Day 75: Full Circle

Day 75
Today I'm in: Romulus, Michigan

It's 75 days later, and I'm back where this whole adventure started, at the Hilton Garden Inn in Romulus, Michigan.  Only two doors down from the room I stayed in on May 5 - even the boring view of the parking lot is the same.  In about twenty minutes I'll take a cab to Ann Arbor, pick up my car, and make the drive to Chicago.  By tonight I'll be in my new apartment, the movers will come on either Monday or Tuesday with my things, and in just a few weeks I'll be a contributing member of society again.  

People keep asking me what the highlight of the trip was.  I don't think, on a trip this long and this varied, that I could narrow it down to one.  Paragliding in Chile.  Driving into a herd of elephants in South Africa.  Hiking through rice paddies on Bali.  Climbing waterfalls in Laos.  There are too many highlights to choose from.

There were low points, too.  The last week or two have been colored by a little bit of homesickness.  As the trip drew to a close I found myself noticing less, taking fewer chances, not doing enough to stretch myself.  I don't think I was entirely fair to Colombia - as the last country on the trip, it was probably inevitable that I'd be a little bit burned out by the time I got there.  I'm very happy to be home.

So let's take a look at the trip by the numbers:

- I visited 15 countries total.  Some, like South Africa and Brazil, I feel I got to know very well.  Others, like Laos and Indonesia, I just scratched the surface.  There's a lot I didn't see.
- I stayed in 43 different accommodations, from five-star hotels in Jakarta to tents in South Africa to guesthouses in Brazil.  Almost all were wonderful, and the ones that weren't at least helped build character.  I hope.
- I took 47 flights, on 21 different airlines, and passed through 42 different airports.  The biggest miracle in all of this is that I didn't have a single delayed flight or a single lost bag.  This was probably my biggest worry as I planned the trip - at times my pace was so quick that a misplaced bag or canceled flight could have really made life difficult.  It's almost miraculous that everything went as smoothly as it did.

At the risk of turning this into an award-acceptance speech, big thanks go out to my parents, for not only instilling a love of travel but also helping to make some of the trip possible.  I'm also grateful for the friends who joined me along the way (or TRIED to join, even if they didn't make it), who kept up with me online, and who passed along tips and knowledge about the places I was going.  Thanks for helping to make this such a great experience.

So with that, I'll close the blog.  It's time to move on to the next big thing.  

Day 74: The Final Day

Day 74
Today I'm in: Bogota, Colombia

I'll admit Taganga wasn't my favorite stop on the trip.  It was hot, dusty and more than a little bit run-down, and although I was enjoying lying in a hammock and reading by the pool, for the last few days I've definitely been feeling the itch to get back home.  To do so I had to fly back to Bogota and spend a final night there before catching my onward flight to Miami and finally Detroit.

Fortunately, my friends Camila and Heinrich proved to be wonderful hosts in Bogota and made my final day in Colombia a great one.  I took a cab to their apartment, and we almost immediately hopped in the car for the half-hour trip up to Chia, a town north of the city.  Along the way we picked up Camila's mother, who lives nearby, and who doesn't speak much English.  That meant we'd all be speaking Spanish for the next few hours, which kept me on my toes as I worked to come up with the right words and keep pace with the conversation.  Everyone was really good about speaking slowly for me, and I think I held my own pretty well.  My vocabulary is pretty good, but I don't speak the language often enough to truly be fluent.  It was a fun little challenge on my last day.

Chia is a fast-growing bedroom community for Bogota, but it seems to be best known for Andres Carne de Res, a massive restaurant, bar and entertainment complex.  It started several decades ago as a simple roadside stand serving barbecued meat, and over the years it's morphed into a huge enterprise spanning several city blocks, with an enormous parking lot to match.  Inside there are multiple dining rooms, dance floors, bars, and even an area for hammocks where people too drunk to get home can spend the night.  The owner's wife has decorated the whole place with crafts and memorabilia and everything is decked out in lights.

