Taganga, Tayrona, and Minca

After leaving Bogota, I met up with Hana and we traveled to Taganga to get our scuba certifications. Taganga is a small fishing town north of Santa Marta. I would not recommend going there unless you really want to take a diving course or do a few dives. The town is covered in trash and stray dogs and depending on your perceived gender you will be constantly catcalled and/or asked if you would like to buy cocaine and marijuana. The town is still figuring out what to do with the new surge of visitors who come to dive. I hope that as Taganga continues to develop, it can do so in a way that is both economically and environmentally sustainable for the locals. 

After receiving our diving certifications, NAUI open water for me and advanced for Hana, we took a day trip to Parque Nacional Tayrona. We hiked through the jungle for a couple of hours before reaching some of the most gorgeous Caribbean beaches I've ever seen. The white sand beaches were scattered with enormous white boulders and the water was bright blue. It's a good thing it was so beautiful, because I don't know how else we would have tolerated hiking in the 95 degree heat and near 100% humidity.

The following morning, we decided to travel to Minca, a small village in the Sierra Madre mountains. We had heard good things about a place called Casa Elemento so as soon as we arrived in Minca, we donned helmets and were whisked away by young men on motorbikes, or "motos", to make the hour long journey up the mountain (mom and dad: skip the rest of this paragraph). It began raining mid way through our journey, which made the already rough road even worse. Thick mud hindered the motos' ability to make it up certain parts of the road with so much weight, so I ended up taking my backpack and walking up the worst parts while my driver spun out in the mud. When we had almost made it to Casa Elemento, the bike I was on did a wheelie and I slid off the back of the seat into a puddle of thick mud. "¡Ay, mi amor!", shouted my driver in distress. He felt terrible because he had argued with the other drivers to be the one to drive me up the mountain (ugh), and he  ended up dropping his precious cargo into a puddle. Luckily, I was completely fine besides having my last clean pair of shorts drenched in mud, and we wade it the rest of the way to Casa Elemento without trouble. 

Casa Elemento is a hostel perched high in the mountains that has giant hammocks, great hiking, and excellent birding. Oh, and AMAZING vegetarian food with family style dinners. It was refreshing to be out of the heat of the coast and we took full advantage of the hiking trails and early morning birding opportunities. It was fun to be surrounded by fellow travelers in place without wifi or cell service. It turns out that socializing is best without social media... imagine that! After 2 days and 2 nights in the jungle, we decided to hike down the mountain to save the cost (and risk) of moto taxis and to get some exercise before an entire afternoon and evening on busses to Cartagena. 

I write this now from a bus with wifi (!!!) heading to Cartagena. We are currently stuck in traffic in the city of Barenquilla, still a few hours from Cartagena. I am hungry. My phone will die soon. I smell bad. Life is pretty darn good. 

Bogota by bicycle

I arrived safely in Colombia, after about 28 hours of travel and flight delays that resulted in a missed connection and a long layover in Mexico City. I arrived at my hostel, Alegria's Hostel, around 10:30pm and promptly showered and passed out. I was mentally exhausted but physically restless. I can only handle sitting in airports and in airplanes for so long. I slept insanely well though, and woke up this morning ready to move. 

Since I only have one full day in Bogota, I decided to sign up for a city tour, something I usually wouldn't do because 1) I'm a cheapo and 2) I prefer to explore at my own pace. However, there are a few companies in Bogota that offer city tours via bicycle, which is perfect considering I wanted to see as much as I could while getting exercise. Plus, Bogota is famous for being accessible to cyclists with the most designated bike paths of any city in the world and weekly events during which main streets are closed so that people can bike without worrying about car traffic. I went with Cerros Bike Tours, a company recommended by my hostel. Apparently, since Lonely Planet has recommended the other main company, Bogota Bike Tours, their tours are overcrowded, whereas Cerros is newer and has not yet made it into the world of travel guidebooks. Thus, their tours are much smaller. I ended up being the only person in my tour, which meant I got to pay the group rate (~$12 USD) for a 4 hour private tour. My tour guide, Jose, spoke both English and Spanish, but since I want to practice my Spanish, we spoke mostly in Spanglish. We started in La Candelaria, the historic section of town, and made our way through various neighborhoods and parts of the city. The tour included a stop at a market, where I got to try about 6 new types of fruit - dragon fruit, pitaya, guayabana, guava, tomato del arbol, and some others I can't remember the names of. We stopped in the Parque Nacional and had a refreshing fruity drink under a unique species of palm tree that grows at high elevations. We continued on to a street famous for its graffiti, which is legal and abundant in Bogota, and Jose explained the cultural significance of many of the pieces. Later, we visited a coffee roasters where I drank the most delicious americano of my life. It was so good I didn't even add cream or sugar. Throughout the entire tour, we'd stop at historic places and Jose would share the history of each location. He rattled off an impressive list of dates and events for each location. What I got from it was that Bogota has lots of old buildings, many of which were built in the mid 1800's, in which many people have been murdered during hundreds of years worth of internal conflict. Jose noted that this week is an especially fascinating time to be in Colombia, with the public's rejection of the peace deal agreed upon by the FARC guerrillas and the government. He said the country is polarized, but overall ready for peace. The eagerness for peace is clear in much of the graffiti, which depicts scenes of war an destruction alongside images of hummingbirds, Colombia's national bird, and other nature scenes which Jose said represent the  internal conflict between war over resources and the desire to simply live and let live.

I was impressed by the amount of bike lanes in Bogota, and the general ease of navigating the city by bike. While Bogota is far ahead of many US cities in its bike accessibility, there are constant reminders that you're in Latin America. Many cars spew black exhaust and never use turn signals. Stray dogs run alongside the traffic and vendors walk between cars at traffic lights selling bottled waters and snacks. In some of the streets, pedestrians, bicyclists, and cars weave around one another in no obvious traffic pattern. I almost go hit by cars twice; luckily my bike had great breaks and I was wearing a helmet. I am thankful for my experience biking in Guatemala, where every day for about 10 months I would bike to school on a crowded road without a shoulder. My 10 year old self thought that I was going to die at least a dozen times per commute. My general cycling experience in the US made the tour much less nerve wracking than I think it would have been otherwise. 

I spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around Bogota by foot. Besides my bike tour, my favorite part of the day was visiting the Museo de Oro (the gold museum) which is packed with pre-Colombian artifacts. 

Tonight, I'll grab a beer with some new friends from the hostel, and tomorrow morning, I'll head back to the airport where I'll meet up with Hana, aka Lil H-Busse, and we will fly north to Santa Marta for a week of scuba diving and sunshine.