Sorry I haven't written in a bit; I'll blame it a bit on bad Internet and being busy, but mostly just being lazy. We ended up spending an extra day in Medellin, as our tourist activities had been stunted from being robbed the day before. We spent all day walking around the city, visiting churches and plazas, and the house where Pablo Escobar had been killed.
Medellin was actually wonderful, and has the most sculptures per square kilometer of any country. It also apparently has a pretty big transvestite and transgender community. When we got back to the hostel, we were exhausted and spent the rest of the evening lounging and prepping for our drive the next day to Bogota. The drive was relatively easy. Jared was feeling very aggressive, and in a daring attempt to pass a truck on a blind curve in the mountains, accidentally broke off the driver's side mirror when we encountered a truck coming towards us and barely squeezed through the two...we then switched drivers. We got into Bogota just before the sun went down.
We were staying with a friend, Topher, who generously offered his home to us. It was such an amazing gesture, because we had to stay there several days to wait for a phone and credit card shipment from my parents. The first night, Topher, Jared, and I caught up over a few beers, and then Topher and I headed out to hit the clubs of Bogota...hard. We spent a pretty epic night dancing and drinking, and stayed out wayyyy too late! The next day, I was a zombie and poor Jared had to drag me around looking for a GoPro, as he no longer had a camera, without success. We were pretty lame that day, napping and watching movies. That night, Topher took us to a good arepa restaurant, and guided us around his area a bit, showing us all the bars, restaurants, and shops. Bed early that night. The next day, Jared and I got our tourist hats back on and headed to the historic district of Bogota. First stop, the Gold Museum, with an intricate history of gold and metalwork throughout the Americas.
Then we walked around and took pictures of the cathedral and churches, the president's palace and the old architecture. Topher remembered that he had an extra GoPro from his brother, so Jared was able to buy that one off of of him. That night we went to dinner at Bogota Beer Company, a standard gringo hangout, and watched a movie before heading to bed.
The next morning, Jared and I headed to the Salt Cathedral of Zipaquira. A salt mine, that housed a pretty interesting cathdral with stations of the cross woven through the tunnels. We then got a tour of the mines, and unsuccessfully attempted to mine some emeralds. The cathedral was beautiful, yet odd.
The next morning, we packed up our stuff and waiting around a bit for my package to arrive. Right on time, at 10am I received my old phone and new credit cards! We finalized everything and headed out close to noon for Salento, coffee country, an easy 4-5 hour drive...
Along the way, we had planned on finding a junkyard to buy a new mirror for the side of the car; unfortunately, the police found us first. We got pulled over at a random checkpoint, and the first thing the cop said as he approached the car was "oh this is a fine" pointing at the missing mirror. He then pointed at a crack in the windshield and claimed that was an additional fine. I attempted to make small talk, as I normally do to get us out of these situations, but the cop was not having it, which is when I got into my sassy Spanish. I informed him that the crack in the windshield had been there since we drove from the US, and we had already been pulled over in Colombia, so we were not going to pay for that. He then said, we couldn't drive without the mirror and they were going to have to impound the car, and we would have to pay a $1500 fine. I told him, the mirror had been stolen on our way to Salento that morning, and we had been looking for a junkyard to buy a new one. He wanted to look in the trunk (no doubt to try and screw us over with some bogus new fine). Jared popped the trunk, and I ran out to watch them. A different cop was more succeptable to our gringo charms, and wanted to know all about who we were, where we had been etc. He asked what we did at home, I said I was a nurse, and that Jared was in the military, and had actually come to Colombia in the past to train the infantry. He misunderstood me, just at the perfect time. His boss walked over , with a huge gun, and the nice cop explained that Jared was in the country (right now) to train the infantry of Colombia!! Couldn't we just continue driving to Salento to find a new mirror, and they could look the other way? It worked!!! We thanked our lucky stars, vowed to find a new mirror, and continue on to Salento. As dusk approached, we were weaving through the mountains when, you'll never guess, the brakes went out again!!! Jared was driving and said they felt funny and we needed to pull over "right now". We thankfully saw a mechanic shop on the side of the road and, attempting to stop, flew right by. We finally slowed to a stop using the emergency brake and reversed back up the hill. The mechanic looked at our brake pads, and said we would need two new pads on the front. He would happily go into town and find us new ones. We waited around for two hours for him to come back, and when he did he slammed us with a $150 bill for the new pads!! He then placed them and said we owed him another $100 for the work. As we went to get him money, I exploded. I called him a thief, recalling how cheap out brakes had been in Guatemala, and saying he had done a crappy job anyway, and we would have to replace the pads again in a month. I said he had cheated us with unexpected costs (including his cab ride back from town). In the end, I got nowhere, but it was good to vent. We had had a rough day.
