Unfortunately I’ve had to move this blog. But don’t worry, you can follow what I’m doing here: http://www.littlealaca.tumblr.com

I am currently on a six month trip through Latin America with my partner, Yves. We left Switzerland on June 21st and will be traveling until Christmas. We‘re taking it as it comes, following the weather and bus connections. I‘ve decided to document some parts of my experience here. Hang around for some photos and impressions of the trip! 

Not having chosen the destination of Colombia entirely autonomously, I had no clear expectations of how this trip should look. I just knew I would want to read a lot and drink lots of coffee(figuratively). Medellín is thus a city which positively surprised me in so many ways. Not only is our apartment incredibly comfortable with a beautiful view, the El Poblado region in which it is located is teeming with cafés and bars, and generally buzzing with excitement. We settled into a new rhythm of eating breakfast on the balcony (on the eleventh floor), having coffee at the Toucan Café before class, and lazing around in cafés after class with unsurprising ease.

Views from our balcony in El Poblado.

Chilling in El Poblado

El Poblado is by far the most tourist-packed area in Medellín. Week 1 only gave us one small opportunity to leave it (I say opportunity, what I really mean is that the area sucked us in with its charm). On Tuesday, a small group of travelers including Anne, Yves‘ sister, came with us to take the so-called Graffiti Tour through Comuna 13. This area is said to have been the most dangerous in South America (and, according to our guide “In. The. World.”) some fifteen years ago. The area is still somewhat dangerous, based on the guide’s accounts of shootings and gang violence, but the region expresses its fears, its hopes and its experiences through art. The entire region is covered in gems of creativity such as graffiti on most walls, houses of all colours and spontaneous eruptions of slam poetry and rap face-offs. Here are some impressions:

The final image shows a piece of art created by Jason, the tour guide, as a symbol for the endurance of the people of Comuna 13. To emphasise their resilience, the artist chose to show that he can grow a garden – life – out of sh** (his words). While Jason only moved to Medellín four years ago, he feels the city has done so much to change his life that he wishes to help it change for the better too. 

Last weekend we joined a group of backpackers to visit the Pueblo of Jardín to the South of Medellín. The 4 hour ride in a stiflingly hot minivan was absolutely worth it. Jardín is a gorgeous, colourful town with stunning views and some lovely hiking opportunities. On Friday evening, Yves and I stumbled into the first local restaurant we found and enjoyed the usual rice with frijoles and then sat on the steps in front of the church to watch two simultaneous football games played on the same piece of tarmac. 

On Saturday morning, our group joined the hostel’s free hiking group, which took us on an hour long walk up to the gondola and to a beautiful nearby river. The water was incredibly cold and refreshing (around 15 degrees). It wasn’t as cold as the lake that we discovered on a hike into a cave on Sunday, though. After riding in the back of an open jeep for an hour, the tour guide took us on a beautiful walk to one of the many cuevas surrounding Jardín. The 5 degree water inside the cave didn’t stop Yves from jumping in!

Above: Saturday’s hike. Below: Sunday’s cave.

The city centre of Medellín is incomparable to El Poblado. I must say, everyone in El Poblado (and probably in some of the regions close to it) is in a bit of a bubble. The center of town has muchmore of a Sri Lankan Petta-market feel to it. There are market stalls on many of the roads selling shoes and clothes and souvenirs en masse, and people are trying to convince you to enter theirstores from all sides. It is definitely an interesting experience, but one that had me exhausted by the end of the day. We didn‘t spend more than two hours there. Here are some snapshots of ourafternoon.

Toucan Spanish School is an amazing school and I would definitely recommend it to anyone who wants to study Spanish in Medellín. Our teacher often took us on excursions around El Poblado and, in oursecond week, we got the chance to visit the local fruit market. This was an awesome, bizarre experience. The fruit market is located near the center of town in a huge industrial complex that looksmore like a car disposal unit than anything else. We were by far the only tourists around. We tried fruits that people in Switzerland would never even have dreamed of. One of them that is smaller than a ping pong ball, you have to crack open and avoid the sticky liquid that spurts out. Another looks like a passion fruit, and feels like a passion fruit, but is completely sweet. Then, there are avocadoes the size of my feet. There are amazing juice stands that make Lulo juice (that should be a Disney character, right?). I’m really glad we had the chance to go here with the school.

