Colombia, Panama and Ecuador

Since every trip I´ve ever taken has involved delayed flights, sketchy people and mosquitos/bedbugs, this tale should not surprise you! Also, now that it´s composed, I should warn you that it´s yet another long post and you should probably skip over the parts that bore you if you intend to get anywhere near the end!!! I swear, we´ve only been gone for two weeks yet it feels like it´s been the longest trip in the world! I began this travel on the 21st – I pretty much saw 100 people I knew at the Detroit Metro Airport and since I was delayed for two hours, I had plenty of time to spend in the bar there! Finally, my plane left to LaGuardia and I had one night to spend in NYC. We were up early on Saturday morning and off to LaGuardia again. Little did we know we could have slept another two hours since, you guessed it, we had another delay. By the time we took off we were convinced that we would miss our connection in Miami. Not helping matters was the fact that once we finally landed in Miami, there was no gate for us. We sat on the runway for another half hour. So when we finally schlepped off the plane we pretty much knew we had missed our flight to Bogota, Colombia. Except – that flight was delayed too! What luck! So we had seven minutes to run half a mile through the Miami airport. What´s amazing is that we made it – and so did our bags! 

Once we finally landed in Bogota, we were met at the airport by a cute Colombian couple from our hotel. They brought us to our hotel and we checked into our miniscule room. It was only as wide as the length of one short single bed. We strolled around that night and there were tons of people out. We passed lots of street vendors selling toys, almonds, hot dogs, grilled corn, etc. I have to say, I felt a little weird because of the altitude. Bogota is the third highest capital in S. America (after La Paz and Quito). The air just seems thinner somehow. Our first full day in Bogota we spent doing a walking tour of the center. It is such a beautiful city!  But every afternoon the dark clouds would roll in, it rains, and then clears up again. Luckily it only rained while we were inside eating lunch and so we had the chance to stroll around the streets and check out the beautiful churches as well as the Plaza Bolivar. We had a coffee at a place called Crepes and Waffles, which only hires single moms. How cool is that? We went to the Museo del Oro (Gold Museum) which is supposed to be the most important gold museum in the world. It has artefacts from the pre-Hispanic era. Naturally it is currently closed for renovations! But they instructed us to go to the Donacion Botero. Fernando Botero is a Colombian artist who paints roly poly people – you might recognize his work if you saw it (see pic below). And attached to his museum were a couple of rooms where they moved some old pieces of gold for a temporary "exhibit" 

Next we took a taxi and our driver either had Tourrets or was having seizures while driving. I guess I don´t know and probably don´t want to! We went up the Teleferico (cable car) to the Cerro de Montserrate. The cable car goes up this insanely steep mountain to the church that is 3,160 meters high on this mountain. We were practically in the clouds. It was insane. 

We had views of the whole city around us. Since it was Sunday there were a ton of people up there, since it´s a mecca for Pilgrims. It was definitely very cool and I really don´t know how they built anything this high up before the cable car was running! That night we went to the Plazoleta del Chorro de Quevado – this super cool little plaza with stores and cafes. We sat outside and had coffee (drinking five coffees a day is a theme of this trip!). We had an excellent dinner at a Salvador Dali themed restaurant and tried some local beer and wine. 

One thing I really don´t understand is why Americans view Colombia as a very unsafe place. People could not have been friendlier! We never felt unsafe walking around the streets (day or night) and every person we met was so nice and welcoming. Literally, if we asked for directions, they would help us and then add, ¨Welcome to Colombia!¨. We absolutely loved every single person we met! 

That night we started to think about our itinerary. Our original plan involved many 12 to 20 hour bus rides and it sounded less and less attractive as we thought about it (clue #1 of many that we are getting old!). We knew we wanted to go to Cartagena in the north on the Caribbean Sea and we read that there were boats to Panama from there. Not part of our original plan but we thought, why not?  Panama could be cool!  Well, the boats weren´t leaving when we needed them to, so we found a travel agency and booked some flights (and right now my colleagues are saying "I told you so!" because this is what they begged me to do from the beginning after they circulated via email a picture of a girl tied up with a bag over her had with the title "Emily on Vacation!). 

