a grump and a volcano

Leon sucked.

Sorry, let me rephrase. Leon sucked because I had another bout of insomnia and was being grumpy about everything. Leon is actually not that bad, but it´s not really interesting or different in any way either. Seems like most everybody just stops in here to check out the volcano boarding at the nearby Cerro Negro.

After my 4 days of isolation I was happy to be in a proper hostel, though. I instantly connected with a brother sister from canada. Brigette and I saw a forgettable museum on my first full day there, and otherwise I walked around and hung out in the hostel trying to hide from the heat. That night I couldn´t fall asleep until the sun started rising, at about 6 am. I woke up at 9 am feeling like death.

I had signed up the night before to go volcano boarding that day, so I debated whether or not I should reschedule because I was feeling so terrible. But I couldn´t spare the day to just do nothing, so I went anyway. THIS turned out to be one of the biggest mistakes I´ve made in awhile. Just in case any of you are wondering, trying to go hiking on practically no sleep is a BAD IDEA. Trying to go hiking while carrying a wooden sled and a orange jumpsuit is an even WORSE IDEA.

I have never felt so shitty doing something physical in my entire life. It wasn´t even that hard of a hike, but on the truck ride in (little more than a cattle truck with a bunch of backpackers thrown in the back) I already felt sick and queasy, and while i was hiking I just kept feeling woozy and lightheaded. At one point I actually thought I was going to blackout! It wasn´t even one of those hikes where you feel like you´ve worked hard and you feel exhilarated by feeling of accomplishment and the beautiful view up top. I just kept thinking about how I felt so shitty and wanted to sleep--insomnia can really fuck you up.

The volcano boarding itself was mediocre. I guess it was cool just because it´s something different to do and the ride down is pretty steep, but for the amount of money and the effort it takes to get to the top, the 30 seconds down pales in comparison. We all had to wear orange inmate jumpsuits (mine had holes in the buttocks region which made me nervous) and chemistry goggles that you couldn´t see out of. I crashed and burned a few times ending with shoefulls and a mouthful of volcano rock, but was happy to come out unscratched and unscathed.

Hitching rides with cowboys

Esteli had a very similar feel to Matagalpa, just less greenery and more pastoral farmland. Supposedly this area is saturated with "cowboy culture", but aside from a few men waltzing around in their cowboy boots and hats, I didn´t really get that vibe.

My second day there I decided to attack the 12km to the local waterfall (oh yeah, apparently when I´m alone I get delusional about how i would like to go walking/hiking) despite the warnings from the hotel manager that I should have left 4 hours earlier. I just threw on my new yoga pants (thanks matagalpa), grabbed a bottle of water and started walking. Unfortunately for me the clouds from earlier in the day had burned off and I was slogging through a path with almost NO shade. I immediately became angry and wished I had stayed back in town, but kept on trudging thinking that, surely, i must be there soon.

After an angry 30 minutes a truck drove by which I halfheartedly flagged down, and I was delighted to see them slow down and invite me on for the ride. They told me to stand up and grip the holdbar, which I nervously did as the truck began FLYING up and down the path. I´m pretty sure I caught some good air on some of those bumps, but I was exhilarated and cheered by the beautiful scenery. I realized after a few minutes that i was lucky to catch a ride, though, for the route was a LOT longer than I had thought and I certainly wouldn´t have made it to the waterfall until late, late afternoon.

They dropped me at the entrance gate and waved me off, and I cheerily entered the gate and greeted the gateskeeper. He held out his hand to be paid the "entrada" for the waterfall. I looked at him skeptically and figured he was just trying to rip a foreigner off, so I told him that there was no sign indicating that I had to pay and I just walked onwards huffily. I discovered days later from some other backpackers that according to the lonely planet (which i don´t have) says that you´re supposed to pay, so I felt some delayed guilt for ripping the old cowboy off.

The waterfall certainly wasn´t the most amazing or picturesque waterfall I´ve ever seen, but it IS the first waterfall I´ve come to that has been completely deserted. I was there for over an hour and I didn´t see a soul, so it was a rather nice feeling to relax and enjoy it all to myself. Unfortunately I had forgotten my swimsuit and after the harrowing heat all i could think about while looking at the water was to go for a swim. I waffled back and forth for 20 minutes and finally decided that nobody was around and jumped in with my skivvies, thinking they would dry quickly in the sun after my swim. The swim was very refreshing (cold! but refreshing) but immediately afterwards the sun was blocked by clouds (doh!) and my underwear was DEFINITELY not drying anytime soon, so I was awkwardly forced to go commando on the way home with my wet underthings tucked strategically into my bag.

I dreaded the idea of a 6km walk back sin underthings. But it was that or be stranded out in the boondocks after dark, so I reluctantly began walking back. By some blessed miracle, I heard a truck behind me after about 5 minutes and I began wildly flagging them down again, only to find that it was the SAME man who had picked me up on the way there! Such good luck. We had a wonderfully stilted chat on the way back about his farm, his health, and his sons in the US. He told me I was pretty, and I suspect he might have had an inkling to do a bit of matchmaking.

4 days of isolation

After Granada Sarah got some serious FOMO (read as: fear of missing out, my fave new word. Thanks nick and phil!) and decided to head back to the sun, surf, boys, and hippie festival in San Juan Del Sur while I decided to continue onwards to the gloriously cool weathered mountains of nicaragua.

This was the first time I have been alone in MONTHS, literally. In fact the last time I remember being alone was for a day or two in Bogota, in between dropping Julien at the airport and meeting up with Sarah in Medellin. It was rather disconcerting and sort of a hard adjustment at first, but I slipped back into it quickly and rediscovered my original joy of traveling alone. Most obviously I noticed I just had a lot more TIME on my hands to do things like go on the internet, read my books, and talk with locals. I´ve spoken more spanish in the past week or so than the entire month and a half with Sarah. Not that I blame sarah, but it just seems to be one of those natural things where if you HAVE somebody to speak to in english, you won´t bother trying to speak in your second language if you don´t have to.

