The Giant Rock of Guatape

So the standard day trip out of Medellin is Guatape and its giant rock. Apparently a giant was walking through the valley one day carrying his wife and he dropped her. Naturally she turned into a rock. And here she is. 

Apparently somebody first climbed the rock in 1954 but it wasn't until much more recently that they built 740 concrete stairs so you could climb to the top to take in 'the best view in the world'. 

After we had witnessed this amazing view we headed off for a standard Colombian lunch. Ever noticed how there's no Colombian restaurants outside of Colombia? It's because their food is ummm boring. And every restaurant sells exactly the same thing basically. Here's the local 'bandeja' (tray) with pork, minced meat, egg, avocado, beans, rice, plantain, arepa (flavourless corn bread thing) and 'salad'. 

After lunch we went on a fairly uneventful boat ride on this boat. 

Then we went for a wander around the colourful town. The tour guide told us that people started painting things on the bottom of their walls to protect them from chickens and when kids kick their soccer ball against the wall. This made no sense to me but I went with it nonetheless.

We ended up in the main square which was just as colourful. 

Then I met a fat little dog. He was pretty lazy but eventually he came over to me and promptly rolled over for a tummy rub. After taking numerous photos and scratching his tummy for ten minutes he suddenly snapped at me and only then the people at the coffee shop told me he would probably bite me. So that was the end of that.   

Obesity and Innovation in Medellin

If you're watching Narcos like most people I know then you probably know more about Medellin than me. Besides old mate Pablo, Medellin is also well known for some chubby looking statues by a dude called Botero. He's a native of the city and supposedly Latin America's most well known and quoted artist (thanks Wikipedia). He's donated a lot of his work to the city and other museums in Colombia. 

Besides sculpture he also paints and a replica of one of his paintings is displayed in the San Antonio metro station. It's the Virgin Mary obviously after a few too many pies. 

The other thing that Medellin is now famous for is innovation apparently. In 2013 they won some award which says they were the most innovative city and they seem very proud of that. They're pouring a lot of money into cleaning up their city and improving the lives of the people here. Like a lot of mountainous Latin America they have cable cars up to the poorer areas in the surrounding mountains. 

This is the view on the way up and then from the top of one of the cable cars.

The other thing they've done here is install urban escalators in one of the communas built on a particularly steep hill. 

This used to be an extremely unsafe area and most likely mentioned in Narcos  if you're paying attention. It's called Comuna 13 but these days it's much safer and a lot of effort is being put into community programs, street art and infrastructure. 

These kids are part of La Semillitas (little seeds) which is a youth development program. They get a special shirt, food everyday and other benefits (like trips to the water park) in turn for being a kids neighbourhood watch program and basically developed into community role models. They joined us when we arrived in the Comuna which I thought was nice. I soon realised why they were so friendly...our tour guide bought them all mango icecreams!

Colombian Coffee

Next thing to do in Salento was to visit a coffee finca (estate). We decided to combine this with a horse ride since it was an hour away by foot and we were happy enough with our efforts from the day before. 

Here's us on our horses. Spaghetti O was rude enough to immediately forget her horse's name as soon as she learnt it. My horse was called Piel Roja which is probably one of the most boring names ever. It means red skin. Anyway I'd requested the fastest horse and that he was. 

So off we went towards the coffee finca through the beautiful Salento area. 

 

Here's me riding down through the banana trees into the Don Elias' coffee Finca.

We did a short tour where we learnt about the coffee plants (which originated in Ethiopia). Here's one of the plants. It flowers twice a year and each flower turns into a coffee bean. 

Please see below an excellent photo demonstrating the various stages of the coffee bean. 

All of the harvesting is done here by hand. They take off the outer skins and let the beans dry in a green house type thing like below. This is a nice change to Vietnam where they just chuck a tarp out on the road and dry them with the traffic passing by!

After that they get roasted in big pots and then either ground or sold as whole beans. I think he said they export 80% of what they grow. 

They also have lots of other plants in with the coffee plants like bananas to provide shade. I learnt that a banana tree only takes 9 months to grow (really tall), produces one big bunch of bananas and then dies! Whaaaat?

At the end of the tour we drank coffee obviously. And I met a cat. He's purring just in case you think this is an animal welfare issue. 