With the flights that we booked, I am taking NINE flights in 17 days!!! Anyone who has ever flown with me knows that I HATE flying! I do it out of necessity but I have yet to understand how a plane stays in the air. But anyway, I´m digressing… Luck was still with us and it only rained while we were in the travel agency. We came out and took a taxi to the Zona Rosa, or the "posh" part of Bogota. It´s so completely different from the old town where we were staying. It´s very residential and ritzy. There are lots of boutiques, lots of Mercedes…and we saw police and their dogs checking the trunk of every person going into a mall parking lot. It´s part of life in Colombia so it doesn´t even bother them. We wandered around this area after lunch and honestly had a hard time finding a café! How ironic while in Colombia. And like I said, we need a minimum of three to five a day to get by! 

What I forgot to mention was that there were no flights to Cartagena in the following three days (it was Christmas Eve Day) and the only way to get there was to leave that same exact day on a $70 flight. So after Zona Rosa we had to pack and get to the airport for a night flight. Our taxi driver was ridiculously friendly and showed us every single thing (and then some) in the city. We had some jugo at the airport – let me tell you about the fruit juices of Colombia really quickly. If you can think of a fruit, Colombians can make juice out of it. We have had melon, strawberry, blackberry, pineapple, pear, peach, and orange juice. Plus, they have fruits that we don´t even have, like zapote and guanabanana. It´s become sort of a game to order random juices and they are always really delicious and fresh! 

So, back the airport, we happened to run into an American couple we had seen in the center two days earlier. We started talking and they were really nice. Their names were Euelle (pronounced Yule) and Nella – they are these 22 year old recent college grad hippies from Oregon who have been travelling in S. America for three months. We sort of adopted them because they were poor (and god knows Wendi and I have been there!) and ended up seeing them a few times in Cartagena too. 

So, Cartagena. Well, it was pouring as we got on the plane (thankfully not a prop plane) and Wendi says, "God, I think so many planes crash in S. America because they fly in heavy storms". She was obviously messing with me but it still made me so nervous. Then, we had major turbulence and of course Wendi, Euelle and Nella were laughing at how nervous I was. I can´t tell you how happy I was when we landed safely. We got off the plane and hit a wall of heat. It was so hot and humid walking down the stairs to the runway. Luckily there was a woman just inside the door by baggage claim handing out freezing cold cans of beer. What a welcome! 

Cartagena is called the "Jewel of the Caribbean". It´s this gorgeous town surrounded by the old city wall. All the streets are cobblestone. 

The buildings are all multi-colored and have these fantastic balconies and flowers and plants on them. The doors of the buildings are intricate and have really unique door knockers in the shape of heads or animals. The whole city is a Unesco World Heritage Site. Our book says it´s a "fairy-tale city of romance, legends and sheer beauty". It wasn´t lying. The weird thing was that our hotel was not exceptionally nice and it cost $80 – and that was after we got a 50% discount. It had a/c though, and when it´s 100 degrees outside, that´s really all that matters. It had no windows, and where the windows should have been there were two framed pictures. Ugly pictures. And the same one – framed and hung twice!!! 

What we didn´t know until partway through the night was that it had bugs too. Kind of like mosquitos, but bigger and man-eating. I´m hardly exaggerating here. It was the worst night of one our trips in quite some time. We both had meltdowns but at different times. Like, I woke up around 2 am to find Wendi flailing around with the lights on and trying to kill the bugs flying around. I was thinking, "god, she´s being a little crazy". But I was there just an hour or two later – feeling insane and trying to figure out what the hell to do.

Clearly the next morning we went hotel hunting. Too bad the bites lived on for another week and my arms, feet and face are probably 

scarred for life. Of course we became convinced that we had dengue fever too – for which there is no vaccination and no cure. Oh well, small price to pay to go somewhere as great as Colombia! 