I decided to spent my second week of Nicaragua in the mountains becuase I was just plain fed up with feeling hot. So sick of sweating all the time, so sick of always having to wear my hair up, sick of constantly swatting mosquitoes, and INCREDIBLY sick of not being able to sleep well at night because of overheating. I had simply had enough, and Matagalpa was the refreshing little pueblo that I had been itching for.

Matagalpa, and to a lesser extent Esteli, are gringo free. For those four days that I spent alone I could easily count the number of foreigners I saw on one hand. This was great, once I became familiar again with the initial apprehension of forcibly being alone. I just reminded myself that I did 3 months in the middle east and the 6 weeks in brazil mostly alone. So what did I do first to ease myself into it? Shopping. Straight away. How could I resist? there were opshops all around and I had some GREAT finds, the best of which was easily my new 100% italian leather knee high riding boots for $10 USD!! I immediately felt better. Retail therapy does wonders, people.

Nicaraguans are also a relatively friendly people, i´m happy to report. Nobody really went out of their way to befriend me, but the ones I did have a chat with were very jolly and curious about where I came from. It never ceases to amaze people that I´m a chinese person born in the US, and no matter how much I insist I´m American they continue to ask me questions about China and what life is like over there. It´s good that I´ve at least been a few times or else I´d be fumbling to tell them anything.

Besides shopping in Matagalpa I ventured out on a little walk in the cloudforest nearby. even though this cloudforest covers a large portion of the surrounding land, a lot of it is privately owned by coffee farms, etc. so walking routes are rare apparently. I had to take a chicken bus (american schoolbuses repainted and spruced up for public transport in c. america) towards Jinotega and asked the driver to drop me to get to the Black Forest.

The moment I stepped out I was faced with an old, rusty tank and a sign indicating a path towards a hotel. Unsure of if this was the right way I simply decided to hoof it a few km and see how it went. Luckily this walk was extremely pleasant with really lush greenery about and offshooting paths onto private coffee farms so I could get an upclose look. There was something very magical and charming about the cloudforest there. It was something about the combination of a mountainly breeze with the fluttering sounds and glimpses of hummingbirds...I just felt very content. After my walk I turned around and headed back to the main road and ended up waiting at least an hour or more for a bus that wasn´t totally full. I nearly decided to hitch a ride back again, but reminded myself it wasn´t the middle east. So instead I waited patiently with an elderly Nicaraguan woman thinking to myself "it´s okay, we´re in this together!" only to watch her half an hour later try to catch a ride in a truck and pretty much jumped into the back of the car without a word to me to come along. We were no longer friends after that.

Where i purchase a hammock

I am starting to feel like my blogs are becoming increasingly more and more boring. I´m not really sure if it´s because I just haven´t really been putting myself out there and really "backpacking", and rather have been sort of going through the motions, or if it´s just something else. either way, I apologize!

Unfortunately, this is another one of those blogs where I try to find a different word for "picturesque" or "cute" or "adorable" to describe a colonial town. Not to take away from Granada at all (which is, naturally, a picturesque, adorable colonial town), but I´m definitely feeling like I´m on major repeat. But still, I arrived in good spirits and enjoyed the hustle and bustle of a bigger town after the laid back days at the beach. I will always love walking down streets where there is all sorts of action going on, from women trying to sell apples, to the men that repair shoes out on the sidewalk.

The downside was the unbearable heat, so we spent the afternoon recuperating at the hostel and later on met up with Edwin (who was at a diff hostel) and some people from his hostel for some pizza dinner. This turned out to be a really amusing night, mostly due to a specific australian named James. It was, as I was informed, australia day that day and in true form, all of the australians were drinking themselves into oblivion. James was no exception and was absolutely SMASHED out of his gourd. I have not seen anybody that messily drunk in awhile (not since the infamous canadian in mancora), so it was pretty amusing for most of the night. I spent most of dinner prompting him to eat and moving his beer glass away from the edge of the table, trying to hold conversation with him without laughing outright in his face. When it came time to pay the bill I even had to pull out his wallet and count out his money for him, then stop him from trying to pay again because he had forgotten in his drunken state. Then on the way home, he made a few sloppy attempts to grab my hand, told me i was "soooooo cute" and then proceeded to ask if he could kiss me. I politely trying to disengage my hand and demurely said no, all the while thinking that, of course, ONLY australians would have such gall!

such wonderful memories I´m going to have by the end of this trip.

The only other notable events of granada was heading out to the nearby town of Masaya, home to allegedly the best craft market of the country. It was very densely packed and reminded me just a little bit of the awesome markets in the middle east, but i was devastated when i realized my camera batteries were dead! so instead I just shopped around trying to take it all in mentally, hoping that I would remember the random assortment of things they had in there (frogs taxidermied into sexual positions anybody?). Eventually I walked out of there with my very first hammock. I bought a shorter version hoping it would be lighter with less material, but I´ve realized it´s just damn small, so I hope I don´t regret the purchase later.

Surfing: I suck.

We headed straight for san juan del sur, luckily only a wee hour away, and after a quick perusal around down we went to go find Linden, AKA Edwin, one of the aussie guys we hung out with back in Medellin, Colombia. He introduced us to two more aussies (Phil and Nick) and an alaskan (matt), and between the 6 of us we formed a tightknit impromptu group for the following four nights. I liked how I immediately felt comfortable with them and accepted, as if I was a vital personality to the group. Just 2 hours after having met the boys Nick told me an inappropriate joke, and immediately followed it up with a "what?? too soon?". I laughed and knew we'd get along well.

San Juan doesn't really have that much to DO perse, it is much like another backpacker beach town just not half as flashpacker-y (yes, i totally just made that word up) and CHEAP. Sarah and I were delighted to be paying only 5 bucks a night for our own private room with ensuite bathroom.

