Keeping up with the Colombians

Happy belated blogging everyone!

Colombia has become an increasingly popular travel destination (it’s gorgeous), and my LLF,  Patrick, had highly recommended it.  While there, I made a bilingual pun that, while isn’t good, I will immortalize in writing: Colobienbienbien.
This post is long. And plans to impart some travel knowledge to help you plan a trip to Colombia.  If you don’t want the knowledge then just skim through the subsequent text and pictures and it’ll practically be like you traveled there yourself (only in a way more cost effective way).

I visited Colombia in October. AKA the rainy season.  This is the very first country that I have ever been to where not having all of my vaccinations restricted where I could go. The very.first.one.  That blew my mind because here is a link to a list of all of the countries that I’ve been to  (spoiler: at the time of this writing there were over 50). And would you believe that not a single one required proof of vaccinations??!  So I was a bit surprised when, because I didn’t have my yellow fever vaccine, I wasn’t allowed to travel to certain regions in Colombia.  This ended up being (probably) for the best, since, as I mentioned, it was rainy season and, full disclosure, I also wasn’t taking malaria medication….

Tip numero uno…

1. Get your yellow fever vaccination.

I got mine less than one week after returning home from said Colombia trip at the Allegheny Health Department (sick shout out! Not, like, literally sick though) and learned that the yellow fever vaccination is good for a lifetime.  I repeat, A LIFETIME.

I turned to my nurse and said “Whhhaaaat!  That’s so cool!  What other vaccinations do you guys do over here?!”  She said “Hep A, Hep B, Tdap, Typhoid”  I said “I’LL TAKE THEM ALL, PLEASE!  But not now.”  So, look out for updates on that in future blog posts.  For now, I received the yellow fever vaccination which, I’ll repeat, is good for a lifetime.

Without that vaccination, in Colombia, I wasn’t allowed to visit:

• Crystal Canyon
• Minca
• Southern region of the Amazon

Those places are saved in my maps.me for the next Colombian excursion.  I was, however, able to go to other places in this gorgeous Spanish speaking country.  Here they are in the order that I visited:

• Bogota
• Pereira
• Filandia
• Salento
• Cartagena
• Medellin

A very full itinerary with three different in-country flights. 

2.   Exchange your money at the airport.

We found it really complicated to exchange our money in Colombia, and credit cards are virtually not accepted.  That being said, I highly recommend exchanging your USD to Colombian pesos at the airport.  I found that to be the best deal.

Now, you’re probably like “Who is this we you’ve started throwing in?”  Let me introduce Dom, a French speaking Canadian.  The two of us met on CouchSurfing in Pittsburgh during PRIDE (see this post where his photo first appears).  We had gotten along well in June, kept in touch, and decided to travel together in October.  I picked the country.  Dom has quite an interesting travel style: He’s not a planner, he literally buys his international plane tickets the night before a trip (and yes, that does make the price more expensive).  He like to go with the flow and if it weren’t for me we wouldn’t have known where we were staying the first night we landed!  I’d never traveled with someone quite like this before, and I was super excited for the new experience.

3. Eat on the streets.

Again, the USD is incredibly strong in Colombia, so our money went a long way, especially when it came to street food.  There was a bunch of stuff– meats on sticks, liver, drinks called “aromatic”, fruits (ginips– YUM), and grilled food.  I’ll be honest — everything we ate on that first night was just okay.   So this is tip number three due to cost efficiency.  We weren’t really wowed. We ate rice-milk type things, homemade popsicles, and everything and anything we wanted.  For dessert, Dom wanted to keep to his travel tradition (which he does in every country) and go to McDonald’s. We ended up getting Mcflurries, which, in Colombia, was really just ice cream with m&m’s sprinkled on top — still good, but not a McFlurry. Who knows, maybe their “machine was broken,” an excuse that transcends borders. Funny thing is, our food from McDonald’s ended up being one of the most expensive meals we ate the entire time in Colombia at a whopping $8-13.

