Holiday in Colombia (10): Cartagena
September 5th, 2018 by Roger Darlington
The last full day of our holiday in Colombia was devoted to a tour of the Caribbean city of Cartagena. I have wanted to visit the old town since I saw the film of the book “Love In The Time Of Cholera” whichwas set and shot in the colonial quarter.
There was a lot to see and rain was threatened, so our guide Julio took the group off at 8 am. First we drove to Castello de San Filipe de Barajas just outside the city walls. The castle was originally built in 1536 and then expanded in 1657 as part of an elaborate system of fortifications to protect the Spanish colony from the British, the French and the Dutch, but it was not always sufficient and Sir Francis Drake managed to occupy the town for a while. We were introduced to a sophisticated system of defences including an extensive network of narrow tunnels.
Our coach returned us to the old town where Julio took us on an informative walking tour. Every street and square has its delights with wonderful doors, windows and balconies, but we had visits to three particular and very different locations.
We went to the Museum of Pedro Claver and heard the story of how this Spanish Jesuit monk (1580-1654), who lived in Cartagena for some 40 years, actively intervened to rescue many African slaves and personally baptised some 300,000 of them into the Catholic faith. Subsequently he was the first person in the New World to be canonised.
Another visit was to the Museum of the Inquisition. I have never been to a location devoted to the Spanish Inquisition and I confess that previously I had no idea that the Inquisition was applied to Spain’s colonies. The inquisition – which lasted from 1610-1811 – was an horrific act of barbarity perpetrated by the Roman Catholic Church and, when it ended, the office of the inquisitor in Cartagena was ransacked and all the instruments of torture destroyed, Today’s museum provides fascinating historical facts and reproductions of a few of the means of torture and death.
A third stop was to the so-called Emerald Museum. This does provide interesting displays on the location of emerald mines in the world and in Colombia and the differences between different types of emerald, but it is also an expensive shop which tempted Silvia with some beautiful earrings costing over £500.
Our walking tour – which included a refreshment break – concluded at 1.30 pm. Silvia and I broke off from the group to find a place for lunch – “Atahualpa” in Plaza Fernandez Madrid – just in time before the heavens opened with thunder, lightning and some heavy rain which went on for a couple of hours. In the evening, Silvia and I hooked up with two other members of the group, friends Alison and Louise, for cocktails in the local square and then dinner at a fish restaurant called La Mulata” in Calle Quero. The old town was buzzing.
Posted in My life & thoughts | Comments (0)
Holiday in Colombia (9): Medellin to Cartagena
September 4th, 2018 by Roger Darlington
Essentially today (Monday) was another travelling day as we transferred from Medellin to Cartagena. The day started very early with an alarm at 5.15 am and departure from our hotel at 7 am. It was only a 45 minute flight from Medellin to Cartagena where we were met by our third guide of the trip, a black Colombian called Julio.
As we have travelled from one location to another in Colombia, the weather has become warmer and then hotter and Cartagena, which is on the Caribbean coast, was 30C (86F) with a humidity of around 80% (it is the rainy season here).
It was only a short drive to our fifth hotel of the trip, a place in the old town inside the city walls. Hotel Kartaxa only has 26 rooms and a good deal of atmosphere with rooms and communal areas designed by local artists and a roof terrace with views of the city and the sea.
Once our guide was sure that we were booked into the hotel, we were left for the day. After unpacking, Silva and I had first little look around the old town which is a UNESCO world heritage site and had a pleasant lunch in a seafood establishment called “La Cevicheria” before returning to to the hotel to escape the heat and have a rest.
Silvia and I started the evening by walking to the western end of the old city where the “Cafe del Mar” has a huge terrace overlooking the sea where people go to have cocktails and watch the sun set. In fact, this evening cloud obscured the sunset, but at least we enjoyed our mojitos and people watching. Afterwards we found a quiet restaurant – we were the only customers – called “Anacarcos” where we had a good meal (the coffee was especially delicious).
Everywhere and everybody in the old town – every hotel, every shop, every hawker, every entertainer – is focused on the tourist and the evening is as bustling as the day, but the area is large enough and old enough to retain its colonial charm in spite of all this commercialism.
Posted in My life & thoughts | Comments (0)
Holiday in Colombia (8): Medellin
September 3rd, 2018 by Roger Darlington
Today (Sunday) was devoted to a tour of Medellin which is Colombia’s second city with a population of 3.4 million. Thanks to its location at 1,500 metres (5,000 feet) in the Aburra valley, it is known as “the city of the eternal spring” and the weather today was comfortably warm.
Sadly Medellin is best known worldwide for its violence associated with the drugs trade, especially in the 1970s and 1980s, but infamous drugs baron Pablo Escobar was killed in 1993, the military-style Operation Orion was launched in 2002, and in recent years the city has seen a dramatic decrease in violence and a social transformation.
