Baby move your hips like you come from COLOMBIA!

Benvenidos a COLOMBIA. Nice Place, nice people, cold in places and warm in others. (That was Ian´s contribution to the blog.)

Technically, we´ve now left Colombia, but I feel I have lot more to share on how wonderful Colombia is. Ian summed it up nicely, in a nutshell, that´s what Colombia is like. We`re in agreement though, its probably our favourite country so far.

By the Carribean coast, Santa wears shorts and a Zombrero, in Bogota, he´s more wrapped up. That just shows how different Colombia gets from place to place.

So what did we do there? Better question, what didn`t we do there. Colombia is probably the cheapest place in the world to Paraglide, dive, rappel down waterfalls or anything else that might fancy your tickle.

As you may remember, we arrived into Cartegena, South America`s only walled city. I think its the nicest city we`ve been to. Its got a HUGE castle and very thick walls surrounding the old city.  The streets are beatiful cobbled paths with balconys hanging over them, they make you feel like you`re somewhere in the south of France. It also has guys on every street corner trying to sell you currency, emeralds and cocaine in that order.

When we were there we met the wonderful Duran Duran, our guide through the nautical museum. Duran Duran turned out to be hugely informative and extremely friendly, he kind of characterised the Colombian people for me. He told us about the five main cities in Colombia, Bogotà, Cali, Medellin, Cartegena and finally Shakira. (Originially known as Baranquilla.) The love Shakira is not exaggerated, she`s everywhere. Funnily, we didn`t find her here, and from what I`ve been told, she`s actually in Ireland. Who knew?

Cartegena is a place easy to fall in love with as its so pretty and the people so approachable. Even the street culture amazed me. The street meats had bbq`ed potatoes on them, and the street sellers walk around selling cheap coffee from flasks. The street coffee sellers are so popular in fact, that most restaurants don`t really do coffee. Heartwarming place.

After 3 days wandering the historical streets, we decided that we needed a bit more action, that the wonderful histories weren`t doing it. We decided it was time to meet up with two wonderful people that we had met in Honduras. We made the 9 hour trip (it was supposed to be 4) to the sea side town of Santa Marta. The next day we moved off to the small fishing village next to Santa Marta called Taganga.

We only intended on spending a few days in Tanganga, we ended up spending the guts of three weeks there by the time we left. I know its a clichè to say `We just fell in love with the place`, but that`s actually what happened. We turned up and were greeted by such a friendly, welcoming, fun and open atmosphere, that we didn`t really want to leave. Its difficult to explain why we liked it so much, its possible that you had to be there. A lot of it had to do with our friends from Honduras, Paula and Darwin. They had us over for dinner, met us for drinks, introduced us to their family and generally made us feel at home. Darwin is from Taganga and works at his mother`s dive shop, the only locally owned dive shop in the town, So we went diving with him. When Darwin was working, Paula would walk around the town with us, take us for the best juice and brownies. Our hostel felt like it was our own house and we ended up throwing more than one dinner party there!

Best of all, the epic Zombrero clad Santa`s were out in the 30 degree heat. I think the prospect of a hot christmas where people would still be in shorts, t-shirst and sunnies had me scared though. I didn`t know what to make of it!

While we were based in Taganga, we made out trip into the Jungle to visit the Lost City. We also visited the National Park at Parque Nacional Tayrona, recommended as one of the best beaches in all South America. While I can`t speak for the rest of South America just yet, it was incredible. The beach in Tayrona is littered with giant boulders that defy perspective. Ian would walk up to them with the intention of climbing a few and he could only ever get so far. It was pretty much impossible to judge the distances and size of the boulders.

While the beach in Tayrona was fabulous, getting there was another matter. Once you arrive at the park, we had to walk for about 2 hours through mud rivers and jungle paths which were heavy on jungle and light on the paths. It was a disaster! As it turns out, we had taken the recommendation of a guide we met at the entrance and it turned out to be poor advice. What is normally a relatively pleasent stroll through the jungle was turned into a never ending struggle through mud flows because of the rain. We should have gone right. After two nights on hammocks and the promise of rain for the next few days, we decided to cut our loses and head back to Taganga before the trail was swallowed whole. (We opted not to pay for the horses since Darwin told us they have ticks!)