We easily fell into a daily habit which I will describe to you now.

7AM -- wake up grumpy and groggy. Dress in swim togs and stumble over to the boys' hostel

7:30 AM -- realize boys still aren´t ready to go, even though they told us to be ready to go by then

8:00 AM -- pack surfboards onto the car. rather, watch boys pack surfboards onto the car while i apply sunblock.

8:12 AM -- drive to Madeiras, a local surf beach.

8:30 to 11:30 AM -- get abused by waves. feel shame about being shit at surfing. go swimming or boogie boarding instead.

12:30 PM-- lunch at the mercado! taste everybody´s banana smoothie.

1:15 PM -- walk to the local bakery and buy donuts.

1:30-6:30 PM-- everybody splits up, either to lay in hammocks at the boys' hostel, use the internet, shower, read, or nap. We would also lay around postulating what we might do the next day (but really secretly knowing we´d do the same exact thing the next day) or what we might cook for dinner.

6:30-8:00 PM -- watch somebody cook dinner and complain aboutI´m starving. Suffer through more jokes about how "little one" gets grumpy when she doesn´t get meals on time.

8:00 PM -- eat, hang out more in the hammocks, sleep early.

I know it doesn´t seem terribly interesting to you passing 4 days like this, but that´s one of the problems with blogging, you can never really quite capture the feeling or an atmosphere in the way that you want to. I liked being a part of something, even if it was just for a short period of time, and I loved how we had all these inside jokes almost immediately. We were ALWAYS laughing, and because of those guys I will always think fondly of san juan del sur.

A country in a day

Crossing an entire country in one day is exhausting, even one as small as costa rica. One of the things I was looking forward to the most in central america were the shorter bus times, but Sarah and I ended up doing a big 15 hour day crossing from the very bottom southeast corner to the very top northwest corner of costa rica. We arrived at 11 in the evening and decided it wouldn't be safe to do the border crossing so late, so we checked into a very basic hostel that felt sort of like a jail. I kept hearing funny noises in the hallway but every time I looked out there was nobody there, so I deemed it haunted and locked us up inside for the night.

Bright and early the next morning Sarah and I headed blindly for the border. Most border crossing are pretty straightforward, but for some reason this one was completely disorganized, mostly because the footpath WAS the road (or was the road the footpath?) and there were huge mac trucks driving in every which direction. There wasn't really any signage indicating which direction to go, and we ended up vaguely meandering towards nicaragua not really knowing what was going on. I did enjoy the nicaraguan immigration officer, though. Even though there was a fat ass line behind us he took the time to look through all my stamps and smile approvingly at each place I'd been to.

flashpacker overload

There are a lot of beach towns overrun with backpackers--if you remember we opted to stay in Santa Marta rather than Taganga in Colombia, just so we could avoid all the other gringos.

Bocas del Toro was a huge disappointment. I have met many a backpacker that really enjoyed their stay there, and as usual the only reason I could see people really liking it was because there are just so many western amenities there and a big party scene. People go there so they can feel like they're at home while being in another country, and while i admit this is sometimes nice (especially when you're gone for a long time) it generally just annoys me having to be surrounded by these "flashpackers".

Don't get me wrong, it was a cute little place and I enjoyed the concept of having to get everywhere via boat. Even to go to the other islands you take water taxis. I also enjoyed our low budget accommodation which wasn't anything more than a shack on top of the water, but it was nice to wake up in the morning and have the water just there, or to hear the water lapping underneath the floorboards while you fell asleep. I lay in a hammock one afternoon overlooking the water and thought to myself that this must be what people wish they were doing back home instead of work.

So to my even greater disappointment, my next stop (across the border into costa rica) of Puerto Viejo was almost exactly the SAME THING. Except they had beaches.

We were staying at a weird hostel in Puerto Viejo called Rocking Js, which seemed to have very few dorm rooms, but a plethora of tents and hammocks lined up around the compound. I even had my very own little one person tent with a mattress inside, which I ended up being quite fond of after a few days. It was nice just having your own imagined space, even though in reality the next person was probably only sleeping a few feet away.

To our horror (i totally didn't remember how expensive costa rica was) living expenses there were extremely high. So high that we actually couldn't do anything, not even eat out. So we spent a few days making plans for the next few weeks (skip the rest of costa rica and head directly for nicaragua), doing yoga, and trying to fill our empty bellies with bread and sandwiches.

DANGER girl

With the ants down to three (Sarah, Ben P, myself) we left early the next day for Boquete in the local choice of bus, yellow school buses from the US. A small town up in the mountains, we mostly went for the ongoing festival of flowers. We figured it would be a great way to get a glimpse into panamanian local life as well as experience something a little different.

The weather there was a welcome respite from all the heat we've been experiencing. I couldn't even remember the last time I wore pants or needed a sweater. I was so excited to pull out my grey jacket and jeans. It was an adorable little town and we were immediately charmed by it.

The flower festival was also quite charming. I enjoyed their little flower setups (in the shape of christmas trees, small dutch looking windmills, very bright colors) with typical small timey fair food and games like popcorn, fairway games, and bumper cars. The most impressive bit was them setting up two temporary outdoor clubs, complete with pounding pop music and flashing lights. It was hard to sleep at night with the music carrying all throughout the valley, but it was still impressive.

But surely the most memorable part of visiting boquete was my very first scootering adventure. Yes, that's right people, somebody actually let me on a scooter!! And then I promptly careened straight into a pole. sigh.

I looked up to see 4 australian guys gaping open mouthed at me and I shamefacedly picked myself up and tried to laugh it off all the while secretly burning with embarrassment inside. To be fair though, it wasn't completely my fault. The scooter was really tall (even ben said so, and he's a motocross junkie so i figure he knows what he's talking about) so I was having trouble propping myself up without falling over, and my hands were too small to grip the brakes properly. The guy who rented us the bikes insisted that we ought to use both brakes, so as I was flying towards the pole in those first 5 seconds, I immediately went to grip both brakes, and with the right hand I DID hit the brake but also thenrolled the accelerator at the same time. This is apparently key to smashing into poles.

