Erika came back for our last week of work, which was just in time as we were down to peeling coconut all day for work (with a bit of cleaning here and there). We got to do some interesting things - Kim helped make coconut oil and Matteo and I made plantain flour. We sprayed some more shit solution on the coffee plants, and did a little more maintenance work with them before we packed up our stuff and headed back to Bogota. On one hand, our four weeks on the farm was very relaxing - I finished The Count of Monte Cristo, Get Carter, and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo trilogy. On the other hand, our host wasn't able to spend very much time with us at the farm, which takes away from the experience some. Of course, this isn't an indictment of our host - she has a young child to take care of. Rather, I think that she has her hands full with her son, and adding 3 volunteers to the list of people who are looking to you for direction and guidance is probably a bit too much to ask.
We made it back to Bogota with plans to catch a bus to Cali the next day. We didn't do much in Bogota last time as I felt like utter crap, and we didn't do much this time because we were tired from the farm and we wanted to get an early start to Cali. We did eat a nice lunch at a restaurant near the hostel, and then we participated in the hostel's BBQ dinner. We can't really be sure whether it was the BBQ, or something else entirely, but something did both of us in.
The next morning on the taxi ride to the bus terminal I was suppressing a mild urge to vomit almost the entire way. Normally I don't get motion sickness. I hadn't said anything about it when Kim asked if my stomach was hurting as well. She was feeling the same. We bought tickets for Cali, a 10 or 11 hour bus ride, took some antacids, and prepared ourselves for what we thought would be an uncomfortable trip. It turned out to be much worse. I spent most of the ride with my stomach churning like a washing machine, and I was constantly dropping silent but deadlies (the guy behind me was not happy about this part). Kim was worse off than me. She does get motion sickness and had to run to the bus bathroom to throw up, which is really more similar to a port a potty as it doesn't flush. After the 3rd or 4th trip to the bathroom she looked at me and said, "We might have to get off this bus, I can't do this much longer." I considered that this option would have left us in some small town in the middle of the Colombian Andes, and I patted Kim on her leg and said, "You can do it. We can't get off the bus, it's not an option."
We ended up having a reprieve from the motion sickness as we inexplicably were stopped for three and a half hours in the afternoon. Okay to be fair, we moved probably 5 miles in that time. But it did help Kim's stomach, and she took some motion sickess pills before we got going again and we didn't have anymore extreme gastrointestinal issues. However, the delay meant that we arrived in Cali at 1am instead of the projected 8pm. We also discovered that my phone was the only place we had the address of our hostel, and it was completely dead (to be fair the battery life issue on my phone isn't a new issue for us, just one we failed to anticipate and that was compounded by a shitty day).
I figured we could find a taxi driver who knew the hostel, or would have gps or a phone he could do a quick search to find it. Our taxi driver had never heard of it, and he had been robbed the week before so he didn't have a phone or gps anymore. This did wonders for Kim's anxiety, especially it being after 1 am, but that didn't stop him from doing his damndest to find it for us. He drove to a group of taxi drivers and asked them if they had heard of Caella or Caelling hostel (the name is Caelum, but we found that Spanish speakers have a difficult time pronouncing this even when reading it). One guy was able to figure out that it was somewhere on Ave 4n - a really long street stretching across a really big city. But a start nonetheless. We drove around on Ave 4n for a bit before he started asking other people on the street if they had heard of the hostel. We finally found help from a security guard at a hotel, who was running in and out of the hotel to use the internet to try and find our hostel.
Kim was able to connect her phone to the hotel wifi from the car, and we had a full address and a small map of the surroundings. I thought we were in the clear, but even with the address our driver was still pretty confused (this was a first for us in Colombia). After some more slow mo driving, Kim was able to successfully navigate the driver to our hostel once we found a big landmark that was on the small map on her phone. If you really know Kim, this is some superhuman shit. The same girl who couldn't find Pizza Hut in the town where she grew up (emphasis on town, only one Pizza Hut), told a taxi driver how to find the hostel after a 15 hour bus ride and a stressful 45 minute ride through the late night streets of Cali.