Oh and the other thing to do in Salento is to play a weird game called Tejo. You throw a metal puck thing at a metal ring (lodged in mud) which has four little packets of gunpowder on it. There were also some other rules which were clearly unimportant since we just wanted an explosion. Unfortunately we failed and so did the few locals who I gave the opportunity to demonstrate it to us. But here it is, the sport(?!) of Tejo...

Giants Palm Trees!

The next adventure was to the coffee region of Colombia and to pay a visit to the world's tallest palm trees in the Cocora Valley. 

Unaware, we arrived on the Monday of a long weekend (to commemorate Christopher Colombos discovering America), the small town of Salento was absolutely rammed with Colombians. The streets were full of stationary traffic. Complete chaos. 

Luckily for us they all disappeared that afternoon and we were left in peace. The next morning we got up early and got a jeep taxi out to the Cocora Valley to do a hike to see the palms which grow there exclusively between the altitude of 1800 to 2400m. 

We started out the hike here in the picturesque valley. 

Then we found ourselves in the forest crossing questionable wooden bridges. 

After a steep climb we arrived at a Hummingbird sanctuary. We've already seen heaps of hummingbirds all over South America but it was cool to see these ones up so close. My favourite was the one with the really long tail.

We paid 5000 pesos to enter the sanctuary which is about $2.50. This included a 'free' drink and we both chose the hot chocolate. This is a Colombian thing. They also have hot chocolate with lumps of cheese in it but I think that's another post in itself. I am yet to experience this!

Next we were off to see the palm trees. We climbed up and over a steep hill and arrived at the lookout. Somewhat of a let down....

The further down we went the more the cloud cleared but I think it looked cooler that way. 

And here they are, the national tree of Colombia. They grow up to 50m tall and for 120 years. They're actually protected now so these ones won't be going anywhere. 

Jardin, Colombia

I got a bit bored waiting for Spaghetti O to return from her Mexican adventure so I decided to take off to the Colombian countryside for a few days. I found some talk about a cute little town called Jardin and the next morning I was on an extremely uncomfortable, hot and packed bus to the town. Luckily when I arrived 4 hours later it was just as gorgeous as I'd read. 

Here's the central plaza and obligatory church which is a pretty good one I must say. 

The plaza is full of colourful little tables and chairs (and ominous rain clouds). The chairs and tables fill up in the afternoon and evening with people drinking coffee or beer and just generally hanging out. The highlights were lots of old boys wearing cowboy hats and the largest quantity of chihuahuas I've ever seen in one location. 

I have also been quite delighted to discover that 'real coffee' is finally back on the menu after months of separation. Thank you Colombia!

Here's a few pictures of the actual town itself. It's tiny and besides the coffee and banana plantations in the surrounding areas I'm not entirely sure what people do here besides hang out in the plaza (or their doorway). 

Anyway there were a few little tourist activities for me to do including yet another waterfall (which I think I'm giving up on) but I decided just to chill, plan my travels in Central America and wander around a bit. 

As I've discovered a cable car is essential in almost every town. As is a statue of Jesus overlooking the town. So off I went up this hill to go and say hi to that little white guy up there. 

Here he is, doing his thing. Colombian music blaring from a speaker right next to him. Drinking a beer nearby I decided it was probably the closest I've felt to Jesus thus far.

And this was the view back down into the town. Gorgeous, no?!

And last but not least. The huskies of Jardin. Also the largest collection of huskies witnessed in one location. Look at that one howling at the moon! 

From Gringo to Monkey

So with Spaghetti O off to Miami I was on my lonesome again. In Ipiales we'd heard someone call out 'mona/s' which is the female version of a monkey (mono). At the time the taxi driver told us that's what they use here for us/blondes. Not quite sure exactly how it works yet. 

Depending on who you ask it seems that gringo/gringa is reserved for yanks. But I've been called that enough times in South America to know that they don't care to identify your nationality first. 

Anyway so now I'm in Colombia, apparently I'm a mona (and for all you non Spanish speakers it's not like Craig Mclachan's 'Hey Mona' it's more like the 'mon' from Monica). Anyway not wanting to get too sidetracked we actually met a Craig McLachlan lookalike in Ecuador. Not even joking. I cracked out a photo of Craig's image from the 80's to show all the Ecuadorians plus the Venezuelan Craig himself. It was unanimously agreed that they were in fact twins.  