But then a few minutes later sarah took a slow turn and somehow got herself pinned underneath the scooter, so I felt a little better knowing I wasn't the only one who was having some difficulty. She was saved immediately by a local panamanian man hefting a large sack of hay, and when Ben and I finally reached her we were relieved to find that she was uninjured.

The rest of the scootering was fantastic, at least. I opted for the most part to ride on the back of ben's bike, but later on ventured another scoot and found it to be incredibly easy except for when i had to brake really hard down gravelly bits. The scenery was beautiful, and I felt really happy riding along on the back roads with the wind flapping through my hair like some movie set in the countryside of italy. We stopped a few times, including a small shop that specialized in strawberries and cream, avoided anymore accidents and all returned in one piece, myself having high hopes for future vespa purchases.

Gorging and Goodbyes in Pcity

Panama City was a surprise for me. In fact, all of Panama was a surprise for me. I'm not sure, but it may end up being my bolivia of central america, meaning I had zero expectations of it and it ended up being one of my favored countries. Initially I was unexcited because I had heard of it being covered with american tourists, as well as upon landing I realized the landscape looked exactly like Colombia.

Our boat group whittled down as we arrived in Panama City, the three of us girls, ben p, stretch, and janna checked into the same hostel, but all with plans to separate at least a day or two later. I was pleasantly surprised as I stepped out of the taxi and took in the surroundings. It just LOOKED like what panama should look like. It looked exactly what i imagined highrise apartments to look there. Sort of old and stylish with palm trees dotting the street and everybody wearing light, airy clothing. The entire place oozed of coolness, and I kept discovering more and more things I liked about it. It had a great energy, and I found myself saying (for only the third time on my trip) that I could see myself living there.

Since Annie and Stretch were leaving the next day, we all hightailed it for the panama canal immediately after checking in. It was sort of far to get to, but once in we caught the last boat going through and found the whole canal "experience" pretty fascinating. It was slow at best, but the man on the loudspeaker was spouting stats and facts, while Stretch answered any excess questions we had about the canal. I also enjoyed waving at the crewman who were taking photos of the tourists and nearly walked out of there with a cheezy panama canal pen where the boat floats up and down as you tilt it.

Afterwards we managed to cram 6 people into one single taxi on the way to Casco Viejo, the old town of Panama City. Since i was the shortest (which occurs more often than I would like, no longer the tall one when surrounded by white people) I was elected to be the one perched on top of everybody else, which meant I was very awkwardly and acrobatically folded on top of sarah and annie for about 20 minutes. We did this again on the way back, this time gently folded half onto Stretch's lap and half on the gear shift. Casco Viejo was even more surprisingly a loooovely area. Beautiful old colonial buildings with heaps of trendy shops and fine restaurants. We walked around taking photos in the fading sunlight, and then ate cheap, crappy chinese food from a local joint.

We bade our goodbyes early the next morning. It was a tragic parting for me, seeing as Annie is the only other person I've travelled with for a long time besides sarah (i don't even want to think about when i have to say goodbye to sarah). All in we calculated we had spent 1 month together backpacking, which translates to approximately 3 to 4 months in real time. I felt genuinely sad to see her go, and wanted nothing more than for her to continue on with us. I teared up a bit, and before I knew it she was in the elevator with her pack and the door was shutting closed while I clutched dramatically to Sarah. I really hate saying goodbye to people I really like. Sometimes I feel like it gets easier to do it over and over, but sometimes I feel like the more I travel, the more tragic it gets each time.

So to cheer myself up (and becuase I just wanted to) I made plans to leave the next day and then spent the rest of the afternoon spoiling myself. I went to a fancy restaurant with Janna and paid 20 dollars for a THIRTEEN COURSE meal. THIRTEEN!! It was incredible and will probably never repeated again unless someday I become amazingly rich or marry into some crazy money! I could easily go over each dish with you all right now, but I will refrain. Just keep in mind that it was probably one of the most amazing meals i've ever had.

p.s. i also splurged on gourmet ice cream.

Puking over boats and the blue lagoon

Somehow through our endless charm and badgering Sarah and i convinced Annie to come with us on our boat trip to Panama. She was originally going south and flying out of bogota for Buenos aires, so it was a big deal for her to be going the opposite way. Though all we really had to do was show her some pictures of the Sanblas islands, which I would recommend for you to look up online right now. Take note you may drool and then be filled with a raging jealousy.

We carted ourselves back to cartagena and hung out there for a few days arranging our boat trip with the "Hard Winer" (not a typo...i myself thought it was meant to be hard winner), owned by Henrik the danish captain. On the 7th we said our goodbyes to colombia and excitedly climbed aboard the large trimaran for a 5 day cruise to Panama.

The players
Sarah, Annie, and myself
Ben P from Australia
Ben C, Jess, and Nate from Canada
German one and German two, unnamed and possibly in the porn industry
Stretch (casimir) from the Netherlands
Janna from Germany
The captain Henrik, Denmark
Armin, 1st mate from Germany
Raisa, the cook and Henrik's girlfriend from Venezuela

All in all, we were a good group. Everybody was nice and laid back, although the german guys kept to themselves and actually ended up leaving a day early. I never saw them more happy than when they were hefting their huge rolling suitcases onto a tiny dinghy and waving goodbye to us. It took awhile for everybody to warm up to each other, although whether this was from everybody being seasick during the first 36 hours of sailing or because we all started in small subgroups as it was, I'm not sure.