I figured we could find a taxi driver who knew the hostel, or would have gps or a phone he could do a quick search to find it. Our taxi driver had never heard of it, and he had been robbed the week before so he didn't have a phone or gps anymore. This did wonders for Kim's anxiety, especially it being after 1 am, but that didn't stop him from doing his damndest to find it for us. He drove to a group of taxi drivers and asked them if they had heard of Caella or Caelling hostel (the name is Caelum, but we found that Spanish speakers have a difficult time pronouncing this even when reading it). One guy was able to figure out that it was somewhere on Ave 4n - a really long street stretching across a really big city. But a start nonetheless. We drove around on Ave 4n for a bit before he started asking other people on the street if they had heard of the hostel. We finally found help from a security guard at a hotel, who was running in and out of the hotel to use the internet to try and find our hostel.
Kim was able to connect her phone to the hotel wifi from the car, and we had a full address and a small map of the surroundings. I thought we were in the clear, but even with the address our driver was still pretty confused (this was a first for us in Colombia). After some more slow mo driving, Kim was able to successfully navigate the driver to our hostel once we found a big landmark that was on the small map on her phone. If you really know Kim, this is some superhuman shit. The same girl who couldn't find Pizza Hut in the town where she grew up (emphasis on town, only one Pizza Hut), told a taxi driver how to find the hostel after a 15 hour bus ride and a stressful 45 minute ride through the late night streets of Cali.
We were let into the hostel, thankfully, and they hadn't given away our reservation so we had (very large and comfortable) beds. The next morning we ate pancakes, provided by the hostel, and met some of the other guests. Stuart and Lewis, two English boys from Leeds, are maybe the two most charming people we've met so far. Gamal, from the US, has lived in Ecuador and now Colombia for nearly a decade. Gamal is a bit older than us, and he came to Ecuador in the late 90's with the Peace Corps, and he definitely has some interesting stories about his experiences in South America. We also met Alvaro, from Cali, who is the owner of the hostel. It was new for us to eat breakfast with the owner of the hostel, but this was obviously not a unique thing at Caelum, as all the other people were quit friendly with him. After we ate, Alvaro gave us a map of the city and pointed out some of the more interesting places to go and see or eat (again, the owner, not his employee). We reluctantly decided to go for a walk about the city after eating a huge lunch at the hostel, and right as we both were ready to go it started pouring rain and lightning sounded so close it may have been hitting the streets outside the hostel. We took this as a cue to nap and relax at the hostel.
Talking with the Leeds boys, we found out that they had been at the hostel for over 2 weeks and they were so happy there they had worked out a deal with Alvaro to work for the next 4 weeks in exchange for a bed. They told us that Alvaro organizes trips for guests to go and see things in and out of the city, and that Alvaro will drive guests himself and then join the guests out to see different things. Kim and I had already made plans to volunteer at a hotel in Ecuador, so we knew we had to leave Cali in a few days to make sure that we could make it there on time. However, it was sorely tempting to cancel our plans and just stay in Cali at Caelum until our visa ran out.
Our first night at the hostel there was a salsa teacher who came and taught a free hour long lesson at the hostel. Stuart and Lewis, Kim, myself and a few other people who joined a bit late all participated. It was very simple steps, I think Kim and I got them down pretty well over the hour. The English boys on the other hand were an absolute riot to watch. When done properly, even very difficult Salsa moves look fluid and easy, but our friends looked a bit like robots trying to stomp out Salsa. And to be fair, in case they find this blog and read it somehow, Stuart was much better than Lewis. But their slang and accents came springing forth anytime the instructor introduced something new. "Ah fuckin' 'ell mate! Ah juss got the last step down." or "Shite! Ah've lost it. Ah had it and ah've lost it!" At one point, I had to step out of the class because I was on the verge of hysteria watching and listening to them.
After the class we all sat around, drank a few beers and chatted. Alvaro and a few more people, I think mostly Alvaro's friends from Cali, joined us and we had a nice social evening but without too much going on. The next day Kim and I got out of the hostel a bit earlier and did our own walking tour of the city. It was interesting, but Kim really doesn't like sight seeing, and the city doesn't have too much that is spectacular to see unless you get a bit outside of the city. There is one really weird park, Parque del Gato, which is just 15 or so statues of cats, painted in different ways by different artists. After walking around for a bit, we sat down and had coffee, and then found a small place called Lulodka that had a delicious menu del dia - soup, salad, risotto and chicken cordon bleu.
