It got me. Colombia got me. I’ve racked my brain to come up with synonyms for ‘awesome’, ‘amazing’, ‘fascinating’ and ‘beautiful’ but I’ve come up empty-handed so this post will not go down as a writing masterpiece. Instead, it’ll be a desperate attempt to convey just how great this country has been by divulging excessive details about my slightly extended stay here. Because I had a flight booked from Bogota to Quito on August 29th. I wasn’t even close to being on that.

It dawned on me pretty quickly on the Caribbean coast that I had way underestimated Colombia (despite it being the only country on my itinerary that I got proper insider information about before I left London – which I swear I did listen to! I went in with high expectations but I still didn’t expect to find it quite this fascinating and addictive) and, as evident in the veeery long previous blog post (this one won’t be any different, I have too much to say, soz!), it quickly looked unlikely that I would be making that flight. Instead I decided to shrug my shoulders at the £150 that were wasted there (which was hard!) and just accept that the cost of that flight just wasn’t worth not seeing more of this awesome country for when there is a land border with Ecuador I should be perfectly capable of crossing.

Medellín was my first stop away from the coast, a 17 hour bus ride from Santa Marta (they lie when they say it takes 15 hours and those last 2 hours were sooo long). I got chatting to two crazy Australians whose continuous commentary of the on-board film (‘Bait’, a true cinematic masterpiece) made it worth not understanding the Spanish dubbing. After checking in to a hostel in El Poblado, we decided to spend the afternoon being nominally cultural and went up the hillside to Santo Domingo in one of the cable cars that are part of Medellín’s public transport system. The cable cars connect some of the low-income barrios on the hillsides around Medellín to downtown in a commutable time which has helped many of them economically and socially although it’s still not recommended for tourists to be wandering too far away from the stations in some of them. Santo Domingo was very unthreatening though and we had an awesome lunch there (menu del dia) before taking in more of the stunning views of the city and heading back in time for happy hour at the hostel bar. Because Medellín is a party town and El Poblado, where most backpackers stay, is the magnet for gringos looking for a good time. After drinks at the hostel, we went to Parque Lleras for more drinks while everyone tried to decide where to take the party later. We were a pretty big group of people and I was the only girl so I knew I had little say which meant decision-making was tricky. By midnight, we had lost four Americans to who-knows-which-club and when the German/English/Irish crew decided to head to Rio del Sur at 2 o’clock, I took it as my cue to call it a night. Because being the random girl that crashes what was clearly turning out to be a guys’ night out, paying 20’000 pesos entry to a club that plays rubbish music did not sound like how I wanted to remember the nightlife of Medellín.

In the morning, with no open spaces on any walking tour (except the Pablo Escobar tour. Which is probably really interesting but which I couldn’t get myself to part with 65000 pesos for. I smelled an opportunistic, over-priced tourist trap. Shaking the hand of his brother just didn’t carry that kind of value for me), I made my own. I got a nondescript coffee from a nondescript chain and warm bread (but still Latin American bread. Which means white, sweet and excessively buttery) from a bakery for breakfast and then I set off toward the centre of town around Parque Berrío. I visited the Basilica de la Candelaria, the neo-Romanesque cathedral, walked through the many stalls selling all kinds of random merchandise (of course I want orange plastic fake Ray-Bans. And a cap with ‘DOPE’ in silver letters. And a pink crop-top, socks with an odd-looking Nike logo, a knitted cap with a picture of Bob Marley and a head-massager) in the streets south of Parque de Bolívar and had a glorious jugo con leche with lulo. Then I walked back through the Plaza Botero and unexpectedly spent 2 hours at the Museo de Antioquia. It was just really impressive with an awesome collection of Colombian and Latin American 19th and 20th century art, an extensive collection of works by Fernando Botero (who also donated the huge sculptures in the square out front) and an awesomely curated Wood and Harrison exhibition. I’m not usually a fan of video art but this was set up in a really cool, interesting way.

By late evening and another few beers with the Irish part of the crew from the night before, I headed to the bus station. Because I had arrived a day later than planned, it had to be a short but sweet stay in Medellín and at 11.30pm that night, I was on the 6-hour bus to Armenia for a few days in the coffee region in Salento. That turned out to be a slightly eventful bus ride. They handed out sick bags before we left the station which didn’t fill me with joy of the hours to come and someone somewhere on the bus was definitely ill as the curvy mountain roads were manouvered at quite the speed by the driver. At 3am, we were all woken up and ushered off the bus and asked to stand at the side of the road, behind the orange traffic cones next to an ambulance. Ahead of us, a truck had hit the back of a bus and was stuck halfway down the ditch at the side of the road. The accident appeared to have happened a while before we got there – there was broken glass and debris spread out across both the lanes but the bus passengers were all at the side of the road and there were motorcycle police, two ambulances, a truck with emergency medical equipment, a bunch of people in orange uniforms and even a bombero on site already and everyone seemed relatively calm.