After a few more days diving and generally hanging out in Taganga it was time to move on. We couldn`t really delay any longer, as much as we might have liked to. We said sad goodbyes to Paula and Darwin, did two last dives and headed for the adventure capital of Colombia, San Gil.

San Gil is where masses of Colombians head on their holidays. The weekend we arrived it just so happened to be a national holiday, our hostel was booked out. Completely with Colombian tourists. That`s one of the other really warm things about travelling around Colombian, you might be in an extremely touristy place. Chances are though, all of the other tourists will be Colombian.

The day we decided to take to the sky and go Paragliding, we hitched a lift with 4 Colombian tourists down for a weekend getaway. The other 40 people waiting to go Paragliding, all Colombian. We were other only two gringos there.

The paragliding itself was amazing. I felt like I was a bird, and a few times, I was looking down over them hovering underneath. There was a slight moment of nerves before we were about to take off, but the second I saw the ground fall away beneath me and I hear the woooshing in my ears, I was laughing and singing. R Kelly came to mind, `I believe I can fly`. Ian unfortunatley didn`t get to go because there wasn`t enough wind. Apparently, a breeze could knock me over as it is, so I didn`t need all that much.

When we headed off for some wild west action on the Cavalgatos, (horse riding), the other guy was a Colombian from Bogotà with his Finnish girlfriend. When we hiked up to the 40 meter high waterfall that some crazy people (like Nath & Mel) rappel down, we met only Colombians going to or from the waterfall.

You might be a stupid lost tourists in Colombia, but guaranteed, the other stupid lost tourists around you are probably Colombian and can talk you out of whatever it is you`ve gotten yourself into.

When we had had our fill

Ecuador, what can´t you do?

Faithful to my New Years resolution, welcome to my ever more frequent bogging update.

In the words of Sash, ECUADOR!  What a place, its rough and ready and brimming with fun places to go and some of the world`s friendliest people.

We arrived into Otavalo, Ecuador after a 36hour bus from Bogota. (There was a landslide, the bus got delayed).  We were definately dirty and tired and stiff, but Otavalo`s charm won us over pretty quickly. Otavalo is famous for its market which is supposedly the best in South America. I haven´t been to all the markets in South America yet, but so far, its definately beat any in Central America and was fantastic fun!

We had one full day of market training, where I had to learn how to bargin. Now, Ian is a pretty big barginer, there`s few who beat Ian to a good deal. So I had a very good teacher. That said, from hwat I can tell, the secret to bargining is to show no interest whatsoever in anything in the market. This is easier said than done, particularly for me! (I`ve been known to get overexcited in the past.)

The market has everything from Woolen jumpers, socks and hats, to Cushion covers and jewerly. The colours of the wall hangings and rugs nearly make your eyes water they´re so vivid. The choice of hats is mind boggling, from leather and cow hide cowboy, to hardened wool

Patagonian Wilderness

Welcome back my fearless followers.

I realise that my resolution to keep the blog updated every two weeks has fallen by the wayside a little, but in my defence, there is little or no internet in Patagonia. Where there is internet, you have to sacrifice your first born child to pay for it, and as I had no children to give up, I ended up with very little internet time.

When I first heard talk about Patognia, I thought it must be some country in South America. (This was a very long time ago). In my defence, people talk about going to Patagonia in the same with they talk about going to the Galapacos (also not a country). You could be forgiven for the mistake if you were 12.

When you talk to other travellers about Patagonia, they've usually managed one or two hikes but more likely, they've avoided it altogether because its time consuming and pretty pricey. Everyone says Patagonia takes at least a month, probably more if you really want to see it properly, and they're right. It takes 4 days in a ferry to get from Puerto Montt (main starting point in Chile) to Puerto Natales (starting point for Torres del Paine National Park). There's no way around it, a visit to Patagonia is slow and expensive and you usually end up for days in a place that you had only planned on spending a few hours. Getting around is a pain in the back, quite literally you will develop a pain in your back from all the time on buses. Also, if you're from Ireland, you'll be surprised how much it looks like Ireland. Aside from penguins, snow capped mountains and glaciers, you could acutally be in Ireland. Right down to Fuschia and Foxgloves!