A key element of this transformation has been an innovative transport system which currently includes two metro lines throughout the city, four cable car systems connecting the shanty towns to the city, and an extended escalator linking the most notorious of the shanty towns (Comuna 13) to the city centre.
Currently, more than 30 street gangs or “combos” operate throughout Comuna 13, controlling territory, drug dealing and extortion. Nevertheless, the area has become a tourist attraction because of its colourful graffitis and the Cox & Kings tour promised a visit to the Comuna. However, at the start of today’s tour, our guide Christian announced that there had been a recent growth in violence in the area and it was no longer safe for us to visit.
We started our city tour by driving over an hour up the mountainside to a nature reserve called Parque Arvi. The walk that we should have taken here was not open so, after a short while, we sampled the delights of the city’s new transportation system. First we took the cable car down from Arvi to Acevedo and then from Acevedo to Santo Domingo which gave us dramatic views of the whole city in the valley and – as we descended further and further – the shanty towns clinging to the mountain sides. Then we took the metro to San Antonio.
Now on foot, we looked at a location called “El Hueco” (“The Hole”) where locals can buy a fantastic range of goods for cheap prices, before wandering over to Parque San Antonio where there are 23 sculptures by the famous local artist Fernando Botero. Lunch was in an establishment called “La Fonda del Pueblo” located in Pueblito Paisa which is a small square created to replicate a colonial era venue. After the meal, Christian treated us to a local treat called oblea con arequipe which is a pair of large, thin wafers with a sticky, sweet substance in between.
Our final destination of the day – a rather macabre one – was very close to the hotel. It was the former residence of the drug baron Pablo Escobar: an eight-story building that once housed 12 apartments decorated in opulent fashion. Although the building has long been empty and unused, it remains a tourist attraction to the irritation of local residents and it is due to be demolished by the end of the year and replaced with a memorial to the victims of the narco wars.
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (0)
Holiday in Colombia (7): Pereira to Medellin
September 2nd, 2018 by Roger Darlington
The next stage of our holiday in Colombia was a transfer from Pereira to Medellin. Now, as the crow (or, in this case, the condor) flies, the distance between these two cities is similar to that between Bogotá and Pereira. Howev er, Cox & Kings had decided that, while the journey to Pereira should be by air, the journey to Medellin should be by road.
Our official Cox & Kings travel notes suggested that this was a journey that with stops would total approximately 5 hours. However, our guide Christian said that he had never made the trip in less than five and a half hours and it had been known to take up to 12 hours. He warned us that there would be road works involving inevitable delays, but that we should not worry when our driver overtook across double yellow lines when he could in order to maintain a decent speed.
According to the Cox & Kings programme, we would set off at 9 am but, hearing about the likely travel time, the group decided that we should leave at 8 am. It was not the toughest road journey of my foreign travels (that was in Bolivia), but it was challenging enough. The entire route was single lane, climbing or descending steep hills, with constant tight bends and nearby precipitous drops. But the scenery was spectacular and Christian helped us pass the time with mini-lectures on features of Colombia including history, politics, education and health.
We made three stops: one for coffee; another because some of the group were becoming dizzy; and a third – at the Mirador del Pipina overlooking the mighty Cauca River – for an early lunch. The final stretch of our journey took over two and a half hours and we rolled up to our hotel in Medellin at 3.45 pm after a total time on the road of almost 8 hours.
Located in the southeast of the city, the Hotel Poblado Alejandria is a modern establishment with 91 rooms – so no character but great WiFi.
Posted in My life & thoughts | Comments (0)
Holiday in Colombia (6): Cocora Valley
September 1st, 2018 by Roger Darlington
Today we visited three locations in the Cocora Valley located just south of the city of Pereira. We set off at 9 am and returned to the hotel about 6.30 pm, so it was quite a long day but an immensely enjoyable one without too much time in the coach.
The first visit was to the beautiful little town on Filandia. This would always have been a delightful place to spend an hour or so because so many of the buildings are so colourfully decorated, just crying out to be photographed. But our guide Christian had, without telling us, arranged for a group of schoolchildren to be in the main square at the same time as us and greet us. Silvia and I both received little handwritten notes and had photographs with some of the kids. Before we left the town, we all sat outside having a coffee in the square.
Next stop was a privately-owned farm called “La Esperanza” which grows palm trees. A particular species called the wax palm or ceroxylon alpinum is grown here and is the tallest in the world reaching heights of up to 60 metres (almost 200 feet). This is actually the national tree of Colombia, but in fact it is not a tree (it has no branches) and it is in danger of becoming extinct. We spent about an hour and a half making a steepish climb and being told all about the wax palm.
