Cuidad Perdida Trek - Day 1

We woke up around 7 and got prepared for our trek. Packed everything we'll need for the 5 days in our small packs, with the plan to leave our big packs at the hostel. Yesterday dad struggled and fidgeted trying to figure out what to bring.

We went down to pay for the room and find that the pickup got changed from 8:15 to 9:30 instead, so we have an extra hour to get ready and have breakfast. So went upstairs and got breakfast and paid for the room then waited for our pickup, which ended up being over 30 minutes late to.

Finally got picked up and walked to the tour company office and paid. There's also an Israeli couple on our trek.

It was about a 3 hour drive to the start of the trek, part of the drive on a small, very bumpy dirt road. Our guide is a local guide from one of the local tribes in the mountains. They are of very short stature. They struggle to reach 5 feet in height. They are almost like mini humans, very dark skin and black hair. The men wear their hair very long, down their back.

Our guides name is Santiago.

We had lunch before starting the hike.

We started the hike in nice weather and it was easy going at first. We came to a pool where we could jump in off a big rock, it was a lot of fun. Crossing one of the rivers dad slipped and soaked one of his feet and shoe.

After about an hour, the hike started to go up. Steep, steep switchbacks. It just kept going and going. The Israeli couple and Ryan and myself were fine, but dad had a hard time with it. He was like a tortoise, slow and steady, but he had to take quite a few breaks. Either Ryan or myself would hang back with him, and often our guide would stay back as well. He didn't really cause the group to get to the destination late or anything, but he's a trooper and I knew he could do it. Ryan has never seen dad like this before, so was kind of concerned for dad, but I hiked volcanoes with dad last year, so knew what to expect.

About half way up it started to rain and all our clothes got soaked.

We made it to the sleep point around 4 I guess. We got into dry clothes and got some juice (tasted like Tang) and then Ryan set out to try and figure out the difference between the 4 day and the 5 day trek. We are on the 5 day, the Israeli couple are on the four day trek. The guide nor the family running the sleep barn speak English and no one in our group speaks Spanish, so it was pretty funny. Ryan thought he got it all figured out with the guide, then wrote it down on a piece of paper, drawing a map, and then called our guide over to confirm. Once again it got all screwed. Then the owner of the sleeping facility came over and the Israeli couple got involved. Ends up that Michal did take Spanish in school for a bit so can do a decent job at translating. Between everyone, we found out the difference between the 4 and 5 day trek. We decided to not do the 5 day trek, but do the 4 day trek instead. The difference is it takes a longer time to hike back down.

We had a wonderful meal of potatoes, rice, chicken and salad made by the family where we're staying.

It gets dark by about 6:30, and there wasn't much to do. And we're going to have a wake-up call at 5am. We stayed up until about 8 them went to bed.

Diving

We woke up around 7:30, had breakfast and then decided to walk around the city for the morning. Ryan and I decided we'd try to see if we could go diving in the afternoon.

We first booked the Lost City (Cuidad Perdida) trek for tomorrow.

We walked to the beach and down the waterfront. Not very busy in the morning at all, hardly any shops open, not to many people around. Some Colombian tourists saw Ryan and wanted to get their picture taken with him. On the walk back, the dive shop was open, so we stopped and arranged to do a dive at 2:00 this afternoon.

We then walked more downtown along the main business street, tons and tons of people, all the little shops bustling, tons and tons of vendors on the streets selling stuff. Awesome! We stopped at a supermarket and bought some plastic bags for the trek.

We went for an average lunch at a small place down by the waterfront, then back to the room.

Ryan and I headed to the dive shop for our 2:00 dive time, got all fitted out with dive gear and then hopped in the little boat for the trip to the rocky point by the edge of the bay.

We started with a wreck, them swam around and saw a fair bit of coral and quite a few fish. The lionfish is an invasive fish here, so the government encourages divers to kill them. Our guide brought a speargun for that purpose. He managed to kill about 4 or 5 of them, including a huge one.

Ryan had trouble equalizing and with his buoancy, so he was constantly going up and down.

We finished the dive and when we came to the surface, Ryan has blood all over his face. He had burst a blood vessel in his nose because of the equalizing problem and it also have him a massive headache.

Back to the dive shop, we cleaned up all the gear, paid our bill and then headed back to the room to have a shower to get all the salt off. We picked up dad and went back to the dive shop to get our pictures, then headed to a restaurant recommended by our guide (Andreas), called Welcome.

Talk about a dive of a restaurant. Run down. The tablecloths were filthy. Lots of flies. But Charlie was hilarious in his broken English. So much fun. I asked if I could get something not on the menu and he took a deep breath and groaned and finally said "Why not!!" The food was absolutely amazing at this place and just goes to show that some of the best food can come from some of the most unassuming restaurants. Both Ryan and dad raved about their food as well.

Back to the room around 8:00 and then just hung out then to bed.

Paragliding in Medellin!

