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Ecuador - a journey to middle earth

With a little bit of sadness at leaving Colombia and a whole lot of excitement for what was to come we continued the journey south and arrived in Ecuador! We had already booked our flights to the Galápagos Islands so we only had two weeks to see the rest of mainland Ecuador. We decided to head straight to the capital, Quito only five hours from the Colombian border. We had just reached our six month mark and were feeling pretty pleased that we hadn't had any major mishaps, yet. Perhaps this is why on the first capital-bound bus we took in Ecuador, Sam’s phone was stolen from right under our noses. We had been warned about dodgy Ecuador buses and Quito has an especially bad reputation for pickpockets so we had been extra cautious holding our rucksacks on our laps for the entire journey, but sadly we weren't vigilant enough. Now someone else in Quito is the owner of a brand new Sony Experia, ¡que lastima! And Sam is back to using his battered old Samsung which luckily he brought with him. At least it's thief proof. We arrived in a cold and dreary Quito in early July, the start of winter. Being so close to the equator, Ecuador doesn't really experience four seasons in the way we know, but rather a wet and dry season. We knew it was elevated but didn't realise how cold it was and were thankful for the plentiful blankets our hostel offered. We stayed in a backpacker area and did some cooking and film nights in to save money. Shakshuka (Israeli baked eggs in tomatoes) has been our meat-free go to option. There’s only so many dishes you can cook without an oven without a) getting bored, and b) using more than one of the four hobs. Someone should invent a backpacker’s one hob cookery book, for the substandard hostel kitchen. Maybe that's one for the back burner! Excuse the pun. Ecuador’s currency is US dollars which was markedly more than Colombian pesos so we tried to tighten our belts before our Galapagos splurge - a decision we agonised over for weeks due to the huge cost ($120 tourist entrance fee). Plus there were plenty of Copa America fixtures to watch at a sociable time, so that took up a few afternoons/evenings! We went to see the equatorial line which has been turned into a huge tourist attraction with a 30m tall monument dedicated to the middle of the world, Mitad del Mundo. Strangely enough it showcases the latitude 0”00”08”. The actual equator is 300 metres further out but they'd already built the park here in memory of the French Geodesic Mission scientists who ‘discovered’ the equator here. Apparently at the real equatorial line they have a few experiments you can perform to see the affects of the gravity at this latitude, such as balancing an egg on top of a nail, watching water flow anti-clockwise and then clockwise down a drain amongst others. For the first time on our trip, we suddenly had a fixed deadline so we journeyed through Ecuador with considerable speed (for us), spending only a few days in each place. Sam had carefully drawn up a route which would ensure we could watch all of England’s fixtures in the Euros. Not an easy feat when the early games were broadcast at 8am and we didn’t have cable TV. So we left Quito and headed towards a town called Baños, only four hours out of our way, but an imperative detour for the England vs. Russia game, so I’m told. The tourist friendly town of Baños (meaning baths) sits over a natural thermal spring and there are many hot baths in and around the town which you can visit. Baños is also known for adventure sports (ziplining, whitewater rafting etc) but as we had already done a bit of this we decided to seek out the hot springs and go on a cycling tour of the nearby waterfalls instead. We freewheeled downhill for 30km on a road with beautiful views of cascading waterfalls on either side of the mountains, stopping off to see the infamous Pailon del Diablo - the Devil’s Cauldron - monster waterfall. They've built a wall around it so you can stand almost underneath it which is pretty impressive. Even standing 10 metres away you end up soaked through after ogling at the sheer vastness and strength of the water. We spent the evening at the thermal baths which was clearly a usual way to spend Friday night for the locals. Everyone turns up for a soak and a gossip wearing their fetching swimming caps (which we had to buy too - Chelsea blue for Sam and turquoise for me incase you wanted to know), and there’s a lot of leg stretching and limbering up, at the foot of a brightly lit beautiful waterfall. Apparently the waters contain lots of healing properties and soothing antidotes for muscle and joint aches. Let's just say Ecuadorian pensioners are not inhibited when it comes to working out a few aches and pains. It was a really relaxing few days (despite the 1-1 draw with Russia) and we felt rested before our next adventure which was the Quilotoa Loop hike. The Quilotoa Loop is a self-guided three day trek throughout rural Andean Quichua-speaking (a derivative of Quechua) villages all elevated between 2600m-3900m. The starting point for the three-day Quilotoa Loop is either Sigchos or Quilotoa, but we wanted to end with a rewarding view of the mighty volcanic lake so we began in Sigchos. We stowed our big backpacks in a friendly hostel in the biggest nearby town of Latacunga and packed (stuffed) our hiking gear for the next three days into our small 10 litre rucksacks. Who said Kramers girls can’t travel light! We set off early for our first day of walking, arriving in a tiny village called Sigchos at 8am after a 2 hour bumpy bus. The first people we encountered were an elderly indigenous woman walking her pig on a leash. Pretty countrified. We had an A4 sheet of printed directions and a roughly drawn map to guide us 14kms towards the next village where we would spend the night. Don't worry, we also had a whistle and lots of chocolate biscuits. After five and a half hours walking through fields, along the River Toachi, passing tethered bulls and goat droppings we found our next village, Isinlivi. We didn’t even come across another tourist, just a few farmers and houses with excitedly barking dogs. The hostel we stayed in was one of the most cosy we had encountered yet. The days were bright and sunny but the nights were cool and we really felt the elevation. We spent the evening wrapped up in blankets by the fireplace with books and Scrabble, befriending the giant St Bernard, Baloo, who was the hostel dog. The next two days had a similar theme. We woke up early and walked for four to six hours through gorgeous countryside, seeing only animals and wondering if our paper instructions were sending us the right way. We spent the evenings shivering under woollen blankets, chatting to other backpackers doing the hike in the opposite direction, and going to bed early after a long day’s hike. The views were reminiscent of the Peak District. Lots of rolling hills and varying shades of green everywhere. The final day finished with an incredible view of the volcanic lake at Quilotoa village we’d been hiking towards for three days. Set up at 3900m and totally exposed to the wind on one side, Quilotoa lake is brutally cold but oh so rewarding to see. We walked around half of it to get towards our bus which would take us back to our original starting point and found some old friends on the bus who we’d met back in Costa Rica. After we had finished the Quilotoa Loop we headed to another remote Andean community further south called Salinas de Guaranda. Salinas is famous for its cheese, chocolate, woollens and salami production. You can see why we were drawn to it! It’s also quite high up (elevation 3650m) so the evenings are chilly but all the more reason for steaming mugs of hot chocolate. Sam suffered altitude sickness so we had a few days enjoying the local treats and reading up about the Galapagos. We left the mountains behind us and heading southwest towards Ecuador’s biggest city Guayaquil which is on the Pacific coast. It was incredibly hot and humid which came as a shock after wearing fleeces and jeans for the past 10 days. We were Couchsurfing with a lovely Ecuadorian lady and her daughter in a gated community twenty minutes outside of the city. She kindly let us take over her living room for the England vs Slovakia game, and we made use of her onsite swimming pool and gym. After two days we packed up and headed to the airport for our flight to the mysterious and magical Galapagos…

