Wow, I swear I had made a post in the past month, sorry
about that. Last off I was in Colombia in the town of Santa Marta having
finished the Lost City. I’m writing now from Peru, two days from starting Machu
Picchu so I’ll fill you in on the rest.
I spent the
week around Christmas in Santa Marta where we celebrated Christmas by sitting
on rooftops talking until the sun came up and then running down to the beach for
a morning swim. Somewhere in that process my sandals disappeared, so I spent
Christmas barefoot as the entire city of Santa Marta was a ghost town. Colombians are famous for their revelry but
everything was quite on the 25th because Christmas was actually
celebrated on Christmas Eve with Christmas reserved for family time. So I spent
Christmas with our big hostel family of English, Danish, Australians, etc.
After a couple more relaxing days in Santa Marta I headed to Medellin.
Medellin is
the second largest city in Colombia and possibly the most well known due to the
recent turmoil surrounding Pablo Escobar and the drug cartels. After a
sixteen-hour bus, I rolled into the enormous valley that held Medellin. The
green hills were painted red from the clay houses that covered the valley. I
spent the better part of my first day looking for a hostel as every South
American was on vacation so every hostel was full. I finally found a bed in a
decent little hostel. The part of Medellin where I was staying was a bit
upscale so there were beautiful parks and walkways lining the streets. I woke
up on New Years Eve with conjunctivitis, which put a slight damper on the
festivities. All of the celebrations that night would take place in a 4-block
area that was nothing but bars, restaurants and clubs. As we walked around at
about 11pm we realized everything was dead, we learned another Colombian
tradition of not going until after New Years as midnight was for family. So we
headed to the central park where we rang in the New Year with over five hundred
other backpackers. Following that long night of celebrating, I spent New Years
Day trying to clear up my eye and my head.
After a restful day it was time to
be a tourist again. I went and visited Pablo Escobar’s grave, office and one of
his safe houses. At his safe house we met his brother, Roberto who had been
responsible for cartel finances. Upon meeting him you would not have know this
had been the face of a multibillion dollar drug cartel responsible for the
murder of thousands of people. He had negotiated his release from jail and
spent his time today helping out on this tour. I still am unsure about the tour
as I was essentially paying for a former murderer to tell his story and talk to
us about how his brother could be a really nice guy as long as you did what he
said. It was surreal to say the least.
Afterwards we took a cable car up
the side of one of the surrounding mountains where we passed over the favelas
that the Escobar’s funded the construction of. We went and wandered around the
favela, talking with a few locals who recommended that we probably should get
on the cable car before dark, as it was a seedy area. Until the sun set, we
wandered around sampling street food and watching the kids ride their bikes. It
reminded me a bit of my own summers’ as a kid although I had to be inside when
it got dark because it was dinnertime. That night I met with some friends at
their hostel where they had met a Colombian family. The entire family brought
us out for some salsa dancing where the mother proceeded to pull me around the
dance floor and make me look silly. I headed home to rest my two left feet and
to get some sleep before another travel day.
The following day I jumped on a bus
to Guatape, a large group of lakes near Medellin. After a relatively short
3-hour bus ride through rolling farmland, an enormous monolith emerged, El
Peñon. This enormous rock looks over all of the lakes and the next day I would
climb it. After throwing my bag in a great hostel that overlooked one of the
smaller lakes I went out for some dinner. I ordered blindly off a menu as there
was no description of the food but I got chorizo, eggs, steak, pork belly,
salad and rice; so I was happy to say the least. The town was bustling with
Colombian tourists who were savoring the last days of vacation before heading
back. The next day I wandered around the town looking at the colorful buildings
and planning for the next few days. That afternoon I decided to walk to El
Peñon because I thought I had a long bus ride ahead of me and wanted to burn
some energy. Well after the 3-mile walk there, the 750 steps to the top looked
a bit daunting. The reward after climbing the 750’ to the summit was amazing
and from 7000’ feet you could see all of the surround valleys and lakes. After
sticking around until sunset for some pictures, I rushed down to grab a tuk-tuk
back to Guatape. From Guatape I jumped on a one-hour bus to a bus terminal
where I planned to catch a bus. Unfortunately all of the other Colombian
tourists had the same plan and the bus was full by the time I arrived. So I
found the first burrito I had had since Nicaragua and went looking for a place
to stay until my bus in the morning. A friendly police officer sent me in the
direction of the cheapest place he knew. I probably shouldn’t have asked for
that. I think I was the first person to stay more than one or two hours at the
place as indicated by the couple leaving around 11pm. After scrubbing the hotel
off me in the morning I jumped on a ten-hour bus to Bogota.
