Part 1: The Colombian Coast

Sooooo I´m in the town of popayan south Colombia about to get an overnight bus to the Ecuadorian border. Its been an amazing month and i´ve barley had time to put my thoughts to paper, other than a few photos and comments on facebook. Thought facebook comments would be enough of a travel log but decided to give this blog stuff a go.

So where to start?

So it all started in the Caribbean,

Check out for some more photos
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=94048&l=32b64&id=543366004
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=95498&l=8345b&id=543366004

I arrived in bogota on 27th December and promptly got an internal flight to Cartagena to meet beth in good time for NYE. Was welcomed with a night of rum and salsa, which come to think of it pretty much sums up most of my memories from our week in Cartagena. Beth had been living in Cartagena for a month with a lovely family (lucky for me there was a spare bed for me to move in for a week), she´d been teaching English in ´da hood´, and had got to know a nice little crew of folk. Actually it wasn´t just rum and salsa, Come to think of it we managed to squeeze in a random trip to a mud volcanoe which was one of the strangest xperiences ever, floating in thick mud, not being able to touch any kind of bottom with my feet, not being able to swim but also being strangly buoyant and being pulled around the volcanoe mud by local folk offering massages for a small fee. The kids hated it, (check out the link on facebook for screaming kids). Skin felt amazing after though. Also got a great dive in islas rosaries which are a beautiful set of carribbean islands, first time in ages i´ve dived with a proper buddy :)

Then Taganga - a small fishing village which has turned into a bit of a traveler hang out, great for a few days chilling, snorkeling, a sneaky salsa night and eating amazing fresh fish for dinner which we saw the fishermen catch the same afternoon.

Also the stunning Tyrona nationa park, probably the highlight of my time in Colombia, beautiful coast accessible only by a 2hour walk through thick rainforest and ccommodation comprising pure hammocks and tents, morning wake up call a selection of tropical birds. We left loads of our stuff in Taganga to make the treck more do-able but couldn´t resist bringing a guitar and selection of percussion which was brilliant as spent most of the time playing the guitar on the beach in the sun, and under the full moon, guaranteed way to meet lots of fun crazy people (check out some of the photos and videos on facebook link). Also we´d planned ahead and bought a cool box and enough muslie, tinned tuna, salad and crackers to last us 3 days, even made it stretch for 4 days, unfortunately no cash points meant we ran out of money and had to leave after 4 days although could have stayed a week.

Although it was quite busy (Colombian holidays seem to last most of January), most other visitors were Colombians which was good fun, and we were camped next to a friendly family who hacked off the coconut husk for us when they saw me struggling with my finnish hunting knife.