Last Friday, Yves and I decided to try out one of the tours offered by the school. E-bikes seemed like an interesting way to get to know the city (this does NOT mean I will switch to e-bikes – they just didn’t offer a normal bike tour). We were not disappointed. The bike tour is run by a really great local agency called TuriBike. While I found it frustratingly unnatural to sit on a bike where you didn’t really have to pedal, it was great getting to know the city from this more local perspective. Medellín has fairly good bike lanes on the major roads around town (in some cases, they are in the center of the street which is both thrilling and horrifying). In my head, Medellín was constructed as many separate, isolated parts before this tour, and this helped me connect the dots a little bit. During the tour (which lasted 4 hours), we visited many different sites, some of which I hadn’t yet encountered. Below you see the group in front of the Modern Art Museum, views from the top of Nutibara Hill and its park, and the city center at night, with its famous Parque de la Luz.

Today’s trip to the Los Alpes coffee farm has been one of the absolute highlights. Yves, some other curious tourists and I shuffled into a minivan that took us an hour and a half away fromMedellín to a farm placed on a fantastic mountain top in the Andes. The tour was conducted by the family and a bilingual travel guide, although the farm owners’ 15 year old son did most of theexplaining (in English). The morning started with a small breakfast on the family’s incredible porch. After watching a brief video presenting more of the landscapees surrounding the farm, the familyintroduced themselves while we sipped coffee in the incredible finca. After this, they led us through the entire coffee making process, from when the plants are just seedlings to how they end up inthe cup. 

Our visit to Parque Arví was slightly disorganised, yet interesting nonetheless. We arrived there by gondola (which is a normal part of the metro system in Medellín, with the exception of the final strecht across the forest designed for tourists). We weren’t sure what to expect, but we left the gondola station without food, which was the first small mistake. We ended up having to walk back about 20 minutes to eat some semi-vegetarian food that tasted like very little. When we finished, we walked towards the so-called picknick area along a winding road with no sidewalk. It was worth it though. The picknick area is a huge park that is protected land. There are streams flowing through it, cool walks around it, and supposedly there is a Go-Ape type climbing park on one side! We missed that part, and instead went on an hour long hike that was absolutely lovely and surprisingly tiring!

On our final weekend in Antioquia, Yves and I visited the tiny town of Guatape. Rumours told us to expected a tourist trap that doesn’t require more than a day’s visit, but we decided to book the night there anyway. And we didn’t regret it! The town itself is really cute, with pavements full of little staircases, as the town is kind of hilly. Our hostel had a lovely hammock area to relax (see below), and the town itself had lots of little cute restaurants and cafés. After arriving, we went for lunch at one of the veggie restaurants at the waterfront. There, we enjoyed watching the chaos of the mud road that was under construction and the bustle of the traffic. After lunch, we walked down to the lake and rented an extremely tiresome pedalo boat. It was entirely worth the pedal out to the lake.

On the morning of our stay in Guatape, we rented some bicycles from the hostel and cycled over to one of the big attractions: la Piedra del Peñol. This is a giant rock that has 700 steps leading to the top. So after our 20 minute bike ride, of which the last 10 minutes were really steep, we climbed to the top of the rock, from which there were amazing views overlooking the many arms of the lake. In the afternoon, we took the bus back to Medellín, where we spent the night before flying to Cartagena for Episode #2 of our trip!

We arrived in Cartagena, once again, with our expectations lowered by tourists telling us how hot it is, how touristy, etc. And again, we were positively surprised. The centre of Cartagena is anadorable colonial town surrounded by a huge city wall, on which you can walk and from which you can watch the sunset. It is true that after two days it was too hot to think, so we staggered throughtown in an almost drunken state, eating at the numerous vegan/vegan-friendly restaurants and practicing our Spanish with local street vendors from cafés on town squares. We also went to look at ahuge fort called el Castillo de San Felipe, which is pretty impressive with its underground tunnels. From the fort (and from the city wall) you get a pretty good view of the more expensive part of town with its high-rises. We did briefly walk there to grab dinner, but it was a little less charming than the colourful old town where we were staying. To be honest, we spent most of our time lazing around at the hostel on our balcony, from which the first photo below was taken. To be completely honest, most of our ‘travelling’ consists of lazing around in hammocks and reading/drinking coffee. 

Hiking to the Ciudad Perdida was one to the things that I had been looking forward to from the beginning of our trip. This 4 day trek was supposed to be enormously challenging, based on the numerousblogs that I read in preparation. Because I prepared this post in a lot of detail with more than a page and a half of text and it got deleted, I will keep this particular description short.

After our exiting adventure to the Ciudad Perdida, we thought we would spend 1 night to relax in Santa Marta. This was such a cute town and we stayed at such a cozy hostel that we ended up extendingour stay by two nights. Here are some impressions of the restaurant that we went to 3 times called ‘Natural Foods’.

