Our flight from Cartagena to Bogota went smoothly. The last day in Cartagena I got sick for the 3rd time. Horrible stomach ache, diarrhea, headache, weak, and was freezing. It was the sickest I had been on this trip, as I laid in bed I contemplated going to the hospital if it got any worst.

I had some travelers diarrhea pills (antibiotic?) So I took one of those. I woke up an hour later sweating because I had so many layers on. My chills were gone and my stomach ache was much less. I had waves of stomach pains for the next few days. Katie was soon to follow, and not far behind was Jeremy. We pretty much slept most of the day for the next two days. Our (flu?) Was followed by a cold.

Bogota is also very high in elevation so that also could have contributed to our tiredness and sickness.

There was a gold museum that we heard both good and bad things about, which we didn’t end up making it to.

We did head up to Santuario de Monserrate, which was a church with a view of the city. We were told it was about a 50 minute hike to the top.

We walked from our hostel and found it a little tricky to get to. We started to cut up a hill but two women there told us not to because it was peligroso (dangerous)

I wanted to hike up but Jeremy and Chris didn’t so we took the cable car. It was just over 7k pesos.

At the top we went inside the church

And looked at the views

I forced Jeremy and Chris to hike down even though they wanted to take the cable car.

It took us about 45 minutes or so and was stairs the whole way.

We reached the bottom and took a cab back to our hostel

We went out a couple nights, but it was completely dead since we went out on a Sunday and Monday. Apparently Tuesday is “Gringo Tuesday” but I am going to be gone for that.

I found Bogota very sketchy. There were cops everywhere around where we were staying and some armed guard. When we walked in the streets at night they were vacant besides beggars and disheveled drug dealers that would follow us around and wouldn’t listen when we said no. For this reason we caught a cab back from the bar.

My flight was 1030 am the next morning. Before I checked in I had to get something stamped regarding a departure tax I believe. It was $35 but I didn’t have to pay since I think it was included in my ticket from Kayak.

I went through the normal customs drills if I had been given any luggage, the purpose of my trip, etc.

At security, both my bags were searched. Once boarding the airplane, when I said yes I had liquids again my bags were searched followed by a body search and shoe search.

After this there was another table that asked the same questions and searched my bags again. Pretty intense, but I assume they have a lot of issues of drug smuggling.

Our flight from Cartagena to Bogota went smoothly. The last day in Cartagena I got sick for the 3rd time. Horrible stomach ache, diarrhea, headache, weak, and was freezing. It was the sickest I had been on this trip, as I laid in bed I contemplated going to the hospital if it got any worst.

I had some travelers diarrhea pills (antibiotic?) So I took one of those. I woke up an hour later sweating because I had so many layers on. My chills were gone and my stomach ache was much less. I had waves of stomach pains for the next few days. Katie was soon to follow, and not far behind was Jeremy. We pretty much slept most of the day for the next two days. Our (flu?) Was followed by a cold.

Bogota is also very high in elevation so that also could have contributed to our tiredness and sickness.

There was a gold museum that we heard both good and bad things about, which we didn’t end up making it to.

We did head up to Santuario de Monserrate, which was a church with a view of the city. We were told it was about a 50 minute hike to the top.

We walked from our hostel and found it a little tricky to get to. We started to cut up a hill but two women there told us not to because it was peligroso (dangerous)

I wanted to hike up but Jeremy and Chris didn’t so we took the cable car. It was just over 7k pesos.

At the top we went inside the church

And looked at the views

I forced Jeremy and Chris to hike down even though they wanted to take the cable car.

It took us about 45 minutes or so and was stairs the whole way.

We reached the bottom and took a cab back to our hostel

We went out a couple nights, but it was completely dead since we went out on a Sunday and Monday. Apparently Tuesday is “Gringo Tuesday” but I am going to be gone for that.

I found Bogota very sketchy. There were cops everywhere around where we were staying and some armed guard. When we walked in the streets at night they were vacant besides beggars and disheveled drug dealers that would follow us around and wouldn’t listen when we said no. For this reason we caught a cab back from the bar.

My flight was 1030 am the next morning. Before I checked in I had to get something stamped regarding a departure tax I believe. It was $35 but I didn’t have to pay since I think it was included in my ticket from Kayak.