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Sam on the blob

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Colombia part two

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Fake pecs and drugs and lots of goals (Colombia part two)

We boarded our first domestic flight of the trip, leaving the bitingly cold Bogotá for the eternal Spring of Medellín. Bizarrely, in some cases internal flights are cheaper than buses in Colombia and so we took advantage of the savings (both money and time) and did the 45 minute flight. We’d lined up another Couchsurfing host and so on arrival we got a taxi to our Canadian host, Steven’s, apartment. Medellín, being slightly closer to sea level, was significantly warmer than Bogotá which we appreciated by burying our jumpers back down to the bottom of our packs.

We arrived in Medellín with high expectations having heard a great deal about the proud ‘Paísa’ culture and its well documented bloody history starring the infamous ‘el patrón del mal’ himself, Pablo Escobar. I shouldn’t forget to mention Medellín’s reputation as also being home to the most beautiful women in Latin America. Safe to say, both Hannah and I were keen to discover the truth behind the claim. On our first night in the city we went to an inter-cambio class with Steven to practise our Spanish with some locals looking to brush up on their English. After some epic conversational prowess on my part and not even a few awkward silences we went out and discovered some Medellín nightlife. That evening Atletico Nacional, Medellín’s top footy team were competing in a crucial game against an Argentinian team in Latin America’s equivalent of the Champions League (Copa Libertadores). We were struck by the level of excitement buzzing around the city with any and every establishment boasting big screen TVs for all to watch. The streets were crawling with Paisas wearing their green and white stripes. The biggest Atletico fans amongst will already know that Macnelly Torres scored a last minute screamer resulting in the street erupting with screams and cheers. We got completely wrapped up in it hugging all of the bar staff at Taco Loco. With Atletico playing a game against their Bogotá rivals that weekend, we resolved to buy tickets and get down there. The atmosphere at the stadium was amicable (largely due to Away fans being prohibited), with a surprising mix of generations and genders. This was partly due to many of the hooligans having been handed bans due to the excessive stabbings at the previous game.

Colombia is known acros the Americas (North included) as the cheapest on the continent for plastic surgery. The Paisas are a vain bunch too and so when walking through the streets, it becomes pretty apparent that Medellín is the plastic capital. ‘Fake boob bingo’ quickly became a competitive pastime. Another more cultured highlight for us in Medellín was the free walking tour. For just a small tip we were led through the centre of the city and given a deeper understanding of both Medellín and Colombia’s recent histories. Getting your head around the complicated series of events that led Colombia into a civil war is difficult, and then to see how the drug cartels took advantage of this is pretty harrowing. This context makes you realise why Colombians are so pleased to see tourists in their country and gives you deep respect for their resilience and hugely optimistic outlooks. Throughout the tour, our guide would only refer to Pablo Escobar as 'the famous criminal’ because hearing his name still brings about vastly different reactions for the Paisas. Despite what Netflix series Narcos would have you believe, the overall perception of what he did is hugely negative in Colombia. By the way Colombians also really hate Narcos because Pablo is played by a Brazilian actor and they reckon the accents are all wrong. Still, I’m looking forward to season 2 (despite the spoilers they gave me).

Medellín has invested a huge amount of money into bringing their communities together to help mend some of the hurt over the past 20 years. One such investment is two fantastic cable cars that leave from the centre of town and take you up into the hills to the many poorer neighbourhoods. The views back down into the valley are spectacular and well worth the visit. One of the cable cars finishes in a formerly rough (understatement) neighbourhood which has had a series of outdoor escalators constructed linking the entire barrio together. The whole area has been vibrantly painted with plenty of great street art to look at making it a great little afternoon stroll. You can see why Medellin was awarded World’s Most Innovative City in 2013.

A few hours west of the city is an amazing town called Guatapé. In the 70s a river was deliberately diverted which flooded the hilly region leaving a huge area of lakes. On top of the hill crests that poke out of the lake, are a number of large houses that have been generally built by the wealthy Paisas and are used as weekend retreats. One of the key attractions of the town, aside from the amazing scenery is an enormous rock (la piedra del Peñol) which stands 200m tall. It’s had 600 steps built up the side of it and gives excellent views of the surrounding area. To give ourselves a break from the city we took the bus out to Guatapé and climbed the monolith. We spent a good half an hour looking out over the myriad of islands popping out of the lake beneath whilst also giving our legs a chance to recover. At the top of the rock is a small shop selling refreshments. Our first thought was, “which poor bastard has to lug the supplies up those steps to keep the place in business?”. On our way down we walked past said poor bastard hauling around 300 bottles of Coke up the windy staircase. We felt as though we’d done our bit by not buying a thing.