The first few days were quiet on the boat. We were sailing in open waters, and I felt a little nervous looking out and seeing nothing but water. I lay still for most of those 36 hours because even with seasickness tablets I felt a bit queasy sitting up or moving at all. Ben P caught a fresh tuna fish and Henrik made us sashimi (delish!) and I watched sarah violently puke over the side of the boat. Repeatedly.

But the islands themselves were a-ma-zing. They are the closest thing I've seen to sheer, untouched paradise! We were landing on tiny little islands that you could walk around in 5 minutes with nothing more than some foliage and a some lone palm trees. All the water was an intense shade of blue, and completely crystal clear. I could seriously float about and look down to see my toes clearly! These islands were straight out of The Blue Lagoon, and after a few days I fancied myself a bit like brooke shields (hah! i wish!) with all that salt in my tangly hair and a raging tan to boot. We spent three days navigating the islands and doing things like going for swims, cracking up coconuts, having bbqs on the beach, and eating fresh caught shark/octopus/conch. Janna and I even swam to one of the nearby islands, although it was one of those weird optical illusions that made the second island seem really close, so halfway there I looked up and cursed myself when i realized i was then really far from the boat AND the island and had no choice but to continue swimming.

We spent our last night on a large, windy island that housed 2 or 3 Kuna indian families. It was fascinating to get a glimpse into their way of life, and I fell in love with the style of dress all of the women embraced. They sew special brightly patterned textiles called "mulas" (unsure of my spelling on that one), and each woman would wear one tightly around the waist in combination with mismatched print on another brightly patterned print until somehow it just worked.

A belated holiday greeting

Although Aracataca was a special experience, I was eager to get back to Santa Marta, as well as Sarah and Annie. I had missed having them around, and coming back to the hostel in Santa Marta felt like a homecoming. The women at the front disk greeted me with big smiles and asked how the trip was, the pizza lady seemed surprised to see me back after a gap of a few days, and even walking into those grimy rooms made me feel comforted.

We decided to stay in Santa Marta through the new year period. We had one more memorable night at la puerta and a very immemorable (unmemorable? uhmm...not very memorable. there we go.) new years. We ended up getting shuffled to a party in Rodadero, a resort-y beach area of Santa Marta. The club charged us a lot to get in, and once we got in everybody was completely dourfaced, and the only music playing was something with a weird, undanceable beat. Annie accidentally hooked up with a 21 year old (she's 29) and I turned down a scary looking man with curly hair. But the most hilarious part of the whole night were the two british guys we were hanging out with. We convinced ourselves that they were a gay couple (they even had a lovers tiff halfway through the night!) only to watch them later both hook up with local colombian girls. There was a very clear moment of,"hold on...you mean they're NOT GAY???"

Otherwise I just wanted to wish everybody a very belated merry christmas and new years. 2009 has been very good to me for the most part, and I felt good closing out the year in colombia. After much time for reflection I've reaffirmed that I indeed live a wonderful, blessed life, and I hope that all of you are looking forward to 2010 as much as I am!

horribly behind

i don't know how it happened. I have been so good about keeping up to date with my blog up until a month ago or so when I started travelling with sarah! will be backdating these for a little while, so bear with me!

Gentle insanity in Aracataca

Annie and Sarah decided they wanted to check out Nacional Parque Tayrona, which I opted out of, mostly from laziness. I just wasn't up for sleeping in a hammock and getting ravaged by mosquitos again to see some beautiful beaches. I've seen beaches...in fact 6 weeks of beaches in brazil was possibly enough to last me for a good number of years. Plus I knew I'd be leaving for central america with more beachfront over there, so I decided against going with.

Instead I thought I might try and couchsurf again for the first time since brazil. I had an offer from a dutch guy to go and visit Aracataca, the birthplace of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, also known as Macondo in his books.

This turned out to be an....interesting experience, certainly. Enjoyable in its own quirky way, but so very strange at the same time. Tim, my couch host, was extremely kind, informative, and passionate about the experience he would provide me in aracataca. He walked over to me and i slowly took in the scraggly hair/beard, the apparent sunglasses OVER the initial set of glasses, and a large, unseemly straw hat. I gulped. But luckily Tim was immediately quite likeable. Accompanying him was a small swiss girl named Matilde (unfortunately, she had those types of eyes where you're never quite sure which one to look into, inevitably making you feel nervous that you might be looking into the wrong eye and making HER feel self conscious about having the aforementioned eye) also couchsurfing, and together the three of us hung out for a few random days.

Aracataca is small. incredibly small. So small that probably every single person in that town knew that we were there. And every single person you met was a distinctly odd character. Like the alcoholic painter who insisted on taking me to the main plaza so we could take photos of ourselves laying down on the ground. Or the juice man that made us delicious guayabana shakes and then promptly left, leaving Tim in charge of the stall. And in general there just wasn't much to do there but hang about and say hello to the locals. Tim kept trying to get me to do crazy things (wear silly hats, tie a bandanna around my leg, CARRY A MACHETE) quoting that the "locals would love it". I lay there in tim's tiny apartment that first night, half my body perched on the couch (matilde had the other half), half my body on a series of chairs wondering what a weird day it was.

The nicest part of the trip was walking down to the local river, named "the exercise tree", where the three of us lay in the shallow water in the shade and climbed up and down this massive, wily tree. It was extremely soothing to just muck about with nothing pressing to do.

On my last day Tim shook me awake early and forced me onto a tiny bus. We were going to the nearby town for his tutoring lesson. He had been teaching english to this dentist for a few months, and was excited for her to converse with another native english speaker. This turned out to be one of the more fulfilling things I've done, and again I debated if I should perhaps stop somewhere to teach english or volunteer so I could spend some quality time with some locals.

a vacation from my vacation

I couldn´t get sarah to stick around cartagena for another day. I sort of wanted to wait for the boys from Medellin to catch up with us, but instead somehow got convinced to join in on a convoy to Santa Marta instead. I had my qualms since I knew it would be hard to find accomodation over the christmas/new year period, and I was already snug and safe with a bed in Cartagena. Nobody else seemed to be too concerned, so i quieted the worrying voice in my head and went with the flow.