I went through the normal customs drills if I had been given any luggage, the purpose of my trip, etc.

At security, both my bags were searched. Once boarding the airplane, when I said yes I had liquids again my bags were searched followed by a body search and shoe search

As soon as we were done with the kite surfing lessons, we headed out to Santa Marta. Santa Marta is a city about 4 hours away.

Instead of catching a cab to the bus terminal, then catching a bus, we decided it was easier and around the same price to catch a mini bus that would pick us right up from our hostel for $40000 each.

The ride was fairly comfortable on a Mercedes bus with AC.

We arrived at our hostel in Santa Marta, which we were told as an old cartel house. It was in a nice area, reminded me of the hostel in Medellin. Very nice hostel with hammocks everywhere and a pool.

We took a ride to the nearby “crappy beach” which was actually a very nice beach.

We hung out here for a couple hours and watched the sunset.

The hostel looked like it had a lot of potential, but when we were there it was pretty much empty. Chris and Jeremy had heard that a nearby town 20 minutes away named Tongonga was the place to be.

So, we caught cab over the hill to Tagonga.

Tagonga was much smaller, and everyone liked it better. Very beautiful. There was one main club that everyone went to that was a good time. When we got there we definitely had our guard down as it seemed so chill and relaxed. We talked to 4 Argentinian girls that said they had been robbed right down the road and were scared to go out now, and we were wondering how they managed to get robbed.

However, after spending a little more time in the area, it definitely started seeming sketchy. Everyone you walked past would ask from the shadows if you wanted to buy drugs. They were selling every type of drug you could think of, from acid to meth.

One day on the beach the cops randomly asked to pat us down, which sketched us out but nothing came of it.

The first day we were there, we decided to hike a path along the side of a hill we saw some others in the distance doing.

There were spectacular views, the town was beautiful.

At one point we hiked down to the beach and there were hundreds of these weird things I have never seen before, almost like snail fish. Well, exactly like a snail fish.

All the garbage here really bothered me. There was trash everywhere in the water, in the woods, on the streets. These people just destroyed a beautiful place. I couldn’t understand how people could live in such a beautiful place and just carelessly trash where they live. Where is the pride?

While in Tagonga we also went on a diving trip.

The cost was 100k per person, but the snorkelers got to go for free.

The diving really wasn’t anything special; we went on two dives, but we didn’t see too many fish or anything on either. The second dive the something was definitely up with the air because it tasted really funny and gave me heartburn. We thought maybe rusty tanks?

From Tagonga, we headed to Tayrona National Park. We read this park is the #2 most visited park in Colombia and on the trip advisor top 10 list.

We couldn’t find too much information on it, so we pretty much went off the information we got from other travelers.

We had been given 3 options to get there:

One was a 40 minute boat ride directly from Tagonga. The second option was taking a cab to the bus station in Santa Marta then catching a public bus to the park (cheapest). The third option was to catch a private van from Tagonga to the park which costed us 17k and we opted for this option.

At ten in the morning we caught a bus to the main entrance of the park.

We had read that one of us in the group had to bring a passport, but luckily we all did just in case (except Kody, who was able to get in anyhow).

We had to pay a steep 37k entrance fee to get in, where the van dropped us off in the lot.

It was to be a 2 hour hike to Cabo San Juan Del Guia where we had planned to go.

The trail was pretty easy to follow, we weren’t that well prepared so didn’t have a map or anything. Luckily it was pretty much all one path that would go through each little beach camping area.

The first hour of the hike was through the jungle, until we started to be able to see the ocean.

It was absolutely stunning; we were told that these were the most beautiful beaches in the world and I wouldn’t argue it.

We were amused by some ants that would create distinct paths along the ground or across logs carrying pieces of vegetation with them

Part of the hike was directly along the beach which was very hot

Which brought us to more beautiful beaches..

At all the 3 or so camps we hiked through on the way to San Juan, there were options to sleep. However we were told to head straight to San Juan since it was the best beach, and I noticed the other beaches you couldn’t swim at since there were signs up that there was a dangerous rip.

Our two hour hike turned into 3 or 4 hours after our run in with the national police.