So back to my new name. This is not something that people say behind your back. It's to your face, as if it's your name. I have been hearing it several times a day and I can't help but be offended. The Colombians tell me it's said with 'cariñoso' or affection but I can tell you when some Colombian woman is shoving magical medicinal herbs in your face that you clearly have no intention of purchasing while screaming 'mona, mona!', well let's just say I'm not feeling the love. Don't even get me started on the lack of blonde monkeys in this world. No one I've asked can explain it to me. Just, that's how it is.

Anyway, my real name it turns out it super popular here. In English it's a bit more like Lora but here it's more like Lau-rah. Oh and I've always liked my name since you can't really shorten it or make up nicknames. Well guess what, you can here. They add a diminutive to everything. 

Dog = Perro, doggie = perrito

They don't even have a word for kitten since they just use gatito (don't get me started, this language is missing a lot of words I require. Fussy for example. Cheeky too. I can't find words for those).

Anyway they also use it to make things more polite or just cutesy.

The bill from a restaurant  = cuenta

Nice way to ask for the bill = cuentita por favor 

I could go on for days. Dolars = dolaritos. They use it for absolutely everything and often it sounds absurd! But who am I to judge. 

Anyway so my name...well it's so popular it's used in Coke advertising.

 

And the nickname. Which people often feel like they can call me after knowing me roughly 20 seconds is Laurita. Yes I hate it. Observe.

Anyway that's all for now. I'll be back with more soon. I'm off to a music festival this arvo! Colombian Breakfest! Hola Marika! :)

Cali and the Zoo

We arrived in Cali after an eventful night bus. The police seem to get onboard every bus here to check identification. We handed over our passports like good Gringos and I watched them outside the bus flicking through all the pages with a torch. A short time later we had our passports back and they were focussing on one couple they'd hauled off the bus. 

As we were sitting there waiting one of the cops got on and said 'where's the Australians?' And so off the bus we went whilst everyone looked at us like hardened drug traffickers. 

My suspicion is that they couldn't actually find our entry stamps to Colombia since both are passports are so full of stamps. So after using the rear light of the bus to show the cop that we had legally entered the country we were back on the bus. And off we went, without that couple! 

After the usual horrendous night sleep on the bus we arrived in Cali, the so-called Salsa capital of Colombia and it was cooking. 

We had one day before Spaghetti O had to leave to meet Mr Spaghetti O while he was on his R&R so we decided to go to the zoo since Lonely Planet had proclaimed it to be the best in South America. 

And it was pretty good. I think the cool thing about going to the zoo here is that you get to see some animals you'd never see in Australia. Like this guy. A King Vulture. I thought he was amazing and couldn't stop looking at him.

  

Plus some of these guys too. Pretty pink flamingos. 

The largest monkey in South America which is quite a cutie. 

And a condor which seems to be the national bird of just about every country in South America. With good reason though. They're pretty impressive. There's two types in the world. The Andean Condor and the Californian Condor. I can't remember which one wins though. Maybe the Andean one with the wingspan. Apologies for the substandard photo but you can see how big he is in comparison to that human. 

Also I've seen these weird little tapir creatures at Singapore Zoo before. Well their Asian brothers. These are the South American variety taking a quick dip.

And guess what?! They even had a new Australia section! Apparently Australia is where the water is gold! I told some guy inside that it was untrue. No wonder people here keep telling us how cold Australia is (true story!!). They clearly have it mixed up in their school text books with somewhere else. At first we just brushed off that cold comment as confusion but people keep saying it and I can assure you I now know enough Spanish to confirm this!

So the Australia section came complete with cockatoos, kookaburras, parakeets (yep) kangaroos, wallabies, some lizards and black swans. The black swans were clearly an afterthought as they weren't inside the actual Australia enclosure. They were just outside looking a bit lost swimming around an island of lemurs in the same water as marine iguanas. Hah!

Oh and here's a lost emu with a new llama friend. But Bolivia does have an emu creature. When I first arrived in Santa Cruz I took a taxi to my hostel and saw them wandering around. I thought they were actually emus but it's called a Rhea. Who knew?! Not me.