Lunch was down the road at another privately-owned wax palm farm called ”La Fonda el Escobal”. Other than breakfast each day, this was the only meal included in the cost of the holiday and most of us, including Silvia and me, had the local delicacy of grilled salmon trout. Before leaving the farm, we were invited to form pairs and plant new palm trees and give them a name, so Silvia and Alison – the two Spanish speakers in the group – teamed up to plant a new tree which they called Esperanza.
The third stop of the day was another delightful little town called Salento. As well as the main square, there was a street specialising in hotels and artisan and souvenir shops and every establishment had a different combination of the brightest of colours. There was time for Silvia and I to have a cold drink at a place on the square with the fun name of “Cafe Willys”.
Posted in My life & thoughts | Comments (0)
Holiday in Colombia (5): Coffee Region
August 31st, 2018 by Roger Darlington
Today we left the capital Bogotá and flew west to the city of Pereira – a flight of only 30 minutes – where we were met by our second local guide, a young man called Christian who illustrated his provision of information with an iPad. The local company for which he works is called Living Trips which is a good sign and certainly better than the alternative. The weather here is warmer than we have experienced so far at the higher altitudes.
We drove outside the city to our accommodation for the next couple of nights. The Hacienda San Jose was built in 1888 and it is one if the oldest and best-preserved houses in the coffee region around Pereira. It has only eight bedrooms but a decent outdoor restaurant plus an open-air swimming pool.
After a quick lunch at the hotel, we drove almost two hours south-west to visit the coffee plantation of Hacienda San Alberto- my second time on a coffee plantation (the other one was in Costa Rica). The Zona Cafeteria (Coffee Region) is really atmospheric with rolling, verdant green hills and mist-covered mountains.
Like all coffee plantations in Colombia, San Alberto only grows arabica coffee and, first climbing the hillside and then sitting in a small cafe, a guide explaining the process of years in creating the bushes, the arrangements of months in growing and picking the beans, the procedures of days to strip and dry the beans, and three techniques of minutes to create different-tasting coffee. We were told that the coffee trees are sometimes attacked by a fungus with what seemed to be the name Roger but turned out to be ‘roya’.
A little way down the mountain in which the plantation sits is the small town of Buenavista and we stopped for a short while to view this delightful place where almost every home and shop has pastel-coloured walls and brightly-coloured windows and doors. Then it was another journey almost two hours back to our hotel for dinner together.
Posted in My life & thoughts | Comments (0)
Holiday in Colombia (4): Bogotá (part 2)
August 30th, 2018 by Roger Darlington
For Silvia and me, Wednesday evening should have been a quiet farewell to Bogotá after a short visit to the capital, but we had finished the afternoon alone in the city centre while the rest of our British group took an optional cable car ride. We needed to return to the hotel and find somewhere local to eat dinner.
My guide book on Colombia warned that “you should never hail a cab off the street”, but our local guide Almando had assured us that it was safe to find a yellow public cab driving along. In fact, we found it impossible to distinguish which cabs had occupants and which were free and, even when we eventually found a cab that was free, the driver did not want to take us so far.
At last, we located a cab that was free and would take us, but the driver in his black leather coat performed frequent violent manoeuvres in the city centre and, then when he was out of the centre, added incredible speed to his wildly swinging lunges. All this was without any seat belts and with the car radio at screaming volume. Our wild journey took a full hour but only cost 20,000 pesos (about £5).
As soon as we were in our hotel room, Silvia used the toilet and then found that she had locked herself in the bathroom because the lock had broken The short version of this adventure is that it took four men (a floor attendant, a repair guy, a security person, and the hotel manager), the removal of the door handle and lock, the breaking out of the door frame, and almost three-quarters of an hour before Silvia was freed.
We were of course offered a new room but declined this suggestion since we were leaving early next morning. However. I did propose to the manager that we be given a free dinner for our troubles and so it was that, instead of going out to a restaurant at our expense, we had a splendid dinner in the hotel free of charge. We really needed that wine.
Posted in My life & thoughts | Comments (0)
Holiday in Colombia (3): Bogotá (part 1)
August 30th, 2018 by Roger Darlington
Our one full day in Bogotá started at 9 am when we were collected from our hotel in the north of the city and driven into the city centre for a museum visit, a walking tour, and another museum visit. There was so much traffic that the journey took three-quarters of an hour.
First call was the Gold Museum. Now I have been before to a Latin American gold museum – the one in Lima, Peru – but this one in Bogotá is way, way better. The exhibits – there are some 32,000 – are stupendous, grouped by region and then chronologically, and the displays are extremely well- organised in a large modern museum. Outside the building were various street vendors and one that caught my eye was selling something called “big ass ants” which were advertised as an aphrodisiac.