We had stopped to have a smoke at a picnic table in one of the parks along the way. It was so tranquil and relaxed here, we had not a worry in the world. Out of nowhere, we see someone marching straight towards our table; it was the national police. He asked if we had anymore and we cooperated and gave it to him. He told us to come with him.

At this point, we were all shitting ourselves and didn’t know what was going to happen. He started off telling us that we had to leave the park. That sure was a bummer as we had only been there a couple hours, but could be worst. Then he started telling us we were going to have to leave the country, that he would bring us back into the town to the station. We started asking questions, as to where we were going to go, where we would fly from.. We all had trouble understanding as everything was in spanish. After this, he started telling us we were going to have to go to prison for 2-3 years.

He went on for a long time, and we were convinced at a minimum we were going to have to leave the country. After a while, he says he is going to give us a break, how much do we want to pay? Kody had suggested 50k each which seemed more than reasonable. Unfortunately, Katie was still scared and had just gone to the ATM, so he ended up robbing us of 250k or so.

After this, we were pretty shaken up. We all now look at the cops here differently, who would have thought that we would end up getting robbed by a cop? I used to think of them as nice helpful people to be trusted, as they always helped us in many other situations. Now I look at them like sketchy people on the corner.

We ended up getting to our camp around 4 or so in the afternoon.

This place was obviously stunningly beautiful, not able to show in pictures. There were tents set up that you could rent (35k a tent), or hammocks in a hut up on a hill (30k/night)

Or the lower hammocks inland off the beach, for 25k a night. We were told to get there early to get a hammock, but with our incident we were late. The top hammocks looked incredible in the hut on the hill but they were closed so we slept on the lower hammocks. It was freezing there at night and we were all under dressed. Not so much cold (high 50’s, low 60s?), but very windy, I woke up several times because I was so cold.

We did some exploring checking out up on the hill and walking up and down the beach

We ate dinner there, they had set times for breakfast lunch and dinner with pretty reasonable prices. There were a lot of people at this place, probably 150 or so just in our camp, I was surprised. But it was a big area so did not seem overly crowded.

The next day we just kind of hung out, did some short hikes.

We decided to take the boat back, so we could spend a little more time on the beach. The boat left at 4:30 and took 40 minutes.

It was a very quick ride and scenic. Pretty rough swells.

We caught a flight from Medellin to Cartagena on the Carribean coast.

The airport was really nice and the flight from Medellin to Cartagena to Bogota only ran us 175 each. Apparently you can get them even cheaper.

We landed after an hour ten minutes. We flew Taca airlines which had really nice comfy planes.

We hadn’t reserved a hostel so just asked the cab driver to bring us to “old city” where we heard all the travelers stayed.

We found a relatively cheap hostel for 30k/night right on the main drag. This street was very busy and little did we know we had arrived on the biggest party night of the week, Wednesday night.

There was a live reggae band and we went all out, didn’t get back til 4am and it was still going strong when we left.

Our room was literally on the main drag and our balcony faced the road. Between the people, music, and cabs beeping we did not get very good sleep.

The next day we woke up and wanted to familiarize ourselves with our surroundings. We took a stroll through the touristy plaza. Apparently cruise ships frequent here.

We walked towards the beach and saw some of the wall that borders the city. The city used to be always attacked by Carribean pirates so they had to defend themselves.

We got to the beach, a small one just on the side of the road and went swimming.

Apparently this was not allowed and we had a brief run in with the cops but they didn’t give us too much trouble.

We walked to the mall right down the road which was very modern and nice.

It was weird walking from the completely third world outside into this super modern nice first world mall. We had our feet up and a cop yelled at us for having our feet up right away. I am starting to get the impression that these people really take pride in the few nice things that they do have. Back in Medellin we saw them scraping up gum from the marble in front of their modern museum and cleaning out the sidewalk drains.

After leaving the mall we had a couple nice views of the city while crossing the bridge.

I could not believe the amount of garbage in the water and on the shores here. Disgusting and smelled; this water was incredibly polluted.

We heard from a couple kids that their friend was jumped and robbed by 2 cops over this same bridge, messed up.

Cartagena seemed relatively safe over all. There were a lot of drug dealers and some beggars but nothing too outside the norm, we felt pretty comfortable here.  

