From Medellin, I took a 630am plane back to Bogotá, and then took another flight to Cartagena.As soon as I stepped off the plane, the humidity and heat hit me like a brick.I was greeted at the airport by the youngest of the Polanco family, Gabi, who fortunately was able to hang out with me the entire four days I spent in Cartagena.
Cartagena is a huge city with many different districts.It was and still is the most important sea port and gateway into Colombia.Thick walls that were used to protect the city from invaders enclose the old colonial part of the city.The colonial part of Cartagena is really beautiful: coble stone streets, colonial architecture, tropical bright colors, and the ocean at a stone’s throw.It’s especially pretty at night when different colored lights illuminate the buildings and reflect off the water: the government really knew how to play it up for the tourists.The carribean/colonial atmosphere is so overtaking that all I wanted to do when I was there was dress up as a pirate and walk around looking for a ship to steal….
I was staying about a 15 minutes walk from the old town in a neighborhood called Manga-a mostly residential, with some huge apartment buildings overlooking the bay.Manga has a cute little boardwalk that lines the bay, which Gabi and I went out of our way to walk on several times a day because it offers just a small breeze that makes the heat almost bareable.It’s actually really pleasant at night, when the sun isn’t out, making you sweat through your clothes.
Despite the intense heat, I had a ton of fun in Cartagena.Fortunately, the first two days I was there it was overcast.It made for great walking around weather to explore the colonial old town.I also went to the beach in Bocagrande, the second day I was there, and managed to get a tan even though it was overcast (a testament to just how strong the sun is when you’re that close to the equator!)Bocagrande is a peninsula that jets right out into the Caribbean.It lined with beaches and touristy hotels and restaurants.The beaches aren’t super nice (bathwater temperature water, hagglers, and gray sand), but its fun, and there’s a bar every 100 meters, with waiters more than willing to serve you underneath your rented canopy.(MJ-It’s totally like Kuta beach in Bali).
The next day, we headed to Isla de la Pirata in the archipelago of Islas del Rosario, just off the coast from Cartagena.Basically we paid for a round trip boat ticket to and from the island in order to hang out for the day, with lunch included.Now this was the Caribbean I was expecting: beautiful clear blue waters, intense sun, snorkeling, and white sand.It was awesome, and the lunch was unbelievable: an entire fried fish served with the most amazing rice I have ever had, “arroz titote.”Overall, it was an amazing day, despite arriving home, and realizing that I had gotten sunburned all over my body (I had really greasy sunscreen, that never absorbed and slid right off when I got in the water….so much for being SPF 80 and waterproof!)
My last day in Cartagena, Gabi and I met up with my friend, Devorah, who had just flown in from Bogota, and we went back to beach in Bocagrande.That night, we all partook in the classic Cartagena tourist activity: we took a Chiva.A chiva is an open-air party bus that comes equipped with a live band, a humorous guide, and bottles of rum for every group of four people.We rode around in the Chiva to different historical sites, and then ended up at a discothèque for some Rumba.I was kind of expecting the Chiva to last longer, but nevertheless, it was a great time.
Colonial old town
View of colonial old town with Bocagrande in the background
Protective walls that surround the city
Don't you wanna be a pirate now?
She made me an awesome fruit salad (and used sanitary gloves to handle the fruit!)
View of Bacogrande from Manga
Boardwalk in Manga
El Castilo de San Felipe-well worth the visit, great views of the city plus awesome dark, humid tunnels that you can walk through...kinda creepy, but totally cool
Beach in Bocagrande
View of the Carribean from the Fishing club in Manga
Cartagena at night...beautiful
Isla de la Pirata. You buy a lobster or a Crab, they'll cook it for you for lunch. Looked so delicious, but our lunch was already included.
Pearls anyone?
Marcel (!) The man who took us snorkeling
Lunch!
Sunset at Cafe del Mar in Cartagena
Chiva! The picture doesn't do it justice...Can you see the band sitting in the 4th row back?
Medellin was great. After being in Bogota for two months, being in hot, dry weather was a dream come true. I stayed with Esmaralda’s friend’s daughter, Juliana. Juliana, her husband, and her one year-old son Geronimo (love his name!) live in a really nice neighborhood of Medellin called El Poblado. Across the street from the apartment was one of the largest, most modern shopping malls I have ever seen in my life (check out the pic.). My first day there, I spent the afternoon walking around the El Poblado neighborhood, and went to lunch with Juliana and her family in the Parque Lleras neighborhood. Parque lleras is really nice. Its full of open air restaurants and bars, and its apparently where all the nightlife happens (I didn’t get to partake as I was there at the beginning of the week).
The next two days I spent exploring the city by foot and by metro. The metro in medellin is great, its super efficient, clean, and almost every touristy detination has a metro stop nearby. I went to the Plaza de Botero, the Museo de Antioquia, Plaza Bolivar, an open air market, and to the Jardin Botanico, all in one day. The Museo de Antioquia was really cool. It showcases almost all of Fernando Botero’s work, as well as other modern artists. The next day I went to the Museo de Arte Moderno de Medellin, Pueblito Paisa, El Parque de Los Pies Descalzos, and I took the metro cable all the way to Parque Arvi. I actually didn’t know exactly where the metro cable would take me. I thought it would just go to the top of the mountains that surround Medellin and then turn around and come back. Instead it just kept going and going, and going, till eventually it was carrying us over a thick forrest. After about 45 minutes in the metro cable I ended up at Parque Arvi, a natural park outside of the city. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to go in or hike in it, as I took the metro cable around 4:45 pm and the sun was going down soon. I ended up making it back down to the metro with about 30 minutes left of sunlight….just enough to make it back to the apartment and call it a day. Had to get ready to go to Cartegena the next morning.