I slept amazing last night. We woke up and packed most of our stuff, then went to reception to check on the paragliding. It's a go. The taxi will pick us up at 10:00 to take us.

We walked around the neighbourhood and found a small place for breakfast, then back to the hostel and decided to book a flight to Santa Marta instead of a bus, as a bus would be a night bus and be around 15 hours.

At 10:00, the taxi picked us up and it was about a 40 minute ride up the hills to the paragliding place. Talk about steep roads. A road inn New Zealad claims to have the steepest road in the world, but some of the roads in Medellin would give the New Zealand road a run for its money on that title.

We paid 80,000 pesos each and then had to make a hike up the hill to the takeoff point. There was a younger guy there training. He introduced himself to us and spoke good english. We met our pilots and got the suit on, and I was the first to go. It was awesome, flying over the hills and valleys near Medellin. I had done this before in Nepal, so I knew what to expect, but this was Ryan's and my dads first time. Once I landed, I was able to record Ryan and dad coming in and landing as well. The landing location was a field in the suburbs and there were a whole bunch of kids around watching us come in, some of them even helped us land and pack everything up.

Dad loved it, he had a permagrin on his face. This was the one thing he wanted to do most in Columbia, so it's great that eveything fell into place.

The taxi driver was late getting to the landing spot, so we had to wait for a while for him to come.

The taxi driver took us back to the hostel, then we grabbed our stuff and he took us to the airport. The flight from Medellin to Bogota was ridiculously short. They didn't even get a chance to finish off the drink service, so Ryan was left complaining about lack of coffee again.

We had about 3 hours in Bogota airport and the only food option was Dunkins Donuts or a block of cheese. I chose Dunkins Donuts. They also kept changing gates and info, and making the announcements in Spanish. We had no clue was was going on! We just followed everybody else.

The flight was late and we arrived in Santa Marta sometime after 11:00pm. We got a taxi to the hostel, he was driving like a crazy man. We got the hostel and found out that I screwed up on the reservation and only made it for one person and they didn't have room for the three of us.

We went to a hostel next door and got a private room for the three of us and got settled. We then headed to the main waterfront road where apparently there was a restaurant still open. Sure enough there was, so dad and Ryan had some food, then back to the hostel and to bed near 1:00am.

Around Medellin

Up around 7:30. We asked the hostel staff about where to get breakfast, and they pointed us to where the malls are on a map, a short distance away. Ryan took control and took us in the complete opposite direction. I took over and got us to the proper spot. Very exclusive area near us, very nice, trendy, large malls and shops, outdoor cafes and such. Unfortunately there was not much open for breakfast, so after a long walk, breakfast was McDonalds.

We headed back to the hostel and talked to the girl working the desk (who speaks broke English) about paragliding. We think we got a story that we might be able to go paragliding tomorrow depending on the weather. We went back to the room and Ryan decided on a plan for today, namely Parque Explora, a science centre and aquarium near the university.

We headed to the metro system, which seems super awesome in the Medellin, and headed to the Universidad station. Really nice area here, little cafes and such, so we had a bite to eat and then went into the Parque Explora and spent a couple of hours there. Nothing super awesome, but it was fun. We heard from a worker about the botanical gardens across the street, which is free, so we headed there for a while. We then headed back to the main restaurat/party/bar area called Poblado, along Calle 10 around Parque Lleras and had supper and some beers. Let me tell you, this is a very nice area, so many shops, tons of great (read expensive) restaurants and bars, very nice.. I wasn't surprised by it, but Ryan remarked that something like this this was totally unexpected from him to find in Columbia.

After some beers, we got a taxi back to the hostel and if the weather is good tomorrow morning, we'll go paragliding.

Mount Monserrate and off to Medellin

Up early, about 7:30 and had breakfast at the hostel at 8:00. Yesterday we decided to do Mount Monserrate and the Gold Museum (Museo del Oro) in the morning, then take a bus to Medellin. We walked to the base of Monseratte and got our tickets for the ride up, via a funicular (cable pulled train car type of deal). The views were pretty great, but amazingly spectacular. At the top of the mountain, theres a restaurant and a church.

The cable car doesn't start operating until noon, so we took the funicular back down and headed off to the Museo del Oro. On the way there dad managed to get a SIM card for his phone/wifi hotspot, so he's internet enabled now. We got to the museum only to find out that it's closed on Mondays. Oh well!

I must say, Bogota is not quite what I expected. It's the third largest city in the western hemisphere (according to what Ryan read on the internets) which surprised me. It's doesn't have the feeling of a typical capital city, though, there are really no touts and hawkers about trying to forever sell you stuff, which is nice.

We stopped at a market and I bought a wineskin to use a water bottle and Ryan bought some things for his kids.

We went to a restaurant and had a Columbain traditional dish of yesterdays leftovers, although this guy claimed they didn't reheat the leftovers from yesterday, instead they reheated the food they made earlier in the morning.

