We arrived in Colombia via Ipiales, not the nicest welcome in this uninspiring town. Here people live from trade across the border, lots of Ecuadorians come here to stock up as most goods are a lot cheaper. Apart from the Santuario de las Lajas there is nothing to see here. The Santuario though is quite spectacular, a gothic church built on a stone bridge against a rock of a deep valley. A shame we had to rush through this in order not to miss our bus to Medellin, our next stop.
MEDELLIN
The city of eternal spring in the coffee area, which is one of Colombia’s largest export products – next to flowers (they are #2 globally, guess who is #1 🙂 Holland of course). We visited the Plaza Botero, which is famous because of its gorditos/gorditas (large bronze statues of fat people/animals) and the Cerro Nutibara – el Pueblito Paisa, a small kitschy version of a typical Antioquian community. Medellin didn’t feel Colombian to us in the first place, the perception we had of Colombia while being here was different from our expectations. Back in the 80s it was the capital of the world’s cocaine business under the violent leadership of Pablo Escobar, but now the city has a metropolitan vibe, there are big modern shopping malls and its modern metro system make most places in town very accessible. The tourist area El Poblado is packed with cool restaurants, coffee and juice bars, clearly the prices here are for gringos as well…
We went on a daytrip to the colourful village of Guatape where traditional houses have fresco’s painted on the lower half – we climbed to the top of Piedra de Peñol, a big rock from where we got a beautiful 360 view over the lake around Guatape.
From the pleasant climate in the Cafetera area we flew to the bloody hot and humid Cartagena on the Caribbean coast in the North of Colombia. Guess we got a little too relaxed after travelling around now for almost 6 months…as we didn’t notice Medellin had actually 2 airports, and the one we had to go to was not the one we had calculated on in terms of timing. We only found out just before, and with an accident on the highway causing a massive traffic jam we arrived way too late thinking we would have missed our flight, but as a miracle our plane turned out to be delayed and we could still check in…Thank you LATAM and thank you Mr. Taxi driver for showing us the real Colombian style of driving 😉
CARTAGENA
In Cartagena it felt as if we were stepping straight into a sauna… Strolling around in the pretty walled historic centre of town, every step we just felt more paralysed. We thought back of the times when we were shivering in our sleeping bags when we were cruising through Patagonia with TuttiFrutti some months ago. We wished for warm weather back then, but not like this…this was way too much…in the evening it became just bearable to go out for good drinks & food, of which there are plenty of options.
MINCA
What a relief when we arrived in Minca, a small mountain village where temperatures are much better as its 600m high up in the Sierra Nevada. Perfect location to cool off and swim in the Pozo Azul and under the local waterfalls. Minca is famous for organic coffee, which we saw and tasted at Victoria coffee farm. Funny enough it’s hard to get good quality coffee in Colombia, as the good stuff is all exported and the majority of the coffee consumed in Colombia is low-quality imported coffee! Yes, Colombia imports coffee for Colombians to drink. We found decent coffee in some places like Juan Valdez – the Colombian version of Starbucks.
TAYRONA
We went straight back into the sauna again in the beautiful National Park of Tayrona at the Caribbean coast. A true paradise to camp in with gorgeous sandy beaches, coconut palms backed by mountains and rainforest. We slept in hammocks here, tried to be as mosquito proof as possible with layers of repellent and nets over our hammocks but these nasty bastards still managed to beat us.
MAYAPURITA ECO FARM
Colombia can be very chaotic and noisy, lots of honking cars, motorbikes everywhere, loud music, we felt the need for some peace and quietness…we definitely found that when we volunteered for 2 weeks on an ecological farm in the beautiful green outskirts of the Cauca valley. This farm was located on the Cauca river, in the middle of the farmlands which are 90% build with sugarcane – a business that runs here 24/7. In Mayapurita we learned a lot about permaculture and vegetarian cooking, which hopefully comes in handy if we’re having our own garden one day. We tried to learn the kids a bit of English on the local school, but this was really hard as these kids have no discipline nor concentration, they just wanted to play. The atmosphere on the farm was so relaxing, there were yoga and meditation classes every morning. We also participated in their program called ‘Alimentos para el Alma’ where they cook once a week for homeless people who live on the streets of Cartago. Such a special experience that touched us a lot deeper than we could have imagined. Heart-breaking to see these people, also small children, being so thankful for a little bit of food.