Later that afternoon we spotted an enormous inflatable slide down by the lake and so as any mature group of eight 20-somethings should do, we enquired as to how much it cost to ride. To make matters even more fun, they also had a blob. “What’s that!?”. Well, it’s a giant inflatable piece of tarp about the size and shape of a small bus. The idea is, one person sits on one end whilst two people drop onto the opposite end launching the poor person at the other end 10m into the air. We all took one turn (that’s all we needed and wanted) and only one in our group managed to land on their feet. Hannah and I achieved multiple spins in the air before landing smack, face first leaving with a bruised leg and a black eye respectively. Even the giant slide was whiplash-inducing with the liberal use of washing up liquid splashed on. Think slip-and-slide with a mouthful of lake water finish.

The next day we embarked upon another tour; one which was likely to leave us with even more bruises. Pablo Escobar famously had a mansion villa in Guatapé which was bombed by the rival Cali Cartel during the height of La Violencia in the late 80s. Fortunately for Pablo, he and his family were whisked away after a tip-off just before the place exploded. The house and grounds remain, however it is a shell of what it was, and luckily for Gringo thrill-seekers, the former house staff have turned the place into a paintballing site. The day started with a walking tour of what is left of the complex led by the housekeepers who tell some interesting stories along the way. At the height of his empire, his cartel were raking in $60m per day and were spending $2,500 on rubber bands per month just to hold all the bills together. With that kind of wealth he had enemies and so his drivers would sleep in the cars in the garage with the engines running 24 hours per day so that he could escape at the drop of a sombrero. With that amount of money being kept in cash, since his death, looters have torn apart the walls looking for hidden stacks of cash. The housekeeper recounted to us the night that the Cali cartel arrived and blew up the house. All of the house staff were taken out of the house first to spare their lives. Their moral code would make a good read.

The paintballing itself was great fun. Hannah was worryingly adept with the replica machine gun in her hands and wreaked havoc only being shot a few times. I on the other hand went for a more devil may care attitude and added a few more bruises to my collection. We returned to Medellín that evening stiff and sore. After a few more fun nights in the city we said goodbye to half of our group and made our way south with Luke and Alice to Salento in Colombia’s coffee region, zona cafetera. We were excited to not only try Salento’s famous coffee but also to try a game that all of the locals play con gusto called tejo. It is traditionally played in large barn style halls where at one end of the hall is a 1m x 0.5m open topped box filled with red clay. In the centre of the clay is a metal ring about the size of a fist just poking out of the clay. Small paper parcels of gunpowder are then laid around the edges of the ring. At the other end of the hall about 10-15m away are the competitors who take turns to hurl heavy metal discs at the clay box with the aim of hitting and exploding the gunpowder parcels. The main rule is that you cannot play if you’re not drinking beer (Seriously. Can’t see how this could go wrong). Sadly, whilst we were in Salento the tejo hall was closed but a fantastic hostel down the road had set up their own hall and so we got to play. It was surprisingly hard to do (with no help from the beer) but whenever somebody did hit the gunpowder, the BANG was so loud that Hannah invariably jumped out of her skin which I enjoyed.

On to Salento’s more famous export; coffee! We heard about a small coffee finca on the edge of town which still produced its coffee in the traditional way and offered tours for a few pesos. In a small group we were led around for about 20 minutes and learned a few interesting facts about how coffee is grown and then the process for picking, drying and roasting. At the end of the tour we were given a complimentary cup of their coffee. It was awful. Really burned and overly strong. We’d already convinced Luke who doesn’t even like coffee to have a cup on the basis that we were in a coffee region and it would probably taste better than anything he’d tried previously. Perhaps the traditional methods of making coffee have been modernised with good reason. We went on to do another coffee tour a few days later at a different finca which was fantastic and redeemed the area’s reputation! We learned a lot more and the coffee at the end was incredible. We said goodbye to Luke and Alice that evening having been travelling with them for six weeks which was sad. It was back to just the two of us after travelling with varying groups for almost 10 weeks! We decided to leave the gringo-trail and to move into a new hostel which was based just outside the town. It was an eco-lodge run by two chaps; a Colombiano/English duo. Set deep in the jungle within a protected ecological area, they had built a small home with a dorm and some extra bedrooms set around an archetypal British country home kitchen (think big oven, big sink and big dinners). To maintain their eco-lodge credentials we were handed our own eco-friendly soaps and banned from using our own shampoos. We stayed for a few days and did very little other than reading and playing cards. The English owner left on our second day for a brief visit back to Blighty and as a parting gift, he gave us an enormous squeezy bottle of Marmite (the impact of that sentence is dependent on which side of the fence you sit of course). I don’t want to be too negative or rant on this blog, however I will for just a moment. On our last day in the hostel, a young English fella moved into the dorm and asked Hannah if he could have a little bit of the Marmite. Hannah agreed begrudgingly and tells me he then went and emptied a tub of hair gel and filled it with about half of the Marmite bottle. What kind of person does that? I can only imagine that on the basis of him being English in a foreign, non-Marmite world he felt it must have been our duty to supply him with our elixir of Englishness to prevent him from being further diluted by rice and beans. He made himself even more dislikable by the fact that he claimed nonchalantly he only travelled off the beaten path and asked if we could give him any tips for Colombia. We said no.

Near to Salento, we had heard of an amazing day trek that cut through the jungle ending up in Cocora Valley home to the world’s tallest palm trees. With a group of friends from our eco-lodge we set off, heading up through a lush green valley, that led all the way up to a hummingbird sanctuary. After 4 hours of soggy walking we were rewarded with incredible views down into the valley we had just walked up. And most impressive, were the enormous palm trees, the tallest of which was around 80 metres high! The photos definitely don’t do it justice.

After some deliberation we decided that our next stop was to be the Tatacoa desert in the south of Colombia. Having come from the lush green mountainous coffee region, this was to be a stark difference! After a lengthy bus ride and some pick-up trucks we arrived at the start of the desert. The landscape was bizarre. Unlike a typical sandy desert, Tatacoa was made up of dried crumbly mud formations adorned periodically with cactus plants. This landscape continued on to the horizon where you could see the misty foothills of the Andes. On one side of the road, the desert was a rich red colour and on the other it was a dry and lifeless grey. Why had we come here you might ask? Well, because of the proximity from any major cities and to the equator, the star gazing was billed to be one of the best places on planet Earth. On our first evening we went to local observatory to listen to a talk from a university professor about the stars and planets that could be seen. The talk was attended only by locals and so it was all in Spanish. Fortunately the professor was a clear and slow speaker and so we understood most of it. The star gazing was sublime and easily the best I’ve ever seen (fans of the blog will note at this point that I claimed in the Costa Rica blog the our star-gazing was second to none. Tatacoa was a hands-down winner). To explore the desert a little more, the next day we rented a pink, flower-covered scooter and raced for miles along the dusty road that cut through the middle of the desert catching bewildered looks from the handful of other people we saw in a the few hours. We were blown away by the starkness of the landscape.