We thought it would be a great idea to relax in the famous Tayrona National Park after our exhausting trip. This idea had its ups and downs. First of all, it was almost impossible to find out exactlyhow to get there, so the four of us thought we would just go and see. So on day 1, we took a bus to the outskirts of town, where we changed onto a dodgy looking jeep that drove us to Bahía Concha,which is meant to be a beautiful beach away from where all the tourists try to enter the national park. Once we reached the park (after about an hour and a half of travelling to get there), we walkedall the way to the end of the beach where the camp ground and rentable hammocks were supposed to be. When we got there, they told us they didn’t have hammocks for rent! After some long and tediousdiscussion, we decided to turn around and race to the more common entrance to the park called El Zaino. We had to race because we knew that we would have to hike from the entrance to the beach formore than an hour, and we didn’t wanna home in the dark. We took an outrageously expensive cab to El Zaino, and from there it was smooth sailing – that is, until we reached our camp ground for thenight: that camp ground was probably the least friendly place we’ve been to so far, with minimal facilities and hammocks lines up with about half a meter of space between them. Still, the hike andthe Arrecifes beach made for some excellent views, as you can see in the first two photos below.

The next morning we were all happy to move on from Arrecifes to Cabo San Juan, which is the main tourist attraction in this park. This is a lovely beach with a hut on a hill where you can rent hammocks. We stayed here for two nights, all though Yves and I noticed pretty quickly that we were ‘beached out’, as we liked to call it. The third picture above shows the view from our hut. On our second day there, we decided to hike up to the Pueblito. This was an awesome, really difficult hike, that included climbing up huge rocks on all fours and balancing on ledges with fairly deep caves underneath. On top, there is another ancient settlement, this time right next to a contemporary, inhabited settlement. After this little hike of 50 minutes (we basically ran up there), Yves and I were pretty tired. The next morning, we had breakfast pretty early and then packed up our stuff. Anne and Angelique were going to hike over to the next beach, but Yves and I decided we wanted to see something new. We decided to head north instead.

Above: the hike to the Pueblito, a hut in the Pueblito, our little travelling group (from left to right: me, Yves, Anne, Angelique)

Getting to Riohacha, from where we would take a three day tour through the Guajira desert, was much easier than any of us imagined. When Yves and I exited the park, swarms of people were upon us offering us lunch, taxis, buses and soon. Our strategy is often to leave the swarm and then reassess the situation without someone nagging at the elbow. So we crossed to a bus on the other side of the road where Yves asked the driver for information on how to get to Riohacha. Meanwhile, a banana vendor asked me what we wanted to do, and I told him. He immediately led us to a cafe 10m down the road andtold us to wait. But we were hungry, so we stood up and walked back up the road, where an official looking lady told us that this restaurant was good (there were literally around 5 houses where we were, so we couldn’t have done anything different when it came to food). We ordered the usual menu del dia and Yves was just taking his last bite when the banana vendor rushed in and said that our bus was here! We paid, and rushed towards a bus (meanwhile Yves managed to negotiate the price of the bus down by 10K COP while rushing) and got on. Travelling to a new town in Colombia had never been so easy! 

On Day 2 we went to look at some more beaches, and we drove to the most northern tip of Colombia known as Punta Gallinas.

On Day 3 we took a short but awesome boat ride through a lagoon which took us close to mangrove trees and super strange birds that I cannot name. Finally, a 6 hour jeep tide took us back to Riohacha, where we recovered from all the driving for a night. The entire Guajira region is facing a massive drought. This meant that running water was scarce, or when there was running water, it was usually a trickle. Still, I found it absurd that the tourist facilities often had the trickle, while the employees at the camps used a separate toilet and shower with no running water. It is also interesting (although obvious, if you think about it) that most of the food up there is canned. Everything needs to be imported, and so, often, people there do not get any fresh vegetables and fruits. Yves and I brought 3kg of apples to give to the children, as we were told that they often set up road blocks to ask travelers for things like water and food. While our driver was reluctant to stop at these road blocks (the dilemma that the children skip school in order to do this), he was more than happy to take us to a school to give them the apples. Here, he told us that some of these kids have never tasted a fresh fruit before. 

Following the exhausting trips of the Ciudad, Tayrona and then La Guajira, we were finally able to kick back in the mountain village of Minca. Minca is essentially 1 and a half roads of restaurants and hostels, comparable to Sri Lanka’s Ella. Here, we spent most of our time at our hostel, enjoying papaya juice on the porch and taking in the stunning views of the valley and Santa Marta below.

