In this modern age of reviews, ratings and the oracle that is tripadvisor, I thought it only appropriate that I rate some of my best (and worst) experiences in South America for you. Of course every dodgy meal, crazy taxi ride, noisy hostel and interesting acquaintance - whether they stick out in my mind or fade into the myriad of memories - had a part to play in my journey so apologies for those that don't get a mention.
Hostels - your choice of hostel can determine your enjoyment of a certain place in every single way. It's your home for the night, the most likely place to make friends, find things to do, eat, sleep and 'sort your life out' as I often like to do. My top 3 hostels, although very different have two common attributes - the food on offer in-house was incredible and the opportunities for meeting people were endless.
1) Discovery Hostel, Rio - right from the word go - the friendliest staff, best free breakfast, the most interesting and open travellers that you could fit into such a small homely hostel, beautifully decorated and filled with things to do, bedrooms and bathrooms designed by a perfectionist. I continued to recommend this hostel throughout the rest of my trip.
2) Community Hostel, Quito - booked for 2 nights, stayed for 6. The only downfall of this place was you weren't sure who was staff and who was a guest but you soon got used to everyone being super chatty and helpful round the big dinner table as we tucked into stunning communal meals made by the lovely chefs. Luxury bathrooms, super fluffy pillows, perfect location right by the central
market and a tour agency downstairs completed the convenience package.
3) Casa en el Agua, Colombia - more of a static boat than a Hostel, despite only spending one terrifyingly stormy night in a hammock here it gets a mention for ridiculous uniqueness. Eating lobster fresh from the ocean around us, drinking coconut cocktails in the natural ocean pool, stargazing on sunlounger kayaks whilst lightning rippled around the horizon - a pretty epic experience if not the most comfortable or cost-effective.
Meals - obviously eating is an essential part of life, and often the highlight of my day wherever I am in the world but whilst travelling it can become an activity in itself. Having already done a whole blog about the cuisine in Peru you know this already. It's so hard to pick just 3 meals that stand out so I'll try grouping meals together.
1) Meals on the Inca Trail - tasty platters of trout, meat, salads, soups and hot breakfasts - all tasting Better than ever eaten under canvas after hours of trekking
2) Seafood in Lima - a super cheap ceviche lunch followed by a not-so-cheap baked salmon at Ponto Azul for dinner (lobster, prawns and whole fish in Colombia also deserve a mention)
3) Pizzas in Rio - as much as I tried to avoid eating international foods too much I went to some fantastic little pizzerias in Santa Teresa, Rio where unique toppings such as gorgonzola, ginger and sesame replaced the usual tomato sauce and pepperoni
Cities - many cities in the Andes had lots of similarities between them - with a main plaza, Bolivar statue, food markets, fabulous street art, Favela-like areas and some sort of hilltop viewpoint. So my top 3 are ones that stand out for one reason or another.
1) Rio - I had high hopes for this iconic city, and despite the not unfounded scaremongering about its street crime, it did not disappoint. The stunning landscape, party vibes and incredible people I met - and the fantastic experience living and working in a Favela - collectively give Rio a very special place in my heart. If the opportunity arises to go back I won't hesitate to do so.
2) Arequipa - bit of an obscure choice, a fairly small, lesser-known city in Peru. It was just a quietly beautiful place with a relaxed atmosphere, great restaurants, stunning architecture and volcanic backdrop.
3) La Paz - despite having the most lonely feelings and unfortunate events of my trip happen during my stay here I could still appreciate its uniqueness. In a huge bowl surrounded by snow-capped mountains with cable cars as their main form of public transport, this city has many other quirks. The Aymara women at strange market stalls that line every street and replace any form of supermarket, the San Pedro open prison and the backwards town hall clock to name a few.
Day-trips - my favourite way to pack loads of sight-seeing in whilst giving myself a break from the constant decision making and navigating whilst also a good chance to meet some brilliant people - mostly in the form of excellent tour guides. As my Ecuador blog would suggest my top 3 are all from that country.
