Sailing the San Blas

'Boat Ahoy!'

Sal fancies herself as a bit of a sailor, I however have lubbed the land as long as I have known how to lubb anything, and never much desired to float around on top of the opaque ocean with who-knows-what (Kraken? Killer Whales? Nuclear Submarines?) beneath you. However when the opportunity to sail from Colombia to Panama via deserted tropical islands surrounded by warm turquoise waters arose - which is precisely what the San Blas crossing entails - it was too good to turn down. Beats another boring flight anyway....

Ian gets his sea legs on 

We found the only boat leaving Cartagena on the 2nd January and boarded the 85ft vessel with 28 other hardy travellers and five crew. After an extensive safety talk by our wild eyed Slovakian captain that primarily focussed on the importance of using the ships toilets correctly (delicate machines whose failings - usually inspired by the malpractice of his passengers - would force the Captain to get up to his elbow in the brown stuff. He disliked this intensely).

The first night was 24 hours of non-stop sail from Cartagena to the islands which lie just off the north Panama coast. It was extremely rough with the boat pitching and rolling back and forth so much that water came through one of the top hatches and flooded one of the downstairs bedrooms. Another passenger, as the boat lurched 12 feet on its axis nearly disappeared overboard. I spent most of the time in the cabin, clinging to the bed trying not to throw up and militantly focussing on episodes of Game of Thrones. Sal slept on deck - rather more debonair and adventurous than I.

One of the 300+ 'Robinson Crusoe' style islands that make up
the San Blas archipelago

Tattered, sick and bedraggled we arrived at the islands which were both beautiful and serene. A series of reefs surround them which acts as breaks to the rough waves of the sea, making the water calm. As you can see from the photos they were totally deserted and there was nothing much to do apart from swim in the incredibly salty and therefore buoyant water, read constantly, and sadly discover that kayaking against a current is really quite a lot harder than it looks. For me anyway, Sal took to it like a professional.

San Blas = White sands and turquoise waters

Not all was harmonious. The much heralded 'all you can eat' lobster buffet - our captain had made a big deal of this - did not materialise due to the weather (first world problems eh....) which nearly prompted a mutiny. The toilets (surprise!) stopped working, as did the showers. And the captain entertainingly/alarmingly turned out to be a nutbar of the highest order, gathering us around the table to share an authoritative and endlessly intertwined series of conspiracy theories. Topics included the African continent only having separated from South America in 3000 BC to Spaceships being stowed under the Easter Island heads. He was keen to tell us how he was very good at martial arts - surprising as walked with an Ozzy Ozbourne style ponderous gait. A real character as people used to say...

Despite the lack of lobster, the food on board was absolutely outstanding. We loved it. How the two cooks managed to produce the food in the storms on the first night with the boat pitching and rolling over 120 degrees was truly incredible. Perfectly grilled and breaded fish, even cooking one that one of the passengers managed to catch himself.  

It was truly an outstanding experience, living and floating between desert islands.

Cartagena - Feliz Ano Nuevo

The clock tower is the entrance to the Old town of Cartagena

New Year's Eve in Cartagena is a slow run up. We headed out into the backpacker area of Getsemani around 6pm for an early dinner and to give ourselves adequate lubrication time for the festivities. The streets were so quiet as we wandered the lanes surrounding Plaza de la Trinidad and we had to question whether we even had the correct night.

Last dinner of 2014

In true Colombian style the party starts late. After dinner, we met up with some friends we had made the night before and found the crowds gathering by the clock tower - the main entrance to the old town of Cartagena - and along the magnificent adjoining city walls. 

A mass of old and young, women, men and children, locals and out of town-ers, all who had brought their own food, drink, chairs and in some cases what looked like the kitchen table - had gathered to create a massive street party picnic. We got hold of a couple of bottles of Aguadiente,- the local 'fire water' - and shot glasses and as we edged closer to midnight we would have a periodical 'Salud.'   