BOGOTA
From the peaceful Cauca valley to the craziness of Bogota, Colombia’s capital, at 2700m altitude, chilly and rainy at the time of our stay. Bogota is a massive city (~8M inhabitants) and it seems the cool places to see as a tourist are all quite spread-out, so going out on a bike was the perfect way to explore the city. Our guide Mike was a journalist from California who lived in Bogota for the last 15 years, so he knew the city inside out. Mike took us to a fruit market where we tasted many exotic new fruits, also we tasted some delicious chocolate (once again, the good stuff is mostly exported), then he showed us a coffee production facility, we saw beautiful street art, and he took us through the prostitution area and some dodgy streets that we probably would’ve never visited on our own. Playing Colombia’s official national sport was the highlight of the tour, surprisingly this isn’t football but a game called ‘Tejo’. You throw metal discs from a distance into a box of clay, the idea is to hit the small envelopes of gunpowder in the middle, and this game has to be played with a beer. Maybe we should introduce this in Europe, for sure will be a hit in every bar or pub 😉
THE AMAZON
The last area we visited in Colombia was the Amazon area in the south from where we planned to cross over into Brazil. We flew into Leticia and from there took a boat 2 hours upstream to the small eco village of Puerto Nariño. No motorized traffic, just breathe…the Amazon is an incredibly big chunk of earth, it is the source of so much of the air we breathe and the water we drink. An area spanned over 9 countries and 3 different time zones, it accounts for 40% of the South American continent, twice the size of India. The river, full of creamy brown water, is the world’s 2nd longest (#1 Nile) but the biggest river in volume. When the water is high the river can stretch 50km (!!) wide in some places. All the towns along the Amazon have a port, the larger ones have an airstrip as well, but there are no roads in or out. Despite its isolation we were surprised to see so many towns popping up along the river, there are definitely more people living here than we expected.
In Puerto Nariño we had a guide who took us on jungle walks. Equipped with headlights and boots we found our way through thick forest and stepped through the muddy ground spotting tarantulas, butterflies, wild pig holes, macaws (long tailed bright coloured parrots), exotic frog species, caimans, all kind of monkeys (also micos, one of the smallest species of monkeys on the planet) and listening to the mystic sounds of the tropical rain forest. We saw massive Ceiba trees – 45m high, 7m*7m – pink and grey dolphins in the river, even caught our own fish for lunch 😉
The last 4 days we spend in a hammock on a boat from Tabatinga (first Brazilian town across the border of Colombia) over the Amazon river and just arrived in Manaus, Brazil, the last country of our trip. The boat travel in itself was a memorable experience, we appreciated a few days of forced downtime, and it was an interesting way to meet with the ordinary Brazilians. The first day on the boat we were crammed in our hammocks among ~300 others, but after the first night a lot of people got off the boat, so there was enough space where we created our own little corner to hang out. Manaus is Amazon’s largest city with nearly 3 million people, a place we don’t want to get stuck in for long…as we finally hope to leave the mosquitos behind us now…so on to the coast next!
We left Colombia with pain in our hearts, we will miss its great hospitality, green hills, the annoying but cute monkeys, the macaws, its rainforest and hot beaches.
Vivian and Rene in South America 
Wat een mooie reis! Prachtige foto’s en super leuk om jullie verhalen te lezen. Geniet van de laatste weken 😘
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Wat een prachtige plaatjes weer en wat een geweldige tijd hebben jullie daar .
Geniet ervan in Brazilië 🐒🐒🌴🌴🏖
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Pffffff
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