Lucie & Rhys´s Honeymoon Adventure: Week 29 - Hacienda Venecia, Medellin, Tolu, Cartagena (Colombia)

We woke and packed glad to be leaving the Hacienda and tried to get the Jeep to take us over to the hostel. We ended up leaving our bags at the house (the jeep was picking people up from Manizales) and wading across the river again ready for that mornings coffee tour (that they’d forgotten we’d reserved to do). The tour was actually really good. The guide spoke perfect English and really knew his stuff. He started by explaining with a world map where different types of coffee are grown and exported to – as Colombia doesn’t have much of a coffee culture they only drink the defect beans here and export all the premium beans to Europe. After peeling and sorting some premium beans we roasted them and spent some time playing with an aroma kit, it’s amazing just how distinct different coffees can be depending on the origin of the bean, the blend and the roast. A short walk through the plantation and we were back at the Hacienda to load our bags in to the jeep before a quick swim and a lift to the bus station in Manizales.

From Manizales we caught a bus to Medellin, a big, modern, extremely clean city (we’ve been shocked at how dirty Colombia is; the rubbish in the streets is on a whole new level and a hundred times worse than any of the other countries we’ve been to in South America). Although it’s not the prettiest city, think lots of tower blocks and malls, in February 2013, it was announced as the most innovative city in the world due to its recent advances on politics, education and social development, in the poorest districts there are cable cars and even outdoor escalators to help the population move about and they built the new library in one of the poor districts to boost civic pride.

On arriving we checked into a hostel in a residential district and headed out for food with a Welsh guy called Kerry. We couldn’t find anywhere overly exciting and ate in a shopping mall near the financial district where we’d been told there were bars – imagine Canary Wharf on a Sunday night, dead and very modern.

We ended up staying up in the hostel till gone 3am so were not raring to go the next day. Tim however was keen to go parascending and having done the research and told us just how cheap it was we thought it would be silly to miss it. We caught the metro to the northern bus terminal (so unlike the tube, you’re not even allowed to drink a bottle of water) and then a bus to San Felix. The bus trip was cool, winding up the hills surrounding the city with views over the valley. The parascending was great fun; we had 20 minute flights and soared around on the thermals before spiraling back down to the launch site, the landing doing nothing for our hangovers. We stopped for lunch at a little restaurant on the hillside overlooking the city before heading back to our hostel to chill. That night the boys went out for ‘boys night’ which as far as I can tell means doing shots and talking about boobs and rugby.

Tim spent the next day in the hostel recovering while Rhys dragged himself on the Escobar Tour with me – since he’d been looking forward to it for weeks he didn’t want to miss it. The tour was ok, we learnt a couple of interesting facts but mainly we were driven around the city looking at various buildings Escobar used to own, stopping at the house where he was shot in 1993 and at his grave while our intense guide told us about how the drug trade is fueling the war and the bloodshed. Pablo Escobar was the head of the Medellin cartel and was an extremely rich man with millions of people working for him and was briefly in politics. At one point he offered to pay off the USD$13bn national debt in exchange for 3 districts forming a republic of which he would be head and where drugs would be legal – surprisingly the government didn’t accept the offer. Back at the hostel we grabbed pizza before heading to the bus terminal for a night bus to Tolu.

Having not slept much on the night bus Rhys stayed at the hostel the next day to sleep and play on the computer. After a nap though, me and Tim decided we would venture out to one of the nearby beaches for the afternoon, Lonely Planet informing us it was only a short bus ride and a moto-taxi away (liers!). it was a mini adventure, first we caught a mini bus to Covenas where we changed for another smaller bus to San Antero. From there we caught moto-taxis to Playa Blanca. The moto taxi ride was worth the trip alone, after passing through the backstreets of a village we came out on the beach and rode along the sand track. The beach was quiet with a number of small restaurants and bars. We sat and enjoyed a beer, swam in the warm Caribbean Sea and walked along the beach before finding a really nice bar with swings for a few more drinks. It was dark by the time we got back to Tolu.

As the diving was expensive Tim joined me and Rhys for a day trip to Isla San Bernando, an archipelago that consists of 7 small islands that are promoted as a paradise of white beaches, mangroves and crystal clear waters, supposedly far superior to the more touristy Isla Rosario near Cartagena. After a squashed but super fast boat ride we arrived at our first stop at Isla Las Palmas where for an additional charge you could go to an Aquarium – we sat on the pier watching the fish waiting for the boat ride to continue. Next our boat did a fly by of Isla Santa Cruz de Islote, one of the world’s most populated islands where everyone lives squashed together with not ever a foot between buildings. Our last stop was on Isla Múcura. We had expected white sand beaches, we got a sandy area surrounded by little restaurants but no beach. The sea was bright bright blue and warm as a bath. We spent hours playing around in the shallows and hired snorkels to be taken out to a buoy with a guide and a boat to spend 45 mins snorkelling watching loads of small colourful fish and starfish. Although not a massively successful day trip the snorkelling and the boat trip somewhat saved it– the spray on the boat on the way back to Tolu left us totally drenched. We spent our last night in Tolu enjoying a bottle of rum on the hostel roof terrace.

From Tolu we caught a bus to Cartagena. To get to the bus station we flagged a bike thing and Rhys had to join the driver to help peddle, in the baking heat with 4 people and 3 backpacks it was no mean task. From the bus terminal in Cartagena to our hostel we had the most memorable taxi journey. Not only did our driver not know where we were going (even though we showed him a map) and we had to stop numerous times to ask people, he got out to shout at another cab driver and the police came and moved him along and then a couple of metres further down the road we crashed into another cab and he paid off the cab with his meagre days takings. By the time we got to the area our hostel was in we were just glad to be out of the cab. Then as he dropped us just on a main road it took a couple of blocks walking in the wrong direction for us to get our bearings. Thankfully the hostel was really nice, a great communal area that you could lounge around in and air con in the dorms – a must when the temperature gets up to the mid 30’s every day. Although it was our biggest dorm yet with 10 people it was fine. After check in we headed in to town to find food and to explore the old centre. Cartagena is quite possibly one of the most beautiful cities I have ever seen. It’s really colonial and the buildings are either white with bright coloured decorations or are bright bright oranges and blues, it has a real Caribbean feel. The buildings all have huge wooden doors often painted bright colours and there are wooded balconies and flowers everywhere.

We ate out in a square near our hostel in San Diego that night for a bargain price then headed over to gringo-ville, Getsemaní which is a much dirtier and grittier area of the city than the Old Town or San Diego where our hostel was but it’s also the area for cheaper bars and food. We popped into a couple of bars before heading back to our hostel.

The next morning we enjoyed a lay in and chilled at the hostel. I popped out for a bit to get deliciously lost in the Old Town and to take some photos before heading back for lunch at the hostel. The morning was livened up by an explosion outside the hostel window when a bird landed on the electric pylon scaring us all half to death. At 1:30pm we headed back to Getsemani where we’d booked a tour to the El Totumo Mud Volcano about an hours drive out of the city. It was bizarre, you pull up in the middle of nowhere to this 15m high mole hill. You change into your bikini and ascend the staircase and climb in to the crater where you float about in the viscous mud and get massaged by local men. Then, when you’ve had your fill you walk down to the lake where local women come out with bowls to wash you clean making you strip off so they can clean your swim shorts/bikini bottoms. I’m not sure if it was a hundred per cent relaxing but made us laugh a lot. That night we headed over to Getsemani again to meet up with some people from our tour for drinks and ended up in Media Luna, a popular hostel bar until 3am.