In addition to being a Friday, today was also Colombia's independence day so the mood was especially festive.  We were all starving, so I let Camila and Heinrich order a whole slew of Colombian specialties - arepa con choclo (a sort of corn pancake with cheese inside), refajo (beer mixed with soda water that's surprisingly refreshing), some of the best roasted corn I've ever had, fried yucca fingers, and plenty more.  The main course was an enormous parrilla of grilled beef and chicken, prepared salted and served on a sizzling platter.  Dessert came four ways - arroz con leche, lemon mousse, rich chocolate cake and a fried cheese dish topped with guava jam.  Toward the end of the evening the music was turned up and couples started salsa dancing at the tables around us.

Alas, I had a very early wakeup the next morning, so we couldn't stay too late and paint the town, as tempting as it was.  But I owe Camila and Heinrich a great deal of thanks for their hospitality and willingness to show me around, and I was happy to finish up the trip with good friends and good food.  I'm currently sitting in the lounge at the Bogota airport, waiting on my flight to Miami.  In just a few short hours I'll be touching down on US soil for the first time since May 6, and tonight I'll be going to sleep in good old Michigan once again.  Expect a recap soon! 

Day 73: One Last Walk in the Woods

Day 73
Today I'm in: Taganga, Colombia

A word of advice: if you find yourself in north-central Colombia and consider a trip to Tayrona National Park, do not go by boat.

It started out innocuously enough.  The boat was pretty small and had a full complement of passengers, so I wound up in the middle of a bench seat with nothing to hold onto.  The water in Taganga's bay was smooth as glass, though, and even at speed it was smooth and pleasant.  Then we rounded the headland at the mouth of the bay and hit the open Caribbean Sea.

That's when the boat ride turned into probably the most miserable experience I've had on this trip.  A small boat traveling at high speed across large ocean swells literally smacks and up and down over and over again.  At first it was a little fun and some of the passengers up in the bow were squealing.  But we had to cover seven miles, and within about five minutes the fun was gone and everyone was holding on to whatever they could to avoid getting thrown out of the boat.  For me that meant trying to maintain a grip on my increasingly slippery bench seat.  At times it felt like entire waves were hitting us.  By the time we pulled into the dock at Cabo San Juan inside Tayrona, we were soaked to the skin and two of the passengers had thrown up.

Fortunately, Tayrona turned out to be pretty nice.  I don't know if I can say it was worth the boat ride (I'm not sure anywhere is worth that) but it was awfully spectacular.  The park sprawls along several miles of jungly coastline to the east of Santa Marta and includes some of Colombia's finest beaches.  Unlike the gray, polluted beaches in Cartagena and Taganga, these have golden sand and the clean, clear water that's more representative of the Caribbean.

I did about a two-mile hike through Tayrona's western stretches, where the jungle is thickest and beaches are most accessible.  From Cabo San Juan I walked to the aptly named La Piscina ("the pool") where an offshore reef keeps the surf to a minimum; most of Tayrona's other beaches are classified as unsafe for swimming.  From there I hiked to Arrecifes - a long, lonely strip of sand with pounding surf and almost no shade - and on to Canaveral, the final beach.  None of the beaches were particularly crowded (Tayrona's not easy to get to) and the weather was really cooperative as well.  

After the trauma of the boat ride, I elected to make the trip back to Taganga by bus, even though it meant I'd be dropped off in Santa Marta and have to make the final leg of the journey in a cab.  About 20 minutes out of Tayrona, we were pulled over at one of Colombia's ubiquitous police checkpoints.  Everyone was ordered off the bus and about ten police officers spent a half hour literally taking the inside of the bus apart.  Everything - seats, flooring, paneling, even the instrument panel in front of the driver - was unscrewed or pulled off in the search for illegal drugs.  I was nervous we'd all be asked to show ID (I'd left the photocopy of my passport back in Taganga and only had my drivers' license) but nothing was found and we were allowed to continue on our way.

