Bogota & Leticia: 18-25 October 2011

Following the hot stormy beaches of the Caribbean, Bogota (back up in the Andes) was quite chilly in comparison. It was overcast for the whole 4 days that we were there and we had to dig our jeans and boots out from the bottom of our backpacks.

Our first impressions of Bogota weren't that great. Apart from the weather, the city itself didn't feel that inviting. The architecture was mostly 60s/70s style concrete blocks and, assisted by the weather, was all a bit grey and drab. There seems to be graffiti on every building. Fortunately, the place grew on us throughout our short visit and there were plenty of nice spots in amongst the urban chaos.

We were staying in Hostal Sue (!!) on the edge of the La Candelaria district, the central part of Bogota and home to dozens of churches, the congress and presidential buildings and lots of colourful shops and houses. It wasn't in the same league as Quito, but was quite a nice place to wander around. We visited a couple of museums in the area, the first was the Gold Museum, dubbed 'unmissable' by our guidebook. It was really interesting too. Despite the amount of gold plundered during the colonial period, the museum has managed to pull together several thousand pieces from different pre-Colombian civilisations, varying from early battered sheets of gold, through to intricate ceremonial masks, breast-plates and jewellery. We hired audio guides which gave some background into the people who used the objects as well as the pieces themselves which struck a nice balance. The second museum was a bit of a random one: the police museum. We sat in the waiting room feeling like naughty schoolchildren until a guide turned up to show us around. Apparently there's a good section there about the final hunt for Pablo Escobar, although we didn't see that part for some reason. The rest of it was quite interesting though (and free!) and touched on some of the big drug busts of recent times. We also had a chance introduction to the longest serving law enforcement officer in South America who is the current director of the museum! All quite random. We got out without being arrested for anything too!

Our sightseeing highlight by some distance was the Salt Cathedral in the town of Zipaquira, some 50kms north of Bogota. It was a bit of a mission to get there - a couple of hours on two different buses, but was well worth the effort. In the hills outside of the town is a large working salt mine, formed by an evaporated inland sea that was pushed underground when the Andes were formed. Parts of the mine that are no longer worked have been carved into a series of underground chapels and a Cathedral which some 3,000 people can visit for mass. We entered through a tunnel in the hillside that leads underground for a 100 metres or so before coming to the first chapel. There are 14 of them carved into the salt and rock on either side of the pathway. Each one is only small with space for half a dozen people to kneel in front of big carved crosses, though some of them overlook massive chambers where the salt has been extracted. The path carried on downwards for another 100m or so, passed the chapels until ending at a kind of balcony looking out into the Cathedral itself. Truly of cathedral-proportions, it's a massive underground cavern, complete with pews and fresh flowers and illuminated by soft coloured lights. Pretty awesome. We had a good look around the main Nave and the chapels off to each side before trekking back up to the surface.

After four days in Bogota, we were booked on an evening flight down into the jungle town of Leticia on the banks of the Amazon River. Leticia is the Colombian town in the border area with Brazil and Peru. It's from the Brazilian town of Tabatinga (just 4km away), that we were planning to pick up a boat downriver. We were looking forward to getting to Leticia, a) to see the jungle and, b) to feel some heat again! It was dark when we took off, so we didn't get the chance to appreciate the scale of the rainforest from above, though it was quite creepy coming into land when there were no lights in the darkness out of the windows. The airport was quite small and stepping off the plane we could smell the hot, green, damp smell of rainforest. To confirm the fact that we had arrived, the brightly lit baggage reclaim was filled with bugs of all shapes and sizes crawling over the floors and walls and occasionally dive bombing into our faces! We were really in the jungle then!

We slept in on our first day in Leticia (after a couple of drinks on our last night in Bogota!) and spent the afternoon looking around the small town. We walked down to the small boat 'dock' situated on a small river flowing into the Amazon, where boats were moored haphazardly and a few people were selling bananas and water melons. We were considering hiring a boat for a look around when we felt the first drops of rain. We just made it to the cover of a bar when the heavens opened in what was a pretty spectacular downpour. It eased eventually, but kept raining for the whole day which brought the temperature down a bit, but wasn't conducive to wandering around town! There isn't too much to see anyway; aside from the dock, the main 'sight' are the flocks of small parrots that come home to roost in the central park around sunset. There are loads of bars/restaurants (of the plastic table and chair variety) and quite a few casinos too. Everything has to come in by air or water, so there aren't many cars around, motorbikes are everyone's favoured method of travel. The town does have a frontier feel to it and Sunday was obviously drinking and gambling day.