Sarah, Thea (the australian girl from medellin), Annie (the australian girl part of the sick TV club in Cartagena), and I banded together and hopped onto a bus heading for Santa Marta, a beach city about 4 hours away by bus and gateway to Parque Nacional Tayrona and the Ciudad Perdida, both of which I had no intention to do. I really had been set on staying in Cartagena so had no idea what I would get up to in Santa Marta, but I realized that spending christmas and new years with sarah and the girls would be far more preferable than potentially being alone. We found a hostel to check into the night we arrived, but were informed that we would have to leave the next day because they were completely booked out for christmas and new years. This threw all of us into a tizzy, getting ourselves worked up about maybe not having a place to stay. I immediately heard the voice in my head go "Why didn´t you just do what you originally planned to do, idiot?"

After a good nights sleep and in the end, it all worked out. Thea went onwards to Taganga (a backpacker village about 15 minutes away by bus) while the rest of us found a really cheap hostel about 5 blocks away. We settled in and decided to stick it out in Santa Marta, which I think we all ended up deciding was the better decision.

Santa Marta is not in and of itself a NICE city. In fact, it´s not really that nice at all. And the beach isn´t nice either. And the church isn´t nice either. It´s just another town! but what the three of us (who were getting on stupendously well, i felt) liked the best is that it felt LOCAL, you know? It was filled with colombians, with little to no tourists about. When we went dancing (and dancing we have) we weren´t hanging out with other foreigners, we were in the corner booth with the crazy colombians sharing their aguardiente and teaching us salsa. When we went to have dinner we weren´t frequenting the gringo restaurants, we were out on the street scarfing down hawaiian pizza and making friends with the stall owners. It was in general just a very relaxing time and as annie said, it was nice to "be somewhere where there isn´t really anything you have to go see". Sarah deemed it our vacation from our vacation, which after being sick for the third time in colombia has been a very, VERY welcome respite.

I bought another dress, this time bright yellow (i KNOW. i don´t know what sarah is doing to me that is making me buy such bright things. I feel slightly like a banana when I wear this dress, but people can´t stop complimenting me on it when i wear it) and debuted it on christmas day, my first summer christmas to be more accurate. We packed up food for a picnic (bread, pesto, avocados, tomatoes, grapes, etc) and went to taganga to finally see the beaches and all the other gringos. What we underestimated was that all the other locals would also flock to the beach, so when we got there we were absolutely surrounded by people. Nonetheless, the beach had a relaxing, refreshing charm about it despite it being a completely mediocre beach. We ate, swam in the clear waters and made a very stupid attempt at trying to bore a hole in a watermelon and pour some vodka into it...but this really didn´t work out.

Other notable activities--

Dinner with the hare krishnas! -- Okay not really. But we were roped into a fundraising dinner for a local school for a poor barrio, and it was catered by the hare krishnas. It was quite a small fundraiser, and when we arrived we realized we were being set up to eat in a mechanic´s garage and served on nothing more than flimsy plates and plastic cups for 15,000pesos (considered expensive for a meal here), but it was one my favorite things we did the entire time in Santa Marta! Some of the local kids came out to perform what they had been learning from the foreign volunteers (kung fu and guitar, apparently) and they took to us immediately, making us pose for endless photos and giving us kisses and hugs as they left. You could tell that the kids who performed were so nervous before they started, but soooo giddy after they were done. Every single person there clapped their hardest for the nervous little performers. I certainly felt the entire thing was in the spirit of doing something wonderful for the children, and I happily forked over my 15,000 for surprisingly good food (who knew the hare krishnas were such pros in the kitchen?) and feeling like the money was going to helping these poor kids have something positive in their lives.

Yoga with a crazy english lady -- Back when I was in India with Kieran I remember meeting this older british woman from the bus. She had been in India for YEARS and had that eccentricity about her that foreigners get when they´ve been out of touch with their home country for too long. This yoga teacher was sort of like that. Certainly not as intense, but still had that lilting voice of somebody who has found "enlightenment" in india, had the excessively kohl lined eyelids, and spoke a lot about chakras and spirituality. This, luckily, took nothing away from the actual yoga, which made me feel MILES better than when I came in. I generally enjoyed her talks and once again considered picking up yoga as a regular practice.

dun dun dun! the death cough!

Just my luck, the day we were supposed to leave for cartagena I woke up with a really sore throat and knew, just KNEW that I was in for a cold. Sarah had infected three of us, but I certainly took it the hardest and was holed up in bed with the death plague for the following 4 days. The bus to Cartagena was half torture, and with a pounding head and aching throat I was ecstatic to check into a hostel in the Getsemani neighborhood of Cartagena.

The first hostel we tried was Hotel Marlin, with its namesake appropriately hanging above the cold, semi impolite receptionist. Since we were both in recovery (albeit sarah was almost completely better already) we hit up the local kabob man before heading to sleep quite early. I awoke in the middle of the night to use the bathroom and discovered a bevy of different sized cockroaches having a powwow in the middle of the bathroom floor, so I shuddered and went to kick them away. That was when I discovered that these were not only the "totally not scared of humans" type of cockroaches, but also the "I will careen towards you in a kamikaze like fashion and try to climb your leg" type of cockroaches. I managed a scream and a very unacrobatic flip-like fall backwards out of the bathroom door and, naturally, made sarah leave the hostel the next day.

After much back and forth we managed to get into Casa Viena, one of the more popular backpacker hostels. We ended up having to share a double bed to save money, which turned out to be a perfectly okay situation other than me coughing all over her at random points throughout the night. She was a trooper though, keeping in mind that she would be most likely immune to me since she was the one who made me sick in the first place. Instead she sympathetically brought me grapes and cups of orange juice in hopes it would make me better. hearts to sarah!