Tomorrow afternoon I leave Taganga and fly back to Bogota, where I'll spend the final night of the trip.  I'm looking forward to coming home; I feel like I haven't been truly fair to Colombia because my readiness to be in one place again has clouded my judgment a bit.  But I'll save all my weepy reflections for a special post when I get back to the States, don't worry.

Day 72: Exploring Taganga (or: How I Spent 25 Minutes of Day 72)

Day 72
Today I'm in: Taganga, Colombia

Taganga is not a large place.  It's comprised of roughly ten streets running east-west and about five streets running north-south.  The only paved streets are the ones within a block or so of the waterfront, and the main road linking Taganga to Santa Marta.  Houses are simple one-level affairs with large tiled patios and interior courtyards.  It's easy to forget there's a large city just over the mountain, except at night when the lights of Santa Marta glow brightly over the hilltops.  Taganga is a very sleepy place, full of children running barefoot down dusty roads, dogs and cats slinking around underfoot, and families sitting on their front porches listening to Colombian music and watching the occasional motorbike go by.  The pace here is molasses slow.

The heat might have something to do with it.  Like it does in Cartagena, the heat settles like a blanket on the town, morning, noon and night.  With only one exception - the somewhat pricey but not-that-nice-looking Hotel Ballena Azul on the waterfront - none of the accommodations in Taganga have air conditioning.  I'm staying at Divanga, a guest house a few blocks inland that consists of ten rooms arranged around a small pool and thatched-roof patio that catch a nice breeze.  It's a great place - the French owner Lucie is a real gem and a great source of inside information - but inside my room it's just as hot as it is outside.  I don't even mind that there's no hot water, since the cold showers feel so good.  There's a ceiling fan, which helps a little, but I still have a lot of trouble getting to sleep.  Any time I pass the town's one ATM, inside a little glass booth on the main north-south street, I stop in for a few moments to enjoy the free air conditioning.

Taganga gained fame as a backpacker destination over the last decade, but it's slowly moving upmarket, with more and more private villas popping up on the hills above town and new guesthouses and hostels being carved out of existing homes all the time.  The residents still rule the streets, but there are plenty of European tourists as well.  Almost no Americans - I listen to voices as I'm walking around and have only heard one other American accent in three days.

The waterfront is the town's de-facto center, although during the day even it is a little slow.  It comes alive at night, however - families out for a stroll, tourists in the bars, teenagers setting off fireworks on the beach.  There is a narrow beach, but it's somewhat dirty and clogged with fishing boats, so it's better just to look out to sea from one of the beachfront bars than go for a swim.  There's a path that leads up one of the headlands north of town that brings you to two smaller, cleaner beaches; I had a swim at one of them today.

Overall, Taganga is short on sights but long on places where you can put your feet up and do nothing.  Doing nothing is the order of the day here, all day, every day.  After eleven weeks of frenetic sightseeing that's taken some adjusting, but I did get all the way through a book on my phone's Kindle app today while lying in a hammock, so I think I'm getting the hang of it.  The big natural draw is nearby Tayrona National Park, which I visited today - more on that in the next entry.  

Day 71: Transfer Fun

Day 71
Today I'm in: Taganga, Colombia

I am never going to get caught up posting entries here.  Fortunately, Day 71 wasn't one of the most memorable days of the trip, although it wasn't without the uncertainty, excitement and general lack of clarity that come with attempting to move around in a foreign country.

On a map, going from Cartagena to Taganga doesn't appear to be too complicated.  It's a distance of only about 100 miles or so, and there's a highway connecting the two places.  I had originally planned to take a long-distance bus (after all, the one I took in Chile had been very comfortable), but when I asked the staff at our hotel in Cartagena, they said they could arrange a van transfer for me.  It would take around three hours and cost only about $40 USD.  Not bad at all.