Our days in Cartagena were a blur. We had Christmas dinner with the kids (Euelle and Nella) who complimented (?) us when they said, "We´re really glad to meet you because you have real jobs and are older and are not boring and still travel". That was a compliment, right? We wandered around the city. We went to squares and plazas in the evening within the city walls in order to have a drink or two or three or whatever and people watch. We tried to beat the heat one day by going to the beach in a nearby small fishing town called La Boquilla (where we randomly ran into the kids!). We watched horse drawn carriages go through the city. We drank a lot of iced coffees from our nearby Juan Valdez café. We sampled tinto (the locals all drink this coffee) and also tinto campesino (coffee with unrefined sugar cane juice). We barely slept because our new hotel had windows (bonus!) but these windows were over the busiest street in Cartagena, I swear. All night we could hear carts bumping over the stones, dogs barking, music playing, people talking, cars honking, trucks picking up garbage – you get the point. At some points, lying in my hard hotel bed with the a/c sounding like a lawnmower on the wall and still not drowning out the street sounds, I thought "did we do the right thing switching hotels?".  But then my bites would itch again and I realized I´d rather never sleep again than get eaten alive like that first night! 

We were sad to leave Cartagena but excited to check out Panama too, since it was totally unplanned and we didn´t know what to expect. We had pretty intense security at the Cartagena airport – no less than three checkpoints involving one grope and a wand over our whole body. There was the random cash payment for a form to get into Panama that no one ever wanted to see again. The flight was horrendous – it was probably the bumpiest ride I´ve ever experienced. The woman across the aisle was vomiting into a bag. Wendi was laughing (see a theme here?). Our tiny plane only had two seats on each side of the aisle and about 20 rows total. However, I have to say it was kind of cool to approach Panama from the north (over the Caribbean Sea) and just as quickly be landing in Panama City on the southern coast (The Gulf of Panama which feeds into the Pacific Ocean). The whole country is less than 50 miles from north to south between Colon and Panama City. 

Talk about not knowing what to expect! Here´s a little Panamanian history. The U.S. supported Panama declaring itself independent from Colombia in 1903 because of course we had a vested interest (the canal). Therefore, there has been a HUGE American influence here – the city had a population of 30,000 in 1903 and now there are over 700,000 people living here. We were shocked as our taxi led us into the city. There are skyscrapers, neon lights everywhere, Quizno´s, Dunkin Donuts, Baskin Robbins, Wendy´s, a Trump Tower…it´s like a small Miami. The city is so urban. Their currency is actually the US dollar. 

We found a hotel in our newly purchased-at-the-airport Panama guide book and the woman sceptically gave us a room. I don´t know if we looked especially weird that day but she acted like there were no rooms and then miraculously found one for five nights we could have. Our room is incredible – for $55 we got a/c, comfy beds, a closet, a tv, a bathroom with awesome water pressure…it´s the little things that matter when you´re backpacking around! Despite the fact that Panama is quite expensive and too American for our tastes, we actually really enjoyed it. We spent a morning at the Parque Natural Metropolitano, which is a tropical forest within the city limits. We decided to do the moderately difficult two hour hike called Titi Mono (Titi Monkey) Trail. It led us through this buggy, damp, humid, hot deciduous forest up to the 150m high Mirador (lookout) where we had hazy views of the bay, the canal and the city itself. We saw an anteater or perhaps a marmoset. But no monkeys, unfortunately.  Luckily we are still satiated from our India trip where we saw thousands of them! There are 250 species of birds in the park too. 

Our taxista Ruben came back for us and took us to see the Panama Canal at the Miraflores Locks. I guess without sounding rude, I would recommend anyone coming here to see it (you´ve come this far, after all) but it wasn´t anything spectacular. It´s a canal. Boats move through it. Since Panama regained control of the canal (from us) in 1999, they have improved safety and lowered time to move through. Pretty cool. 

People in Panama have been very nice too, although no one understands my Spanish. I don´t know if my accent is too different – no one else has had any problem anywhere else, but in Panama I felt like I was speaking some obscure language with all the blank stares I was getting! Also, we learned the hard way not to become friends with your taxi driver or they will rip you off. It´s happened twice now. See, all taxi drivers drive an old Toyota. None of them have handles to open the windows in the back. None of them have a rearview mirror. They all have really nice aftermarket cd players, a Panamanian flag, and a blessing from their saint tacked onto their windshield. It seems that as soon as we make plans to have our taxista come back for us, he always does (they´re very honest in this way) but then charges us double. Hmm. 

