Colombia Part Two

Colombia Part II
Jan 27 - Feb 6, 2009

Cartagena to Ipiales

The map again for reference

We finally arrived in Cartagena, and even though the outskirts of the city don't look too good, the old city is absolutely gorgeous, with lots of large colonial buildings in tip-top shape. We stayed in a not so safe area, but the hostels there were cheaper. Apparently, only a few years ago, some of the streets were filled with drug dealers and prostitutes. Now the prostitutes were relegated in bars...

Some made-for-tourists boats

The park, even though small and busy, was home to these giant residents

And the main attraction, the city within the walls.

Plaza de la Aduana

Iglesia de San Pedro Claver (named after a monk that spent his life ministering for the african slaves)



One of Botero's typical sculptures. I think she likes me.

Isn't that lovely.. ;-)

The citadel walls. These were built during the time Cartagena was rich (as can still be seen by the size of those houses) and attracted a lot of attention from a lot of bad people on boats with skull flags, including Francis Drake.

Looks so peaceful now.

Caroline's gone crazy....

The Atlantic waves were spilling on the road.

Had some overpriced crepes in restaurant set in a inner courtyard, very nice.

The badly overpriced museum of torture was situated in a huge mansion

They weren't very nice back then. The death was slow and painful.

That is a BIG door. They must have had tall horses...

Caroline has some chicken soup, and discovers that they use the feet as well.....Not a happy camper.

Next day we met with Robin again, semi-randomly, and we all decided to go hit the local beach. What a nightmare, not a second of relaxation, an army of vendors passed by trying to sell us the most retarded things you can imagine...some women came to give us feet massage and no matter how much we refused they continued to rub our feet. At the end, when we refused to pay the ridiculous $5 they got all pissed and made a big deal out of it, it took a while until they left.

Here we get some sausages from a guy hand-carrying a a barbecue with hot coal.

Apparently, the thing to do at night in Cartagena (among other things of course...) is to take a chiva bus and go blasting music on the streets at night with a live band while we get thrashed on cheap rum. Yeah! We had lots of fun, shaking those maracas till I got muscle aches.

We had a stopover to hand over money to all sorts of other people offering stuff we didn't need. We did give money to a guy for taking a picture of this adorable sloth.

Our party bus!

Some comedians. Rob is the biggest of all, we pissed ourselves laughing when we saw the picture.

Then we had some drinks on the street. The trick was to buy drinks to go (cheaper) and take the seats outside of the bar, neat!

And that was the end of our stay in Cartagena, next day we started riding south again. We passed town after town of uninteresting places. These bikers provided some entertainment in the way they packed their bike, Che Guevara style.

Two days later we arrived in Medellin. We made the mistake of staying downtown, which during weekends looks like Beirut. It really was scary, the vast majority of the people were either homeless or crazy (or both). There were people washing their clothes in the main fountain of the Botero plaza, at night, peeing everywhere they felt like. This was a very unpleasant time.

We then discovered there's a nicer area of Medellin, El Poblado. We went there in the evening and we found the biggest party zone I have ever seen anywhere. There must have been 50 bars within a square of 4 blocks, and it was all packed with trendy people. The bars were all unique and very modern, we absolutely loved it.

The view from the hotel room.

We visited the Botero plaza where they have lots of his sculptures and this funky looking building.

A black Jesus on his knees? No Comment....

While taking a break in front of an excellent fruit smoothie, these Colombians started talking to us and we spent a good hour shooting the shit with them, they were very curious about everything, asking us a million questions.

Not knowing what to do with the rest of the day, we just took the modern subway (which really is a suspended train) took a ride across the city.

And a movie shot from it.

The university library

Then not very far from the end of the line, we saw a cablecar that was part of the subway system, the Metrocable. It served the poorer suburbs on the hills and it gave an opportunity to go there without having to walk the possibly dangerous hill.

Great views over the city within the hills

Up there there was a nice free area where lots of people were relaxing.

This a a public telephone, there was a place to put money, it looked funny.

Later that night we went to check our email in a cybercafe, these two guys were shamelessly downloading porn

We left Medellin towards Cali, and had some great mountain roads to enjoy, somehow nature was a lot more generous to our eyes than Medellin was....

In the background, a town built on a mountain crest, not wider than 2 streets.

Closer to Cali, the traffic was blocked because a truck had lost his container in a corner (who needs straps?) and now an old crappy tow truck was trying to put it back, and bending its chassis in the process.

All the bikers got to the front, it looked like the starting grid of the GP125. It was a lot of fun passing them all!!

In Cali we did some maintenance on the bikes at the Kawasaki dealer, Alvaro took good care of us. We washed the bikes for the first time!