That evening we sat in the backyard of the hostel and once again enjoyed the company of other travelers. The English boys kept bothering Alvaro to get the salsa instructor to come back because "ah really enjoyed that" and "she was really fit." Halfheartedly, Kim and I decided we would stick to our original outline and head to Quito for Easter weekend and then on the the beach in Ecuador just after. We purchased bus tickets to Ipiales, a town in Colombia right on the border with Ecuador. Purchasing tickets was a bit of a shit show - none of the companies run daily buses to Quito (hence our destination being Ipiales), and a lot of the companies only ran buses heading north back into other parts of Colombia. But, eventually, we did get our ticket, and our plan was to take a taxi from the terminal in Ipiales to the border, cross on foot (which is what we have heard buses make you do even if you have a direct bus), and then catch a taxi to the Ecuadorean city of Tulcan where we have read there are frequent buses onto Quito.
But we still had one more day in Cali, our bus was to leave at 9:30 at night. We spent the day hanging out with the people we had met the past few days - ate lunch with Stuart, Lewis, Gamal and Alvaro. In the morning Alvaro took us to the local market, very reminiscient of Seattle's market, and we bought some fruit and meat for a BBQ that evening. Alvaro also introduced us to a medley of interesting fruits we hadn't tried before (and forget about the names, I have no clue). In the afternoon Alvaro took us up to the Cristo del Rey, a giant statue of Jesus on a hill overlooking the city. I asked Alvaro who was building all these gigantic Jesus statues and planting them all over South America, and he told me it was an Italian artist who did the one in Cali and the Catholic Church paid for it. Alvaro definitely knows a lot about his city.
We had the BBQ that evening (delicious choripan - sausage on a bun but Argentinian style), and as time got closer and closer for us to leave Kim and I were bummed about leaving and definitely not looking forward to a really long bus ride. The people we had met all of two days before also seemed genuinely disappointed to see us leave as well. It is rare to find this type of camaraderie and connection so quickly, but when it happens it gives you so much more energy to keep travelling.
Our bus left Cali more or less on time, and Kim and I were both able to fall asleep relatively quickly, albeit not very soundly. Sleeping on these buses is definitely better than sleeping on an airplane, much more leg room, but it is by no means comfortable. And our seats were right up in the front of the bus, so we got to listen to the music and serenading voice of our bus driver as he sporadically joined in on the music of his choice. It took us 12 hours to make it to Ipiales, we crossed the border as planned, and found a bus heading to Quito. In all we spent about 20 hours going from Cali to Quito, which was definitely exhausting, but not the worst thing ever.
We booked a hostel, Minka, in the Old Town of Quito with plans to see the procession on Good Friday (imagine a parade of people in purple KKK outfits), and to go to mass on Easter. The hostel is nice, very laid back. But having come from one of the best hostels I've ever been at, it seems a bit boring, with most of the people more interested in their phones or laptops than in socializing (of course I'm being a hypocrite as I'm typing this).
We went out to find some food last night, and we found a row of street vendors selling fried fish and a local soup called fanesco. Deciding to share, we ordered one portion of each and sat down to eat. Very tasty food, maybe a bit on te salty side, but way more food than the two of us were going to be able to eat. On our way to the street vendors we walked through and around a large group of young people who you would lump into the stereotype of punk/skateboader or if you wanted to be political anarchist. They didn't seem threatening to me or to Kim, but halfway through our meal the police showed up on the street and shortly after a tear gas canister was spitting fumes that were wafting into the seating area for the street vendors. We were full, so when we felt our breath get a little peppery we decided to pay (US dollars - a bit strange after paying in thousands of pesos) and head back to our hostel. On our way out, I stopped to see what I could make of the ruccus. To be certain, I have no actual idea of what started the conflict between the police and the group on the street. But it reminded me of scenes you could see in Seattle - large group of "alternative" young people hanging about, maybe looking suspicious to some, but not doing anything malicious when the police show up and order them to disperse. The scene in Quito seemed to be wrapping up, I couldn't even tell if anyone was arrested, but we made our way back to the hostel safely and went to bed early as we were exhausted from the long day of travels.