In search of greener grass we moved further south to a town called San Agustin back in the lower Andes famed for its pre-Columbian ruins. The ruins were basically just enormous stones with faces carved into them. Some Aussie friends we had been keeping in touch with who were slightly ahead of us, told us on arrival that these weren’t actually very impressive and not worth seeing. Instead, we used San Agustin to break up the long journey down to the Ecuador border and took a couple of days to chill and enjoy the amazing scenery. On the second night, it was the opening game of Copa America (for non-football fans, it’s the Americas’ edition of the Euros). Fortunately for us, the opening game was Colombia vs USA. It would have been hard not to find this out either as every man and his dog were walking around in Colombia shirts, 80% of which had James (Rodriguez; Colombia’s biggest export after coffee) on the back. Despite being a tiny, remote town, a huge screen had been put up at the local 5-a-side pitch and the whole town turned up to watch the game. We made sure we got down early and secured a good standing spot by the bar. The atmosphere was palpable and was only heightened when James scored an early goal and we couldn’t help but go mental the rest of the town (also keen to prove that we weren’t Americans!). The game finished 2-0 to Colombia and the night finished with around 200 motorbikes roaring around the small streets with horns blaring in celebration. It was hard not to get caught up in their passion for football and we went to sleep that night with smiles on our faces.

Our task on leaving San Agustin was to reach the Ecuador border. We had heard from friends that currently there were a series of strikes happening around the key transit routes in the south of country, being led by the campesinos (the rural farming community who were almost exclusively of indigenous backgrounds). We found out that this had been going on periodically for years with evidently little impact. In Colombia, campesinos (largely indigenous and Afro-Colombians) suffer huge inequalities in areas such as health and education and with such rural lives are affected by increased food importation and industrial contamination of water (to name just a couple of issues), and are being left out of the economic system. The government had recently reneged on a series of promises for reforms and so the campesinos took to the streets in a peaceful demonstration. For us, this meant that our route to the border was blocked.

In the interests of limiting the length of this blog and keeping it exciting I won’t go into too much detail, but we spent the next few days on 8-hour buses stopping at various towns in our quest to reach Ecuador. The final stop off was the most interesting; a town called Ipiales, more or less on the border. In the 1700s, a local claimed to have seen an image on the Virgin on a cliff face. Naturally, the only thing for it was to build a stunning neo-Gothic church on a bridge spanning a gorge. We made a quick stop here for some excellent photo opportunities before high-tailing it to the border before anything else could get in our way.

Colombia was incredible and lived up to the high expectations we had. We’ve agreed since that it was our favourite country alongside Guatemala for a few reasons. It was our first taste of South America and the sheer size of it was intimidating. The variation in landscape and scenery from beach to mountains to desert kept us excited to see more. More than anything else though, we’ve realised that it is the people that have the greatest effect on you when you spend time in a place. The Colombian zest for life in the face of horrific events in the not so distant past told volumes of their resilience and unfaltering positivity. We were easily swept up in their passion for dancing and football and it brought out a much more friendly and welcoming side in us too. If this is to be a responsible review of Colombia though, I must say, the food was sh*te. On to Ecuador!

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Aye Colombia! (Colombia part one)

And so we entered South America, part two of our Latin American adventure. After nearly five months in Central America we were feeling the need to extend our self-awarded sabbaticals, so we arranged new flights home and started planning out the next five months in Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Argentina and Brazil. Quite an ambitious route considering the vastness of these countries compared with Central America. Upon leaving Central America we realised that the entire distance we’d travelled so far from Cancun in Mexico to the southern point of Panama matched that of Colombia’s scale alone. We had a lot of long distance buses coming our way if we were ever going to reach Rio de Janeiro before Christmas!

It’s hard not to have high expectations when you are travelling but we found some of our favourite places were when we didn’t know much about them until we arrived. Too much anticipation can result in disappointment when schedules change, the weather worsens or you get sick etc. A lot of people talk about getting travel fatigue from seeing too much great stuff in such a short, intense period of time, and so we entered Colombia with a sense of trepidation not wanting it to fall far from our expectations. We had heard only good things about Colombia from friends, family and other backpackers so we decided to travel slowly spending eight weeks there in total. It was also one of the cheapest countries we had encountered on our travels thus far, and after a hefty San Blas tour, we needed to make our pesos go a bit further. Colombia ended up being our favourite country that we visited - possibly twinned with gorgeous Guatemala. Suffice to say we’ve got too much to cram into one post so this one will cover our first month in Colombia up until Medellin and part two will go from there… Enjoy amigos!

Our first impressions of Colombia were vibrancy, heat and salsa. We spent the first two weeks exploring the Caribbean coast, home to costeños; a fun-loving and chilled out people. We began with a few hot and sunny days in Capurganá, a sleepy fishing town (with a pumping Salsa & Reggaeton Bar) right on the Panamanian border, before we headed onto the colonial city of Cartagena de Indias, famous for its historical streets and crowded plazas. Founded in 1533 it is Colombia’s first colonial city and was considered the gateway to the north of the continent by the Spanish conquistadores. The Spanish quickly constructed a strong castle fortress around the port to ward off buccaneers and pirates hoping to steal their looted Latino gold and plunder. But several sailors were undeterred by this fortress, including Sir Francis Drake who staged a siege there in 1586. It went pretty well for him - so much for an impregnable fort! However, spurred on by foreign threats the Spanish reinforced their defence and luckily much of the romantic old town has remained, where we spent stiflingly hot afternoons wandering around with melting ice creams and stopping for cold cervezas. In the muggy evenings we went people-watching in the buzzing plazas where kids played futsal, local dance troupes performed and community zumba dance classes were held with massive sound systems wheeled in on a tuk tuk. Why can’t we have those at home?! We also tried some salsa bars where we brought out our moves from those lessons we had way back in Guatemala. Turns out salsa is harder than we had remembered, even with a few swigs of aguardiente (national aniseed flavoured spirit). Shakira was right, Colombians are a people who know how to use their hips, and despite our best efforts we Brits have much to learn.