It was Sunday, so by 8pm, everything was closing up. And quickly.  We noticed a lot of people–men, women, and children– sleeping on the streets, wrapping themselves and the stuff they were selling in blankets. As it got later (8:30pm), an alarming military and police presence was growing in the streets.  This scared me so I insisted we head back to our Airbnb. Dom wanted to stick around to see what it was all about, but I refused. I told him that he could go back out after he dropped me off, but by the time we got back to the Airbnb, his curiosity had subsided. During various encounters we had with locals later on in the trip, I asked what could’ve been going on that night. None of the students (they are so good at english) or locals we talked to knew, but the general consensus was that it was smart that we got away from them. We’ll call this tip number 3.5: Use caution and go with your gut.
The next day, we woke up early and went to “climb” up to the best view in Bogota (it was less of a hike and more of just stairs).  This staircase was hard. It was 2,350 meters up– great exercise, no doubt, but we rode the funicular down. After our “hike”, we had breakfast — eggs (yum), freshly squeezed orange juice, and something wrapped in a banana leaf that felt like I was opening up a present — and headed out on our graffiti tour.

After getting the SIM cards, we went back to our airbnb and booked a ticket Dom-style (i.e., the day of) to Pereira. To be honest, it was pretty exciting to purchase a plane ticket the exact day I was going to use it– and I was lucky to be trying out this travel style in a country where the domestic flights weren’t very expensive (even the last-minute tickets). Dom consolidated his bags and gave our host some maple syrup he brought from Canada as a gift (Canadians are SO nice), and we were off.

More food talk.
At some point, Dom was craving some Western-style food and I was craving some vegetables so we headed to a “Western” restaurant.  I got this crepe, which wasn’t that good but at least I got a leaf of lettuce (pre romaine trying to kill you).

After Filandia, we continued on to Salento, which ended up being my favorite town of the trip (where we got the veggies pictured above). It was rainy (probably because it was rainy season), and we stopped to get a view from the top of the town. Meanwhile, I ordered this delicious hot drink (that cost thats than $1USD) to keep me warm (ok, fine, I got it for the nutella).

We stayed in a private room at a hostel that was advertised on Airbnb and got great instructions from the owner as to how to go on a long (6 hour; 12km) hike the next day.  We were really excited to get an early start but woke up to the sound of rain literally POUNDING down on the zinc roof. We decided to get a few more hours of sleep until it sounded like the rain had lightened up.  When this happened, we headed to a Willy (jeep), which would drive us into the rain clouds to the beginning of the challenging 12km hike.

The whole hike took us about 5.5 hours, and as you can imagine, when we finally got back to a Willy and into Salento, we. were. famished. So, seeing as though Salento is known for their trout, I rewarded myself with a trout dinner that only cost $7.25.

8. Eat Trout in Salento. 

When we got to Armenia — the one in Colombia — we got on a bus and then on another bus, past Pereira to some hot springs we had heard about where we then hopped on another Willy, and the scenery became STUNNING. We got to the natural hot springs (there were two options, but we sprung [hehe, get it?] to go to the farther one in San Vincente, which was incredible

9. Go to the hot springs in San Vincente.  

Along with the hot springs, there were waterfalls, and a literal hot river.  

The hot spring trip lasted about four hours. And it WASN’T ENOUGH TIME. But we had to keep up with our Colombian itinerary, and alas, we had another plane to catch. This time, we were off to Cartagena!

When we got to Cartagena, we did more exploring, making our way to the Old City, the Walled City, San Francisco, and beyond.

The center of Cartagena was beautiful, and it was a nice change from where we had been.  It was less rainy, way more humid and much, much warmer, which made exploring the streets more muggy. We soaked in all of the bright colors of the buildings as best as we could. And, as we were walking, we found a tiny local bar, which I loved, because it was somewhere the locals actually went (and also liked). They had wifi and cold drinks — I ordered a CosteNita, which is a super tiny beer. So maybe I ordered another.

We walked all the way to the beach part of town and admired fisherman bringing in their hauls for the day.  Watching people buy fish directly from the fisherman not only made my stomach rumble but also inspired me to eat fish again in this part of the country.

The daily catch.

Definitely FISHING for compliments on this food photography.

While we hung around the beach area during lunch, we made friends with a group of students who were selling popsicles. We asked them why, and they told us that they were trying to raise enough money to travel around Colombia by bus. We OBVIOUSLY donated to the cause, excited to see young, adventurous travelers trying to find a way. Dom and I hung out with them for a while and took pictures at sunset.  