Amidst all the relaxing in Minca, we did do quite a hike on the third day. We decided to try the 6 hour circuit to Casa Elemento on a nearby mountain and back. Casa Elemento is a famous hostel that has massive hammocks hanging over a cliff. The road up to Casa Elemento was pretty boring as there are motorbikes and cars that go all the way to the top, but the views from the top was incredible. On the way down, we stumbled upon an adorable little café where we had a drink before finishing the hike by torchlight. 

We arrived in Bogotá apprehensive of the cold, and it definitely lived up to our expectations. We had decided to brush up on our Spanish, so we enrolled in the Nueva Lengua language school. This also meant we were stuck in the 10 degree weather for a whole week. While we decided at the end that Bogotá is actually quite nice, I was grumpy every day because our apartment didn’t have heating. Here are some rough impressions of the city, gathered on various excursions like a biking tour, a visit to the city centre, a ride with the cable car/gondola up the Monserrate, and walks around our neighbourhood looking for food. 

On our last day, we went with a newly made friend Rena to the underground Salt Cathedral near Zipaquira. This is a massive cathedral built in a disused salt mine. It was built by the actual miners! While the entire place is magnificent, we went on a Saturday when the place is flooded with tourists (I know, I’m part of the problem). After this, we went to look at the town of Zipaquira, which positively surprised us! 

When we arrived in sleepy Villa de Leyva, a random Pueblo about 4 hours from Bogotá by bus, we instantly fell in love. The town itself is scattered with cafés and restaurants, most of which are closed during the week due to the lack of customers (!), and it is surrounded by mountains and forests that are perfect for exploration if you’re feeling adventurous. 

On the first day in Villa de Leyva, we went to look at a surreal house made of clay built by a local architect. The house is fully functional with a working kitchen, running water, beds, toilets and even a little office space. 

We also decided to do the 7 hour looping hike to the Iguaqué lagoon close to the town. We took a bus to the entrance of the national park, and started walking from there. The hike turned out to be suprisingly difficult, with a stretch where you need to walk up on all fours, more or less, for about forty five minutes. When we reached the top, we shivered in what felt like 0 degree weather, and enjoyed the view of the lagoon very briefly before rushing down the mountain as quickly as possible. 

The best part of Villa de Leyva was probably the hostel that we stayed in. The two guys running it, Fabian and Johann, were really really awesome. They organized events each night that made staying there more interesting. On the first night, we played Rana (“Frog”), a game in which you have to try and throw metal objects into some holes in a box. On the second night were dance lessons that we didn’t join. On our last night, they lit a little fire in the backyard and Yves introduced them to s’mores. On the last day, the four of us had breakfast together and added each other on Facebook before hugging eachother goodbye dramatically.

Having booked our flight out of Colombia for 8 September, we started cutting out parts of our plans for the South. As a result of our time pressure, we decided to fly to Popayan and then make our way north back to Medellín. We would have loved to go further south to Pasto or San Agustín, and we would have loved to visit the Amazon too, but we had to come up with a compromise. So we booked a couple of nights in the next sleepy town, Popayán, also known as the White City. This is a town in which the main attraction is leaving the town – to go and look at architectural sites in San Agustín and so on. But we loved it. It was lazy and cozy, and we spent most of the time stuffing our faces with the amazing breakfast at our hostel, wandering around aimlessly and coffee shop hopping. There was a little hill from which we could see the entire town from above, and it was perfect to watch the sunset from. We came up here on two of four days. On the third day, we wanted to rent bicycles and discover the surrounding landscapes, but the hostel told us it wasn’t ideal due to the hilly countryside. She also told us the only other thing to do in Popayán is look at museums, which we weren’t too keen on. We took the bus to Cali the next day. 

I‘ve been a bit lazy with updating my blog, so I have some catching up to do. Sitting at the airport in Las Vegas, several weeks after having left Colombia, and ready to head to Mexico, Cali and the rest of ‘the Loop’ seems hazy! But I’ll try and summarize it.

On our final stop before returning to Medellín, we decided to visit what we knew was an incredibly touristy town called Salento. This was definitely one of the highlights of our trip. Much like in Minca (see above), our hostel had a beautiful view and we had our own personal balcony! As soon as we arrived, we extended our stay by two nights. The town itself was small, with one bustling square, and hilly streets lined by colourful colonial houses. At the end of the pedestrianised street, there is a staircase that leads you to a lookout point overlooking the entire town. We spent three out of four days drinking coffee, being lazy, ‘schlendering’ through the park and streets. 

