colOmbia

yes, i emphasized the O in colombia. there is no U....get it right. so..i went to colombia for 9 days last april/may. i write about it over a year later, because master's degree part II has taken my attention from my blog. and i have also been encouraged by a friend to keep up with my writings. onward.

we landed in bogota april 28...i had dipped out of a class called "end of the west" a week early to make the journey (i got a B for claiming that the us and france had a positive future--the professor was germna-swiss..you do the math).....so, it was cold! coming from tropical florida to mountainous colombia...change of pace. unfortunately, i had only brought one pair of jeans and some sneakers that looked ridiculous with them.

we hung out in the city a couple of nights. good scene...relatively cheap in comparison to america. we took some buses out to the salt cathedral, which was far worth the sojourn. a friend and i licked the wall. mind you, swine scares were at their zenith at this time, but we didnt care. we survived. the next day, someone apparently died from the swine flu at, or shortly after having visited, the edifice. i survived, so did my friend. in fact, my group was 7 deep, and none of us contracted the disease. so we took a night bus to bucaramanga the next day. let me tell you, night buses are awesome...they're cheap AND they save you the fee of one night's accommodation. ;)

bucaramanga was much much hotter. we spent some time in a market, and shopping by street vendors. we went to the quaint town of giron for a few hours, and moved on, via taxi, to a nearby farm. finding a taxi was hard; but, getting up that damn mountain was harder. two cabs, stuffed with 9 people (we had acquired some friends) later, we arrived at the finca. one word: breathtaking. okay, we got there at night, so i didn't actually see anything, but i did the next morning. some of us went for a walk through the valleys; some of us slept in. then we went parapente...that was one of the highlights of this trip. paragliding, in english, i suppose. imagine jumping off of a hill and flying over a valley for fifteen minutes. frightening? absolutely...but, the adreniline rush...much greater....id do it a million times again...and it was only about 20 bucks!

next, we took a bus to santa marta. slept through the night again. hung out in santa marta for a bit before finding a ride out to parque tayrona (must see). there, we saw little monkeys and hiked an hour to the cabanas on the beach. the park is very peaceful and serene...it has this vibe--a partially hippie one...that makes you not want to leave. the cabanas we're too expensive, and..for those on a really tight budget, you can walk another half hour to find a campsite and hammocks. the beaches were nice, beautiful. several of my friends tried to find the lost city....many hours, no shoes, and a rainstorm later, they apparently did. they also took the donkey trail, so there may be a better route somewhere.

from there we to another bus to cartagena. tourist trap. it's pretty, cute, commercialized. it reminds me of san jaun, puerto rice--it's probably the fort. the city was alright (pretty damn hot), but it didn't make my top ten list. in the interest of time, we ended up flying back to bogota from there. we didn't do much, as we had a day left. as for the exit fee, we did not pay one. we had to go first to tax exemptions, where they stamp your passport, then onto the ticket booth. this was over a year ago. next week, im going to colombia for three weeks...we shall see what it brings.