1) Otovalo - not necessarily the most spectacular of trips but with visits to a biscuit factory, ice cream parlour, hat workshop, crater lake and the incredible arts/textiles market in between jokes and history lessons from Omar it was a fun day. I remember thinking on the drive back to Quito how lucky I was to be here whilst witnessing a fabulous rainbow.
2) Amazon - the most jam-packed day full of monkey petting, canoe riding, jungle trekking, Tarzan swinging, waterfall swimming, face painting, chocolate making and all with only one other tourist in sight! Despite not going far into the Amazon itself I felt very much off the beaten track!
3) Cotopaxi - another day with the brilliant Omar. Lots of travel but the most exhilirating hike up the highest active volcano and meeting some great characters makes it one to remember.
Adrenaline Activities - despite being fairly risk averse generally I do like to challenge myself to do some rather dangerous things whilst travelling - just in case the opportunity doesn't arise again. I managed a fair few on this trip - hang gliding, white water rafting and rappelling 72m into a cave don't even make it into the top 3 there were that many!
1) Snorkelling in Rio Prata - not quite a heart-stopper but 3 hours of floating down the clearest river you've ever seen alongside beautiful fish and aquatic scenery made for a completely unforgettable adventure.
2) Canyoning - abseiling down 5 waterfalls up to 30m high, learning how to set up the ropes with a guide practically to myself this was a very pleasant if slightly nerve racking way to spend a rainy morning.
3) Dune-buggying/sandboarding - this activity should have come with a health warning! Back- breaking bumping along the sand, terrifying drops over the brows of the dunes and the possibility of grazed knuckles, chin and winding after your sandboard hits you in the face (as I found out) were not advertised. However, it was possibly the most exhilirating and by far the longest lasting rollercoaster I have ever been on - with the bonus of spectacular desert views!
Experiences - obviously anything can be an experience but what I mean really is an extended part of my trip that felt particularly memorable. My top 3 probably won't surprise you, they were as good as expected if not better.
1) The Inca Trail - a truly magical experience, I couldn't believe how much I enjoyed the actual hiking and the group were all fantastic. I felt simultaneously supported by the guides and porters and yet completely free to stare at the hills and ponder my thoughts. Even waking up at 5am every day was weirdly enjoyable!
2) Volunteering in Rocinha - living and working in one of the most notorious places in the world and yet not feeling unsafe as I passed the guys hanging out with machine guns was a fairly unusual experience. Looking after very cute if rather naughty children and finding my way through the steep maze of alleyways, marvelling at the view of higgledypiggledy brick walls, cables and water tanks from our hillside house was just incredible.
3) Salar de Uyuni - the salt flats themselves were every bit as dazzling as the pictures suggest but the multitude of incredible landscapes we drove through to get to them over 3 days, with a lovely driver and great quartet of fellow travellers helping each other overcome the sub-zero temperatures and altitude sickness made me realise how fragile and inconsequential mankind can be in such an inhospitable but breathtaking environment.
Sunday, 23 October 2016
Wednesday, 5 October 2016
Los Colores de Colombia
From its lush landscapes to its diverse population, its beautiful street art to its violent civil war - colourful is the best way to describe Colombia. Around every street corner there are fantastic murals in vivid hues, on every windy bus journey a blanket of vivid green covers the hillsides, salsa music fills the air around every food stall and shopping mall and in the quiet moments you'll spot all kinds of brightly coloured species from humming birds to birds of paradise. All this beauty does a good job of distracting you from the terrible history the country is still trying to put to behind it but, thankfully, the tour guides are able to enlighten us naive tourists, as we marvel at the products of politically outraged artists and the architecture of regeneration projects within the cities, on the causes, effects and current attempts to end the modern world's longest civil war.
My first encounter with Colombia's love of colour came just 5mins after crossing the border from Ecuador. I hopped out of my taxi to find the most brightly coloured bus station, reminiscent of a game of Tetrus. My next taxi ride took me to the equally, if slightly more bizarrely, kaleidoscopic Sanctuario de Las Lajas - a cathedral built in a gorge due to a sighting of the Virgin Mary. The gothic building clinging to the side of the rock with a multi-coloured lit crypt was bound to light up as it got dark - and sure enough as I walked back up towards the road the whole building was bathed in ever-changing disco colours, like a giant fibre optic lamp.