Also on the walk from the mall there was the main fortress called Castillo San Felipe de Barajas. We haven’t gone in yet because we simply didn’t have time with everything else we were doing. By the time we got back everyday it was late and the fortress closed at 5:30. The entrance fee was $18k.

We decided to just take a walk around it and did some exploring. Pretty impressive structure. It is actually a UNESCO world heritage site.

Another interesting thing was this is where the whole thing went down with the prostitutes and secret service. We had heard there were prostitutes here, but hadn’t seen any. We slowly started figuring out they were mixed in with everyone else. At any given time a good chunk of the girls in the clubs were prostitutes. They dressed just like every other girl and fit right in so you couldnt tell the difference. After a while we assumed that any girl that showed any amount of interest was a prostitute.

There was one square in particular we spent a lot of time. It was extremely laid back and it seemed to be a gathering area for the local community. Every night everyone would sit around this square and there sometimes was dancing, performances, always some sort of good time. It was only a few blocks from the main drag.

The last night in Cartagena our friend we had met back in Misahualli met up with us, Katie. She brought with her a friend she met in Bogota, Kody, another Canadian. In the square that night we hung out with some people we met from Vancouver.

The majority of our time here we spent taking kite surfing lessons. We found place that would give us 4 days of lessons, two hours each day, for 550k. The place we took the lessons was at a more expensive area about 20 minutes north. The hotels in this area were top top end.

For the next four days we went out every night, would wake up to catch a cab, grab breakfast at a place called the C store, then hangout in the tent for 15 or 20 minutes before the lesson.

The first day we went out we thought we were starting at 8:30, but it turns out the wind doesn’t pick up at this beach until 11 or 12, so we napped in the grass in front of one of the hotels.

The first days of the lessons, we learned to set up the kites

and how to control them in the air.

We also used the kites to do a little “body dragging” in the water without the boards.

The second day of lessons they put us straight on the board in the water. We did a lot of falling.

The third day we were able to pretty much get up on the boards, and even rode for some short distances. The fourth day I popped a kite and had a pretty frustrating day, but did figure out how to go back and forth in both directions. Every day we had so much fun regardless of how we did, it is such a fun sport, I am thinking about buying a kite board or getting lessons at home.

We caught a flight from Medellin to Cartagena on the Carribean coast.

The airport was really nice and the flight from Medellin to Cartagena to Bogota only ran us 175 each. Apparently you can get them even cheaper.

We landed after an hour ten minutes. We flew Taca airlines which had really nice comfy planes.

We hadn’t reserved a hostel so just asked the cab driver to bring us to “old city” where we heard all the travelers stayed.

We found a relatively cheap hostel for 30k/night right on the main drag. This street was very busy and little did we know we had arrived on the biggest party night of the week, Wednesday night.

There was a live reggae band and we went all out, didn’t get back til 4am and it was still going strong when we left.

Our room was literally on the main drag and our balcony faced the road. Between the people, music, and cabs beeping we did not get very good sleep.

The next day we woke up and wanted to familiarize ourselves with our surroundings. We took a stroll through the touristy plaza. Apparently cruise ships frequent here.

We walked towards the beach and saw some of the wall that borders the city. The city used to be always attacked by Carribean pirates so they had to defend themselves.

We got to the beach, a small one just on the side of the road and went swimming.

Apparently this was not allowed and we had a brief run in with the cops but they didn’t give us too much trouble.

We walked to the mall right down the road which was very modern and nice.

It was weird walking from the completely third world outside into this super modern nice first world mall. We had our feet up and a cop yelled at us for having our feet up right away. I am starting to get the impression that these people really take pride in the few nice things that they do have. Back in Medellin we saw them scraping up gum from the marble in front of their modern museum and cleaning out the sidewalk drains.

After leaving the mall we had a couple nice views of the city while crossing the bridge.

I could not believe the amount of garbage in the water and on the shores here. Disgusting and smelled; this water was incredibly polluted.

We heard from a couple kids that their friend was jumped and robbed by 2 cops over this same bridge, messed up.

Cartagena seemed relatively safe over all. There were a lot of drug dealers and some beggars but nothing too outside the norm, we felt pretty comfortable here.  

Also on the walk from the mall there was the main fortress called Castillo San Felipe de Barajas. We haven’t gone in yet because we simply didn’t have time with everything else we were doing. By the time we got back everyday it was late and the fortress closed at 5:30. The entrance fee was $18k.

