An Attempt At A Recap (For my memory as much as for posterity)

Day 1: Cartagena; Old Town
Day 2: Cartagena; La Popa and Castillo de San Felipe; Bus to Medellin
Day 3: Medellin; Palm Tree Hostel and Martina; Metro/ Teleferico/ Spanish Library/ Botanical Gardens/ Krishna Lunch
Day 4: Medellin; The Ignominious March to El Peñol (La Piedra)
Day 5: Manizales; Bus to Manizales; Rendezvous with Manisha, Tomas, and Doris; Coffee Farm Arrival (Jose, Cathy)
Day 6: Manizales; Highland hiking, stream swimming, highway hijinks, and dancing.
Day 7: Manizales; A day in Manizales
Day 8: Manizales; Abortive attempts at swimming; Agua panela con queso; onward to Salento; Teresa
Day 9: Salento; Valle de Cocora with Teresa, Marc, and Herlinda (60 meter wax palms and snow!)
Day 10: Salento; A day in Salento
Day 11: Salento to Pereira to Marsalla; Buses, cemeteries, and naked Bolivar - oh my!; Overnight to Bogota
Day 12: Bogota; History, politics, and culture: a day in Bogota; Israeli food!
Day 13: Bogota; Shopping Bogota and abortive attempts at theater
Day 14: Bogota; Climb Cerro Monserrate; Bus to Tunja
Day 15: Tunja morning; Villa de Leyva afternoon; a tale of two miradores; Laura, Jessie, and Oscar
Day 16: Villa de Leyva; in search of waterfalls near Santa Sofia; Paso de Los Angeles
Day 17: Villa de Leyva; biking through the countryside and through history: from dinosaur bones to prehispanic fertility cults and beyond; getting L-O-S-T; Overnight to Cucuta and the border
Day 18: Into Venezuela, slowly but surely; 28 hours by bus from Villa de Leyva, Colombia to Merida, Venezuela
Day 19: Merida; A Day in Merida; Planning
Day 20: Into the Andes; Hacienda El Carrizal
Day 21: Through the Andes; From El Carrizal to El Quino... without Boca e' Monte
Day 22: Descending Back to Earth
Day 23: Merida; Aguas Termales
Day 24: Merida; Pico de la Aguila, Paso del Condor; 4100 meters up, 8 degrees north of the equator and 8 degress above zero...
Day 25: Like a bat out of Venezuela and into Colombia (Santa Marta)
Day 26: Taganga; Life's a beach
Day 27: Taganga; ...more beach...
Day 28: Minca; the mountains, one last time
Day 29: Minca; waterfalls galore
Day 30: Taganga redux; Election Night - you, me, and CNN
Day 31: Cartagena; Welcome back to Astor

Some things just never go away

This is the second time in as many months I've been headed toward a sailboat and, likewise, the second time I've felt like this. I guess I never mentioned it before - things just got away from me, I suppose - but damn I miss my dad.

Bogotá

It was only inevitable that I would fall in love with Bogotá. After all, my travels thus far have made few things less abundantly obvious than my love for big cities. After all, where else do you find all this within one square kilometer?

Colonial Architectural


Public Transportation* - The Transmilenio

* No, seriously, gotta love the Transmilenio: it's a subway without the infrastructure costs and quite possibly the most brilliant thing I've ever seen.

Angry Protesters


Ciclovía Sundays!

Mission Accomplished!

My hunt for mountains has led me farther south faster than I anticipated, so much the better!

Let me try to explain: Just as frustrated with hostels as I was with the flatlands, I contacted a (wonderful) CouchSurfer name Manisha and she's been as unbelievably welcoming from the word go. In fact, we just came back from two days of absurdity in Chinchina (not far from Manizales) where the landscape reminded me of Costa Rica and the people of the United Nations. Colombia in general and Manizales specifically is apparently a hotbed of English-language instruction to such an extent that it has attracted instructors from countries as diverse as India (Manisha), Nigeria (Doris), and The United States (Cathy). Throw into the mix a couple of locals (Jose, Carlos) and another [French] Couchsurfer and you have all the ingredients necessary for an unbelievable weekend, complete with hiking, swimming, and inadvertent hitchhiking.