Fireworks at midnight

The count down for New Years was very haphazard without any central clock on display. Coupled with the growing fuzziness from the liquor, no one knew precisely when we actually passed into the New Year. It turned out that we were based right near the lauch pad of the fireworks which signalled the start of 2015. It was no Sydney Harbour Bridge or London Eye display but the heart palpitations gained from the fact that there was no safety zone surrounding the launch area and sparks seemed to be going in all directions, more than made up the for the somewhat underwhelming show.  

Drinking Aguadiente near the city wall

Afterwards people started to gently drift away from the walls and we feared that the night was over and we would have to make our way back home - a decidedly un-Colombian outcome. However, fear not, we found the pressing mass inside the walls of the old town taking part in what would be a night and morning long party that would rage and tumble from one gorgeous cobblestone street to another.

Cartagena's old town, constructed by the Spanish during the colonisation of the country and now a UNESCO world heritage site is wonderfully beautiful and rivals anything in Spain I have seen certainly. And they really know how to enjoy themselves. Whole families and groups of friends - sometimes in the hundreds - dressed in their most elegant attire were lined up throughout the narrow roads on long tables, Champagne was flowing and everyone was eagerly chatting to one another or dancing to the huge stereo systems blasting out music ranging from salsa to dubstep.

Feliz Ano Nuevo 2015

Loads of the squares were turned into concert venues with dancing girls, salsa bands, djs, turntables, even Carlos Vives - Colombia's own Meatloaf, middle aged, open shirted. tanned and permed, the apple of every Colombian lady's eye - performed. A throng watched as the video relayed the action from the main concert area (which you needed tickets to get into). We hung around and had a sing along to his most famous recent hit 'Volvi a Nacer' with thousands of other revellers. We ended up seeing in the first morning of 2015 looking out at the ocean at the trendy 'Cafe del Mar' up on the city walls.

The beautiful streets of Cartagena's old town

The city walls in the daytime

The Lost City and Santa Marta



 The setting for the trek to the Ciudad Perdida

The Lost City trek (or Ciudad Perdida as it is locally known), up near the Caribbean Sea in the country's far north eastern edge, is Colombia's more modest alternative to the Inca Trail in Peru. We were trepedatious to learn that back in 2003, several tourists on the trek were kidnapped by the FARC, marched for several days through the jungle, held for around 3 months before release. Although the situation has improved a lot since then, Colombia still has an insurgency around the fringes, which was underlined by the ambush and killing of five soldiers by FARC rebels who attacked a patrol in a rural area of western Colombia the day we started the trek.

With children from the local tribal community who are
 descendants of the Tayronas. It is estimated that the
Tayronas constructed the lost city in 800AD

Regarding the 2003 hostage incident, a documentary called 'My Kidnapper' was released in 2010. One of the British hostages found himself contacted by one of his kidnappers a year after his release. This developed into him and a couple of others from the group going back to Colombia to meet the kidnapper and to complete the remainder of the Lost City trek. Wowzers. Talk about facing your demons...









Ready for the 1,200 steps that take you up into the city

Anyhow, luckily we didn't get kidnapped on this five day adventure through true jungle, wide rivers and dirt trails to a Tayrona archaeological site high up in the mountains, only rediscovered by locals in the 1970s. Don't get me wrong -  it's not quite Heart of Darkness - probably 200 people are on the trail a day (though you will only see the 20 or so in your group and maybe 50 who pass you coming back the other way) and you are never more than 30 miles away from Santa Marta (a big city of five hundred thousand people along the coast from national park).





One of many river crossings on the trail

But it is a pretty challenging walk - we had a couple of French soldiers on the trail with us and they said it was no piece of cake - lots of steep climbing and descents, fast flowing river crossings and the heat of the jungle to contend with. You walk for 5-8 hours a day depending on your itinerary and whether you chose to do the walk over 4, 5 or 6 days. You really do feel like you are a loooooooonnng way from civilisation.

