Hola from Colombia

[wpns4l]

New country new thread

So i landed in Santa Marta a few days ago. Actually landed a day late since in true South American form my flight from Buenos Aires to Lima was delayed like 3 hours so i got stuck in Bogota one night. Santa Marta/Taganga area is basically one of the main beach areas for Colombians and its also the stepping stone into Tayrona Park and Sierra Nevada Park. The actual beaches in Santa Marta and Taganga though arent really that nice but there are some decent ones you can get to by boat. There is also super cheap SCUBA diving here which is the main reason i came. After two months in BA i needed to get out in nature for a bit and do some dives and hiking. The diving isnt great here, cold water, bad vis and not much to see. But when you do see something its the biggest and best of that something i've seen in the water yet.

The past two days i spent in Tayrona which has some beautiful beaches but arent really made for swimming. To much surf and the water is a bit cold. Now for my fun story of the week...

So im on the bus to Tayrona and get to talking to this Brit guy who lives in Bogota now and we decide to do the hike to the beach together. When we make it to the main camp site his friends are there and we all get hammocks for the night. Also there are three girls from their hostel. So we all spend the day on the beach and once night falls bust out the rum and coke. Eventually we decide to head down to the beach where we meet two Argentinians, a Colombian and a guy from Holland.

Well the girl from Colombia has brought a bag of weed with her and starts rolling a joint for everyone. We're all having a good time when all of a sudden (and im sure Carlos knows where this is going) the police show up. They are shinning their flashlights in our faces so we cant see them. Two of them are in uniform and have weapons and one of them, the guy in charge is just in shorts and a tshirt. They start saying some stuff about how they are going to search through our bags and of course find the girls bag of weed and our bottles of liquor.

They start going on about how weed is illegal and liquor isnt allowed in the park and how we need to respect Colombia and the park. Then they start asking who is from Colombia. The one Colombian girl doesnt answer and says she is from Argentina. Then they ask who is from the USA. Again myself and the one other girl who was from the US dont answer and tell them we are from England. At one point some in the group started to question rather or not they were even real police and started asking to see their IDs... which they wouldnt show us. So this goes on for about 10 minutes when they finally start asking for money from the girl with weed and the Holland guy who had all our liquor. They make the girl with weed give up 50usd and one of the Argentinian guys gives up 50usd. Finally they leave.

Well right before this happened one of the girls in the group had gone off to the bathroom. We figured she saw what was going on and just didnt come back so we pack up and head back to the camp site and she is not there. Well this sends the Canadian girl into hysterics. We try calming her down and tell her lets go look on the beach for her. So we go back to where we were sitting and she isnt there. We see a couple just down the beach and decide to go see if maybe they have seen her. Well when we get there it turns out that the couple is actually our missing Californian girl and the police guy who was in shorts and a tshirt.

So once again this makes the Canadian girl go even crazier and she starts yelling at him and calling him Mother fucker and yelling about how he robbed us and how he isnt a real cop and then she grabs the Cali girl up and drags her off. The girl from cali has no clue what is going on and the Canadian girl tells her how that guy just robbed us, how he had a gun and all this other stuff. So now the girl from Cali is freaked out and thinking she was just sitting with a thief and was gonna get raped had we not shown up.

We go back to the camp site, some more girl drama ensues and eventually we all go to bed. The next day we are out eating breakfast when who shows up in full uniform? But the guy from last night. He says hi to the girl from Cali and is asking her why her friends are so mad at him and the girl from Cali tells him that we are saying he robbed us. He laughs and basically says no, he did us a favor.

Anyways, picture time!

[dylan]

Wow Colombia sounds brutal but looks beautiful.

[Doug]

Wow, very pretty! It's too bad that your experience of the place had to be dampened by that money shakedown. I've noticed on a lot of occasions in Mexico (I've never been to Colombia) that when someone looking like a cop says you have to "respect" them or the country, that's a way of saying they want a bribe. Unfortunately, US citizens are walking targets for this kind of thing.

[Blackford Oakes]

Cool stuff Joe. El Parque Nacional de Tayrona is awesome.

With your Spanish lessons complete in BA, all you need is a Garcia Marquez novel and an excursion to Barranquilla to let loose.

[wpns4l]

Wow, very pretty! It's too bad that your experience of the place had to be dampened by that money shakedown.

