfect setting for a Hollywood movie.



The little theatre below looks out onto the vista you see in the picture right below it. We didn´t get to see a performance but it must make for a good venue.



All the buildings had red tile roofs and colored windows. There were lots of flowers everywhere and some cool looking trees. Not much else to say about this little town, but thought you might like to see some pics.

BIG Bogota Post

We´re going big with this blog post. Big pics that is. Accidently forgot to switch back to small after the last post but since Google so generously just upped the amount of photo storage I have for free I figured we´d see how it goes.

While I´m talking about big lets start off with the BIG win the Colts pulled off over the Pats. Gemma and I had a sweet flat screen in a fancy hotel all to ourselves to watch the game. And beers only cost us about 60cents. I definitely did not see us pulling that off but I´m so glad we did!

We stayed in a hostel in the La Candeleria district. Its an artsy district with lots of students, bars and restaurants. There were many walls covered in cool graffiti and most of the buildings are painted in bright colors which I loved.


The Freak Family - Just like Yours


We visited the Police Museum to see an exhibit on the 499 day manhunt to catch Pablo Escobar. The building itself was really beautiful and they were playing 1930´s music throughout so it felt very elegent inside. It reminded me of a really nice Disney Hotel.


It was pretty interesting seeing some of Pablo´s personal artifacts including the Harley Davidson he had made for himself. We also saw the beeper he used (apparently the first in Colombia) and some old school car phones he used in his last days. Most of the technology the Colombian government used to catch him was donated by the CIA.


Here is a wanted poster with Pablo´s picture and some of his associates.


This picture below is a cocaine press they used to package bricks of coke. The horses would be imprinted into the bricks so buyers could identify who was making it. Unfortunately, or fortunately if you´re into that kind of stuff, the cops spent all their time and money on capturing Pablo and while they had him in jail for a brief period (he escaped) and on the run, other cartels simply took over a majority of the trafficing.


Our favorite museum in Bogota had to be the Fernando Botero Museum. I´d never heard of this painter before but he´s from Colombia and really famous here. He paints mostly ¨fat figures¨as he once called them and they are delightfully hilarious. He makes everything fat, women, horses, presidents, even Jesus on the cross.



The museum also had some Monet´s, a Dali sculputre and a few Picasso´s including my favorite of the group below.


This is the courtyard of the museum and one of my favorite photos I´ve taken recently. This museum is a must see in my opinion.

Ah Bogota, city of museums apparently. We also went to the Museo de Oro or Gold Museum. It has ALOT of the shiny stuff and some really cool pieces found in ancient tombs.



This photo is taken from the top of Bogota´s tallest building. The weather was terrible that afternoon but we got to see the bull ring from the top and although I´m still waiting to see my first bull fight, I thought it was still cool just seeing the arena.

So do we like the big pics or should I go back to the small to fit more text on the screen??? Let me know!

Wax Palms - Zona de Cafe in Colombia

After turning the salsa world on its head in Cali we danced up to the Zona Cafetera to get buzzed up on some fine Colombian coffee. Unfortunately the coffee plantation we stayed at for the evening ran out of coffee and the owner needed to leave town the next day so wasn´t able to provide us wth a tour of his farm! I mean are you serious? Geeze. But we were able to get him to give us a quick tutorial on coffee and learned about the different types of beans and the process they use to harvest them.

The highlight of our time in the region is when we went to visit the Valle de Cocora. The guidebook describes it like a lush version of Switzerland and I´d add it has a bit of the airy mysteriousness of Machu Picchu mixed in as well (see below).

One of the main reasons to visit this area is to see the Palma de Cera, these really tall palm trees which don´t grow outside the area.

We went on a four hour hike which led us into a cloud forest with rolling clouds touching the mountain tops. We stopped at a hummingbird reserve along the way where seven different types of hummingbirds buzzed about. We were served hot chocolate with a block of cheese to dip into it. A bit strange and oddly kinda nice.

After about 3 hours we reached this view:

After another thirty minutes or so we reached the bottom of the valley and were rewarded again with stunning views of the wax palm trees.

Everyone else took the easy way and hired horses while Gemma and I walked. We are enjoying hiking these days and seem to be pretty good at it. We actually kept up with the horses the entire way despite some serious uphill climbs and river crossings.

Next stop Bogota.

Introducing two new Legends of Salsa... Cali, Colombia

We left Ecuador and literally ran across the border into Colombia. We haven´t had the best beach luck on our trip and have been fantisizing about the Colombian Coast for quite a while now so to finally be entering the country felt good. Now its only three more weeks till we get to the coast but at least we´re here!