After surviving the heat in Cartagena we headed for the northern beaches next to Tayrona National Park to enjoy some waves. Costeño beach stretched for miles and was lined with shady palm trees. Perfect for reading a book on the beach. In the evenings we watched tropical lightning storms out at sea, and dodged the rainy downpours. One day we walked along the beach to see a university conservation group release hundreds of sea turtles which was a chaotic fanfare. It started an hour and a half late, as is typical in Colombia, and despite masses of security, several unleashed dogs were running into the turtles as they attempted to propel themselves towards the sea, cheered on by thunderous shouts from the crowd, and hysterical conservationists wildly trying to shoo the dogs away. Our favourite part was watching a group of onlookers standing in waist high seawater, be routinely demolished by the incoming tide, thus missing their perfect turtle photograph with each set of new waves. A few more beach volleyball games later, we decided that we had had enough sweltering coastal days and headed inland to San Gil, Colombia’s adventure sports town in the middle of an Andean canyon.

We took a long winding overnight bus there from Santa Marta and were rewarded in the morning with incredible views of the canyon, and our first experience of the Andes, which was to be a recurring part of our window gazing for the next four months. San Gil reminded me of the Pyrenees, with a raging river under the town, sunny afternoons and chilly evenings. It was a big town nestled within a mountainous backdrop with steep rollercoaster like roads and signs for white water rafting, ziplining and bungee jumps in every tourist outlet. We settled for the Parapente (paragliding) and Extreme Trekking Circuit Course which involved abseiling, canyoning and ziplines. The paragliding was brilliant. It’s a unique feeling to be weightless, soaring with the birds at 600m above the canyon looking down onto vast fields and woods. It would have been quite meditative if the instructor behind me wasn’t making small talk in Spanish - ¿hay mucha lluvia en Inglaterra? Does it rain a lot in England? After fifteen minutes and a few thrilling loop the loops we were back on the ground watching the rest of the group take off. The Extreme Trekking Circuit was bitterly disappointing and the abseiling and ziplining we had expected proved to be more of a kids activity. The tour ended with a walk through a bat cave where the most exciting thing they showed us was cress growing in bat faeces. Bat shit crazy. We made sure we tried out the famous Santander hormigas from this region, crispy giant red ants fried in salt, and then departed for the capital, Bogotá.

Bogotá is overwhelming upon arrival. It’s a sprawling mass of main roads and residential areas, set in a valley at 2600m. The public transport is a complex web which we tried to navigate and ended up doing a healthy amount of walking. We sat in stationary traffic reminiscent of the M25 on our way to the cinema one day, making the most of the plush shopping malls in the capital and the chance to refresh our faded travelling wardrobe. One redeeming factor is the amount of bicycle lanes off the roads, which seemingly cater for hurried moped drivers too. We stayed in the backpacker neighbourhood of La Candelaria, and spent the next few days visiting museums learning about the pre-Columbian gold and Botero sculptures, as well as Colombia’s bloody history (more on that in part two), and seeing the oldest parts of the city. We went out to Andres de Carne de Res, a mega steak restaurant club complex over a square mile large, located an hour from the city. We went with a big group from our hostel on a party bus with ample amounts of mandatory aguardiente reminiscent of freshers week. The next day we ventured up to one of the tourist spots, a hill called Montserrate. There’s a great view of the city available from the summit which you can get a funicular up to and admire the architecture and different areas of the city without the traffic and pollution. We then moved to a Couchsurfer’s house near El Chapinero, Bogotá’s version of Dalston, to get a residential view of the city. Our overall view of Bogotá was that it’s a developing and fun place to live but not so pretty to visit. It’s got great nightlife and tourist attractions but the sheer size is quite intimidating if you only have a few days to tackle it and the cold evenings, pollution and drizzle make it feel a bit dreary at times. Having said that we had a fun time there and sampled great coffee, street food and did an interesting graffiti tour of the city. For a capital city it had everything you could want. But we were about to encounter our favourite city of them all. Next stop…Medellín.

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San Blas / Kuna Yala

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More Costa Rica snaps

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Puddles in Panama and sunny bliss San Blas

Our group of six headed East down the beautiful Caribbean coastline of Costa Rica, a stone’s throw away across the border to Panama. Technically speaking this should have been one of our easiest border crossings yet, but the corrupt border punters (well hidden from the actual officials) forced us, at gunpoint, to pay entry into Panama and so we were coerced into handing over more dollars to leave Costa Rica and enter Panama. It was more of a demonstration of power than actual intent to harm us. They had a 6’5” stocky guy in a military outfit with a (possibly plastic) gun in his holster which he never brandished but the message was loud and clear, and so we were welcomed to Panama with an air of hostility. Having been in seemingly peaceful Costa Rica where they have no army this came as a shock to the system. In fact throughout all of Central America the police and army presence was strong, with frequent 4x4s cruising the streets filled with AK-47 armed law enforcement in the back.

Determined to enjoy ourselves during a fairly short stay in Panama we boarded a boat departing the mainland bound for the archipelago of Bocas del Toro in the Caribbean for four days. We had already booked onto an idyllic four day boat cruise from Panama to Colombia via the San Blas Islands for our border crossing - a popular and safe way to cross the border from Central to South America - so we decided to top up our tans in Bocas and enjoy some island hopping, wildlife spotting and cocktails on the beach beforehand. Honestly, travelling is a tough gig. However, as anyone who lives in the Caribbean will tell you, the weather patterns there can resemble those in Northern England and it rains a lot more than we had bargained for. Add to this the aftermath of El Niño and you’re left with four days of pretty solid rain and soggy trainers. This couldn’t deter us from venturing out into the downpour though. We hired bicycles and ploughed along a dirt track road and through huge puddles to the opposite side of the island in the hope of finding a beach we could swim at. However the strong rip currents meant that swimming was prohibited so we took shelter in a restaurant instead.