We decided to just take a walk around it and did some exploring. Pretty impressive structure. It is actually a UNESCO world heritage site.

Another interesting thing was this is where the whole thing went down with the prostitutes and secret service. We had heard there were prostitutes here, but hadn’t seen any. We slowly started figuring out they were mixed in with everyone else. At any given time a good chunk of the girls in the clubs were prostitutes. They dressed just like every other girl and fit right in so you couldnt tell the difference. After a while we assumed that any girl that showed any amount of interest was a prostitute.

There was one square in particular we spent a lot of time. It was extremely laid back and it seemed to be a gathering area for the local community. Every night everyone would sit around this square and there sometimes was dancing, performances, always some sort of good time. It was only a few blocks from the main drag.

The last night in Cartagena our friend we had met back in Misahualli met up with us, Katie. She brought with her a friend she met in Bogota, Kody, another Canadian. In the square that night we hung out with some people we met from Vancouver.

The majority of our time here we spent taking kite surfing lessons. We found place that would give us 4 days of lessons, two hours each day, for 550k. The place we took the lessons was at a more expensive area about 20 minutes north. The hotels in this area were top, top end.

We woke up bright and early to catch our flight to Cartagena, only an hour ten minute flight from Medellin. Would have been a 15 hour or so bus ride and the flight was very affordable.

The airport was very nice & modern. The flight was great, very comfortable and we slept the whole way. We had had a pretty big last night there in Medellin so were hurting pretty bad, slept the entire flight.

We arrived in Cartagena, was very nice weather. Cartagena is a city right along the Northern Caribean coast of Colombia, reminds me a lot of Miami.

We were still beat so relaxed when we finally got to our hostel.

We walked a little around the city. There is a big wall around the city; I read in my guide book that the city was frequently attacked by pirates so we had to build a wall around it.

We walked around the plaza by the beach a little bit, very touristy area and everything was over priced

We went swimming on the beach right off the main road until 2 cops came to yell at us and told us we couldn’t swim there.

I thought Cartagena was going to seem really safe since it was a touristy area (I read online Disney cruise ships come here) but it definitely seems less safe than Medellin. We are a few minutes by taxi away from the main tourist area (seen in photo above) which seems a lot more safe, but where we are really isn’t bad either.

We were surprised at how much of a night life there is here, there were so many backpacker gringos all on this one road we are on. There was a live show we went to watch which was pretty cool at one of the bars. Unfortunately our hostel was right in the center of the action which we had no idea, and we may as well have been sleeping in the bar since it was ridiculously loud all night. When we finally came in after 4 am the party was still happening outside.

It was really hard to find a hostel, everything had been booked up so we waited until we got here to get one. We switched hostels after the first night and are in a much nicer/quieter area now, only a 2 minute walk from the action around the corner.

We signed up for kite surfing lessons, which I am really excited for. For the next 2 hours the next 4 days we have lessons, at $550,000 soles total for a total of 8 hours of lessons.

Everything is extremely expensive here, hostels $30,000 pesos ish for a cheap one, or around 17 a night. Jet ski wanted $50 for a half hour. We are going to end up spending a good amount of money here in our 10 day stay.

The next day, we went on a Pablo Escobar tour. I didn’t know too much about the guy, except that he was a huge drug lord in Colombia during his time. However I learned a lot from this tour and found it very interesting, he had a profound effect on the city.

The tour was expensive; costed $60,000 pesos. Our other hostel had the tour for $35,000 but apparently with the more expensive tour we were able to meet his brother and see his house. We were too lazy to price shop so we just went with them.

A van with way too many seats and no leg space picked us up in the morning at 10.

After stopping at a few more hostels and grabbing more people, we had a full van and started the tour. As we drove between places, the guide told us about the history.

Basically, Pablo Escobar was a huge cocaine giant from the late 70s until 1993 when he was shot and killed. He was on the Forbes list as the 3rd richest man in the world. He had I think something like 60 or 70 planes at the time of his death that did deliveries every single day and came back with cash. He supplied the US with 80% of their cocaine. He had 10 billion dollars to his name when he was finally shot and killed. He basically ran Medellin as he had more money and power than the government.