Maybe it was the fact that it was getting hotter outside, or the spontaneous nature of Doms personality….. but as we passed a barbershop Dom decided it was a good time get his beard trimmed. I couldn’t have agreed more. In fact, that’s tip numero 11….

11.  Get your beard trimmed in Colombia.

It was a great experience– they did a really fabulous job, and I got to chill with a beer during the process.

Dom and I stayed in Cartagena for the night. If we had gotten to stay longer in Colombia, we probably would have gone to an island or –if either of us had gotten our yellow fever vaccines beforehand, Minca (Oh Minca, so sad to have missed you). Since we didn’t though, Dom and I chose Medellin as our last and final Colombian city. We headed there the next day.

————-

During our stay in Medellin, Dom and I stayed with a local host family who was incredibly kind and didn’t speak any English. Which was actually great for my Spanish, and sidenote, as I said before, it would’ve been a GREAT place to do so.

Tip number 13…

13.  If you have the time or are able stay for a month or two, take a Spanish class!

Anyway, we settled in at our hosts’ house, and for lunch, we found a modern, but traditional dish right across the street from our homestay.

We ended up in the fancy (read: touristic) part of Medallian. It’s one of those places where it’s touristy for good reason because it was CHARMING!  

Dom and I picked a restaurant that had local vibes so as not to be too touristy, but still hang in the area, drink some ClubColombia El Dorada, and appreciate the good vibes.

 

Local restaurant in a touristic area.

It was around Halloween and I decided to buy a shirt, dressing myself up as a Colombian futbal player.  

Halloween costume.

Other people were dressed up too, and my favorite costumes were the life-sized uno cards (callback to Baltimore and my glimpses).

We enjoyed Medellin, seeing this city transform from day to night.  Dom had to leave first thing in the morning, but I had one more full day on my own, which I decided to use to practice more of my Spanish with my lovely hosts.

After Dom’s departure, I decided to take my new friend, Jose Luis, out to lunch. I told him to pick anywhere— his favorite place! He asked, “Anywhere?” And I was like, “Yup, your favorite restaurant.” So we started walking, and something must have gotten lost in translation because I was expecting a local place with some really great, traditional, fresh cuisine, but we ended up here:

After lunch, Jose’s mother joined us. We walked around the city, went to some botanical gardens, and happened upon a small festival (not to be confused with a carnival) along the way.  Muy divertido!

I enjoyed the day with them and had a really great time practicing my Spanish.  After we got back to *our apartment, I put my Halloween costume to good use and went to a futbol game– Medellin vs. Bucaramanga. I met up with a group of gringos outside the game waiting for it to start. There was no drinking inside the stadium (smart), but we had hours before the game to hang out, paint our faces, and talk before the game started. It was such a beautiful night!

When it was game time, we took our seats in the stadium — I was sitting right next to a sign that said “Always home field advantage!”  There was SO much energy in the stadium throughout the entire game, the spectators would randomly clap at different rhythms (and as someone with no rhythm, I really got into it).

Gringos y gringa.

We had such a great time!!  I was enjoying hanging out with these gringos, and we all seemed to get along well, except for a girl in the group who couldn’t be bothered (her name was Molly). As the game went on, there was an escalation of celebration — we were jumping, screaming, clapping — SO MUCH EXERCISE, we probably got as much cardio in as the futbol players. I LOVE IT.  Straight up burning calories. The whole stadium was shaking.  The game went into overtime, and luckily, Medellin ended up winning. It was DEFINITELY an experience of a lifetime to be at that game and by far the best sports game I’ve ever, ever experienced.

What a FANTASTIC last night in Medellin. I reflected on my time in Colombia as I headed back “home” in a (super cheap) Uber– Medellin at night was so lit up, it looked like a twinkling night sky. Gorgeous. The next day, I went to the airport with dreams of coming back, with a yellow fever vaccination.

At the airport, I took inventory of my funds.
Note: I’d spent about $33USD a day.  This included Airbnbs and domestic flights.  

14. JUST GO ALREADY!!!

Colombia is waiting.