Aerial view of Bogota on the plane to Medellin
The glamourous Santa Fe mall
The metro
Plaza Bolivar with Botero statues
I wonder whats on his mind?
Street salsa dancing, called "Salsa Libre" in plaza bolivar
Orchids at the botanical gardens
The modern art museum
Pueblito Paisa-a minuature version of a colonial town from this region of Colombia - purely for tourists.
View of Medellin from Pueblito Paisa
Parque de los pies descalzos - literally means barefoot park: there are parts of the park in which you are not allowed to wear shoes. I found that out the hard way, when I got chastised to walking on the sand in my shoes.
View of the metro-cable I was about to get on
The metro-cable takes you over some of the poorest parts of the city. And yes, people repair their roofs by adding another piece of sheet metal and securing it with a brick.
Journey into the woods as the metrocable got further and further away from Medellin
Bogota has a great selection of museums. Most are located in the La Candelaria, and El Centro districts. I've only been to four so far, but they've each been great:
1. Museo Nacional: Chronicles the history of the country from its earliest inhabitants to present day through art. I needed two full afternoons to see everything in this museum. My favorite exhibits were of the ancient poetry and modern Latin artists (Fernando Botero; Andres de Santa Maria, Alejandro Obregon)
Cute Courtyard inside the walls of the museum
2. Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogota (MAMBO): I liked the modern art museum a lot. It was a little hard to find because the entire street in front of the museum (calle 26) is completely torn up due to transmillenio construction. The museum is three stories and has a basement. All of the exhibits were by Latin American artists. A few notable ones that I remember were Nacho Lopez, and Graciela Iturbide. The latter did an interresting exhibit entitled "Frida Kahlo's Bathroom." The following quote by Frida Kahlo introduced the exhibit: "Cada (tic-tac) es un segundo de la vida que pasa, huye, y no se repite. Y hay en ella tanta intensidad, tanto interes, que el problema es solo saberia vivir: que cada uno lo resuelva como pueda."
3. Museo de Botero: This was by far my favorite museum, and it was free to get in! Fernando Botero is a Colombian painter whose paintings are infamous because everything he paints is obese (people, nature, objects, animals). His works were comprised of oil on canvas, bronze sculptures and charcoal drawings. The museum also had works by other famous modern artists like Picasso and Matisse:
Courtyard inside the museum
Botero's version of the mona lisa
Botero's la pareja (love it!)
4. Museo del Oro: This museum showcases gold artifacts from all over Colombia, and there's a ton! of it. I decided to go the museum on a cloudy afternoon after class, and the second I stepped off the transmilenio I was faced with a torrential downpour that literally made the street look like a lake. After waiting for 30 minutes in the station to see if the rain would let up, I gave up and made a run for it. Needless to say my shoes got soaking wet...luckily by the time I left the museum the rain had stopped and I went home to a hot shower.
I would say the most interesting thing I learned at this museum was that indigenous participated in some unique drug activities. Priests used to inhale a hallucinatory substance called "yopo," in order to achieve elevated states of awareness. Coca leaves were and are currently chewed in the mouth with lime in order to increase its stimulating effects. Another interesting and very true indigenous belief: time was thought of as being cyclical like a spiral, inspired by natural repetitive events such as the movements of the stars, animals reproducing and women's periods. All in all it was really cool, and well worth the wet visit!
This past weekend a group of friends and I headed to Villa de Leiva. The town is definetly one of the most beautiful places I've ever visited. All the houses are built in the traditional colonial Spanish style (the exact style I would want in a house!). The cobble stone streets, the scenery, and the friendly people all add to the atmosphere. Overall, I would describe the town as romantic, and relaxing.
The bus ride there was around three and half hours long through the countryside on a very bumpy road. We all met up at "portal norte" (a public transportation hub in bogota) on Saturday morning. At portal norte there are a ton of people standing along the street selling bus tickets to various cities outside of bogota. The buses to Villa de Leiva left every 15 or 20 min, so there wasn't any need to be exactly on time. We rented an awesome house in the hills a little outside of town, and had a bbq on Saturday night.
Besides its charm and beautiful scenery Villa de Leiva is also known for lakes, waterfalls, hot springs, and hallucinogenic mushrooms that grow naturally in the countryside!
Anyway, I'll let the pictures speak for themselves:
Leaving Bogota: Naoki, Paula, Agustin, Kati, Glorio, Sophie, Juan
Before entering Villa de Leiva, all the men on the bus had to be patted down for weapons....
Main Plaza
Our rented house! It had 6 bedrooms with 2-3 beds in each.
Outside patio of the house
Main Plaza-View of the church
There were a ton of stray dogs everywhere, and farm animals (goats, cows, horses)
Hotel "El Duruelo"-one of the most famous in Villa de Leiva (and the most expensive)
Went horseback riding on Sunday and got a terrible sunburn
Sophie on horseback
The view on our horse ride
The bus on the way back-they played the movie "Rango" in Spanish