I wish i could say more about Cartagena, but realistically i spent a lot of time there and almost all of it was inside the hostel. I can tell you it is VERY hot and cold showers are a godsend...I can tell you that good quality fake sunglasses cost approximately 10,000 pesos (about $5USD)...and I can even tell you that there were two other sick people in the hostel (gastro problems rather than a cold, though) and the three of us formed an impromptu tv club for a few days where we would each sit in our claimed couch spot watching bad romantic comedies for hours.

I did manage one day at the end looking around the city (beautiful! colonial! adorable! still very hot!), ate one of the most delicious coconut cookies I´ve ever had, and even managed to buy a bright blue dress, but for the most part have very little to say about the city itself. I will be heading back there after the new year to leave on a boat for panama, so perhaps I will have more to report later on.

Glam rock in Medellin

Medellin is totally Glam (or as sarah would say, flash!) with a capital G. It is the center of fashion in colombia, and every other woman on the street is absolutely STUNNING. Backpacker guys have been telling me for months than the most beautiful women are from Colombia, and for good reason. They have beautiful hair and skin, and apparently it´s very common to get breast implants at age 18. It was hard to feel like I could compete, especially because the only summer clothing still in my repertoire was the red ecuadorian dress.

I spent a mellow 5 days there soaking up the beautiful medellin. The zona rosa, where our hostel was located, had tree lined streets with super trendy outdoor bars and cafes. Sarah unfortunately came down with a cold the day after our joyous reunion, so I was pretty much just hanging out waiting for her to get better. Luckily we were staying in a small, homey hostel where I met 3 other really fun australians, and the group of us had a grand old time hanging out, eating gourmet pizzas, telling bad jokes, having quasi intelligent discussions on astronomy, and catching up on bad movies in the hostel. In fact the zona rosa part of medellin felt entirely UN-colombian with the french bakery round the corner and the boutique shops selling an assortment of patchwork clothing. If not for Sarah feeling under the weather I might not have stayed so long.

bogota recovery

Julien and I arrived smack in the middle of the night, staggering from the curvy too hot, too cold bus. We piled into a taxi like zombies and sighed with relief when we checked into a hostel and crashed to bed. The plan was to get up early and head out for the salt cathedral since it was Julien´s last day before flying out...but I ended up sleeping in until 2:30 in the afternoon, essentially messing up any chance of going.

Instead we self medicated with nutella and banana crepes and checked out the gold museum instead. This was as I expected--overall a good museum filled with (surprise!) gold artefacts from the local indigenous past civilizations, but particularly exhausting because somehow my stomach was upset AGAIN. I wobbled back to the hostel and lay in bed feeling like I was going to die, moaning at julien to get me a 7up.

The next day Julien flew off back to cold and freezing canada, so I took the day to take care of some errands and generally recuperate. I was delighted to find a message from Sarah the Kiwi, the girl who stuck around for my birthday in La Paz. She had made an INSANE trek from argentina all the way to colombia, and would be meeting me in Medellin over the next couple of days. hurrah!

The next day i begrudgingly checked out the Salt Cathedral over in Zipaquira. I figured as a day trip it would be doable, only to find out later that for 2 hours at the cathedral I spent something like 4 hours in transit. Bus to bus to taxi, then in reverse, combined with getting lost and accidentally passing 15 stops past the one I should have been on. The cathedral itself was also only so so...i´m not really sure what I expected, but I think after seeing the legit mines in bolivia, the gussied up ones seemed pretty mediocre.

My First Communion

After coffee Julien and I had to arrange a bus ride BACK to Armenia. Our packs were still back there, and we hadn't decided if we were going to stay another day or not. I had a feeling that maybe James was a bit worn out from taking us around, although he graciously kept insisting we could stay if we wanted to. The very last thing he invited to was his niece's first communion party, which coincidentally was also MY first communion party, as I'm neither religious nor catholic. It was an outrageous and slightly eccentric affair where little girls wear white dresses that look like wedding dresses and pass out cake and food.

I literally sat there in a stupor for 3 hours, waiting for Julien to decide if he wanted to go to bogota that night or not. I peeked into the living room and was shocked to see 12 year old pairs dancing seductively in front of their aunts, uncles, and family friends. I'm 27 and I don't get that type of action, you know?? I seem to remember at my 7th grade dances guys and girls were still dancing with 4 feet in between them and hovering their hands above shoulders and around waists. But I looked over to James' older cousins, and they were also commenting in spanish how scandalous the kids were being, so I felt a little better about being a prude.

Eventually, after much discussions, confusion, and rushed packing, we last minute decided to take a night bus to bogota. I bade james and his family goodbye and begged for him to contact me when he visited new york or san francisco (i owe him bigtime) and Julien and I rushed off into the sunset.

Festival of lights

The next day was MUCH less death defying, but not any less wonderful. In fact we spent most of the day not doing a whole lot other than walking around Armenia. Armenia itself is not the nicest city in colombia and is WAY off the gringo trail. I can confidently say I did not see a single other gringo the entire time I was there. So for that fact alone I really enjoyed my day there. James did his social rounds (i swear we couldn´t walk more than 20 feet before he had to stop and chat with somebody else) and when we weren´t walking along we were parked in little cafes sipping on coffee and eating the local cheese bread (yummmm...cheeeeeseee....). My new vocabulary word that day was "oso pelisoso", which means sloth, unless there was something really lost in translation with James.

We were waiting around most of the day to borrow James' cousin's scooter again so we could go the nearby town of Buena Vista. They were having a festival of lights where the entire town shuts the electricity off and the streets are filled with candle lit lamps. I thought I had experienced something special that most tourists wouldn't, but i found out later that the entire country participates in this festival of lights, but it's really good in buena vista because of its small size. Still, finding that out only took away a little bit from the overall experience.