I feel now like I am beginning to see the best Colombia has to offer and more than ever like I am the luckiest man alive!

Onward and (blissfully) upward!

It is amazing what you can and, ultimately, cannot get used to. For example, it took only a few months in the hill of Monterrey to make me a stauch devotee of mountain landscapes and it seems something easier to set than to break: after three weeks on flat ground in Panama or literally at sea level en route to Colombia* it was like my entire childhood was forgotten. Indeed, the driving heat of coastal Colombia was too much for me, and I left for higher and cooler climes yesterday. My first port of call is Medellín, some five hundred kilometers south and some 1500 meters further up. Oh and what a difference it is! The city is lovely, in its way - it reminds me a lot of Monterrey, in a way, and is likewise achingly modern but, well, greener - and the climate is idyllic. Here I am, wearing a sweater and everything! Unfortunately, though, the weather is only one half of the equation: now that I am among mountains, I want to be in them, too. Next stop: hiking!

* This from a Florida native!

Coffee! ¡Café! ¡Tinto!

Man, forget about Starbucks and try to remember everything you used to know about Juan Valdez and his friends: Colombian coffee is king. A delicious one, at that, and this royalty can be had for a song. This is particularly exciting for yours truly because after the horror that is Mexican [instant] Nescafé and the unbelievable expense of Costa Rican blends, even in Costa Rica.* No, no, here in Colombia the coffee is hot, (reasonably) fresh, and on almost every street corner and a cup will set you back about 200 Colombian pesos, or 13 cents. No, no, here it is good and cheap and plentiful and - given the complete absence of soda here and in my diet - almost worth the trip in and of itself.

* Which is especially ironic because Costa Rica is the number one exporter of coffee in all of Central America... but I digress.

All That From a Library

Like any good student of Medieval History, I adore churches and fortunately for me, Cartagena is chock full of particularly charming ones (the Spanish really did adore this city). What makes me absolutely love Cartagena, however, is not its churches but its library. [As a man of indeterminate faith but strong convictions, you see, a library will always be my sanctuary.] It is the first (non-national) one I have seen since Mexico and it is small and quiet and air-conditioned and wonderful. The other joys of the city notwithstanding, it reminds me of my earliest days in Monterrey - a library was my refuge then, too - and that much more cognizant of how far I have come in the intervening months. Forget the distance - the further I go and the more I miss my family and friends the less ¨impressive¨ geography becomes (much the contrary, actually) - and think instead of, well, everything else. Take, as I often do, Spanish as a yardstick. When I crossed the border into Mexico in April I could barely speak a word of Spanish - and what little I then thought I knew was dutifully corrected by Sergio and Erika - and pointed avoided non-English interactions at all costs. [Not my finest moments, I´ll admit, but fear not it - did not last long.]

Here and now, though, having been shot out of the bottom end of Central America, things are radically different. Now I speak not just for myself but for my crew aboard the Astor* and all I want to do is use this wonderful language I am learning as much as possible.

More telling still is the fact that now I not only understand border security but argue with them. I negotiate, make friends - and even jokes. It may not sound like much but it is proof positive that the Spanish Gamble** is paying off and that the days of ¿Donde esta la biblioteca? are long, long gone.

* A job translating was never something I expected... or qualify for!
** You know, the whole move to Latin America and learn Spanish thing? Yeah, that.

Surprise!: South America Here I Come

As the map above demonstrates, Cartagena, Colombia is clearly north of Panama* and therefore on the way home to Florida. Sure, right. Which, then, explains how exactly I ended up here [well, if add in the whole sailboat thing, I suppose], even if I wasn´t quite expecting to. Sure, right. In truth the decision was not mine - rather it was Astor´s captain, Richard´s - so even if I was not exactly expecting this, I am not exactly one to look a gift horse in the mouth; a little Colombia exploration is in order. (We will be in Cartagena for a few weeks, actually, waiting for hurricaine season to end, giving me more than enough time to explore in a somewhat limited range.)
After all, I started my trip southward thinking that there was no more necessary a stopping point than The Panama Canal - how was I to know it might just have been the beginning?

* ...and more to the point, of the San Blas Islands, from where the Astor began its trek northward.