Changed the oil, cleaned the filter, installed a new speedometer cable (the original broke at 16k, crap quality, Mr. Kawasaki), and Caroline got a new LOUD horn so she could harass the moronic drivers.

In Cali we also met Alex and his peruvian girlfriend who were riding low tech on a 80's Suzuki a similar route as ours, Kudos for him!

Alex's bike, leaking oil and dead chain..:-)


We stayed at his hostel, he married a Colombian after his trip to South America and stayed in Colombia.

We left Cali and took a detour towards San Agustin National Park, on a bad dirt road.

It was pretty interesting at times

San Agustin has some archaeological sites with pre-hispanic large statues, made by a "mysterious" culture, according to my Lonely Planet Guide
We just took some horse riding towards a beautiful green canyon. Caroline just wanted to walk the horse, named Mango. They were able to take us on a road so bad, no car could have gone through, amazing little horses.

Mystical place, apparently many people of different religions congregate here once a year, at the top of the canyon

No post is good without a funny dog popping its head in the camera. He left immediately after, he just wanted to be famous.

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That evening we went out to eat and found a little pizzeria, Pizza Mania, onwed by a french expat, that had lived in the area for more than 20 years, living off agriculture. She made amazing pizza, and had even more amazing stories of her life among the FARC. It seems the guerilla imposed social rules that had a positive effect on the communities that lived on those hills. They really believed in the red book. Of course, not following the orders meant expulsion from the area or death. She was accepted even though she was "gringa"because she was a hard worker. Unfortunately when the financing from mother Russia dried out, and the traditional drug cartels from Cali and Bogota had been crippled by interfighting and government interventions, the FARC took over the drug business because it was easy money. This corrupted them and things went down after that, with kidnappings other bad things . She didn't have a good opinion of the current popular president, saying he was a dangerous man that gave immense powers to the right wing paramilitary troops formed by the demise of the drug cartels (they committed huge atrocities in communities they believed supported the FARC)
She also spoke of the real Colombian mafia, the Spanish descendants which do not mix with indigenous or black people and who control the media so nothing that goes against the interests of the big local corporations is being investigated in the newspapers or television.

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On the way back to the main route we took another road that was not recommended by Alvarez, Mocoa - Pasto, as it used to be prime guerrilla territory. We took it anyways, because the locals told us that there was a lot of military presence, and the FARC had been pushed farther into the Amazon region.

Caroline takes some cool shots of the road

Bloody great!

Caroline in Mocoa gets some directions from some locals all to eager to help.

Decided to have some fish, unfortunately he decided to have me instead, as you can see from my expression. He put up a fight even in the afterlife, I almost choked from all the little bones he had, you just couldn't eat this thing.

Just look at that mean face!

But still enjoying the best of Colombia

After Mocoa, the real bad roads followed, but they were accompanied by phenomenal views
And river crossings, as can be seen in this pic.

This one was deep!

Pictures don't do it justice, but they're still better than words. At least, MY words.

Yes, I'm the dot on the road.

The pic above is me taking the pic below.

Isn't that great?

Please don't slip...

The road was only a little bit bigger than the truck, not the encounter I was hoping for. And they weren't slowing down much, priority was based on weight.

Of course where do we get another flat? Right smack in the middle of the mountain pass. And to make matters interesting, the nut was overtorqued (by the guy that changed the tires). The stuff you see me doing in the pic did not work, I had to flag down a bus to borrow a big wrench.

At least the views were pretty.

I'm NOT impressed.

Making some friends in the process

Kept going after that until we got to this: A bus had broken down and had blocked traffic on both directions. All the "nice" people that passed us without asking if we needed help were going to disappear in our rearview mirror.

It is NOT easy to ride on that crap and film, so don't ask for a steadier version of this clip!

Finally made it to Pasto, and I was all to o happy to snap a pic of this great ass :-)

The chain was all dirty, so we had it washed in a car wash.
She wasn't working on the engine, she was washing it! I'm sure the owner didn't mind the scratches on the side.

Less than a week after we left Pasto, a nearby volcano errupted, covering the city in ashes. Talk about close calls...Speaking of which, we had other coincidences in this trip. Four days after we left the Poas Volcano in Costa Rica, on Jan 8, there was a 6.2 magnitude earthquake with the epicenter 10kms from Poas, and the ensuing landslide had killed a few people. Also a day before getting into Cali, Feb 1st the FARC had detonated a car killing 3 people.

And that's it with Colombia, we crossed the border with Ecuador at Ipiales, it was fairly effortless, we were through in an hour.

Next post, Ecuador.