COLUMBIA - THE ONLY DANGER IS YOU WILL NEVER LEAVE!

When I planned my travels, Columbia never crossed my mind. Most people have the vision of mass violence...guns, knives, muggings, robberies, kidnappings, murders etc. After hearing rave reviews from other travellers, I decided to cancel my flight home and find out for myself. The Columbians say "the only danger is that you will never leave." After a month there I can´t think of any reason to disagree...

POPAYAN

I finally made it to Columbia on the 14 Sep when I crossed the border from Ecuador, and caught a bus to Popayan. This city is blindingly white. So white that I remember thinking if there was a law against any colour! You won´t be surprised then to find out it is known as the ´white city´ due to most of the buildings being you guessed it...white! Al-white, enough of the white jokes....

BOGOTA

Bogota is a booming city of close to 9 million people, and is one of the biggest cities on our planet. It is also the place I celebrated 400 days travelling, learned to Salsa and ate lots of street empanadas with the local students - all this in the freezing cold of the 3rd highest capital in the world. The town is also littered with museums, too many in my opinion, of which the Museo del Oro (Gold museum) was a highlight. Not surprisingly it was full of intricate gold artefacts, some 1000s of years old and with a remarkable level of detail. Some interesting sights were Plaza Bolivar with yet another huge Cathedral, and also a statue of Simon ´El Libertador´ Bolivar. He is a hero here after leading Columbia to Independence from the Spanish in 1819. They have even preserved his house as it was when he lived in it - some say interesting, I say it´s just a house! Maybe I will have mine made into a museum too?

Nightlife here was very much hit and miss. On the one hand I learned a few steps of Salsa from the locals, but we also unknowingly chose Valentines night to sample The Zona Rosa (party area of town)! Lots of couples, red and white balloons, hearts everywhere and a funny moment when an Aussie guy with me tried speaking to a cute looking girl, only for her to completely ignore him, turn around and walk away! Not even a hello!
The best part here though was mixing with the locals and practicing my Spanglish, which I did with Julian and his flatmates - a friend I met back in Santiago on my first day in South America. It seems so long ago now! He took me for some terrific Ajiaco (a type of soup big enough to feed 3 people), and some black pudding style street food.

SAN GIL

I went to San Gil for white water rafting after seeing some incredible pictures of a roaring river. Unfortunately, despite spending 4 days there I couldn´t go because the water was too HIGH! How is that possible? Too MUCH water for RAFTING? Anyhow, San Gil has plenty of other options of which I sampled a few. First was Barichara, a charming little town of less than 10,000 people. The sight is the town itself with its red roofs and crazy paved roads. The local delicacy is Hormigas Culonas, meaning Fat Arsed Ants. Despite tasting like coffee beans and soil, they were strangely addictive!

Then was an entertaining walk to a waterfall, where we had to pass a muddy trail, cross the river a couple of times and climb ropes and ladders inside the waterfall until we reached the bottom of a noisy cascade. Thinking we were the only ones there and without our swimming costumes we stripped down to underwear to accomplish this mission, only for a school trip of about 100 kids and their teachers to arrive!! I tried an ice breaking ´Hola´ to la prefesora. She returned with evil eyes. Oops! Next day, remembering swimming shorts this time, we made for Pozo Azul, some natural swimming holes on a river about 1hr away and then went Paragliding. That is a crazy sport, using the thermals to rise and then locking on a hard left/right to spiral down! Brilliant fun!

MEDELLIN

For me, the highlight here was the Pablo Escobar tour. Many of you will know that this drug lord was one of the most powerful men in the world when he ran a huge cocaine trafficking business in the 70s and 80s. At one point Forbes magazine put him in the top 10 richest people in the world! Our guide was a woman who lived through the violence when Columbia was an extremely dangerous place and she gave a fantastic history of how Escobar became the leader of his Cartel and her opinion of the period. Our driver, Hylem (Pablo´s bodyguard), who worked in the cartel for 23 years, answered any question we asked. On the day Escobar was shot dead on a Medellin rooftop in September 1993 it was his day off! He told us of one job he had to do, where he was obliged to keep one of his friends occupied for the weekend, knowing he was going to be killed 5 days later for snitching on the Cartel. He watched on as the guy played with his kids and then again when they set fire to car tyres while he was inside. Gruesome.

After seeing the Escobar mansion, graves and the famous rooftop we met Pablo´s brother, Roberto. He is partially blind and deaf after he opened a letter bomb sent to his house. He showed us around his place and some memorabilia including a bullet proof 4x4, Pablo´s Harley in which he transported the first package of Cocaine and one of hundreds of desks in which they hid money. At the end I looked on as Hylem washed the van. What a difference - 20 years ago he was surrounded by money, drugs and women, looking after the biggest drug lord in history. Now he is ferrying us tourists around in a minibus. I wondered if he has a few million which he didn´t declare stashed away.

After Medellin I took a flight to the Caribbean coast. Reading back I feel this is going on a bit so I will leave it there and post again in a few days. Cartagena, Santa Marta & Taganga, The Lost City Trek and sailing to the San Blas islands in Panama to come...

All the best.

Will

PS. For those of you that don´t know, and are getting bored of all this travel, I´m flying home on the 27th Nov. So I will be around for Xmas parties and a few long awaited reunions! I can´t wait!