Cartagena...and More Mud

Didn´t think this would happen, but even after 5 days of trekking (slipping, sliding, eating, climbing, and being absolutely positively covered) in it, we voluntarily (even paid money) wanted to get in a little more mud. Although the presentation was way cooler (a 26m tall, over 2000m deep vat of silky gray mud), the end effect was the same: I had mud in places I don´t want to think about, let alone mention.

Floating, sort of, since it´s not like you can swim in the stuff, was an eerie sensation. You could stand upright, suspended 2000m over who knows what below you, and still only be submerged to your chest. Moving was a communal effort, with one person grabbing a nearby structural pole and helping along the poor soul who got stuck in the middle. A nice dunk in a fluorescent green lagoon afterwards to get "clean" (until the thorough scrubbing in the real shower back at the hotel), and we were on our way, one mud volcano experience richer.

Shocked to realize I only have 2.5 weeks left of my trip... Tomorrow we fly to Panama. On to new and exciting things!

Into the Heart of the Jungle (Sort of....)

Not traveling alone: not only do I not get bored, I don´t even have to update my own blog! Woohoo! Here is the rundown of the 5 day jungle trek we just got back from, from Angel´s perspective.

The Lost City trek: 5 days of slipping and sliding through mud, wading through rivers, and just generally tromping through the jungle. This seemed like a really good way to spend a good chunk of my vacation. We quickly figured out the routine: The mornings are an early riser at around 5:45 (at least for Mariel and I) and included a gigantic breakfast of either 3-5 cups of fruit or a 4 egg omlett with 1/2 cup of cheese (which I found out after a day of bumbly stomach) and 3 pieces of white toast (smothered in butter). This, of course, we were all ravenous for and ate up and asked for seconds. There was so much food the whole trek and wow did we eat a lot! Mornings were sunny and pleasant and it is when we did the most hiking. Every afternoon, however, at 3:30pm like clockwork the storms rolled in. Sometimes they lasted for two hours, sometimes for 10 hours. Pretty awesome feeling to sit in a hammock and watch the rain pelt the already soaked jungle floor knowing nothing is expected of you but to stumble over to the table when dinner is ready. One night I had to share that rain soaked experience with a mouse that decided to crawl over my head. It's not the best thing to wake up to a mouse in your hair at 1am....trust me.

Of course it was beautiful too! But like most beautiful things, very difficult to photograph. Being in the Jungle is like being in a busy subway but the people are trees and the trash on the ground are countless worker ants. The sound on the speaker announcing the next train is the buzz of mosquitos awaiting to attack if you weren´t lucky enough to remember repellent. I got a few good photos of the scenery, and even better photos of the military. Up until we reached the lost city, three days hike in, I had been slightly worried about all the military walking around Santa Marta and the rest of Columbia. They are slightly intimidating, and since I´m in columbia, very freaky when they are carrying a gun. Then we met the poor kids who are forced to join the military at 18 and were then put on a mountain in the jungle with no one to talk to. They looooved the gringos.

The lost city: Apparently this city was used by the Tairona people from 700AD-1400AD, when the Spanish came and wiped them all out with disease. The Spanish never made it up to the mountain (they were probably disuaded by the 2000 moss covered slippery oddly shaped steps that lead to the city) but the disease was spread through trade with other non-lost city dwelling Taironians. The place was gorgeous and apparently very rich. When someone discovered it in the late 20´s, the archeologists found a crap load of gold. Taironians didn´t believe gold to be a precious stone, so they just had it in their houses ready to be robbed 600 years down the road.

We were promised an english speaking guide, but in true south american fashion, the dude spoke really fast spanish and not a lick of english. His favorite things to say were "this is very complicated", "This is very important", "No problem! relax!" (that last one would be when Mariel and I were complaining about his lack of plan). It was an interesting group. One dude even walked the whole thing barefoot. I´m curious to see what types of infections he gets in the next weeks...gross!

Its been 10 days now in Columbia. Its a great country! I haven´t felt scared yet and the weather is awesome. Do I actually have to go back to work at the end of this?

Sister!

