Cartagena, Colombia - Day 139-140

Our original plan after Colombia was to visit Venezuela and Guyana before returning back home. After hearing many stories from other travelers about how unsafe Venezuela is, and then realizing if we were to skip Venezuela and go straight to Guyana, we would have to take an extremely expensive flight, we decided to change our plans and continue heading north into Central America. There are no land crossings between Colombia and Panama and the only options to cross the border are to fly or take a boat. We decided on the boat option, so we headed to the beautiful city of Cartagena to get ready for a 4 day boat trip from Colombia to Panama. We walked around exploring the city one day and spent another full day getting money for the boat and making lots of currency exchanges.

The original wall built by the Spanish to protect the city still stands.

The streets of old town Cartagena were the most beautiful of any city we visited in South America

Parque Nacional Tayrona, Colombia - Day 135-138

Our next stop was Parque Nacional Tayrona, a very popular national park in northeast Colombia comprised of lush jungle that meets the Caribbean ocean. The park is supposed to have some of the most beautiful beaches in Colombia only accessed by trails. After a 1 hour hike into the park, camping and restaurants could be found right on the beaches. Unfortunately, most of the beaches have very strong currents that make it too hazardous to swim. Bad weather with no sun and rain plagued us once again. We camped in the park for 3 days and waited for the sun to come out, which it finally did within the hours of leaving the park.

Our lovely and expensive campsite. This campsite cost more than some hostels we've stayed in, but at least the bathrooms were really clean!

If you opt to not sleep in a tent, you can sleep in hammocks in this structure and battle the wind all night.

Waiting for the sun...

Huge caiman hanging out next to the beach.

 

 

La Ciudad Perdida, Colombia - Day 130-133

After loosing so much time in Pasto, the day the protests ended, we decided to bus directly to the northern coast and skip traveling throughout the middle of Colombia. After 42 hours of bus time we finally made it to a town called Santa Marta. Here, we booked a trek to La Ciudad Perdida (The Lost City). La Ciudad Perdida are ruins left over from the Tairona people who lived in the area hundreds of years ago. They built the city in 700 A.D. and had to flee in the 1600s due to the spread of disease from the Spaniards. In order to survive, they were forced to mix with the other indigenous communities in the area. The indigenous groups seen today are the descendants of these people.

The 29 mile trek is normally completed in 5 days, but because most of the 30 people in our group had pre-set arrangements they had to attend directly after the trek, we shortened it to 4 days. In typical rainforest fashion, it rained most of the trip. 4 days of sliding around in ankle deep mud on extremely steep hills is pretty difficult and fun!

Beautiful countryside heading into the trek. These hills used to be covered in coca plants. The locals have customarily chewed on coca leaves, the raw material used to manufacture cocaine, in a practice similar to how we drink coffee, but the U.S. gov't flew planes in and fumigated this whole area as part of the war against drugs. Since coca leaves are neither harmful nor addictive on their own, it's hard to say if it helped prevent cocaine production, or just took away an entire cultures' pastime. Now, the farmers cultivate cacao and coffee.

One of the many stream crossings throughout the trek. The rivers also provided great swimming spots along the way.

Snack time! The guides fed us delicious fresh fruit almost every hour.

Normal sleeping accommodations during the trek; hammocks with mosquito nets over them.

An indigenous community that lives in the area. These kids were racing toward us in hopes of getting some candy.

The beginning of La Ciudad Perdida was comprised of 1,250 stone steps.

All that remains are these round foundations of where their houses used to be and pestle and mortars that they used to grind up plants for food and medicine.

This structure is in the center of the city and was the most important area, because it is where the shaman lived.

Here is a map carved into a huge stone that the Tairona used for navigating the nearby mountains and rivers. The bottom line signifies the ocean.

Yellow-Striped Poisonous dart frog that Kris found hopping across the trail!

The never-ending mud was unlike anything we have ever hiked in.

 

Ecuador/Colombia Border - Day 122-127

We were excited to move north again and spend time in Colombia which we've heard so many good things about. We bussed up to the border and found it a little strange that we seemed to be the only ones crossing into Colombia. At the border, we were warned that there was a chance we weren't able to go to certain cities due to some problems. Thinking it wasn't a big deal, we decided to cross. What no one told us was that every road going north had been blockaded due to protests for the past 7 days and that no one had a clue when they were going to reopen! We waited at the bus terminal all day for a chance to catch a ride, and realized no one was going anywhere. After spending the night in the border town, we luckily were able to get a ride in a van up north to a neighboring city called Pasto. This is where we got stuck for 5 days. Pasto was not a fun place to be stuck in and to top it off the weather was cold and rainy the entire time. We thought about flying to the north coast, but soon learned the airlines took advantage of the situation and jacked all their prices up out of our price range.

The coffee farmers went on strike to demand more subsidies from the government. Due to price decreases, flooding, and mold, they actually lose money while producing their crop. The government did not have enough money in their budget to meet the high demands. Negotiations continued for 12 days until a settlement was finally reached!

We stole these first two photos from the Colombian news website. All we did for 5 days was continually check news updates and watch tv.

Because the coffee farmers were receiving so much news worthy attention, other industries wanted to jump on the band-wagon. Truckers also went on strike, gas station owners shut down their pumps and raised prices, the airlines followed as well, and even the high school students in this photo while we were in Pasto decided to protest!