The shuttle came right on time and was about the size of a SuperShuttle in the US.  It was about half full (including a mother with a fussy baby) and we spent the next half-hour driving through lunatic Cartagena traffic picking up the rest of the complement of passengers  It was very tight seating on the bus, but at least some of the passengers were getting off in Barranquilla, a large city about halfway along the route.  The first half of the drive - which took us past the Volcan de Totumo that we'd visited a few days before - was through a lush landscape of hills and pastures, usually with the Caribbean visible just a half-mile or so in the distance.  The driver drove like a maniac, overtaking in both the passing lane and on the hard shoulder and swerving wildly when oncoming traffic came on too suddenly.

We got to Barranquilla a little after 2:30pm.  Barranquilla is Colombia's fourth largest city (after Bogota, Medellin and Cali) and is one of its busiest ports.  It's a sprawling, fairly charmless city, although it looked to be a bustling and reasonably prosperous place, and it's the hometown of both Shakira and Sofia Vergara, two of the country's better-known and better-looking exports.  We rolled around town for almost an hour dropping off passengers and finally, around 3:30, the driver pulled up to the shuttle company's office and announced that I needed to wait there for a connecting shuttle.  OK.  I sat in the lobby of the office for half an hour and then another shuttle pulled up, and we began the slow refilling process again, driving from house to house in Barranquilla picking people up.

It was 4:30 before we hit the road for Santa Marta, the next destination about another hour up the coast.  The drive between Barranquilla and Santa Marta wasn't quite as picturesque - a flat, scrubby, cactus-studded landscape, with the Caribbean just off to the left breaking onto empty gray beaches.  We rolled through a few towns where it was apparent that poverty is still a fairly large problem in Colombia.  The conditions there rivaled some of the worst townships I saw in South Africa - run-down homes made from scrap wood and corrugated steel, dogs in the streets, and dust and garbage everywhere.  It was sort of disappointing after how nice Cartagena had been.  There appeared to be some sort of festival going on in many of the towns - we passed multiple processions of people carrying religious statues, lively-looking street parties with blasting speakers, and kids in colorful school uniforms performing on makeshift stages.  I have no idea what the occasion was but I'm hoping to get some clues while I'm here.

Finally, a little after 5:30, we rolled into Santa Marta, another port city that's much smaller than Barranquilla, and began dropping off passengers.  I was transferred yet again into another van for the short 15-minute journey over the mountain to Taganga, where I finally reached my hotel just before 6pm.  Not quite the three hours promised by the hotelier in Cartagena, but it definitely could have been worse.  Night fell pretty shortly after my arrival, so I didn't see much of Taganga until today - I'll cover that in the next entry.  

Day 70: Sun, sun and more sun

Day 70

Today I'm in: Cartagena, Colombia

As I mentioned on Day 68, the beaches immediately surrounding Cartagena and generally not great.  Before coming I'd heard them described as "horrible" and "ugly", terms which seem a bit overblown.  Suffice to say that for a city on the Caribbean, the beaches are disappointing.  Further down the coast, however, is the Islas Rosario National Park, a chain of islands that's far enough out to sea that the beaches aren't clouded by river silt or fouled by pollution from the mainland.  Through our hotel, we were able to set up a daytrip to visit one of the islands, so that's where Day 70 took us. 

We were picked up early in the morning and driven to the city's tourist docks, which are only about a ten-minute walk from our hotel.  Boats were leaving for islands up and down the Rosario archipelago, as well as some of the more picturesque mainland beaches, and the docks were jammed with tourists.  The heat was back in full force - we'd had a slight reprieve the day before, but today was like being inside an oven.  Eventually we were herded onto a speedboat, issued lifejackets, and were on our way. 

On the way out of the harbor - Cartagena has one of the finest natural harbors in South America, an enormous, deep bay several miles wide - we had a nice view of Boca Grande, the city's tony high-rise neighborhood that draws a lot of well-to-do Colombian tourists (the hotels in the old town seemed to cater more to Americans and Europeans).  It stretches for quite a ways down a natural peninsula and reminded me a lot of Recife in Brazil - a wall of skyscrapers.