Our first stop in Colombia was in Cali. There are three mains styles of Salsa dancing which are Puerto Rican, Cuban and Cali. We spent five days in a Salsa school learning how to perfect the sweet sweet steps of Puerto Rican Salsa. You´d think we´d have learned Cali style but we didn´t. The reason is because of the three very basic steps we first learned, our least favorite was a Cali Style step and we pretty much refused to work on it after awhile choosing to focus on the more fun and natural feeling moves.

Our instructor´s name was Wilbur and had been dancing professionally for about twenty years. Wonderful dancer, but he seemed sort of bored teaching us and didn´t provide the best instruction. His english also wasn´t the best. But all that being said we actually learned enough steps and twirls to look like we know what we´re doing. Here is a pic of the three of us in the studio below.

We stayed in the Jovitas hostel/dance school which had the studio you see above inside. We took six hours of private lessons and four hours of group instruction. On top of that, each night Wilbur would take us and the other students to the best Salsa clubs in town and we´d all dance until about 3:30 in the morning.

By far the best night was when we went to a club called Chongos. The club is about 25 minutes outside of town and when our taxi finally pulled up to the clubs entrance I felt a little like I´d stepped back in time to 1950´s Vegas. It was all lit up in neon and had some really nice cars in the parking lot. All of Cali´s best salsa dancers go to Chongos on Sunday nights so naturally we were there.

There are two dance floors in Chongos and all the tables face inward towards them. Anytime you step on the dance floor you can feel everyone watching you. But it also made for some great people watching. Cali is also known for being the plastic surgery capital of Colombia and there were quite a few examples of this on the floor.

We had an unbelievable time there and were seriously tearing up the dance floor by 3am. We even had a small fan base watching us to which we bowed as we left for the final time. I think I even danced all the way out the door we were having so much fun. The video below is pretty bad quality and the girl that took it was terrible with a camera but its proof we know how to cut a shape or two in the club. Check it!

Gemma made some friends with the workers outside before we hopped in our cab home.

We also went to the Cali Zoo to see some unusual South American animals. The bird below has a pretty wild looking face and if you look closely you´ll see a baby anteater on her moms back. We also saw alot of miniature frogs only found in Colombia.


Which of these beasts would you not want to run into in a dark alley???

Journey to the center of the Earth!

After leaving the beautiful Laguna de Quilotoa we headed to Quito, Ecuador´s capital. It is less beautiful and way more shady. Everyone we spoke to before heading to Quito told us a story about how they or someone in their hostel got robbed. We almost got robbed but couldn´t understand what the guy was saying in Spanish so I just responded with a ¨No Gracias Amigo¨and we kept on walking. He walked along side us for a minute but I just kept telling him ¨No comprende and No Gracias Amigo¨and he finally stopped following us. Hopefully he wasn´t threatning our lives in Spanish. I guess it paid not to speak the language for once.

We mainly went there so we could see the Equator, or Mitad del Mundo (Middle of the World).

The Equator is about an hour outside of Quito by bus. We first went to the sight of where the French originally measured the Equator in 1736. They actually were about 200 meters off. We paid three dollars to enter this touristy village full of shops and food stands. There is also a large monument erected there which is impressive, except for the fact that its in the wrong place.

We then walked out the gate and 30 seconds up the road to another Equatoral theme park where the real Equator, as measured by US Military GPS, lies. If you get a chance to visit, skip the first park and come straight here. Well actually go to both, its only $3. But the outdoor museum-like area where the real Equator lies was actually fun and informative.

There is only so much you can say about an imiginary line in the ground so they also spend time telling you about the Ecuadorian Amazon and some of the more unique tribes that still live there today. The first was the Wuaorani tribe which has very little contact with the outside world and all walk around naked. The men actually wear a string around their waist to keep it from flopping around.

We also learned about a tribe that shrinks the heads of their enemies when they kill them, but also of their chiefs when they die. They do this to their chiefs because they believe the head retains the persons knowledge. They shrink their enemies heads and display them on sticks as a warning to other enemies. I always thought this was some sort of gimick but they explained how they do it. They remove the skull from the head but leave all the cartiledge in the nose and ears to retain their shape. They then boil it in a pot with 30 different herbs that are found in the jungle and only known to this tribe. Click on the pic below and notice the crazy amount of detail the shrunken heads retain.

Some fun facts we learned about the Equator:

• Towns along the Equator experience a constant 12 hour day and night all year long


• You weigh slightly less on the Equator (only 3% or so)


• Water drains staight down on the Equator whereas it drains counterclockwise in the North and clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere (or the other way around, can´t remember)


• Its difficult to walk in a straight line with your eyes closed and arms held out with your thumbs pointing upwards on the Equator (although I think this is difficult most anywhere)


• I once owned the biggest guns in the Northern and Southern Hemisphere
  

Our next stop is the long awaited and much anticipated country of COLOMBIA!!!!