The walked tour was of the district known as La Candelaria which is the oldest part of the city with many colonial buildings. At the centre of the district is Bolivar Square which has the Congress Building, the City Hall, and the Cathedral on different sides while, behind the Congress is the Presidential Palace. It was impossible not to notice the ubiquitous presence of armed police and soldiers in this sensitive area.
Our second call was the Botero Museum. This is actually an art gallery housed in a beautiful, restored colonial mansion. The name refers to the Colombian Fernando Botero and most of the exhibits are his paintings and sculptures which are something of an acquired taste with figures portrayed with bulging bodies and extra large heads. However, the museum also houses works by the likes of Renoir, Monet, Pissarro, Picasso, and Dali.
Later most of the group chose to go on an optional cable ride to Montserrat Hill, while Silvia and I decided to remain downtown and soak up the multifarious sights and sounds of this bustling metropolis.
The evening should have been a quiet affair, yet for Silvia and I it proved to be a time of adventure followed by challenge – but details will have to await my next blog posting.
Posted in My life & thoughts | Comments (0)
Holiday in Colombia (3): Zipaquira
August 29th, 2018 by Roger Darlington
Tuesday was a light day in terms of tourist sights since essentially we were travelling from the town of Villa de Leyva (which we left at 9 am) south to the capital city of Bogotá (which we reached at 5.15 pm). We broke the journey three times: a comfort break where we had breakfast on Sunday, a salt mine just outside the town of Zipaquira, and lunch in Zipaquira itself.
The Zipaquira Salt Mine has been open since 1816 but, between 1992-1995, some $16M was spent to create a special tourist attraction. The Catholic miners have always had places of worship in the mine, but now there are modern versions of the 14 stations of the cross plus a so-called cathedral which is 25 metres high and can accommodate a staggering 8,400 people.
The tunnel of salt mines is located 200 metres inside a mountain and visitors like us descend through a series of passage ways to a depth of 38 metres. We spent over an hour in this strange and moving subterranean world.
Only once before have I seen anything like this when I visited a salt mine just outside Krakow in Poland. Here too Catholic miners have created a complex of chapels and a huge church. The Colombian version though was created by professionals and coloured lights, ecclesiastical music, and an elaborate gift shop make it a more commercial proposition.
Bogotá is a sprawling and cosmopolitan metropolis with over 8 million inhabitants located an an altitude of 8,630 feet (2,630 metres) so the climate is cool. Our accommodation here is very different from that in Villa de Leyva. Atton Bogotá 93 is a large modern hotel of 139 rooms with all the facilities one would expect but none of the charm of the previous mansion.
Posted in My life & thoughts | Comments (0)
Holiday in Colombia (2): Villa de Leyva
August 28th, 2018 by Roger Darlington
After a difficult night’s sleep because of jet-lag, today was spent around and in the town of Villa de Leyva, with a morning trip west to two interesting locations outside town and an afternoon walking tour of the town itself. The valley in which all these places are located is some 7,000 feet (2,144 metres), but altitude has not proved to a problem and the surrounding hills make for a wonderfully picturesque setting.
The first morning visit was to the Convento del Santo Ecce Homo which was founded by Dominican friars in 1620. It is no longer a religious institution, but instead a state-owned establishment hosting conferences and other events.
When we arrived, we found that there was a film crew there shooting a documentary about Simon Bolivar, the liberator of Colombia from the Spanish, and we were offered five minutes to look around. This was clearly unacceptable and in fact we managed a good hour in this magnificent location. The experience of the pretty courtyard, surrounded on four sides by cloisters, was enhanced by the presence of characters in colonial costumes acting as extras in the production of the film, while the chapel has a resplendent golden altarpiece with a small image of Ecce Homo.
The second visit of the morning was to the Museo El Fosil – the first time that I have been to a location devoted entirely to fossils. This small museum contains – in the exact location in which it was found in 1977 – the world’s most complete fossil of a kronosaurus which was a large, marine reptile that lived locally – when the valley was ocean – some 80 million years ago.
We returned to town where we were given a few hours to have lunch and a rest. Then our guide Almando took us on a walking tour of the centre of the beautifully preserved town of Villa de Leyva which was founded in 1572 by order of the first president of the New Kingdom of Granada Andres Diaz Venero de Leyva. This is a town of cobbled streets and whitewashed houses with attractive doors, windows and balconies. The main square – the largest in Colombia – is surrounded by colonial buildings, including the main church Nuestra Señora del Rosario which was built between 1608-1665.
As we have been wandering around, Silvia and I have been getting to know our travelling companions. All of them are incredibly well-travelled and one (a single woman) has visited an amazing 160 countries.
Posted in My life & thoughts | Comments (0)