We headed back to the hostel and got a taxi to the bus terminal and got our tickets to Medellin, about 60,000 pesos each. We had about an hour wait for the bus. It was a super nice bus, it even had wi-fi and charging stations on the bus! The bus left at 2:45.

We stopped for supper around 8:00ish. Remember Ryan getting scared by a big beetle in the sink in the washrooms at the restaurant.

The drive was pretty spectacular, especially heading into Medellin. It's more tropical (being lower elevation), and it was storming really hard, so there was all kinds of massive waterfalls along the side of the highway. I was really disappointed that it was late at night and I couldn't see much, as it looked like it would have been pretty spectacular.

We got the hostel about 1:00am. I went to bed first, I had just a sheet on my bed, which was fine, it was quite warm. Ryan was next to climb into bed and he didn't even have a sheet. He had to use his sleeping bag. Dad was last (as he had to fix his spreadsheets), and he had only a comforter, not a sheet. Haha.

Biking Tour of Bogota

We got up about 8:00, slept amazing!!

We had breakfast at the hostel. It was ok, not great, but it is included in the price of the room.

We started walking arounnd, dad is looking for a Claro place so he can get a SIM card for his phone/hotspot. No luck, and mostly everything is closed, as it's Sunday.

We decided to do a Bogota bike tour, so headed to where the office is, and timed it perfect. They were just getting ready to start the tour, so we joined them. A big group, probably 20-25 people.

We got a lot of history about Bogota and saw lots of different places, including park,s the bullfighting arena, the red light district, fruit markets, the central cemetery and learned about Columbia's national sport, tejo.

On Sunday's, the city closes down many of the downtown roads to vehicles and makes them bike and pedestrian friendly, which was perfect for our bike tour.

Near the start, a mass crowd was walking down the street, chanting and holding up banners. It was a huge protest against bull-fighting (and animal cruelty in general), people dressed in animal costumes, and one woman was even almost completely naked. She had only panties on. Weird. I'd put it at 5,000-10,000 people. After watching for a bit, we bypassed it and continued on the tour.

It's always interesting to hear about the history of the city on tours like this, including the very violent 1980's ad 90's, the sordid history with rebels and assassinations.

We learned about the wild, feral hippopotamus population thriving in Columbia. I guess the drug lord, Pablo Escobar, in the 80's had wild hippo's brought over from Africa. During his downfall, they escaped and took up residence in a river and now they have the second highest hippo population in the world. They don't know what to do about them, the animal rights groups get upset when they hear about killing them, but they are not native and are destroying everything.

We stopped at a bar where they did Columbia's national sport, tejo, which involves throwing heavy iron balls into a clay pit with explosive packets buried. You get points to making one of these gunpowder packets goes off. It was pretty fun!

The bicycle tour lasted over 4 hours, and we got back to the hostel around 3:00, stopping for a piece of pizza on the way.

We used the internet and lounged for a bit and argued about where to go for supper. We then headed to the trendy university area, around plazeto del Chorro de Quevedo for supper at a restaurant called Rosalita's.

It was an absolutely beautiful day, sunnny and hot. We all got sunburns.

On our way to Columbia

I met Ryan at his house about 2am. Ryan and Olga didn't understand why I was there so early, but you're supposed to arrive at the support airport 3 hours early.

We took a Car2Go to the airport and there was hardly anybody there. Another older couple came over and said he even called the airline and they told him 3 hours. Nothing was open except the self check-in terminals. I swiped my passport and it told me it needed more information, so provided the flight number and it said it couldn't find my reservation. Holy crap. I tried again, this time giving it my destination city, same result. I'm shitting bricks. It printed off a slip and told me to see an agent (which were not open yet). I sat down dejected. Ryan suggested I try another terminal, so did. This time I provided my confirmation code. Thank the gods, it found my reservation and I got my boarding pass printed.

When Ryan went through the process, the system automatically provided him an upgraded great seat near the front of the plane. He thought he was going to have to pay extra for this seat, so he overrode the default and selected a different seat at the back of the plane. His bad when I finally got through, it auto selected the same seat he was originally given, and I accepted it, no extra charge, and got extra leg room out of the deal. Ryan ended up during beside a 600 pound woman who's fat was overflowing into his seat.

We had a long superior stopover (6+ hours) in Dallas. We arrived in Bogota about 11pm, breezed through immigration and dad was waiting for us at the luggage pickup area. Ryan wasn't really surprised, as apparently Chloe let the cat out of the bag about dad meeting us down here. (Olga, don't get mad at Chloe!)

We got a taxi to the hostel (Casa Platypus), a nice hostel, if fairly expensive. Remember me trying to pay the taxi driver 200,000 pesos on a taxi charge of 18,200. The taxi driver was honest and gave me back 150,000, but kept the large to of over 30,000 pesos.

We had a beer at the hostel in our room and then to bed around 1:00am.

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