We left the archipelago and took an overnight bus (the first of many) to Panama City, arriving after a very broken night’s sleep at 5am and navigated ourselves to our Couchsurfer’s home in a nearby neighbourhood. After some sleep and a good meal we explored some of Panama City. We took the obligatory trip to see the Panama Canal which was an impressive feat of engineering. Interesting fact for you all, Richard Halliburton swam the canal and paid only 36 cents in fees for the privilege. Compare that to the average fee of $300-400k for a ship and you can see why Nicaragua are considering building the own canal. Panama City was one of the few capital cities we had been to in Central America, and certainly the most impressive. The landscape was filled with soaring skyscrapers and industrial sized cranes pointing towards the famous waterway. Once on the bus, (cheerily only 25 cents a ride) we passed through the glossy financial district and saw mammoth shopping mall after mall. It was hot, sticky and humid in the capital so we made the most of the mall air conditioning and went to the cinema for Jon Favreau’s adaptation of the Jungle Book (finally!) which was a winner. Whilst we were in the country, the Panama Papers story broke but we didn’t see any news crews or protests around. Probably trying to keep a low profile… The next day we explored the Old Town cobbled streets with yet more colonial style buildings and churches and tried to avoid the street hawkers flogging bird whistles and panama hats (which incidentally originate from Ecuador). We ate lunch outside the famous fish market where numerous restaurants begged us to sample their ceviche. We willingly obliged and washed it down with cold latas (cans) of their national beer, Bilbao.

After a briefing session for our Caribbean cruise to the San Blas (aka Kuna Yala) islands we packed up our backpacks, triple bagging our electronics and valuables in case of any storms at sea, and awoke at 4am for the start of our adventure to Colombia. We crammed our bags, water and rum supplies into jeeps which took us north to Cartí, the starting point for our boat trip. Four bumpy hours later we arrived at the shore in official Kuna Yala territory - an area of protected mainland (chiefly, dense jungle) reserved for the Kuna Yala people - ready to depart. The Kuna Yala are an indigenous group of people to Panama numbering only 150,000 globally who reside mainly in the San Blas Islands off the coast of Panama in the Caribbean Sea. They are a friendly, proud and traditional community who live in one of the most beautiful places in the world. The Panamanian government have developed a strong relationship with the Kuna Yala and provided solar energy panels in recent years which has aided their self-sufficiency. Seeing their basic wooden houses with solar panels on the outside provided quite a contrast.

We visited six islands on our four day trip, passed hundreds of uninhabited ones in our speedboats, and spent the night on three very differing ones. The first island we stayed on was owned by one family and was the closest we will ever get to feeling like we had our own private desert island! It was surrounded by crystal clear water and had stunning reefs nearby which we swam to, spotting starfish, stingrays and barracuda along the way. The second island had a pet monkey on who was, they assured us, well cared for. The most built up island we visited housed a community of around 800-1000, but even this seemed paradisiacal compared to sprawling Panama City where we had just stayed. We spent the days snorkelling, playing beach volleyball, and hanging out with the 28 others on the tour (and just one morning of torrential rain!). The friendly Kuna boat captains were also excellent fishermen and caught a huge barracuda one night as well as octopus another night which served as a tasty dinner.

Our guide taught us about the Kuna culture which was fascinating. Their language is very different to Spanish so we weren’t able to interact with them a great deal other than basic greetings and lots of smiles - the kids were super cute! They use hammocks a lot; everything from beds to conducting council meetings, and we slept in them too. The trick is to sleep diagonally which we eventually mastered on the last night. Due to an abundance of palm trees the Kuna have their own currency which they use to trade with the mainland: coconuts. For those economists amongst you, it’s currently 60 cents to the coconut so money really does grow on trees! As a result, each coconut is claimed by a Kuna person and visitors are forbidden to help themselves to a freshly fallen coconut. But we happily bought them and slurped Coco Locos (rum and coconut water) straight from the coconut on the beach. Just as we were perfecting our volleyball net slams, our time in San Blas came to an abrupt end and we found ourselves at another much anticipated border crossing - this time a sea border, and the one that would take us to South America, starting with Colombia.

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Costa Rica - Tamarindo, Montezuma, Monteverde, Cahuita

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Costa Rica - Costa Lotta

Firstly a shout out and apology to Michelle Aitken-Fischer who is possibly this blog’s biggest and only fan and is continually disappointed by the frequency of updates. Michelle; this one’s for you.

Before getting to Costa Rica we were really concerned about our budget as it is currently one of the most expensive places to be in Latin America. To help make things a little cheaper and to experience a different way of travelling we decided to sign up to Couchsurfing which is an online network of locals who offer up a space in their houses for travellers to stay for free for a few nights. Having met a few people along the way who had been doing this, we were pretty excited to meet some locals, get some on-the-ground tips and practise our Spanish.

Our first stop off in Costa Rica however was a town called Tamarindo (Tamagringo to locals) on the northern Pacific coast. We were expecting it to be busy and built up, and teeming with American families and it didn’t let us down. Tamarindo is in a beautiful setting with a fantastic beach and ample surf but its long term popularity with North Americans has meant it’s become overrun with restaurant chains, tourist tat and unbackpacker-friendly prices. We stayed a couple of nights and got some great beach time before moving swiftly on.