It is Good Friday as I'm finishing this post. Kim and I will probably shower and then make our way out into Quito to find an ATM, a grocery store, and then try and find a good spot to see the festivities. Or rather, we've heard it isn't really all that festive, and some people are quite serious about the physical punishment part and so they choose to wear crowns of thorns or barbed wire, or even carrying crosses made of cactus. We'll find out for ourselves how it goes shortly.
We spent 10 weeks in Colombia. I absolutely loved it, far more than I thought I would. This was the general attitude I felt from a lot of other travellers - people heading south were spending far more time in Colombia than they had planned and people heading north were disappointed they hadn't planned enough time for Colombia. There is so much of the country that we didn't see at all, I'm already hoping to return someday. One guy at the hostel in Cali suggested that we could fly back to Colombia at the end of our trip and spend a little more time there. I have no idea what our budget or timeline will look like 8 or 10 months from now, but right now it is something I very much want to do.
Talking with the Leeds boys, we found out that they had been at the hostel for over 2 weeks and they were so happy there they had worked out a deal with Alvaro to work for the next 4 weeks in exchange for a bed. They told us that Alvaro organizes trips for guests to go and see things in and out of the city, and that Alvaro will drive guests himself and then join the guests out to see different things. Kim and I had already made plans to volunteer at a hotel in Ecuador, so we knew we had to leave Cali in a few days to make sure that we could make it there on time. However, it was sorely tempting to cancel our plans and just stay in Cali at Caelum until our visa ran out.
Our first night at the hostel there was a salsa teacher who came and taught a free hour long lesson at the hostel. Stuart and Lewis, Kim, myself and a few other people who joined a bit late all participated. It was very simple steps, I think Kim and I got them down pretty well over the hour. The English boys on the other hand were an absolute riot to watch. When done properly, even very difficult Salsa moves look fluid and easy, but our friends looked a bit like robots trying to stomp out Salsa. And to be fair, in case they find this blog and read it somehow, Stuart was much better than Lewis. But their slang and accents came springing forth anytime the instructor introduced something new. "Ah fuckin' 'ell mate! Ah juss got the last step down." or "Shite! Ah've lost it. Ah had it and ah've lost it!" At one point, I had to step out of the class because I was on the verge of hysteria watching and listening to them.
After the class we all sat around, drank a few beers and chatted. Alvaro and a few more people, I think mostly Alvaro's friends from Cali, joined us and we had a nice social evening but without too much going on. The next day Kim and I got out of the hostel a bit earlier and did our own walking tour of the city. It was interesting, but Kim really doesn't like sight seeing, and the city doesn't have too much that is spectacular to see unless you get a bit outside of the city. There is one really weird park, Parque del Gato, which is just 15 or so statues of cats, painted in different ways by different artists. After walking around for a bit, we sat down and had coffee, and then found a small place called Lulodka that had a delicious menu del dia - soup, salad, risotto and chicken cordon bleu.
That evening we sat in the backyard of the hostel and once again enjoyed the company of other travelers. The English boys kept bothering Alvaro to get the salsa instructor to come back because "ah really enjoyed that" and "she was really fit." Halfheartedly, Kim and I decided we would stick to our original outline and head to Quito for Easter weekend and then on the the beach in Ecuador just after. We purchased bus tickets to Ipiales, a town in Colombia right on the border with Ecuador. Purchasing tickets was a bit of a shit show - none of the companies run daily buses to Quito (hence our destination being Ipiales), and a lot of the companies only ran buses heading north back into other parts of Colombia. But, eventually, we did get our ticket, and our plan was to take a taxi from the terminal in Ipiales to the border, cross on foot (which is what we have heard buses make you do even if you have a direct bus), and then catch a taxi to the Ecuadorean city of Tulcan where we have read there are frequent buses onto Quito.
