Colombia! August 2009

I arrived in Colombia in early August. The first town we visited was Popayan, where we stayed with a couchsurfing host. We didn't stay for too long, so I can't say much except that it was a pretty little white-building town with lots of horses pulling trailers and lots of bikes! Lots of women on motorcycles with high heels on. Also, an observation:
In Peru...no women drive, but there are lots of female cops.
In Ecuador...some women drive, there are some female cops.
In Colombia...lots of women drive, barely any female cops.
In Venezuela...everyone drives, everyone is a cop. ha.



Anywho, after Popayan we headed to Cali, the salsa capital of Colombia. We stayed there a couple days with a really nice fellow named Paulo from couchsurfing. We went to a free concert, and went with him and his friends to a "videobar" where young people drink beer, eat, and sing along to popular music videos.









Now time to head to the coast! First we took a bus to Santa Marta, which is kind of a gateway to beautiful Colombian beach zones. From Santa Marta we took a taxi to Taganga, which is this terrible beach with way too many people, expensive hostels, and no campsites. Well, at least we got to go swimming and eat awesome coastal food.

The next spot was sweet. A campsite called Casagrande, where I got to sleep in a hammock on the beach...swim all day...and look at the amazing mountains. In fact, this area (El Rio Mendihuaca) is the ONLY area in the world where you have ocean, mountains, a tropical biome (including coconut trees), AND you can sometimes see a snow-capped mountain veryyyy early in the a.m. Also, this campsite was so great because I met so many nice people who were working and staying there.
Anyways, we stayed here for a couple days, and on one of those days we visited the Parque Nacional Tayrona, which everyone ravessss about. It certainly is beautiful, but very expensive to enter and then you have to pay to get into the middle of the park!



Next...Barranquilla. I only stayed here for one day...so I can't say much. The nightlife is supposed to be amazing and the city is known for it's celebration of carnaval.