One of the bunkhouses we slept in - a normal bedtime was around
7.30pm ready for the 5am starts

Everything is so humid that nothing dries, you sleep in bunks wrapped in mosquito nets, are passed on the paths by the local tribal folk in their traditional white tunics and charming black wellies, or a pack of mules carrying supplies to the bunkhouses and swim in crystal clear pools along the route.

The most iconic of the city's 169 terraces

While there were no kidnappings that is not to say we had no drama. An unfortunate gentleman was struck down by what was thought to be appendicitis, which can be deadly without surgery, on the evening before we were to make the final ascent to the 'city' and - unfortunately - the furthest point away from civilisation. After several hours of excruciating pain a decision was taken to helicopter him out at first light. We found out few weeks later that it turned out to be kidney stones (less fatal but very very painful without treatment....) and luckily for him the ancient Tayrona had the foresight to design the main temple complex as large circles which double excellently as a helicopter landing pad! The guides got him up there the next morning and the insurance company flew him out.

Casa Moringa's rooftop pool at night

After the trek we ended up spending Christmas in a small beach village called Taganga situated just round the headland from Santa Marta. A few friends we had made on the hike, and a friend from London who amazingly happened to be in the area, came and met us in the most outrageously impressive hostel we have ever seen. Welcome to Casa Moringa! It had hammocks with a view of the ocean, a swimming pool on the roof, two Jacuzzis and a well stocked bar. It was recently opened by a Swedish traveller, Maria, who happened upon the empty property while looking for somewhere to base a new hostel. It was once lived in by the now ex-governor of Santa Marta who was currently under house arrest for corruption. It seems that one thing these Colombian' bad guys' have in common is their obsession for pimped up bathrooms - we learnt that this was a major fetish of Escobar's and always a sure way to identify whether he had been using somewhere as a hiding house when he was on the run from the police. Not bad for nine pounds a night.

Christmas Dinner

We did a big shop on Christmas Eve and after an early morning swim in the ocean on Christmas Day, followed by our exchange of gifts (beer for me, tequila for Sal) we set to work on preparing something that would hopefully resemble a traditional British Christmas Dinner. Turned out pretty well, we even achieved homemade cranberry sauce and stuffing, albeit with somewhat modified ingredients and a slightly unusual yet pleasing taste... Only problem was the chicken (turkey was sadly beyond the backpacker budget) which I managed - through cooking in the fat at the bottom of the pan - turn into a carapace with the resilience of a tortoise shell.... Our fellow travellers from around the world didn't seem to mind...or perhaps they were just being polite.

Our home for the night - Cabo San Juan beach in Tayrona
National Park

We rounded off the festive period and our time in the Santa Marta area by visiting the stunning beach of Cabo San Juan in the Tayrona National Park. We spent the day sunning on the golden sand and the night sleeping in hammocks, on a rocky outcrop in the Caribbean Sea. 

Bogota - A big, busy family affair

Central Bogota from the cable car to Monserrate (by the time we
reached the top the city was covered in cloud)

As we stepped from the plane into the darkness of the Bogota evening we were met by a chill not felt since the autumnal days of London in October. Bogota - at 2500 meters above sea level - is a cold place at night despite nearly lying on the equator. So we were extremely happy to walk straight into the arms (and warm car) of Juliana and Sergio - a Colombian extension of Sal's family. They live in North Bogota, well away from the historic centre - La Candelaria - up towards the lush green countryside referred to by the locals as the "savannah", though we saw nary a giraffe or an elephant. More about that later....

Ian, Juliana & Sergio in the courtyard of the Botero Gallery

The first thing you notice about Bogota is the incredible size and traffic. At 8 million citizens Bogota is the forth largest city in South America, and without a metro it is extremely difficult to get around the city. Huge traffic jams bumper to bumper ensnare the city, a situation so desperate that a law has been passed which specifies only certain cars can use the roads during peak hours, depending on the last number on a numberplate (0-4 or 5-9 on alternative days). Unsuprisingly many of the wealthier residents have instead bought a second or third car with a different number plate to get around this.