But we still had one more day in Cali, our bus was to leave at 9:30 at night. We spent the day hanging out with the people we had met the past few days - ate lunch with Stuart, Lewis, Gamal and Alvaro. In the morning Alvaro took us to the local market, very reminiscient of Seattle's market, and we bought some fruit and meat for a BBQ that evening. Alvaro also introduced us to a medley of interesting fruits we hadn't tried before (and forget about the names, I have no clue). In the afternoon Alvaro took us up to the Cristo del Rey, a giant statue of Jesus on a hill overlooking the city. I asked Alvaro who was building all these gigantic Jesus statues and planting them all over South America, and he told me it was an Italian artist who did the one in Cali and the Catholic Church paid for it. Alvaro definitely knows a lot about his city.
We had the BBQ that evening (delicious choripan - sausage on a bun but Argentinian style), and as time got closer and closer for us to leave Kim and I were bummed about leaving and definitely not looking forward to a really long bus ride. The people we had met all of two days before also seemed genuinely disappointed to see us leave as well. It is rare to find this type of camaraderie and connection so quickly, but when it happens it gives you so much more energy to keep travelling.
Our bus left Cali more or less on time, and Kim and I were both able to fall asleep relatively quickly, albeit not very soundly. Sleeping on these buses is definitely better than sleeping on an airplane, much more leg room, but it is by no means comfortable. And our seats were right up in the front of the bus, so we got to listen to the music and serenading voice of our bus driver as he sporadically joined in on the music of his choice. It took us 12 hours to make it to Ipiales, we crossed the border as planned, and found a bus heading to Quito. In all we spent about 20 hours going from Cali to Quito, which was definitely exhausting, but not the worst thing ever.
We booked a hostel, Minka, in the Old Town of Quito with plans to see the procession on Good Friday (imagine a parade of people in purple KKK outfits), and to go to mass on Easter. The hostel is nice, very laid back. But having come from one of the best hostels I've ever been at, it seems a bit boring, with most of the people more interested in their phones or laptops than in socializing (of course I'm being a hypocrite as I'm typing this).
We went out to find some food last night, and we found a row of street vendors selling fried fish and a local soup called fanesco. Deciding to share, we ordered one portion of each and sat down to eat. Very tasty food, maybe a bit on te salty side, but way more food than the two of us were going to be able to eat. On our way to the street vendors we walked through and around a large group of young people who you would lump into the stereotype of punk/skateboader or if you wanted to be political anarchist. They didn't seem threatening to me or to Kim, but halfway through our meal the police showed up on the street and shortly after a tear gas canister was spitting fumes that were wafting into the seating area for the street vendors. We were full, so when we felt our breath get a little peppery we decided to pay (US dollars - a bit strange after paying in thousands of pesos) and head back to our hostel. On our way out, I stopped to see what I could make of the ruccus. To be certain, I have no actual idea of what started the conflict between the police and the group on the street. But it reminded me of scenes you could see in Seattle - large group of "alternative" young people hanging about, maybe looking suspicious to some, but not doing anything malicious when the police show up and order them to disperse. The scene in Quito seemed to be wrapping up, I couldn't even tell if anyone was arrested, but we made our way back to the hostel safely and went to bed early as we were exhausted from the long day of travels.
It is Good Friday as I'm finishing this post. Kim and I will probably shower and then make our way out into Quito to find an ATM, a grocery store, and then try and find a good spot to see the festivities. Or rather, we've heard it isn't really all that festive, and some people are quite serious about the physical punishment part and so they choose to wear crowns of thorns or barbed wire, or even carrying crosses made of cactus. We'll find out for ourselves how it goes shortly.
We spent 10 weeks in Colombia. I absolutely loved it, far more than I thought I would. This was the general attitude I felt from a lot of other travellers - people heading south were spending far more time in Colombia than they had planned and people heading north were disappointed they hadn't planned enough time for Colombia. There is so much of the country that we didn't see at all, I'm already hoping to return someday. One guy at the hostel in Cali suggested that we could fly back to Colombia at the end of our trip and spend a little more time there. I have no idea what our budget or timeline will look like 8 or 10 months from now, but right now it is something I very much want to do.
Love reading about your adventures!
ReplyDeleteMe too! And I've made a note that Columbia requires more time ;-)
ReplyDeleteDo you listen to Sage Francis?
I don't listen to him much, but my roommate Alex did in college so I'm familiar with some of his stuff. You talking about the accent?
ReplyDelete