Eventually we figured out that we wouldn't be able to get the scooter, so Julien and I moseyed our way to the bus station to catch a bus instead. Due to some technical difficulties, however, we ended up getting dropped off 5 km from the town. In theory, really this isn't SO far, except that it was getting dark fast, there was a lightning storm (which, oh i dunno, usually indicates RAIN???), and we were also at the bottom of a MASSIVE massive hill. It was so humid and warm, i was worried that at any moment there would be a huge clap of thunder and rain would start pissing down on us, sans umbrella and wearing far too much cotton. But there wasn't much we could do. James said they started lighting the lamps at 7, and we were at least an hour away by foot. So we just started climbing, in the hopes that we would make it in time. Blessed the powers that be, after 20 or 30 minutes of seemingly never ending inclines I flagged down a passing jeep. The older colombian woman, upon finding out I was from the US, told me she had 3 sisters living in the US. "oh really?" I said,"Where in the US?" She gave me a mystified look and said she had no idea. Julien told me later that this was the first time he had ever hitchhiked, which I thought was funny. I guess I haven't done so much hitchhiking either, but after the middle east a lot of the mystery has been taken out of it.

At the edge of town we passed by James, who was at the local store waiting for our bus to arrive. He had a lot of family there and arranged for us to stay with one of his aunts, and then we checked out the small town slowly being brought to life.

you guys, it was STUNNING. I had this incredibly happy feeling the entire evening. Imagine every street in your neighborhood filled with paper lanterns of all shapes and sizes--think mini dioramas of towns, helicopter lamps with candle powered rotators, butterfly lamps hanging from strings, even a set of lanterns designed to look like a gondola moving off into the distance! etc. etc. I'm not kidding, these people went ALL OUT with these lamps, and they were lined up on the street, sometimes 5 across and hundreds deep, giving the entire town this wonderfully mystical and euphoric feeling. We walked around up and down all the hills and I cooed each time we turned the corner. Each street even had its own theme! I took a moment to notice that there were maybe too many little kids lighting up things unsupervised, but again I put it down to south american kids just being a lot tougher than their north american counterparts. seriously, i think maybe we're coddling our kids too much. I even saw a few lamps go down in flames, but the colombians just laughed and stamped out any dangerous embers.

The town was in a GREAT mood and in a state of celebration--the local bands were playing upbeat salsa meringue hybrid music, everybody was hefting around bottles of aguardiente (including us!), and people were dancing in plaza. Julien and I even attempted to participate (me in flip flops, him in crocs, no less), but I think our inexperience was obvious. Still, I loved that the cliche was true, colombian kids literally come out of the womb dancing. I watched 8 year old kids show Julien and me up without even working up a sweat. an amazing experience, i can't express it enough.

By 1 i was warped and headed back for sleep, although I later heard James stayed out until 5. When i gawked he just gave me this shrug, as if to say "what? that's how we do it here." James, his cousin, Julien, and I later rode some motorbikes up to a new artesanal coffee shop that overlooked the valley and town, and up there you could see why this amazingly beautiful place was called Buena Vista.

Death Scooters

Julien had a colombian friend from back home who lived in Armenia, so I decided to go with him to check at the "Zona Cafetera", the area known for most of the coffee plantations in the country. I was excited at the prospect of hanging out with some locals, and finally getting off my guilty tourist ass. Luckily James lived up to his colombian reputation and was a wonderfully hospitable host, considering I came along sort of sans invite.

The very first evening James immediately invited us out to his cousins wedding. I was so excited! i was expecting crazy latino dancing and late night partying, but when I arrived I noticed that everybody seemed oddly reserved. James informed me that these cousins were "religious", that there was to be no alcohol or dancing, and that his entire family was bored to tears. Still, they snuck me a shot of aguardiente under the table, a popular alcohol in colombia which tastes suspiciously of sambuca. At first I tried to refuse--my stomach was still killing me and I just was not in the mood to drink anything, but then I realized that I couldn't bother, nor did I really want to explain to 30 of his cousins that I had stomach issues and was, frankly put, asian. So I downed the nasty drink down and made a pained face, which all of his relatives found a lot of delight in.

I conked out early that night, and readied myself for day two, clinging for dear life in a pink helmet to Julien, who was driving a scooter for his FIRST time ever. Normally I am not terribly scared of riding on the back of motorbikes--i don't like the feeling of tilting, nor can I stop thinking of my parents warnings and recountings of my uncle's gruesome bike accident as a youth, but I'm usually okay, as long as I feel like the driver knows what he is doing. But knowingly getting onto the back of a bike with somebody who admittedly doesn't know one thing about driving a bike made me downright NERVOUS, even with the damned pink helmet (hideous and forbidden color, but a reasonable fashion compromise for keeping my head intact). I expressed my concern to James who flippantly waved me off and told me Julien had been practicing all morning and would be fine. Obviously I survived unscathed otherwise this blog post wouldn´t exist or would have another tone altogether, but I felt my heart nearly jump out of my chest at least 10 times. After one particularly hairy escape, Julien turned to me and said,"uhhh..did you piss your pants? Because I just did."

Other than the death defying moments spattered throughout the day, the trip was AMAZING. The sun was shining in the most cheerful way, the countryside is, dare i say it, almost uncomparable. We sped along on little roads passing by small town after small town, coffee plantations, and little remote guesthouses. We stopped in Salento for the markets, and two other towns whose names escape me, but each time we stopped we had fantastic local food. Garlic simmered salmon (AMAZING. best meal I've had in a LONG TIME), iced coffees (tasted just like frappucinos!), corn patties with cheese, etc. etc. It was just eat, ride, look at beautiful stuff. eat, ride, look at more beautiful stuff. I was enchanted by the area, and immediately fell in love with colombia and the colombian lifestyle. and at the end of the day, i decided it was best that we did it recklessly whizzing along on a tiny scooter.