A 'love drink' (made with blended crab (shell included))
pit stop on the Bogota Bike Tour

To try and alleviate the pollution and encourage alternative transport use, roads are closed on Sunday mornings and public holidays and turned into cycle paths, running tracks and even yoga studios for what is known as the 'Ciclovia'. Approximately, 2 million people (about 25% of the population) take part. We unfortunately missed the opportunity to participate but instead joined the 'Bogota Bike Tour' which allowed us to explore the  more unusual side of Bogota and see what it was really like on those roads. An exotic fruit market, street art, love drinks, coffee production and the red light district were some of the highlights. And despite dealing with huge amounts of traffic and being led the wrong way up one way streets numerous times, the cycling was pretty fun although i'm not yet convinced that I could commute daily by bike if I lived there.

A selection of funerary masks on display at the Museo del Oro

Bogota has the largest gold museum (Museo del Oro) in the world. It is truely wonderful, showing work from every tribe across Colombia which survived, and was not smelted down and exported by the Spanish. Also Botero's gallery showcases his sharp and evocative political and playful paintings. Botero is one of two of Colombia's great cultural icons (the other, of course, Gabriel Garcia Marquez) who developed his art over the years of La Violencia and the following insurgency. This contributes to a style which blends satire with a sharp eye for proportion, uglyness and sensual in the human form. I'm not really a big art lover, but I have to say I really loved his work.

The Salt Catherdral of Zipaquira

On a day trip to outside the city, on one of the wonderful day trips into the 'savannah', Juliana and Sergio took us (along with Sergio's daughter Maria) to the astounding Salt Cathedral in Zipaquira which lies deep underground within one of the largest salt deposits in the world. The walls are pure rock salt, and the carvings elaborate. The fifteen chapels that correspond to the stations of the cross are hollowed out of the rock as you make your way to the breathtaking cathedral itself, hewn out of the rock 180 metres beneath the ground.

Family day trip to the Laguna de Guatavita

We also were taken to the Laguna de Guatavita, the source of the myths of El Dorado. The Spanish conquistadors followed fabled stories of a city of gold since they arrived in the Americas, and arrived at this lake. They surmised - based on the knowledge of gold offering ceremonies seen elsewhere in the Americas and the exquisite golden raft model in the picture below - that the lake would be filled with gold from hundreds of years of ceremonies.

A scene depicting the gold offering ceremonies on display
at the Museo del Oro

Spanish, and then French engineers drained the lake with no success. At the end of the 19th century, British engineers were invited to try a more sophisticated method to find the golden horde hidden beneath the water. A huge trench was dug out of the surrounding mountain and the water drained. When the lake had been reduced to mud the investigators waded through it but found nothing, having wasted millions. Today it is a placid body of water, still used as a sacred site by those nearby.

With 'honores de la casa' we were welcomed

With our Colombian family

We finished up out time at Bogota with a visit to the legendary restaurant Andres Carne De Res in the northern suburb of Chia - a  spectacular experience. We feasted on fine cuts of beef (the Colombians love a good steak almost as much as the Argentinians). The place is absolutely huuuuuugee and eclectically decorated with the most weird and wonderful trinkets. On arrival we were given sashes and crowns, played to by a wandering band and sung to by the various actors (the restaurant employs people to provide impromptu musical performances as entertainment).

After the food and the delicious cocktails came the time to dance. Sal and I are always saying we should have a few Salsa lessons but we never got round to it, so we botched together a few drunken steps. Juliana and Sergio really cut some rug up, moving with all the practiced ease of professionals, making us all very jealous.

PS. There is no doubt that the star attraction of Bogota, for Sal at least, was Luna the tiny dog. She has started a campaign for us to get one when we get home...

Luna

Medellin - Infamy to modernity

Medellin, nestled in the Aburra Valley, within the
Andes mountain range

The bus from Cartagena to Medellin forges a path from the sea to the high mountains of Colombia, winding through the steep channelled topography that dominates the centre of the country. The ride is akin to a rollercoaster, pulling your stomach back and forth with each hairpin bend so severely that many passengers grasp sick bags in their hands. The rapid ascent does little to help the queasy.... the peak of the ride takes you to 2000m above sea level.