Our first stop was one of his first houses, where he would stay with 10-20 of his body guards. Apparently back then, it was a very rich/exclusive area, now it is just a broken down building off of a main road.

Our next stop was the burial site of Pablo, as well as his cousins and uncles etc. He wanted to be burried in Medellin, as he believed that the city would watch over him, as he had watched over them during his life.

His life was very controversial. During his reign of power, he ordered the death of over 10,000 people in Colombia and another 40,000 outside Colombia. Anyone who go in his way he had killed. He had an entire airliner exploded, as well as set off bombs at the equivalent of the FBI to Colombia. Reporters who wrote things he didn’t like he had killed. Judges, police offers, anyone who had an anti-drug agenda.

He had 4 presidential candidates murdered; one in particular showed a lot of hope for Colombia and people were very excited about him and really liked him, and Pablo had him murdered during a speech.

This really pissed everyone off and the US started getting involved and there was a huge man hunt for him.

However, at the same time Pablo was committing this horrible crimes, he was helping the country in a big way. He was using some of his money to help the poor who otherwise had no other way of living a decent life. He built tons of housing for the people for free. So the poor loved him and watched out for him. When he was getting close to getting caught, the people would alert him and he would run and hide somewhere else.

Finally he turned himself in and was sent to “jail”. Apparently this jail was a complete joke; it only had 3 walls, and was built according to his instructions. He continued to run his business from within the “prison” and could freely come and go as he pleased. It was a palace.. extremely luxurious. His friends came and visited him whenever he pleased.

He escaped from this “prison” and was eventually shot down, or killed himself, no one is certain.

The grave site is located at the bottom of the hill of the city he built, so Pablo believes that they continue to watch over him.

The next stop was Roberto Escobar’s house. This was his brother, who is still alive and well. There was sort of a museum built into his house, in the entry way, garage, and dining room. The rest of the house he lived in. Kind of strange.

His house was located high up on a hill in an affluent area of the city (saw a Mercedes driving in the same way and a Porsche dealership across the street)

Although the house was definitely nice, it was kind of falling apart here and there like everything else. There was a boat out front that was probably a brand new beautiful boat back in the day, but was just sitting in his yard falling apart now.

Pablo owned houses all over the world, and during the time when he was running all the time, he stopped at this house 5 different times to see his brother.

His brother had been arrested for 11 years and was released in 2002. Roberto and run the financial end of the business along side Pablo, they were very close. Although Pablo had no problem killing other people, he valued his very strongly and was very close to them.

During his stay in prison, someone from the government had sent him a letter bomb. It made him blind in his right eye and deaf in his right ear.

The house still had bullet holes in the walls.

And he showed us his secret hiding spots. Every house Pablo had had hiding spots for himself

And his money

This desk stashed away 2 million dollars, $1 million in each opening in the sides.

The first car Pablo bought for drug running was still in the garage.

Also in the garage was a motorcycle. The significance of this motorcycle is this: One day during a run from the police Pablo ran across a kid with a motorcycle (above photo). He told the kid who he was and that he needed his motorcycle. The kid complied and Pablo got away safely.

Later, Pablo found out who the kid was and gave him a $50,000 truck. He was super loyal and I guess his word was never broken to anyone.

There was a photo of his first airplane

This guy had so much money; apparently he loved soccer. He used his soccer team to hide his drug money. For this reason, they had tons of money to work with to obtain the best players all over the world, and paid them very well to keep them.

He was friends with a large drug lord at the time in Mexico, and he told him to fly his favorite players to his ranch. They both compiled teams with the best soccer players around the world. They would then bet on the games 1-2 million dollars, on top of paying the players extremely well.

Roberto stuck around for a while to answer our questions, the guide translated back and forth for us.

Some questions that were brought up was how he was financially, and if he was worried about being attacked by anyone.

Roberto’s answer was that he was all set financially, and for 3 or 4 more generations. He had come to an agreement with the government that they could keep half the money and negotiated his jail sentence. All the proceeds from the tour are used for a fund towards Colombian people with HIV. I guess he wanted a chance to do some good with his life.

He said he is not worried about being hurt by anyone, as most people don’t recognize him and the ones that do realize he is a changed person and realize he is now doing good with his life.