The Monday was bright and sunny and we set about preparing for our trip down the Amazon into Brazil. First step was to head back to Leticia airport, speak to the immigration people there and get stamped out of the country. We then took a tuk tuk across the border into Tabatinga to get stamped into Brazil by the Federal Police. While in Tabatinga, we went down to the docks and had a quick look round a cargo boat due to set sail to Manaus on Wednesday. We looked at the small cabins - bunkbeds and no windows for £200 per person and settled on buying a ticket on the hammock deck for £60 a piece. For that you get space to hang your hammock, three meals a day and fresh water for the four days and three nights it would take to get to Manaus.

We handed over the dosh and were told to come back at Wednesday at mid-day. Feeling a mixture of apprehension and excitement about it all, we returned to Leticia and extended our stay there for a couple of days. Although we'd officially left Colombia, you can move freely in the border area here and Leticia is a nicer and safer town than Tabatinga. Police are stationed at the border, but rarely stop anyone. As both towns are accessible only by air or by river, it's not until you leave that they give you a thorough going over.

With a spare day until we set off for Manaus, we booked a day trip heading upstream calling at various points on the Colombian side of the river. Leaving at 8am, we were walked down to a small speedboat that we'd be sharing with 6 others and our Spanish-speaking guide. We headed out into the Amazon, pausing at the tri-border point where the Colombian Coastguard gave us the once over and studied the passenger list before we set off on our trip.

We would stop at a few places during the day; the first was to see the giant Victoria Regina water-lillies that can grow to two metres across and where we were treated to a close encounter with some colourful Macaws. The second stop was the aptly named 'Monkey Island', populated by hordes of small cute monkeys who started appearing out of the jungle as we walked ashore. We were led into the woods by a guide carrying a bag of bananas and before long the monkeys were jumping up onto our bags, shoulders and heads in an effort to get closer to the food. I plucked a banana out of the bag and was instantly covered in monkeys swarming all over me to eat the banana out of my hand. They get into a right feeding frenzy, but are incredibly gentle (with the humans anyway!) and there wasn't a single scratch or bite amongst us. It took Sue a little while to pluck up the courage to get too close, but in the end she didn't have too much of a choice as a little fella leapt five metres out of the trees and landed on her shoulder, tale and backside nicely positioned in front of her face!

Further upstream, we paused to listen (or at least the Spanish-speaking people among us did!) to the guide talking about the river, when a pink river dolphin surfaced close to our boat. Pretty cool. Even this far upstream, some 1800 miles or so from where the river spills into the Atlantic, the river is massively wide and is as brown and muddy as you expect it to be. In the wet season it is navigable by ocean going ships for another 200 miles or so upstream from where we were, into Peru.

We stopped at a small Indian village to see (and join in) a traditional dance for which we handed over a tip and had a mooch round the souvenir stalls before getting back on the boat and heading to a national park that would be our next stop. The rest of our group had pre-paid the steep entrance fee, but we decided to sit it out and enjoy a cold drink while they went for a half hour mooch through the jungle and saw a giant Sequoia tree. We've seen a few of them before, so didn't feel like we'd missed much fortunately! Next up was a late lunch where we were terrorised by a lone monkey who started off being cute, but then got quite excitable, probably not helped by the coca cola and lemonade he managed to get his hands on! He was in hot pursuit of us as we left to go on a rather unsuccessful search for river dolphins. The sighting earlier that morning would be the only one I saw, though Sue caught a glimpse of another couple.

Our final stop before turning to head back downstream to Leticia was to walk through the village of Puerto Narino. A nice enough place, but by then we were starting to feel the burn from the hot sun. We'd run out of sun lotion a little while ago - we can't seem to find any stronger than factor 2 and lower than factor 50 for some reason!!

Back on the boat we were motoring along nicely, managing to shade ourselves as best as we could, when the outboard spluttered into silence. We weren't initially concerned as it had played up a bit all day, but after a short while it became clear that we'd run out of fuel.. How the skipper managed to let that happen we're not sure: you'd think he would have done this tour once or twice before! We also had no radio on board and (until we drifted downstream a bit) no mobile phone signal either! We drifted down the middle of the river slowly baking in the sun while a few boats passed us by in the opposite direction. Eventually a kind Samaritan stopped and gave us some of his fuel - enough to make it to the Peruvian island of Santa Rosa. It wasn't clear whether this was a scheduled stop or not, but the villagers there were plainly waiting for tourists from one trip or other and had a few jungle animals for us to pet and hold including a couple of small Caymans and turtles, a jungle cat and three or four cute Sloth's who would cling onto you like a slow-moving long-armed baby (!). Not quite as cute as the Koalas in Australia, but surprisingly close!

Another boat (with a full tank of fuel) came to pick us up and take us back to Leticia and we arrived just as the sun was going down - a really good day. We had a cold refreshing shower and a few beers before heading out for our last dinner in Colombia. We've bought all our supplies now for the boat journey starting tomorrow. Looking forward to it!

Next update to come from Brazil (the 15th and final country on our trip!).

See you all soon,

Dan & Sue.