Angel has finally made it (I´ve only been (anxiously) waiting for oh, a month and a half), and we decided to waste no time. I picked her up at the airport late Sunday night, and after a restful nights sleep, we headed out the following morning for a little paragliding. There is no way to see a city like flying 1000m above it. A bus took us up, up WAY up the mountainsides that surround Medellin to an altitude of 2600m (Medellin sits around 1400m). Paragliding is kind of like hang gliding, except it is a parachute/kite instead of a hard thing. The staging area was a semi flat grassy bit with a steep drop off down the mountain. I was up first. I strapped into the harness, which included a seat for the tandem rider, and they threw the schute in the air. CORRE!! CORRE!! CORRE!! Before I knew what was happening we were running at the edge (awkwardly, picture a potato sack race crossed with a three legged race) and then the edge dropped away and we were flying! Woohoo!! Didn´t take long before we were doing some aerobatics (swoops, dives, spins) with the cows and farms looking pretty teeny below us. After a 30 or so minute flight, my landing was an ungraceful plop onto my bum back at the staging area.

The following day we set about doing some proper sight seeing. Plazas, churches, cable cars, statues of fat people...Things Medellin is known for. A whirlwind two day tour of the big city and we headed up to the coast. We´re currently in my old ´hood of Taganga, setting out on the 5 day trek through the Jungle to Ciudad Perdida tomorrow morning. We really are wasting no time on this trip. Quite a change from my past month of doing...oh, nothing. A very welcome change, don´t get me wrong. Excited to have had a little time to travel with both my sisters :-).

Venturing Out

After sitting around Medellin for close to 10 days doing close to nothing, I decided it was time to get out for a bit. My adventures started at Peñol, a really big rock about an hour and a half outside the city. There are upwards of 700 some steps that climb the rock, for a sweeping lookout over the surrounding area which has been flooded by a dam (hydroelectric plant) and now is populated with summer/weekend getaway homes for rich paises (Medellin citizens).

My next adventure happened kind of by accident. I had been contemplating heading out to the Zona Cafetera (the coffee growing region of Colombia) for some time, after hearing multiple reports of how beautiful it was. The night before I was thinking about heading out, a large group of University students from a college in that region came and stayed at the hostel for a night. They were on a field trip to visit companies in Medellin. Opportunity knocked, and I ended up catching a free bus ride out to Zona Cafetera the following night on the University bus. Arriving in Pereira (one of the access towns, not much fun for a tourist) at 1am, the professor and his wife generously invited me to stay at their house instead of at one of the rather expensive hotels. I gratefully accepted. They then told me that they were going to Santa Rosa (my destination) the following morning on business, and again invited me to tag along. After feeding me breakfast, we packed in the car and picked up a colleague. First stop was a random little pueblito (tiny, tiny town) up in the mountains where the professor had the business to take care of. The drive was beautiful, coffee plots stretching down the impossibly steep slopes. Around 2pm we finally arrived in Santa Rosa to pick up their son (currently staying at the grandma´s) and to drop me off. I was taken into his mother´s house and fed lunch without a bat of an eyelash, and an introduction so quick I think I missed it. No questions asked, a 4 course lunch and my many expressions of my deepest gratitude later, I was standing with my pack on my back in front of a hotel in Santa Rosa.

Santa Rosa is famous for its hot springs, which I must say, are some of the best I have been to. A steaming hot waterfall (two, actually, one for each main pool) cascades down a rock face and into the massive hot tubs, all carved out of the natural rock bed. In case you get too hot, you can jump in the 100m tall ice cold waterfall on the other end of the pool and sprint back over to the warm before you get too numb.

After about 5 hours of hanging out at the

pools with only two other people in the complex, I headed back to town. Caught a local bus back to Pereira, and hopped on the connecting bus to Salento. Salento is the home of the wax palm, which I´ve heard only exists in this specific region of Colombia. Headed out at 730am with a small group (randomly ran into someone I had met back in Taganga and had lost contact with) to embark on the 6 hour hike through the Valle de Cocora. A beautiful lush green valley curiously dotted with palm trees, who look confused and out of place on the mountainside. On the top of the trail is a small nature reserve that served delicious hot chocolate and happened to house over 8 different species of humming birds. (Grandma Bolhouse would have loved this place.)

I got in and got out of Salento, staying for one night and then taking the night bus back to Medellin. I´m settling back in for the last few days of waiting I have until Angel comes down. :-)

The City of Eternal Spring

I´ve been in Medellin, so called La Ciudad de la Eternal Primavera (appropriately named, the warm breezes and occasional passing showers that water the abundant flowers are very springy), for about 4 days now. And honestly, I don´t have much to show for it. I have another 2 weeks until Angel flies in, so I am taking the sight seeing easy, trying to spread it out over as many days as I can. To my credit I have done some touristing every day. My method of attack is to explore one subway stop a day, which should occupy about 12 days. Granted, it is a bit tedious. The time I´m not being a subway vagrant or reading (luckily I found an awesome book exchange, whew!) I spend shuttling between my hostel´s wonderfully stocked, impeccably clean kitchen and the grocery store.