We got into Salento, much later than expected, and couldn't find any place I had researched that had available beds, so we ended up parking at a hostel, and sleeping in car. Needless to say, sleep that night was not easy, and we were exhausted the next day, yet happy about having an extra $10 in our pockets. We had breakfast at the only joint in town open at 6:30, which ended up being a well known traveler spot with great food. We met the owner who was very informative, and helped us plan our day in town. We went to a hostel to sign up for a coffee tour in the area. The owner of the coffee plant, looked and sounded exactly like the grandfather in Jurassic Park! We walked down to his plantation, and spent a few hours learning all about how to grow coffee, and were then able to roast and drink two different varieties of coffee from the plantation. We can now definitely start our own coffee plantation!!
We had hoped to have time to hike in the national park close by, but we had to buy a new mirror and make it to or next location that day, so we unfortunately had to skip the hike. There were no mechanic shops in Salento, so we drive to the next closest, and bigger, town, and after a bit of searching found a place, with a suitable mirror, and ghetto taped it into place. Our car is looking more and more legit! The rest of the day, we drove to our next location, Cali; an easy drive. We came into a ghost town. Apparently it was their independence day, so everything was closed. We found the hostel, and a cheap parking garage, and rested a bit. Cali is the world capital of salsa dancing, and there happened to be an international salsa festival that night!! We spiffied up, and headed to the hotel where the festival was being held. We grabbed dinner at the hotel, and attempted to enter the festival, but were told (after an up-and-down by the hotel staff) that tickets were sold out, and we couldn't even stand in the back to watch. We were insanely bummed, also because our other event for the night, tejo, had been nixed when we heard the neighborhood where people played tejo was not so great. As we got into the cab to head right back to the hostel, I asked the cab driver if he knew another location for tejo. He told us about the same place we had previously cut. Buuutttt, our cab driver was awesome, and said for a fixed price he would take us there, wait for us, and drive us back!!! We were down! Tejo, is a traditional Colombian "sport" for old men, much like corn hole, but with iron disks...and gunpowder! When you throw the iron disk at the target, if you hit a small triangle around the main hole, it explodes and sets on fire!! We were naturals! Everyone also thought that we were athletes partaking in the World Games (we had never heard of these either, but apparently they are like the Olympics. Over 80 countries participate, including the USA [???], and it occurs every 4 years, this year in Cali, and they just ended August 4th). Everyone wanted pictures with us, and offered us free beers as we were heading out! In the end, our only night in Cali was a success; Jared had a bit of fun the night before his birthday, and we were able to end our Colombians adventures on a good night. The next morning, (WAS JARED'S BIRTHDAY!!!) we packed up and went to find our long lost Panama-Colombia sailing "adventure" friends, Alex and Kenny, as they would be joining us for a bit. We planned on driving alllll day to make it to Quito, Ecuador that night...yea right. Before we even left the city, the brakes sounded weird, and we did not want to be stuck in another mountain ripoff situation. We pulled into a reputable mechanic, and ended up waiting for several hours as they replaced one of the back tire brake pads, that had cracked. When we finally got back in the car, Ecuador was out of the question, but we had already looked up an auxiliary location on the Colombian side of the border. We drove and drove, and the sun went down, and we were still nowhere near the border town we had hoped to reach. We ended up asking police officers who stopped us, where we could stay, and they steered us towards a gas station motel...enter bad scary movie script. We played cards and drank some beers, before heading to bed with, thankfully, no scary movie aspects. The next morning, we woke up at 5:30, loaded up the car, and headed for QUITO!...almost.
The border was simple, and shockingly free on both the Colombian, and Euadorian sides, but in true border fashion, the aduana attendant had stepped away...for about an hour. The whole process took 4 hours, making Quito again, outside of our reach, but at least we were through! Colombia was hard on us: car shipping, robbery, police bribery, brakes etc. Also, Colombia is tough to drive through with just Jared and me, because both tolls and gas are outrageously expensive!! I think Topher and coffee helped us survive. Goodbye Colombia, hello Ecuador!
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