The overarching, more naturally occurring, colour of Colombia is green. From the coca, coffee and banana plantations to the more wild cloud forests and even the water of the Penol reservoir - the green is so intense it has to be seen to be believed. And what better place to marvel at it than Salento, the sleepy hilltop village famous for its outlying coffee fincas, which I daren't visit for fear of bladder malfunction. This place was, nonetheless, a magically quaint area with more horses than cars, the tallest Palm trees in the world and green as far as the eye could see.
My next stop of Medellin - previously the murder capital of the world but now a vibrant city of orange brick tower blocks against a backdrop of forested hills - was where I had my first proper history lesson. Our guide explained the history of Medellin - it's geographically isolated melting pot of Basque and Jewish Spanish settlers that after hundreds of years of cooking time became a Paisa stew - a culture who felt different to the rest of Colombia. With the help of the international political colours of red (left) and blue (right) she summarised the civil war from the assassination of a red politician in the 1940s which led to the creation of red illegal armies (guerrella groups like FARC) which in turn led to the creation of blue illegal armies (paramilitaries) and a war between them, complicated by the drug trade from the late 70s onwards as drug lords paid each of these groups to guard their crops and so drug money fuelled more and more violence. The US waded in with PlanColombia, giving funding for each soldier killed which brought about the deceitful phenomenon of kidnapping homeless people, taking them out to the countryside, dressing them in army uniforms, shooting them and taking photographic evidence of their success against the drug gangs.
From this colourful history comes a beautiful bi-product in the form of street art, giving citizens a way to express their opinions, usually in clever pictorial form such as pineapple grenades, bugs with weapons as legs and piggy presidents. The now legalised activity has become not only a way to redevelop a rundown area, like the modest paintings around Communa 13s new escalator transport system, but also a good way to attract tourism (in 2000 Colombia received 50,000 tourists, in 2015 4million tourists came - thanks to rapidly reducing kidnapping rates and fantastic transformations of the worst parts of the cities into symbols of hope). The incredible portraits, landscapes and cartoons covering the walls of Bogota are a sight to behold and the talent does not go unrecognised as we learnt on our tour - with many of the graphic design graduates going on to have international careers as grafitti artists, getting commissioned by public buildings all over the world.
For my last week in the country, and indeed on the continent, I had decided I wanted some beach time - since Ecuador taxi drivers and tour guides had been using the phrase 'vamos a la playa' to mean let's go (literally meaning 'let's go to the beach') and I hadn't followed their instructions once! The Caribbean coast of Colombia was a fine place to do so though. From the stiflingly hot yet picturesque colonial walled city of Cartagena to the wild jungle clad beaches of Parque Tayrona the natural and man-made beauty of Colombia was a constant treat. I became rather skilled at sleeping in hammocks after a night in 'Casa en el agua' - a hostel in the middle of the ocean where, of course, a thunderstorm raged all night as I attempted to sleep - after that the other hammock nights were a doddle. Between a few jungle hikes and walking tours I managed to fit in a fair amount of beach combing, snorkelling, soaking up the sun and enjoying the clear blue water from which the country's flag gets its blue stripe.
The huge band of gold at the top represents the abundance of gold that brought the Spaniards here (half of which seems to now reside in Bogotas eye-boggling Museo del Oro whilst the red stripe depicts blood - whether that be of the men who fought for Colombian independence, the African slaves brought over to work in the mines (and who are responsible for such a deep culture of dance) or the more recent bloodshed caused by the civil war, I do not know. It's sad that such a fantastic country has so much bloodshed to choose from and the white stripe of the recently rejected peace deal made a beautiful, if short-lived addition to their flag. I hope one day they can replace the red with white once more as our Medellin guide pointed out 'Better an imperfect peace than the perfect war'.