We then undertook a 12-hour journey (which we orginally thought would be six hours!) to get to another beach town called Montezuma further down the Pacific coast. It was a marked improvement on Tamarindo! We stayed in a pretty reasonably priced hostel and the beach and adjoining national park were quiet and packed with wildlife. On our second night, our American friends, Jack and Evan had a two man tent and hammock with them and had heard of a free-to-camp spot on the beach. They took the tent and Hannah and I crammed into the hammock. Despite sleeping head-to-toe, it wasn’t a great night’s sleep. The saving grace was the night time star-gazing which was second to none (probably) and the soothing backdrop of crashing waves. We shared the camping area with some real characters too, which included a self-exiled middle-aged Canadian who had been living on the beach for four months. Safe to say, after one night on the beach we were keen to get back to the comfort of a hostel and so we spent our last few days there swimming in rivers and the sea and walking through the national parks. After Montezuma we headed across the Nicoya Peninsula and further on to inland Costa Rica towards the cloud forest of Monteverde.

After a long and windy bus ride into the highlands of Costa Rica we got off in Monteverde to find that the air was fresh and views were plentiful! This was to be our first Couchsurfing experience. We met our Couchsurfing host Rozzi in the cafe that she worked at, and she took us home to her mother (we clearly made good first impression). They put us up in our own room and we had full use of the kitchen and were even allowed to stroke the cats. Monteverde was really beautiful, but as a well established location to visit the wildlife abundant Cloud Forest, the price to get into the nature reserve was upwards of $20 (double that if you want a guide to help you see anything). As two tight backpackers we naturally shunned that choice in favour of the smaller (and cheaper) Santa Elena nature reserve next door. Upon entry we name- dropped our couch surf host and we got in for free! Sadly after a few hours of walking we saw nothing more than a bird that sounded like a creaky door. Monkeys and sloths would have to wait for later in our Costa Rican adventure. The other key attraction of Monteverde is its ficus trees. Check out the photos to understand when I say, these were 60-70ft trees that were essentially hollow and grew like thick vines creating a ladder on the inside that you could climb up. We met a friendly American on the way to the cluster of trees who shared with us some South America tips as we climbed the largest ficus tree in the area. We precariously sat atop the tree looking over the jungle canopy and watched the sun set. Dreamy.

Our next major stop was Cartago just south of the Costa Rican capital San Jose. Having not visited the cinema in around five months we had got into our heads that we needed to go and fortunately San Jose boasted mega malls with big multiplex cinemas. We therefore stopped over for a night and went to see 10 Cloverfield Lane. We’d hoped to find Jungle Book with just Spanish subtitles but unfortunately it was all dubbed and despite knowing the story line we feared it all going over our heads. The next day we arrived in Cartago where we had lined up another Couchsurfing host, Dani. It turned out that Dani had got stuck at the office and so we collected the house keys from the local bakery. She’d warned us in advance about her troublesome puppy Barbie but we weren’t to know the extent of her mischief until 3am. Dani never came back as she was stuck out at work so we put the dog in her bed and turned in ourselves. I went for a wee in the night to find the bathroom floor covered in sanitary towels but no Barbie. This naturally piqued my interest so I went for a little stroll and found Barbie in the living room having pulled an Andrex puppy move and covered the entire living room in more sanitary towels and toilet roll. After 20 mins the place was shining again and Hannah hadn’t stirred an inch. We spent the next day in Cartago and went out for drinks with Dani our host (once she’d made it back from the office) who taught us lots of Costa Rican slang. Que tuanis!

Our next destination was in the southern part of Costa Rica’s Caribbean coast in a sleepy village called Cahuita. Yet again, in our money saving quest we had lined up a Couchsurf host. We had been given some instructions from Sergio our host, that we were to get off halfway down the main road into Cahuita in the middle of nowhere. We did as told and discovered his plot of land. It was around 50 acres of jungle that had been in his family for years. With the increased tourism and being driven out of his docking job at the threat of gang reprisals (a crazy story, if you’d like to know more), he and his family had decided to build eco friendly lodges on the site. So far they had built the first lodge in which we stayed. Everything in the house had been made from things in the surrounding area. Beds and tables were made from wood in the garden, seashells decorated everything. It’s worth stating at this point that it was highly tasteful and not just a Changing Rooms botch job courtesy of LL Bowen. In the grounds around the house, there were trees with colonies of howler monkeys as well as smaller trees where we saw a sloth close up with its wee bairn. To give the place a personal touch, Sergio’s wife had painted pieces of wood in beautiful Autumn colours all over the house as well as using old saw blades as a canvas for mandalas. As with all his guests, Sergio encouraged us to paint our own mandalas which you can see above. We took time exploring the Cahuita national park down the the road which turned out to be the most wildlife abundant place we had seen thus far. Howler monkeys, spider monkeys, yellow tree snakes, sloths, sting rays and racoons (all in a two hour stroll!). To top off the excitement we bumped into our friends Evan and Jack with Chrissie and Ryan and stayed an extra day in a hostel with them. I also bumped into an ex-colleague on the beach who I knew from my time at Costa Rican Vacations eight years previously which was bizarre!

Cahuita was a special place but we needed to move on as we knew Luke and Alice would be arriving in Puerto Viejo, an hour down the road, the next day. We’d heard mixed things about Puerto Viejo. Mainly that it was a busy tourist town with a fairly good nightlife. That was about right but it was the ideal place to meet up with friends from home and catch up on our travels thus far. It was great to see Luke and Alice and meet their travel pals Fitsy and Rachael with whom we would be travelling for the next 6 weeks! After a couple of days we headed down to the Costa Rica/Panama border. We loved Costa Rica, just not its prices. Having been savvy with the Couchsurfing thing, we managed to stay within our budget and see some amazing places and animals! Well done us. Next stop, Panama.

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Nicaragua - Comin' atcha!

As previously mentioned, we arrived in Nicaragua after a long day negotiating public transport; a variety of local buses, coaches, rickshaws, taxis and walking finally got us over the border from Honduras where we jumped straight onto a chicken bus with live poultry. We met a really cool family from Vancouver at the border who we spent the next couple of nights with and learnt about their Couch Surfing experiences travelling from Mexico. More on Couch Surfing in our next post!