Anyway, another day we toured el Casco Viejo, or "Old Compound". This is the area that used to be Panama City (when only 30,000 people lived here). It´s got old, winding streets and Wendi says it really reminds her of New Orleans' French Quarter. Again, there are lots of balconies and colonial architecture. There are crumbling old churches and plazas. It´s very ethnically diverse too. Apparently Casco Viejo was pretty dangerous even recently so now there are bike police and walking police on every street. We really enjoyed strolling through it although by mid-afternoon it was baking hot. We randomly had lunch at this ridiculously nice restaurant where all the other patrons were drinking wine, if not wine and champagne! The meal started off with an amuses-bouches of gazpacho. Come on! 

Our second to last day we woke up obscenely early (ok, later than I normally do for work but this is vacation!) and we took a chugboat for an hour to an island called Isla Taboga. It´s an island in the Bay of Panama with a population of 950 people and 150 pelicans. Our guide book said we could pay $7 and use the pool, beach and bathrooms of the hotel on the island. Naturally, when we got off the boat, the gate to the hotel was locked up tight, and pretty decrepit. It was closed-and not just for the day! So there we were again, renting broken chairs and an umbrella on the beach. Wendi made a friend – a stray dog she was convinced had rabies who laid under her chair all day. We even bought it a hot dog. I think the French family at the next umbrella was appalled! I know we were appalled because we had lunch at the nastiest place (and only place) on the island. The fact that we´re still alive is shocking. The damn dog ate better than we did. 

Overall though, the food here has been really awesome. I have shrimp every single day. The Panamanians make a mean sangria. We´ve been out in Bella Vista for dinner a few times and sit on the patio of various restaurants with our $13 pitchers of sangria! The only troubling thing that happened so far is that on our way back from the island, we stopped to get our pre-dinner coffee. When we got back outside with our large to-go cup (I told you this place was American!) we saw a man and a woman getting in a brutal fight. She was screaming and hitting him. He actually kicked her to the ground in the middle of a semi-busy street. Enough people had jumped in to help and so we just sort of hurried on to our hotel. No joke, not three minutes later we heard two gunshots. Which made us hurry a little faster. And everyone thought we would be shot in Colombia! 

Honestly, as usual, New Year´s Eve was not the most fun and crazy evening of our trip! It never is (remember last year I was alone on a train with some Kashmiri guys outside of Delhi due to a bomb being found at the station). We had dinner and drinks and saw a pretty decent fireworks display at midnight. 

The last leg of our trip has probably been our favorite part, actually. We flew from Panama City to Quito, Ecuador three days ago (that is where I am writing from now). We really didn´t know what to expect because no one really extolled the virtues of Ecuador to us before we left. But we LOVE it! Quito is this fantastic city in the Andes mountains…it´s very hilly and green and mountainous. 1.5 million people live here and it´s the 10th highest city in the world. Their specialty is cuy – guinea pig. I refuse to try it but Wendi claims it tastes like bacon. Do you want to know why it´s called cuy? Apparently when you slaughter a guinea pig, it screams "Cuy! Cuy! Cuy!". I´m horrified. 

Anyway, back to Quito – there are tons of multi-colored buildings built in the valley and up the hillsides. Our hostal ($12 each per night and quite nice, believe it or not!) is in the area called La Mariscal (also referred to as "Gringolandia") which is New Quito. There seems to be a huge ex-pat community here but not in a bad way. It´s just really laid back and there are tons of cafes and bars and restaurants and bookshops. It´s so much fun. It´s also much more temperate here. It´s in the 70s during the day and the 50s at night. Which is a welcome change after the oppressive heat of Cartagena and Panama City! I know, I know, I heard it snowed another foot in Michigan so I will regret complaining about the heat! 

Anyway, we´ve gotten to know a bunch of people in our area (New Quito) and we spent a day exploring Old Quito. Old Quito is another Unesco World Heritage Site and absolutely gorgeous. All of the buildings are very colonial looking and there are beautiful churches and parks and squares. We started at the Basilica which you can climb for views of the city. We wandered the streets for hours, until the altitude sort of caught up with us. It´s different breathing here in such thin air! I wasn´t having much luck that day considering that while we were sitting outside at a cute café having our ridiculously cheap lunch, a bird crapped on my shoulder. How gross is that?! 