A view across the red brick metropolis from the Santo
Domingo neighbourhood.

In the final half hour the bus crests to reveal Colombia's second city in the valley below, partly obscured by wisps of low cloud. A river bisects a city of red brick buildings, modernist plazas, un-pretty concrete towers and car parks. Medellin has assiduously demolished the majority of its older buildings and replaced them with the new. It is, more than anything, a determinedly modern South American metropolis reinventing itself. 

We really loved it, and it wasn't anything to do with how the city looked or the places we went. Rather how the city felt, and the way its ambition has forged a new model for developing and developed urban centres around the world.

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A Violent History

Medellin in the 1980s and early 1990s was a desperate city in a nation drowning in crisis. Since the onset of La Violencia in Colombia in 1948 -a civil war provoked by the assasination of the hugely popular Liberal presidential candidate Gaitán in the street - the country had been gripped by a long and deadly conflict between Liberals, Socialists and Conservatives. Much of the countryside was controlled by insurgent groups - armed socialists such as the ELN and FARC - or Conservative paramilitaries over whom the government exerted little control. By 1964, 300,000 people had been killed across the country. Corruption entangled a parliament whose coalitions would collapse. The violence spurred millions who lived in the countryside to flee to the cities, including Medellin. In 1951, Medellin had a population of 390k, by 1993 it was over 1.5m.

Colombia was (and continues to be) a place of huge inequality. While the wealthy and the middle class could (and can) afford a European standard of living the majority live well beneath the poverty line, eking out an existence in an unforgiving urban environment. Increased numbers of poor internal migrant and the collapsing security situation of the 70s only increased the pressure on meagre social service provisions.

Hernan from Real City Tours focused on where the
city is going, rather than the sad and turbulent past

In the late seventies cocaine arrived and catalysed the ongoing civil conflict to new levels. It is estimated that through the eighties, cocaine exports brought in 2.5-4 billion US dollars - around 7%-10% of the total GDP of Colombia at the time. The drug was cheap to produce in the mountainous nations of South America and could command high prices in wealthy North America and Europe. The areas surrounding Medellin possessed the perfect altitude for production, while the lawlessness of the countryside (as a result of the conflict) provided the hiding places for the cocaine production sites, and Medellin's relatively strong transport links enabled strong access to market. Also dispossessed poor migrants to the city provided ready recruits for the emerging drug gangs. Medellin soon came to be the centre of the worldwide cocaine trade, and with it huge inflows of capital and profit. Much of this was used to buy weapons to support the feuding between different gangs. Payments were channelled to paramilitaries or insurgents to act as "security guards" for the coca fields. This money in turn was used by these groups to increase their arms and the political conflict escalated further. Huge fortunes of tens of millions of dollars were to be won and lost. The stakes had been raised, and with this so did the violence.

It was within this deadly environment Pablo Escobar's Medellin Cartel distinguished itself through ruthlessness, extreme cruelty and a gift for PR which any politician would be proud of. Steadily he picked off his competitors whilst maintaining a public image that allowed him to sit in parliament briefly in the mid eighties and give interviews to journalists claiming to be a legitimate businessman. He ordered the killing of Ministers of Justice, Supreme Court Judges, Presidential candidates, police captains, politicians and journalists. A staggering trail of dead.

The countryside surrounding Medellin, where Escobar
built his luxury prison.

Escobar's domination followed - in 1991 it was said he controlled 90% of cocaine entering the US market and 90% to the rest of the world (earning literally tens of millions of dollars per day) and had a personal fortune of $30 billion. In the early 1990s as many as 27,000 violent deaths a year were occurring in Colombia, a significant amount of them linked to the Medellin cartel, while 600 police officers across Colombia were killed by cartel assassins. When eventually the police did arrest Escobar in 1991 (a major achievement such was the fear his threats of 'silver or bullets' caused in the highest echelons of government) he was put into a prison of his own design, complete with widescreen TVs and Jacuzzis.