The bus to Bogota was fairly
beautiful but slow and I did not arrive in the Colombian capital until rush
hour. I quickly jumped on a bus headed towards the section of town where I
needed to go but missed my stop and took an hour-long drive up into the
suburbs. I assumed the bus would loop back but the driver was done for the
night so I found another bus back to the city. After 3 connecting buses and
some great directions from a kind older woman I found my hostel. I only had one
full day in Bogota so I made the most of it. The next day I went and visited
the Gold Museum, which had some tens of thousands of gold pieces from
Colombia’s past. Afterwards I went to go buy a jacket because temperatures
dipped down to the 40s in Bogota and some of my upcoming cities. That turned
into an ordeal as there are few jackets made for my size, after at least an
hour in the most insane market I’ve been in I found something that fit. As well
as a Patriots hat! After a night of wandering around the city, I headed to bed
because I had a flight to Peru at the crack of dawn.
After a short two hour flight to
Lima, Peru I set out to find a hostel. Lima was a bit of an eyesore after
Colombia. It was a dusty, gray city even though it sat on cliffs overlooking
the Pacific. I decided I did not want to be there long so the next morning I
jumped on a bus to Huacachina, a little desert oasis. I arrived in the night
and saw little of where I was but when I awoke I was surrounded by enormous
dunes, which encroached on the small lake and surrounding village. That
afternoon we skipped what sounded like a very exciting Patriots game for a very
exciting time in the dunes. We climbed into a homemade sand buggy and our
driver tore off into the desert. After a rollercoaster like ride over the
dunes, we climbed to the top of one. We jumped out and strapped on snowboards
before hurtling down the enormous dunes. After filling every orifice with sand,
we headed back for another heart pounding ride over the dunes. We returned to
the village and a few of us climbed the neighboring dune to watch a spectacular
sunset before returning to the hostel for an all you can eat bbq. The next day
I relaxed around the oasis before boarding a night bus to Arequipa.
After a pretty poor ten-hour ride
to Arequipa, I found the hostel where some friends from Colombia were staying.
After a couple nights in the Wild Rover, I set off at 3am to hike Colca Canyon;
one of the deepest canyons in the world. After a cold bus ride through snow and
ice at 18,000 feet we arrived back in the desert. We hiked 11 miles down into
the dusty canyon where we stayed at a glacially fed oasis. The oasis was an
amazing respite from the dry dusty desert that we had been hiking in. The next
morning we woke up at 4am and hiked the 3000 feet up out of the canyon. After a
day of looking at llamas and all of their relatives we returned to Arequipa.
The following day I went to a museum that held a frozen mummy known as “The Ice
Princess” found at the top of one of the mountains. It was how I imagine Ted
Williams is being kept currently so a bit creepy. After a weekend at the Wild
Rover I was ready to head to Cusco. Unfortunately after the Patriots great win
over the Colts, I came down with food poisoning. So I have been stuck for the
past two days in Arequipa waiting for this to pass (or stop passing?). On the
Brightside it gave me time to update the blog, read Dune by Fran Hebert and
make it on to what will hopefully be my final interview for a job in Boston. So
it looks like I will be spending the weekend hiking the Salkantay Trail about
40 miles to Machu Picchu.