My first encounter with Colombia's love of colour came just 5mins after crossing the border from Ecuador. I hopped out of my taxi to find the most brightly coloured bus station, reminiscent of a game of Tetrus. My next taxi ride took me to the equally, if slightly more bizarrely, kaleidoscopic Sanctuario de Las Lajas - a cathedral built in a gorge due to a sighting of the Virgin Mary. The gothic building clinging to the side of the rock with a multi-coloured lit crypt was bound to light up as it got dark - and sure enough as I walked back up towards the road the whole building was bathed in ever-changing disco colours, like a giant fibre optic lamp.
The overarching, more naturally occurring, colour of Colombia is green. From the coca, coffee and banana plantations to the more wild cloud forests and even the water of the Penol reservoir - the green is so intense it has to be seen to be believed. And what better place to marvel at it than Salento, the sleepy hilltop village famous for its outlying coffee fincas, which I daren't visit for fear of bladder malfunction. This place was, nonetheless, a magically quaint area with more horses than cars, the tallest Palm trees in the world and green as far as the eye could see.
My next stop of Medellin - previously the murder capital of the world but now a vibrant city of orange brick tower blocks against a backdrop of forested hills - was where I had my first proper history lesson. Our guide explained the history of Medellin - it's geographically isolated melting pot of Basque and Jewish Spanish settlers that after hundreds of years of cooking time became a Paisa stew - a culture who felt different to the rest of Colombia. With the help of the international political colours of red (left) and blue (right) she summarised the civil war from the assassination of a red politician in the 1940s which led to the creation of red illegal armies (guerrella groups like FARC) which in turn led to the creation of blue illegal armies (paramilitaries) and a war between them, complicated by the drug trade from the late 70s onwards as drug lords paid each of these groups to guard their crops and so drug money fuelled more and more violence. The US waded in with PlanColombia, giving funding for each soldier killed which brought about the deceitful phenomenon of kidnapping homeless people, taking them out to the countryside, dressing them in army uniforms, shooting them and taking photographic evidence of their success against the drug gangs.
From this colourful history comes a beautiful bi-product in the form of street art, giving citizens a way to express their opinions, usually in clever pictorial form such as pineapple grenades, bugs with weapons as legs and piggy presidents. The now legalised activity has become not only a way to redevelop a rundown area, like the modest paintings around Communa 13s new escalator transport system, but also a good way to attract tourism (in 2000 Colombia received 50,000 tourists, in 2015 4million tourists came - thanks to rapidly reducing kidnapping rates and fantastic transformations of the worst parts of the cities into symbols of hope). The incredible portraits, landscapes and cartoons covering the walls of Bogota are a sight to behold and the talent does not go unrecognised as we learnt on our tour - with many of the graphic design graduates going on to have international careers as grafitti artists, getting commissioned by public buildings all over the world.
For my last week in the country, and indeed on the continent, I had decided I wanted some beach time - since Ecuador taxi drivers and tour guides had been using the phrase 'vamos a la playa' to mean let's go (literally meaning 'let's go to the beach') and I hadn't followed their instructions once! The Caribbean coast of Colombia was a fine place to do so though. From the stiflingly hot yet picturesque colonial walled city of Cartagena to the wild jungle clad beaches of Parque Tayrona the natural and man-made beauty of Colombia was a constant treat. I became rather skilled at sleeping in hammocks after a night in 'Casa en el agua' - a hostel in the middle of the ocean where, of course, a thunderstorm raged all night as I attempted to sleep - after that the other hammock nights were a doddle. Between a few jungle hikes and walking tours I managed to fit in a fair amount of beach combing, snorkelling, soaking up the sun and enjoying the clear blue water from which the country's flag gets its blue stripe.
The huge band of gold at the top represents the abundance of gold that brought the Spaniards here (half of which seems to now reside in Bogotas eye-boggling Museo del Oro whilst the red stripe depicts blood - whether that be of the men who fought for Colombian independence, the African slaves brought over to work in the mines (and who are responsible for such a deep culture of dance) or the more recent bloodshed caused by the civil war, I do not know. It's sad that such a fantastic country has so much bloodshed to choose from and the white stripe of the recently rejected peace deal made a beautiful, if short-lived addition to their flag. I hope one day they can replace the red with white once more as our Medellin guide pointed out 'Better an imperfect peace than the perfect war'.
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