They tried to use our bus to pull the truck out of the ditch but the ropes snapped and it didn’t move an inch. 30min later, as we still stood in our appointed area at the side of the road, the rescue workers seemed to get a bit more agitated and brought a huge bag out of the ambulance and took it around to the driver’s side of the truck where a small congregation of rescue workers was standing on the little hillside, which is when I started to think it was possibly more serious than first thought. I found it quite morbid that people still at this point had their smartphones out, documenting what was happening in both video and photographic format because we just had no idea if anyone was hurt. After about 45min at the roadside, the truck still in the same place and no new signs of what was happening, we were asked to get back on the bus and 15min later, our bus was directed through the crash site and we were back on the windy mountain roads. I’m still keeping fingers crossed that everyone was fine.

At 5.30, we got the wake-up call for Salento. Which meant get up, get your bag out of the hold, walk to the other side of this random highway in central Colombia and wait for the local bus. It was just me and a French couple but at least there was an element of safety in numbers. A bus came quickly though so by 6 o’clock I was sitting in the main square in Salento, waiting for one of the cafes to open so I could get myself a cup of coffee before getting to my hostel at a more reasonable hour. After a leisurely consumption of the worst coffee I’ve had in 3 months, I set off for the hostel with a Canadian couple who had also arrived at this godforsaken ridiculously early hour. On recommendation from someone I’d chatted to on the night out in Medellín, I’d booked a place called La Serrana which is 20min walk outside town. It felt like a longer walk than that with my ridiculously heavy backpack after such a rubbish night’s sleep. La Serrana is essentially a finca-turned-eco-hostel, set off a gravel road, surrounded by hills and coffee plantations and all-round lovely countryside with a reputation for beautiful views, great organic communal dinners and nightly campfires preceding it. It didn’t disappoint.

I had planned to meet up with one of the girls I’d met on the Lost City trek so by 9.30 I was back at the central square with a daypack full of leftover travel snacks, ready to join her and another girl from her hostel on a trip to Valle de Cocora. On the 25min drive there, we had to hang on to the back of the jeep for dear life which felt slightly mental but was good fun. It was about a 2-hour walk, through a valley and a forest and across dodgy footbridges to get to the hummingbird sanctuary Acaime. There, we stopped for COP$5000 coffee/snack/donation-for-footbridge-upkeep before making our way back down the hill and then up another hill before finally reaching the wax palm tree plantation the area is best known for. It was such a beautifully surreal view when we stood in the middle of it, surrounded by 60m tall palm trees everywhere we looked.

Salento town is an interesting mix of tourist and locals, traditional country living and commercial enterprises catering to the foreign visitors. On the Sunday night, the town was full of life, locals by far outnumbering the tourists and the main square was a hub of activity. During the week, evenings are quieter but we still managed to fill our evenings with lovely food (including the traditional trucha dish – 6000 pesos food bargain), drinks at Bar Danubio – a pool hall filled with local cowboys, glorious Thai green curry and chocolate cake, and tejo. Tejo is a traditional sport which involves throwing a rock at a target of triangles filled with gunpowder. Hit one of them and it explodes. I caused no explosions because I have rubbish aim and don’t take easily to sports. Thankfully, I didn’t miss out on witnessing any explosions because the others, including our guide from our coffee plantation tour, Herbert, were much better at it.

The days were equally easy to fill with activities. Aside from the walk through Valle de Cocora, we visited the Don Elias coffee plantation, day-tripped it to nearby Filandia (which the Lonely Planet has decided to call Finlandia which kept reminding me of Portlandia so ‘Dream of the 90s’ kept going on in my head. All day) where I got the best souvenir ever (I’ve convinced myself I can totally pull off a baseball cap with ‘I ♥ Filandia’ printed on it), and walked the 45min down the mountain road to Boquia from where we trekked across countryside and farmland for 1 ½ hours (it will take less time if you don’t end up making a wrong turn and cross the river again unnecessarily and circle around to hit the trail you were on 20min earlier) to reach the Sta Rita waterfall and Rio Quindio. It was quite possibly the coldest river swimming pool/waterfall ever but worth the swim for sure. That was such a fun day and I very much suspect there is a Lonely Planet writer making his/her way there imminently, it had random-cheap-backpacker-activity written all over it.

 

After 5 days/4 nights of lovely countryside living, evenings by the campfire with great people and so many (good!) coffees at Cafe Jesus Martin I can’t even count them, it was time to head south. The local bus took an hour to Armenia from where I caught a (slightly delayed) 9pm overnight bus to Pitalito. There were weird pre-historic stone statues for me to see in San Agustin.

I spent 2 days there, visiting the archaeological park one day and touring the region for 7 hours in a jeep the other, visiting more sites and two massive waterfalls. The hostel I stayed at was so cute, on top of a hill with bottles built into the walls of the dorm, hammocks on the deck and very good (ie not white and not sweet. Finally!) homemade bread. The town was a bit rough around the edges but I quite like that (it feels more authentic which is some weird justification I have for liking things that most people don’t). If the weather had been a bit more consistent, I probably would have stayed put. But chilly nights don’t agree with me if there are colonial towns to visit so I started to inch my way back towards the border and set off for Popayan.