Once we'd cleared the harbor mouth the captain opened up the throttle and we bounced across the open sea for about 30 minutes until we reached our destination, the "Isla del Encanto" beach camp.  It was allegedly part of a resort, although we only saw one small building that looked like maybe it could contain hotel rooms.  Most of the facilities seemed to be there for day tourists - besides the beach, there was a swimming pool, massage tent, volleyball court and thatched-roof bar.  You could also sign up (at extra cost, of course) for two-hour excursions to an aquarium, snorkeling sites, or jetskiing.  We elected just to remain on the beach, which was fringed with palm trees and was very nice.  The water was bathtub warm, there were plenty of chairs, and waiters periodically (VERY periodically) came around to take drink orders.  It wasn't a bad way to spend a day.  Midway through the day lunch was served, and around three in the afternoon we boarded the boat for the return trip to Cartagena.  All told, Day 70 was pretty sedate; I'd write more, but there's not much to cover; we spent most of the day lounging in the sun, swimming and catching up. 

Evan was leaving that night to catch his flight back to the US, and we got back to the dock in time for dinner before he grabbed a taxi.  Although he was only here for about three days, it was really nice to have some company - now I've only got five days left, which I'll be spending up the coast in the small fishing town of Taganga.  

Day 69: Jamie vs the Volcano

Day 69
Today I'm in: Cartagena, Colombia


After a nice, long night's sleep we woke up and headed back into old Cartagena for lunch and to continue exploring.  Although still sweltering, the skies were a bit bluer today and it was maybe five degrees cooler than it had been the day before (when you're dealing with this level of heat and humidity, that's pretty meaningful!) We found a great place for lunch - a little corner snack shop called Bocaditos Madrid that was recommended by my guidebook, but that had moved locations since the book was published, so we were lucky we found it at all.  It had excellent food (cheap too, which is no small feat in Cartagena, where prices are several levels higher than the rest of the country) - we each got a bowl of caldo de res, with coconut rice, salad, and a side of fried chicken, and we split an order of arepa con huevo (corn fritters with scrambled eggs inside) and fried yucca dumplings with ground beef inside.  

Following lunch we went back to the hotel to don bathing suits and meet the bus that would take us to Volcan de Totumo.  This is Colombia's famous "mud volcano," which has become a de-rigeur stop for tourists in Cartagena.  It's located about 50 kilometers to the northeast of Cartagena, and when we got there we found what looked like a miniature volcano or a very large termite mound.  According to legend, the volcano was formerly the normal kind (with lava) but a local priest, convinced the devil was inside, sprinkled it with holy water every day of his life.  When he died, the lava turned to mud, and the volcano has spewed mud ever since.

Regardless of whether you believe the legend or not, the volcano is pretty cool.  You clamber up a rickety flight of wooden steps to the top, where the caldera (if you can call it that) is full of people.  When it's your turn, you're pretty much pulled in by "helpful" "masseuses", who roll you around while giving you half-hearted massages of dubious quality.  The mud itself is pleasantly cool - not cold, but not warm either - and it's got a bizarre consistency that neither of us could really describe.  It's famed for its therapeutic qualities, which I suppose it has, but the best part was that it didn't have that rotten-egg stink you usually find in mud baths.  You're very buoyant in it; once you're vertical it's difficult to get yourself horizontal, and vice versa.  We couldn't touch bottom either - the mud comes up from some mysterious underground conduit, and we decided it was better not to think about how deep it was or how the volcano actually worked.

When you're finished up, you're helped out and you waddle down another flight of steps to a nearby lake, where more "helpful" personnel rinse you off.  They even take your bathing suit off for you, such that you find yourself naked in mostly-opaque water surrounded by people you don't know.  The mud is thin enough that washes off pretty completely - I was expecting to find bits of it for the rest of the night, but we were clean as whistles when we left the lake.

The bus took us back to Cartagena and we finished up the day with dinner at Crepes & Waffles, a Colombian chain restaurant that, at dinnertime, serves an enormous menu of savory dishes.  We headed to a nearby bar after dinner to finish up the day, although as with the day before, the sun had really sapped a lot of our energy, so we hit the hay around midnight.