Nicaragua was the fifth country we had now visited so we thought we were getting pretty adept at acclimatising quickly, like calculating new currency, working out the main highlights to visit, picking good hostels etc. However, nothing could prepare us for the heat that emitted from Nicaragua’s northern cities. Leon and Granada both felt like concrete furnaces and we spent most of our time hiding in the shade eating ice cream (maybe me more than Sam) trying not to sweat out all the litres of water we were drinking. We decided against a volcano trek in the blistering sunshine and opted to treat ourselves to a massage from local company Seeing Hands which employed blind masseurs. Far from being relaxing this 30 min experience was excruciating for both of us and afterwards we compared notes on who had the more cruel masseur. It turns out my masseur gave significantly more attention to the upper thigh area than Sam’s… After seeing some more colonial churches and cobbled stone plazas with horse and carriages we took a day trip out to a beautiful volcanic lake called Laguna de Apoyo. We met some more friendly Canadians who were on the last day of their trip and decided to buy us beers all afternoon, which we feebly resisted. Laguna de Apoyo is a stunning lake packed full with minerals and we spent the afternoon swimming and enjoy respite from the oppresively hot city.

We departed Granada for the volcanic island of Ometepe famous for housing two volcanoes at either end of the island - one active and one dormant. As we took the ferry over from the mainland we wondered if any bullsharks still inhabited the waters as they once did. Bullsharks are known for their ability to survive in both fresh and seawater, swimming upstream through rivers to find more food. Luckily for us, the bullsharks seem to have dwindled but the river they use still feeds out into the Caribbean sea which is why the Nicaraguan government is considering to build another central american canal to increase trade and compete with Panama. We met up with some German friends from Utila once we were on Ometepe and spent the next few nights on the beach playing Flunky Bal which is a German take on ten pin bowling on sand involving chugging beer and lobbing coconuts at targets (usually plastic bottles). The island is best explored by motorbike as the roads are pretty long and bumpy with views of either side of the island and surrounding lake. We didn’t see a lot of Ometepe but from what we did, it has a strong but not overpowering tourist presence. I hope it stays that way as it is really beautiful and will change a lot if the canal is built nearby, not least pollute Central America´s largest lake.

After Ometepe we went to the surfer town of San Juan del Sur which is essentially Newquay on a smaller, hotter level. It is packed full of tourists but whilst we were there, big buses full of Nicaraguans were also visiting for Semana Santa (Easter) holidays. We decided to head to some nearby beaches in other towns because all the accomodation was booking up and prices had doubled. We saw some gorgeous (and super windy) beaches, ate fresh fish and perfected our body surfing skills, away from the madding crowds. For Semana Santa itself we went to an even more remote beach where some other friends we had met in Honduras were staying. We stayed here for a week being beach bums, avoiding stingrays and listening to more cumbia than is healthy for any human being. Latinos like their music loud and repetitive at all times of the day. Once the Semana Santa fiestas had finished and transport resumed to normal schedule we crossed the border to Costa Rica.

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Honduras - Utila, Rio Cangrejal

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Honduras - What a dive!

We were really sad to leave Guatemala having spent 2 months there, but if we were ever going to get to Rio then it was time to move on. Guatemala’s bordering countries are El Salvador and Honduras. We decided to give El Salvador a miss due to time constraints and so it was on to Honduras. I would strongly advise not reading the news before travelling here as all you’ll get are crazy statistics on world-beating murder rates and not a lot else. With that in mind we crossed the border with some trepidation, particularly as we were passing through the town of San Pedro Sula which is currently the world’s most dangerous city outside of war zones. Fortunately we sailed through in our bus, seeing no more than a traffic incident. We arrived at La Ceiba port town where we caught a ferry across a small stretch of water to a minute island called Utila, our Caribbean scuba diving paradise.

We were advised to be really thorough when choosing a dive school to get the best price versus quality. Hann and I sat down for an hour and made a list of 20 questions to help us decide. We then spent the afternoon traipsing between 6 of the best rated dive shops in town, finally settling on Alton’s which had the nicest jetty, not part of our initial criteria.

The next morning we began our PADI open water course. It pissed it down. But fortunately, day 1 is in a classroom where we sat through 6 hours of unacceptably cheesy instructional videos. Once all that was out of the way, the weather cleared up and it was time to get wet. Initially we learned basic skills in shallow water; removing and replacing our masks, buoyancy practice and most crucially, breathing. We all passed with flying colours and so on to our first experience in deep water. Initially we both found equalising our ears difficult but after load of blowing out of noses we got there and we decended to 18m below the surface. What a feeling! We saw all sorts; fish, lobsters, squid, eels and rays but more amazing than all of that was the realisation of where we were. Seeing the ocean floor drop away from 15m deep to 100m was awe-inspiring and competely terrifying. Looking up and seeing the sun’s rays shining through the rippling surface 18m above you was equally surreal.

After an unbelievable week of diving the reef in Utila we travelled back to the mainland and stopped at Rio Cangrejal which is a raging torrent of a river. We stayed at an amazing hostel set above the river in the dramatic and jungly valley. The setting was insanely beautiful and so to really experience it we hopped into a raft equipped with a paddle and took on Mother Nature. She was no match for us as we zigged and zagged over the rapids. Gnarly.

After a few days here, doing not much more than reading and swimming in the river, we hopped on the local buses and made our way into the heart of Honduras staying a few nights at the D&D brewery which is a hostel set up by an American which as the name suggests, also brews its own suds. After a long thirst-inducing transfer to get there you might imagine my disappointment when we discovered on arrival that they were out of proper beer and only had a porter on. I obviously ordered it anyway and it was alright but it didn’t have the thirst-quenching bite of nice IPA. Anyway, I’m clearly over it now. No, really I am.

This was our last stop in Honduras and time to move on to Nicaragua. I won’t get into the detail but we made our way to the Nicarguan border ambitiously using Honduran public transportion. After around 9 hours and 6 modes of transport we got to the border slightly exhausted only to deal with some pretty frustrating border officials who demanded various payments in both US dollars and Honduran Lempira. After losing my lid a bit, our passports were taken away from us. After a nervous wait we got them back and we were on our way in to Nicaragua!

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Guatemala - Antigua, Livingston, El Paredon, Volcán Acatenango