Popayan turned out to be quite the little colonial gem – white hispanic architecture fill the old town and the (many) churches are among the prettiest I’ve seen so far. But mostly Popayan is about food. So I ate. A lot. Two lunches? Not a problem when they cost just 4000 pesos each. I will deal with the weight gain consequences later (although all the fried food I’ve been eating since Guatemala and the fact that beer seems to have become part of my staple diet have probably already done the main damage anyways). I had tamales de pipian, Popayan’s take on empanadas (uhm, fried potato pastry with aji de mani (aka spicy peanut salsa)? There are dieticians around the world in despair over this but, damn, they were good. I went back later for seconds), helado de paila (officially best.ice-cream.ever. I recommend coco and lulo from personal experience), sopa de tortilla and champus (there is fruit in this so I’m going to count that as a healthy option. Despite the canela). I don’t think I could have squeezed in more food options, that I will inevitably forget the names of, if I tried. The best meal was courtesy of vegetarian restaurant Mana where you choose 7 options from their daily menu, all delicious, which they rush out to you at lightning speed. All the locals that I shared the table with were lovely and chatty and happy to try to have a conversation despite my poor Spanish (yeah, so I realise it’s been nearly 3 months but it still sucks), as is the owner at the front desk despite a huge queue of hungry customers starting to form. It may have been lunchtime rush hour but this is Colombia so no one was stressed out.

Aside from eating my way through the town, I also did something in Popayan that I swore I wouldn’t do unless it was for practical reasons. I went shopping. In an actual clothes store. That was always going to end badly for my budget but well for my psyche. That new printed dress and the floral oversized cotton cardigan that are now impractical parts of my traveller’s wardrobe are making me way happier than any of the boring long-sleeved t-shirts I’ll need to be wearing in the upcoming months.

Popayan is my last stop in Colombia. Tomorrow morning I’m setting off for the border, Ecuador finally awaits. But it’s with departure reluctance. There is too much I haven’t seen in Colombia. Which after nearly a month says a lot about how much this country has to offer. I live in hope that Ecuador has lulo and friendly locals and beautiful countryside and arepas and bandeja paisa and the easiest transport system ever because those are among the things that have made this place great. Or at the very least I hope it’s a decent rebound for my heartbreak over having to leave this place behind.

I already have an unofficial list of the places I need to visit next time I’m in Colombia. Because there is no way I won’t be back to the country that taught me extreme supermarket patience (so much time wasted in Éxito), where I learned how to breathe underwater but also that I’m not very good at getting a diving kit off (or on, for that matter. Really, it made me think that it’s a miracle I’m managing to get dressed every day), where I found out that it is possible to live in the same clothes for four days of trekking but not to feel anything other than extremely gross by the end of it, and which taught me never to run low on cash on Saturday afternoons or Sundays in towns with 4 ATMs or less. They get drained for cash by the weekend and you are left wondering how you are going to pay for your hostel and/or bus and begrudging the fact that the one ATM that does have money is Bancolombia which refuses your foreign debit card. The solutions to this problem, in my experience, are to 1) spend your last remaining cash on a taxi to the next town with an ATM that you keep your fingers crossed isn’t a Bancolombia, 2) accept that you will have to pay your bank a transaction fee for taking out just COP$50’000 (what a waste of £3.50) because that’s the maximum amount the ATM will dispense, or 3) handle it the Colombian way – spend whatever you have, enjoy yourself, laugh, drink, eat chorizo on a stick and then queue up at the ATM with an aguapanela con limon in hand with the rest of the town at 10am on Monday morning when the machines have been refilled.

I will miss Colombia, I will miss its spirit (none better illustrated than when walking to catch a bus in San Agustin at 8am on a Sunday morning and music was still blaring and laughter escaping from a few of the bars onto the wet and misty cobblestone road down the hill into town) and I will miss its people who have been the most open, most friendly and most helpful I have met on my trip so far. Have I ever felt unsafe here? No, but I have taken taxis when returning to the hostel on my own at night and I haven’t sought out places in dodgy parts of town and I decided to skip Cali completely. Police (often with massive shotguns) are patrolling most towns and tourist areas and most buses I’ve been on have been stopped for ID checks. Have I ever felt worried that I haven’t been on my guard enough? Only momentarily – when a friendly woman I was chatting to at the bus station in Medellín said to beware of sleeping on the nightbus as bags get taken all the time and when a woman stopped her car at an intersection in Popayan and told me to be careful with my DSLR camera. I didn’t feel unsafe in either of those situations but the fact that they felt the need to point these things out made me think that maybe it’s too easy to get very comfortable. Possibly, I have been very lucky because I have heard the occasional stories of muggings from other travellers. But I think I’ve judged situations and circumstances here alright, nowhere is ever 100% safe and my experience of Colombia in this regard has been very positive. And I’m glad that it has.

And now, as it’s officially my last evening on Colombian soil and a bunch of new people (and even a few I recognise from further north) have arrived at the hostel, I’m off for an Aguila (and probably a Poker and a Club Colombia just so I have the whole array covered). Hopefully I won’t regret planning to be on a bus towards the border by 7am tomorrow morning…

 

Today I’m listening to: Black Rebel Motorcycle Club – ‘Fault Line’