Today I took an expedition on the cable car system of the metro. One of the few (if not only) cable cars used for mass transit (and not for tourism, although just about everyone on there had their camera out), it connects the poor and once very derelict barrios that line the mountainsides that flank the city to the center. Not long ago, before the metrocable was built, these areas had the highest crime rates of the city (which is saying something, Medellin wasn´t the safest city anyway). The sidewalks are all staircases, the houses mostly shanties. Makes you wonder how they ever got down into the city before (buses aren´t even a viable option). As a secondary function, the metrocable provides beautiful, sweeping views of the city.

Going Home! Eventually.

So, my original return flight was out of Lima, then I changed it to go out of Cancun, and after the third (and I sincerely hope) final change, I will be departing from Managua, Nicaragua on July 10th. Yes, that is earlier. So yes, the title of my blog is a lie (7insouthamerica). But, in all honesty, it was always a lie. Even originally it was only going to be 6.5 months. However, I think 6 months (okay, one day less than 6 months) will be quite sufficient, and the change allows me a couple extra weeks to head up north to Michigan when I get back to see the family and hang out at the cottage. Having both parents and all three girls in the same place at the same time is a rare occurance, and it should be celebrated with barbeques, water skiing, and jet skis.

As I´m leaving Taganga tonight for Medellin, here are a few parting sunset shots that a friend took.

In the Black...Almost.

In an attempt to fill my time (of which I have plenty) and in the interest of my budget, I spent the last week scheming up business plans. After careful consideration and observation I decided that there was a hole in the market, and it was shaped like a brownie. The baked goods in South America as a whole are pretty disappointing, and I figured this was a service that I could offer the tourism industry of Taganga. I looked up a recipe and went into town to get the required ingredients. Made my first batch of brownies from scratch (and realized just HOW much butter goes into those things...and why they are so delicious) and spent 10 minutes trying to sell them on the street. It only took me about 3 of those minutes to remember that I absolutely positively hate selling things. Flashbacks to selling entertainment books in gradeschool gave me the chills. Hopes crushed, I went back home and put the brownies in tupperware. I then made a loop of the village, seeking out the few friends I had made at a scattering of hostels around town. I ended up giving most of them away to randoms sitting around their hostels, and got rave feedback. Hopes revived, I came up with an alternate business plan. So I don´t like sales. That doesn´t cut out my chances entirely, I just needed to find someone to do the dirty work for me. So I made a deal with one of the local juice stand ladies. I would make the brownies and deliver them to the stand in the morning. For every one that sold for 2500 ($1.10), the juice stand lady would get 500. I would return to pick up the money and whatever didn´t sell at the end of the day

Day 1: Made a batch of 12 brownies. By the end of the day, 7 had sold from the juice stand. I only needed to sell 3 to break even on the costs of production, so things were already looking good. But, it was 9pm and I still had 5 brownies to sell. Undeterred from my goal of selling all of them, I set myself up outside the only bar in town (it was Saturday night) with a sign. It took an hour, but I sold the remaining 5. Sucess! I had made enough money to cover all of my expenses for the day, as well as an extra $.65. I´m RICH! ...sort of.

Day 2: Repeat, but with a different juice stand, this one has a better location on the beach. End of the day: disaster. I had borrowed one of my landlord´s plates, and the juice stand had closed a bit early so when I went to retrieve it that night the lady had already cleaned up and taken it home. They were absolutely furious about this, assuming the plate was stolen. After getting screamed at (in spanish, it was good practice, at least), I spent two hours asking just about every person in town where the juice lady lived. I finally recruited the help of an elderly man who walked literally across the whole town with me, finally narrowing in on her neighborhood, street, then house (this took about an hour). I finally found her, "rescued" the plate (since there are NO OTHER green plastic plates in Colombia, even if it had been stolen), and gave the remaining brownies to the old man for his troubles. I returned home to further scolding in spanish. Needless to say, things are a bit weird around the house now. They have calmed down by now, obviously, but I will never be comfortable being there again. So, after a week and a half of laying on the beach, I think it´s time to move on. Pack the bag and get back on the road.