Overall a really cool experience and worth doing.

After the tour, we met up with Jose as he didn’t want to go on the tour. We hit up the science museum/aquarium which was pretty cool.

We stayed in an area called Poblado in Medellin. According to our guide book, this was an exclusive area for the wealthy that later on the city expanded and it became part of the city. However it still remains a wealthy area.

The first night we stayed at a hostel in a different area, but they only had one night available so we had to move. This hostel was pretty nice, huge.. could hold up to 100 people. It had a pool, basketball court, etc. Although when we were there there didn’t seem to be too many people around.

Medellin was a much more touristic city than Cali. There were plenty of other travelers and hostels around, and plenty of tours/activities to do. Although we only stayed 2 days and 3 nights, we kind of wished we had just skipped Cali and stayed in Medellin. The city was surprisingly nice and safe, I read it is the safest big city in Colombia.

The first day we took the metro to an area called Santo Domingo. The metro system is very new and modern.

It costs $3000 pesos to get anywhere along the line, one way. Included in the metro is a gondola system that gets to areas up in the hilly part of the city, where Santo Domingo is. So the gondola in itself is kind of a tourist attraction, and very inexpensive.

As we later learned in our Pablo Escobar tour, most of the area below the gondola was the housing that Pablo gave to the poor during hiss existence.

Along the metro, we kept getting awful stenches. Finally it clicked to me that it must be garbage, since when I did the tour of the slums in Brazil, it had the same exact stench. Although the metro was very modern, it ran through very poor areas of the city so I am sure that is where the smell came from.

Santo Domingo was one of those areas.

The gondola went up even higher, but that section was shut down when we were there. We got off at an area called Arvi Park. Here there was a small park and a little overview of the city.

This was the only area we went to that I felt like I had to keep my eyes open and be a little careful, but we weren’t there for very long.

On the way back, home, we decided we would stop and check out the aquarium/science museum, but it turned out it was closed.

We headed back to our hostel, and drank at the hostel that night.

I still wasn’t feeling quite right, my last recovering day from my sickness. Went to bed fairly early.

We took am 8 hr bus from Pasto to Cali. Busses are relatively very expensive here, costed us about $23 for the 8 hr ride. In Ecuador they usually run about $1/hr.

I woke up feeling a little queasy, and was worried about the bus ride as most of the busses here don’t have bathrooms.

As it turns out the worrying was plenty justified.

I couldn’t think of a worst place to be sick than a hot, cramped bus on windy mountain road. Thank god the bus stopped fairly frequently. There was a bathroom on the bus that I managed to only use once and I don’t think anyone appreciated it. Outside of that, the drive was very beautiful through the mountains.

Although we were advised not to take night busses at all in Colombia, a guy from Alaska we met on the bus told us just the stretch between the cities of Popoyan and Pasto was bad to take at night.

We arrive in Cali and the city was much nicer that we had anticipated.

Our hostel was pretty boring; there was only us 4 and a couple other guys there.

We were mostly there for the nightlife because we heard it was great. However with no one else in our hostel (and it didn’t look promising at other hostels either) we only had ourselves to go out with. We had heard there just really weren’t many tourists in Cali.

There was a clear division of classes in Cali; the first club we went out to had a $50,000 peso (25 USD) cover to get in. We didn’t go in but a couple other guys from the hostel did and they said everyone was ritzy and stuck up.

So we headed to a couple other locations which were much more reasonably priced, and finally ended up in an area called Menga. This place was pretty cool but we still felt out of place.

The next day we headed to the Cali zoo as we heard it was really good and weren’t sure what else to do.

We headed downtown to grab some lunch; busy area.

Started to rain

We spent the remainder of the day just killing time and hanging out; it was very hot and humid here and if we had known of something to do we weren’t very motivated.

We were staying in San Antonio area which was also a wealthy area. Since it was walking distance we went out here a couple times to eat and go to the bars here, which were a little expensive but not ridiculous (~$3 for a beer).

We walked a little bit around San Antonio and looked around

The next day we went to see the big Jesus in overlooking the city (Cristo). It was an easy 12000 peso cab ride all the way to the top.

We hiked down from the monument a little ways and there were some really nice views.

We tried to go out again in San Antonio on Saturday night but we just weren’t feeling it. Instead we headed back played some poker.

