Colombia - Carribean Coast

more photos of this part of the trip are here

May 12th

Nearly ten days in Colombia have passed by, and we are about to finally leave the Caribbean coast behind us and start into the first stretches of the Andes towards the capital of the country, Bogotá.
Columbia has offered us a very good and welcoming start into South America. We arrived to the city of Turbo on the Colombian mainland after all the weeks on boats in between the two parts of the American continent. The last days on the boats had gotten a bit long as we were getting more and more restless to get moving at our own pace again instead of waiting around for even more coconuts (see last blog), so we got of “our” boat and jumped onto some faster moving carriers and finally some little “pangas” (local longboats) to get to the Panamanian border town of Puerto Obaldia. On the way there we were joined for the last several days by two brothers from Colorado and a mother with her 5-year old kid from Medellin, Colombia to share the costs of the rather expensive transport by private boat. We were a funny travel group: our visas for Panama were expiring the day we arrived at the border town, one of the brothers had had his backpack including passport stolen the day we met and thus wasn't sure if he would be able to cross, and our Colombian friend had overstayed her visa in Panama for about a year and was thinking of having to cross illegally too... we felt like a family of illegal immigrants heading into hostile territory, only that we were swimming against the current of refugees and immigrants, migrating south... But in the end we all got across without troubles, as the surprisingly efficient local police “found” the stolen luggage with all its contents, and the visa issues were solved by friendly migration officials.

Getting the final stretch to the Colombian mainland was another story, as boats were rare and expensive, and their greedy owners were monopolizing the market and extremely unfriendly, so it took us another 2 days to resign to the exaggerated transport fees and get into their panga to reach Turbo where we said goodbye to our new friends (until we visit them in Medellin). Once there this bad first impression of Colombia dissolved quickly when overly friendly gas station staff offered sandblaster, soap, high pressure water sprayers and air to help us get the weeks worth of salt off the bikes, new chains on, and in general get everything nice and shiny again.
The wonderful friendliness continued that way as we cycled along the Caribbean coast towards Cartagena: we were greeted in many places by very curious, inquiring and friendly Colombians who asked lots of questions to find out who we are and how we had gotten to where we were on our bikes. Some cars and motorcyclists would ride along side us and chat about where we go, where from, if we ever get tired; some even pulled over when they saw us stopping for a water or (to our frustration) pee break and would talk for a while, telling us where there is good accommodation, inviting us to stay with them if we ever came back, and getting our blog address to look at our photos. This is helping us get used to the new Colombian Spanish accent and dialects!

Another extremely surprising and refreshing experience is biking with no trash anywhere! We immediately noticed the lack of trash thrown around and the cleanliness of not only the highways and roadsides, but also the towns and cities. Phew! It is good to know that not all of Latin Americans are litter-bugs and there are many who respect the earth. However less refreshing was the intense heat, making much of the riding which should have been very easy, as it was flat, quiet a struggle: it remained around 98 degrees F (37 C) with high humidity from nearly 9am to 4pm. Furthermore, drinkable water was sometimes difficult to get and so we struggled at times thirsty in the oppressive weight of the air – luckily camping on the ocean's shore rewarded for an evening cool-off. A few very rushed mornings trying to flee the hordes of sand flies and mosquitoes after sweaty, sleepless nights in the tent didn't help us get through the days, nonetheless, we managed to enjoy the countryside: wide rolling hills and flatlands of grassy cow pastures mixed in with palms and villages scattered around the many lakes and wetlands. So far (and we keep our fingers crossed) this rainy season has been mild and we haven't had more than a few nights and one day of rain.

One of the highlights of this week was a mud volcano on the side of the road. We are not so sure if it really is a volcano, but everybody called it “El Volcan”: a small crater of bubbling mud, in perfect density for free floating laziness like out in space. Getting anywhere in the mud is nearly impossible, too thick to swim, too thin to walk, but you don't sink at all, you just lay there like a walrus. Getting out the mud made us feel like very fat lethargic people, so heavy on our bodies was the sticky stuff. But after a shower we felt all refreshed, with our skin soft, clean and dry like little baby bottoms.

May 17th

This first week of cycling went really well, considering we had had a 1 month break from the bikes – we even had two days of nearly 100km each! This achievement brought us in time to the old colonial city of Cartagena to celebrate our 6 months anniversary of this trip and Swen's birthday there. A nice location for these events, as Cartagena was one of the major ports of the Spanish empire in the 16th and 17th century, and the old town has barely changed since then. Big restoration works in the last years make many streets really look like “back then”, nearly all of the buildings are in perfect colonial style with their little balconies, huge wooden doors, and colorful walls and window frames. The horse carts that chauffeur tourists through the narrow lanes give the place an even more ancient feeling, so that the illusion is close to perfect, except for that there are many expensive restaurants, fancy hotels and very chic art and fashion stores all over...

So we spent a few days strolling the streets, sipping little coffees sold by street vendors everywhere, sitting on plazas and the outer walls, visiting the gold museum and one of the many old fortresses built all around to protect the city. It is a bit touristy but deservedly so, and the local vegetarian restaurant served us a delicious anniversary/birthday lunch.

The city gave us as well the occasion to do some of the organizational stuff that accumulates from time to time: exchanging reading books in some of the hostels, doing our laundry, organizing our photos taken in the last weeks, cleaning out all our gear.... We even met 4 other bike travelers, all going north who gave us good tips about roads and conditions ahead of us (i.e. beware of biting dogs in northern Peru! One guy got bit by one of the million ferocious street dogs and had to get rabies shots!)

As we saw posters announcing Sargento Garcia in town a few days later we got tickets and instead of staying a few more days in the city we took the opportunity to escape the city for a lonesome paradise beach 40km down the coast on a little peninsula. It was really beautiful: white sand, palms, turquoise waters, some coral reefs for snorkeling, and not many people on our end of the beach, where we camped at a little restaurant and relaxed in its beach chairs and hammocks... nothing more to say about this – you can imagine it was – see the photos!

As we cycled out to the beach, through over 20km of city suburbs, industrial areas, oil refineries and then 20km of dirt road with ongoing construction works to get in paved (we got VERY dusty!), we decided we want to get back more relaxed and less dirty so we took a tourist boat into town in the afternoon. Even though we were sick of boats after San Blas, getting into Cartagena by boat was really worth it as it gave a new view onto the stark contrast of old town with its walls and fortresses, the nearby industrial and harbor areas, and the tourist hotels and skyscrapers right next to it all.

We spent one last day in the city, exploring the huge stone fortress built just beyond the city walls to protect it against the pirates, who had plundered the richnesses destined for shipping to the Spanish court a few times before in the 16th and 17th centuries. It has an amazing system of supply tunnels underneath and through it, that were great fun to get lost in!

Now we finally have left the Caribbean behind us for good and are on our way to the northern outposts of the Andes, which will be our companion for the months to come. The snorkeling gear got sold, the ocean will be rarely in view, a new landscape is waiting for us...