Today we had an awesome adventure (if you´re still reading! Sorry, this is getting super long!). We decided to take a day trip to a town two hours southeast of here called Papallacta. It´s known for being a beautiful mountain town and having hot springs. Only 600 people live there. So we caught a bus this morning and ended up sitting across the aisle from a guy wearing a Tiguan t-shirt. I started talking to him and he was a very cool German guy who used to work for Audi AG and quit to do freelance VW Experience work, take photographs, and lead white water kayaking trips in Ecuador a few months every year. 

Let me paint a picture for you about what was going on on the bus while we chatted with Norbert. People were jumping on and off every time the bus slowed down. Men roamed the aisles selling fake watches, apple juice, colored pencils, fried banana chips, charms, electric shavers (no joke!) and ice cream cones. One man even told a long, involved sob story about how he had a pregnant wife and needed money. This is when it´s good to look like a gringa who speaks no Spanish because you can ignore them! It was quite an experience. 

But, the views on the way were outstanding! We passed villages and grazing animals and forest as we wound around the mountains. There is actually no bus station in Papallacta so they sort of ushered us off the not quite stopped bus when we got to the town. It´s so high up (10,800 feet above sea level) that you are in the clouds! Norbert told us we needed to take a taxi up to the springs, but there were no taxis. Well, luckily a very entrepreneurial man converted his tiny pick-up truck into a taxi. So for $2 we climbed into the bed of his truck and headed up this steep hill on this rutted, rocky non-road that led to the baths. We were holding on for dear life to not fall out! It was so funny. Check out the pic of Wendi in the truckbed below!

We had lunch in the scariest roadside place you can imagine, but the food was randomly good. We had trucha al ajillo, or trout with garlic sauce. If you could ignore the fact that the cook has probably not washed her hands so far in 2008, it was quite enjoyable. Once we got to the springs we weren´t as impressed as we hoped to be – they were pools of hot water surrounded by pavement and filled with families and children. Plus, there were no more towels to rent. So we hung out for a few minutes and eventually decided to walk the 2 km down the mountain and flag down a bus. 

Yes, that´s right – you can´t buy a return ticket – you just have to hop on a passing bus. After about forty minutes, one finally passed by and we climbed on. There were two seats left – in the back row. I tend to get a little sick on buses weaving on small roads in the mountains with cliffs about a foot from the wheels, but what could I do? So we sandwiched ourselves on the back bench. Wendi was next to a four year old boy who was evidently traveling by himself. I took a picture of him – he was so cute! 

Once we got into Quito and saw a statue we recognized, we hopped off the bus (there´s no need to go all the way to the train station, we could see from everyone else hopping off at various points). We had a great dinner that night (food and drink at a nice place will run you about $8 per person but if you eat at an Ecuadorian restaurant it´s more like $4). They also use the US dollar here, since 2000. I read that the transition from their local, inflated currency to the US dollar was really horrible because the uneducated, indigenous population thought it was a big scam – why should they hand in 25,000 of one currency to get one dollar of another? 

On our last day, we did a day trip to Otavalo, another mountain town northeast of Quito that is known for it´s indigenous market. The traditions of this town date back to the pre-Inca past. We were really excited to check it out. It did not disappoint us - the whole town is filled with market stalls and people selling artesanias (art, jewelry, blankets, bags, dreamcatchers, pottery, etc.). The women in this area of Ecuador wear these cool tophats.  Naturally the bus trip was the biggest adventure! On the way there we continuously stopped along the road while a guy hung out the door incessantly calling "Otavalo" to anyone on the street and people would jump on the bus while it was still moving. But the way back was the craziest - it was standing room only and I ended up with someone's kid half on my lap! 

I´m back on Monday and in the office again on Tuesday. Please, Wendi and I are asking you to pretend to have missed us because we feel like we´ve been gone for months and we miss you! It´s been an incredible trip, and as always after a trip, all the things that seem so important at home are so inconsequential. I highly recommend Colombia and Ecuador to anyone looking for an adventure. I hope everyone had a great Christmas and New Years! Talk to you or see you in a few days!

Comments

[Hotels Quito Ecuador]

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[Terence]

Wow… You had a wonderful trip. Even we had gone for a vacation at Miraflores last year, which was an amazing trip. The most unforgettable was the food in Miraflore hotels, it has been really awesome!