 The 1995 bomb had been planted in the base of "The Bird,"
the work of the renowned Colombian painter and sculptor
Fernando Botero. It remains standing in the park today next
 to a replica that is intact as a reminder of the progression seen
in the city. 

Repeated calls for him to be extradited to the US were denied by the Colombian administration due to his influence. Thumbing his nose to authority, Escobar continued to direct his drug empire from within the luxury prison and eventually escaped. He was finally killed in 1993 by the Colombian police as he jumped from the roof of a Medellin hideout. His location was pinpointed by American intelligence agents after months of searching. The killing of Pablo Escobar however solved none of the underlying issues - drug money still flowed, the civil conflict continued to rumble on. In 1995, a bomb went off in a central Medellin park killing 30 and injuring 200 (mainly teenagers attending a city music festival). No one claimed responsibility nor could the police find the perpetrators. Perhaps there were too many suspects given the city's turbulent past.

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A New City

It against that awful legacy that Medellin began it's recovery from the mid nineties. The engine for change was the public utility company, Empresas Públicas de Medellín, which supplies water, electricity, sewage disposal and gas to the city. It is owned by the city and able to generate electricity cheaply due to the hydro dams in the mountains. Around 30% of profits generated have been used to fund public projects across the city over the last 20 years with great success.

Taking a ride on the Metro de Medellin

The construction of the Metro de Medellin - the only one in Colombia - started in the early nineties, and began operating in 1995. It is slick and modern transit, bisecting the city and rapidly conveying the inhabitants from one end to the other.

Spectacular cable cars link the mainline with slums. Libraries - the most impressive of which ("Bibloteca Espanyol") is situated in formally the most dangerous neighbourhood of the city, Santo Domingo - have been dotted in the poorest of areas to provide educational and social centres. 30 story elevators that climb the sides of impoverished neighbourhoods have been installed, a new university district, and a beautiful botanical garden which we visited.

Three hundred poles light up Cisneros Plaza, an area that
used to be rife with prostitutes and drug dealers.
It is now a modern public area and a key part of the renovation
 effort being carried out across the entire city.

Underpinning these investments are principles of security, inclusiveness, connectivity and education. Systemically the city has sought to reclaim dangerous areas and install well lit openly designed public spaces. The biggest projects - such as the Cisneros Plaza makeover and libraries - are targeted at areas historically associated with social deprivation. Education courses are offered to residents in these areas to try and improve skill levels and build trust. It feels a city which recognises that its most valuable resources are not commodities such as the coffee that grows in the mountains, but rather the people who live within the city. A refreshing approach when often poverty is seen as a blight to be fenced off, rather than an opportunity to develop and economically improve.



'Serenidad' (peacefulness) displayed as part of the city's
infamous Christmas lights display 

This inclusiveness (alongside other factors) have had great benefits. Since 1992 - the height of Escobar's power and the drug war - the murder rate has declined by 90%. Medellin is now heralded as one of the top technology centres in the world, certainly South America, with a burgeoning tech industry, and has just been named the Wall Street Journal's city of the year.

Strolling through the Jardin Botanico

One night we ended up at a music concert at a finca on the edge of the city with a bunch of friends we had made from both the hostel and neighbourhood we stayed in. The feeling was one of optimism and internationalism, most locals who we talked to had lived and studied in Paris, London, Barcelona. Many young people had travelled to the city from abroad or within Colombia. The DJs on stage were big electronic acts from New York and Sweden. It felt like you could be at a boutique festival in Cambridgeshire or Spain. While inequality remains a serious pervasive issue, certainly the majority of the people of the city would not be going to out of town concerts or participating in the tech boom there at the moment, it did feel like the city was really going somewhere, and genuinely invested in developing the whole city, not only the enclaves of the rich.