Colombia

We’ve now been traveling about a week and a half. So far, we’ve spent a little bit of time in the capital of Colombia, Bogota, sitting at coffee houses figuring out where to go and what to do next, and the rest of our days at the beaches in and around Santa Marta, Colombia, trying to relax. We are currently back in the capital for a few days before heading on to coffee country for Christmas, which is probably the part of Colombia I am most excited about :). We’ll be staying at a hostel connected to a coffee farm, and we’ll have free coffee and a tour of the farm to come with it! We plan on spending Christmas with people we meet at the hostel and possibly the owners of the farm. We’ll also probably do some hiking in the area too. The tallest palm trees in the world are in a valley right outside of the city and they reach up 200 ft!

So far our time in Colombia has been pretty eventful. It seems like something unexpected has happened just about everyday! We’ve been accidentally locked out of the bedroom in one of the apartments we rented with no key in existence (they broke the door handle off to get us back in and then took our keys to the entire apartment – still unsure if that was an accident or on purpose). In another lodging situation, the person tried to lodge us in a room in their personal house when we had paid to rent their apartment next door. We ended up in the apartment, but it turned out to be a little sketchy. Maybe the best summary is to say that there were used needles in the freezer of that apartment and eventually, rat droppings on the counter. We have also each spent one day of our travel days pretty seriously ill with stomach problems and another semi ill/in recovery (We are now finally on the up and up and in a precious apartment we love!)

Colombia itself is pretty interesting. It has a little bit of everything- beaches surrounded by mountains, mountains surrounded by valleys, and even a few deserts nearby. In one week we’ve traveled from 8,000 ft above sea level, to seaside and back again. The temperature has ranged from upper 30’s to 90’s. There is tourism here, but not in abundance. We’ve encountered less than a handful of Americans and very few English speakers, though there do seem to be a lot of people who vacation around Colombia from surrounding cities and countries – and some from Europe too. It’s been beautiful to see so much of the local culture still intact, and so many beaches and areas of beauty not overrun by salesmanship. Of course, there are some places that are more touristy than others, but it’s a different kind of touristy than back home.

Rodadero beach seems to be a popular beach for locals and tourists. We spent a few hours there on the end of the beach with fewer people, but found a beach a few blocks down to be much more peaceful (and cheaper!). The dog in the picture was a stray who was having such fun by himself chasing the waves :).

Salguero Beach was our favorite. It had huge waves and a couple of locals who had set up tents to rent ($5 for the whole day) as well as 2 local women who would cook fresh fish and deliver it to you on the beach. This was our tent one day.

These are us getting pelted by the huge waves there 😂

A couple of the beach itself

This is Taganga, where many of the locals go to eat fresh fish. We were there on Sunday, so it was very busy. You take a bus to Taganga and then a boat to the shore with restaurants.

This is us eating fish. It was the best fish we had by far! I had snapper and Kirk had a parrot fish. All the fish we had in and around Santa Marta came with coconut rice and fried plantains and sometimes a bowl of fish soup. The rice is delicious! It doesn’t have pieces of coconut in it, but has a strong coconut flavor. We are thinking maybe they cook it in coconut milk and then fry it? Maybe we’ll find a recipe to share :).

I posted a couple of pictures of Bogota on instagram if you’d like to see some of those. I’ll try to get some of our other food pictures up in the next blog. Then you’ll have an idea of some of the other traditional stuff around here!