Yea all it did was put an early end to a good night. I lost no money or anything so no harm no foul. Not sure what they would have done had i admitted to being from the USA. Probably would have tried to extort money out of me. I also let on that i knew no spanish even though i understood just about everything they were saying.

[Carlos Miller]

Typical Colombian story. Did you get pictures of the girls?

Small amounts of marijuana was actually decriminalized in Colombia back in the 1990s.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legalit...bis_by_country

[Jess]

The photos make up for the story.

[Christy]

Wow, so a real cop decided to become a thief for the night? Well I'm glad everyone is ok!

So you got to sleep in hammocks on the beach? That sounds so amazing!

[Jess]

That actually sounds like a story straight out of Mexico. Would have loved to hear your British accent.

[Mario]

Next time you encounter a corrupt cop, you can always say that you're Australian, they seemed well-liked all over the World.

In those situations, it's always best to have several Colombians in the group, as the cops are less likely to try to pull funny $hit like that. I'm not sure about rules in National Parks, but Colombians drink aguardiente openly in the streets, and it get worse during carnival time.

[wpns4l]

Todays Colombian adventure.... Bullfighting

So we had heard about the bullfighting here and talked to one of the bellmen at the hotel we are staying at and turns out he lives like 2 blocks from the arena so he agreed to take us when he got off work. Its about a 40min drive out of Cartagena on the outskirts of Turbaco. The arena itself is nothing more than wood planks nailed together... amazing its actually standing and doesnt collapse from all the people. Anyways, it cost about $5usd to get in and once inside you can either go up and watch or go down and get in the arena with the bull. Word is they dont kill the bull but it does get stabbed a few times with those spear things they use and the people in the arena with it constantly hit it and chase it around. When we showed up one guy was getting carried out covered in blood from apparently being trampled by the bull and while we were there we saw two people get tossed and trampled pretty good but they walked it off. They also have a live band in the stands playing music and they play like this crazy happy latin song whenever someone stabbed the bull or got knocked by it.

one pic, nothing graphic but mods can remove it if you dont want it on the forums

[Blackford Oakes]

It was my first trip to Colombia that introduced me to formal Bullfighting.

That makeshift redondel near Cartageana, is quite similar how bullfights are treated in Costa Rica. It's illegal to kill the bull, and everyone is welcomed to take their chance to jump in the ring an taunt the bull.

I was reluctant tp go to my first formal bullfight. It was in Cali After tweenty minutes, I was grabbed by the paegentry and totally embraced the art form. I caught Hemmingway's bug.

Not sure if it's still true, but recently, the best bullfighter in Spain was Colombian.

[RaviAuto]

Wow great combination of pics...

[Maria de los Angeles]

Sorry I'm late to this thread. What an adventure, wpns. When I lived in Venezuela many years ago, it was nothing but corruption all the time. I guess bribe money should be included in one's travel budget.

[Mario]

Wow wpns4l, you're really trying to experience everything the country has and not sticking to tourists traps. Formal bullfighting is very different and treated more as an upper class hobby.

[wpns4l]

Hola from Medellin

Just got into Medellin today and will be here for at least a month so expect some updates... Today though im still recovering from New Years in Cartagena which was crazy. Best part is cheaper too, we paid $25usd to get into the best club in Cartagena and bottles of vodka were only $70usd each.

[wpns4l]

View from my terrace





Im actually staying in a nice little neighborhood, though i did meet the local wannabe gangster/drug dealing kids the other day and saw where they hide their drugs under the drainage grate by the sidewalk, but besides that its a nice area. Grocery store in walking distance that actually sells food unlike the ones in Buenos Aires. A bunch of bars and small eateries all around and i get the impression that besides those of us living in the apartment there are no foreigners in the immediate area and while i feel safe here i can tell Medellin is going to be a place i need to be a bit more careful compared to Cartagena or Santa Marta.

[Jess]

Yeah, not liking the look of this place as much.

[Doug]

Back in the 90s, there were lots of young gangbangers here called "jovenes sicarios" who would go around casually killing people for their shoes (or whatever else they wanted). I translated a story about this to help a Colombian woman win an asylum petition.

[wpns4l]

Yeah, not liking the look of this place as much.

Im the opposite i love it. Medellin is actually very pretty. Its very hilly, there are trees lining all the streets, it sits in a valley so you are surrounded by jungle mountains. And believe it or not even though the neighborhood looks run down the apartment im staying in is super nice and totally redone. It wouldn't look out of place in Miami.