We made plans and booked flights for the rest of the trip; $175 multi city flight from Medellin to Cartagena, then a leg from Cartagena to Bogota where Jose and I fly home from and Chris and Jeremy head back to Guayaquil from.

We are catching a day bus from Cali to Medellin which is another 8 hours and $48000 pesos. However this bus has AC and wifi, is way more comfortable and the road seems to be fairly straight so an easy ride.

Medellin is more touristic and there should be more fun and travelers there.

We were going to stop at a national park (Reserva Natural de Yotoco) between Cali and Medellin but after booking the flight we just don’t have enough time.

We left Misahualli by taking a bus to the neighboring small city Tena, then taking a 6 hour bus ride back to Quito. The bus ride was pretty miserable, stopping every few minutes to pick up passengers and waiting in city traffic.
When we got back to Quito we met up with Jose in the hostel. He updated us that he had been robbed (again..) as he was robbed when I met him last year in Buenos Aires. Bad luck I guess?

Apparently he was with a girl in the hostel going to see a city monument and 4 guys with knives jumped them. They made away with Jose’s sunglasses and the girl’s ipad and camera.

We really didn’t do much as we had been doing stuff non stop between the jungle and Banos. It felt good to just chill out.

The next day we started looking into our trip to Colombia. We picked up another guy named Chris from Switzerland staying in our hostel so we are now rolling in a group of 4. Works well for taxis etc.

We were careful with our plans to Colombia as we had heard a lot about it. Some girls I met from the peace core said that they won’t allow the peace core to enter Colombia for safety reasons. They told us they heard about a bus that got robbed and made everyone strip naked on the side of the road. They said that we shouldn’t take any busses at all in Colombia.

I had heard from a couple other people that if you take busses, only to take day busses. We started looking into rental cars but Jeremy had trouble finding places to rent as most of the major rental chains don’t operate in Colombia and we are not allowed to take a car from Ecuador over the border.

We ended up deciding to take a day bus just over the border.

So we woke up early this morning and jumped on a bus to Tulcan, the border city in Ecuador. The bus ride was $5 and 5 hours.

As soon as we arrived in Tulcan there were guys outside our bus asking if we needed to exchange currency. We were a little apprehensive about exchanging money with these guys on the street but we didn’t really have a choice since we had no Colombian Pesos on us, so we exchanged $20. The exchange rate is 1800:1 USD so everything costs thousands of Pesos.

Once in Tulcan, we had to catch a cab to immigrations ($3 about 20 minutes from Tulcan)

The border crossing was surprisingly easy and un-sketchy. First we had to enter the Ecuadorian immigrations to get an exit stamp rental cars.

There were many other gringos in there, and we waited in line about 30 mins

After exiting this building, we walked about 2 minutes across a bridge into Colombia

We had to enter the Colombia immigrations to get our entry stamp and visa

Once over the border we fumbled around for a bit and jumped in a taxi to the border town on the Colombian side, Ipiales, about 10 minutes.

Ipiales wasn’t too sketch, the cab dropped us at the bus station. Here we were able to withdraw from an ATM and found out about busses for tomorrow. However, we didn’t want to stay in Ipiales and opted to instead head 1.5 hour North to the next larger city, Pasto rental.

We jumped on a small shuttle van/bus which was 6000 pesos per person or around $3 each.

The ride was beautiful, I couldn’t really catch good photos from the van but very scenic. We were all in high spirits, excited, and in a good mood, despite the long day of traveling.

Pasto is a pretty run down city, and I think we all felt fairly uncomfortable.

When we arrived it was just starting to get dark and a policeman told us not to go outside at night. So we walked just around the corner from the bus station and were surprise to find a very nice hotel for $70,000 pesos or around 35 a night with 4 beds. Hot shower and cable!

We just hung in tonight got some local cheap food at the place right next door.

We did some planning. What we plan to do is catch an 8 hour bus bright and early tomorrow morning to Cali. Cali is supposed to be a really sketchy city so we don’t think we will spend much time here. From Cali we will head North to Medellin spend a few days there and fly to Cartagena on the Carribean coast. From there we will fly to Bogota where Jose and my flight home is from, and Chris and Jeremy will fly back to Quito.