On the third day in Salento, we boarded a jeep that would take us to the famous Cocoro Valley to look at palm trees that tower to 60 metres. Here, we coincidentally met Ben, who went to Spanish school with us, and we were able to make plans for a little leaving party for our last night in Salento. So on our fourth night, the three of us went up the stairs again to watch the sunset before going for a drink in town and then visiting the vegan restaurant for the third time that week. We were sad to say bye to Salento, but pretty excited to get to see Medellín one last time before heading to California. 

Our last few days in Medellín were almost a little melancholic. We went to play football with Toucan Spanish School one last time (which we did once a week in our 4 weeks of Spanish school), and we gained one last look at the city from above by taking the gondola to the Comuna 13. This gondola ride was actually quite exciting because it climbs a mountain and the drops afterwards, so you see an entire additional part of the city. It is quite interesting as it connects a less wealthy part of the city to a centre. We heard from a guide on a tour several weeks earlier that this is a deliberate strategy of the government to promote development. The city builds institutions like libraries and infrastructure such as the MetroCable in poorer and more dangerous regions with the hope that those regions slowly begin to flourish. 

As had previously been planned, Yves’ mother, Brigitte, wished to visit California to see some relatives, so the entire family had a mini-vacation in California. Yves and I arrived in SanFranciscoand took the train to Santa Rosa, where we tried to find Brigitte and Bernard with very little mobile data. It only took about 2 hours, after which we went for dinner and then headed to our cabin surrounded by massive redwood trees. We briefly visited Colonel Armstrong, a 600 year old redwood tree (see below), and took a walk in the Armstrong Redwood State Park. We also took the car from here to drive to the beach, which made for some pretty sunset photos! 

I cannot seem to catch up with posts, so here are some impressions of Santa Cruz, the 17 Mile Drive and the Big Sur.

After a brief stop in Fair Oaks, near Sacramento where we met some of Brigitte’s relatives, we moved on to what I thought was the highlight kf the trip: Lake Tahoe. Here we had a beautiful (if somewhat inconvenient) ‘designer house’. Just a few minutes’ ride from our village, we had access to a lovely beach where Brigitte gave us a brief but inspiring yoga class. From here, we drove along the shore and went kayaking (see below). On the last day there, we did a beautiful hike along the Mariot Lake trail. Finally, we drove back to San Francisco, where Yves’ family left us to our own adventure again.

After having spent half a fortune on a fairly basic hostel for four days in San Francisco, I was a little sceptical as to how I would find it. And my scepticism was confirmed. At least, it was confirmed for a couple of hours when Yves and I left the hostel in the night to try and find some food. We were baffled by the number of people seemingly living in the streets, people hanging out noisily on street corners, dark corners smelling of miscellaneous liquids. I was absolutely shocked. We ate fast (Ethiopian, which was excellent!) and went back to the hostel to bunker up. Morning came and the city was transformed! The sun shone and skyscrapers commanded attention. We walked around town, exploring the sunny streets and cafés, crossing Union Square and heading towards Chinatown. We trudged through town becoming more and more impressed as we went. 

As we headed further north-ish, we neared the main attractions that I was interested in seeing: if you wanna know why, check out this poem. Lawrence Ferlinghetti‘s poem Dog comes from the so-called Beat era, of which Ferlinghetti and his City Light‘s Bookshop were a central part. Coyt‘s tower is mentioned in the poem too. After visiting the tower and taking in the stunning views (see above), we actually went to the bookshop, which was amazing! I decided to buy a collection of William Carlos Williams’ poems (not Beat poetry, I know) and I even got a City Lights stamp at the counter! When I asked the salesperson whether they get a lot of literature nerds in the bookshop, he said that there surprisingly only a few people that know about the shop’s history, and most people just come for the books. Opposite the street to the bookshop is Vesuvio’s, which was to the Beat Generation what the Cabaret Voltaire was to Dada. The street between the two is named after Jack Kerouac, and there are plaques on the floor with quotes from famous San Franciscan authors. 

On the third day in San Francisco, we decided to rent some bicycles and discover the city on wheels. In our travels, we have discovered that biking allows you to see a city from an entirely new perspective, and it was completely worth it here too! We cycled through many parks and past cafés before finally reaching the Golden Gate Bridge. Despite the fog, the bridge was amazing! It was particularly lovely to be able to park-hop and move on without any dependance on public transport or taxis.