Injury, Illness and More Diving

When we last left you, we'd planned to be heading off into the jungle for four days to trek to 'Ciudad Perdida' ('Lost City'). However, a couple of days before we were to leave, we were struck down by both injury and illness. I managed to hurt my foot once again - tripping on a loose paving stone in Santa Marta left me with a big cut on my toe and an inability to walk comfortably. Not ideal when preparing for a long, hard trek. Jo, meanwhile, was feeling a bit unwell and this worsened for a few days. Aching joints, mild fever, fatigue and a small rash pointed to zika. This is currently all over the news in Europe at the moment, possibly leading to babies born with microcephaly. Luckily, the other symptoms are generally mild, although don't leave you ready to hike. Therefore, we cancelled this plan and spent the time resting and recuperating in an air conditioned room in Santa Marta.

The town hall in Santa Marta

A plaque for Símon Bolívar in Santa Marta's cathedral

Santa Marta doesn't have much in the way of sights, which was perfect to ensure that we didn't venture out too much. We always try to see as much as we can of a place, so it was something of a blessing that there wasn't much here when we needed to rest and recuperate. We did visit the excellent Museo de Oro (Gold Museum), full of artefacts from the ancient Tayrona culture and information on the history of the city. The cathedral was the first resting place of Símon Bolívar, the Liberator of much of South America from Spanish colonialism, before his body was moved to his birth city of Caracas in Venezuela.


After a few days, we felt we needed a change of scenery and went for a couple more restful days in the hills surrounding Santa Marta. We stayed at a hostel/farm a short bus ride outside of the city, followed by a bumpy motorbike ride up a hill. We relaxed by the pool here while feasting on locally grown chocolate, coffee and honey. We also exerted ourselves more on the last day to climb the steep path up to a viewpoint over the whole of the surrounding countryside, with the city in the distance.

The viewpoint near Finca Carpe Diem

We had been filling up time before returning to Taganga for some more diving and to meet up with our friends from home - Ralph and Shehnaaz. We all stayed in the same hostel as last time, which has a terrace with a perfect view over the bay for sunsets. The main reason we'd returned was for diving. The other three successfully completed their PADI Advanced Open Water course with the same instructor as before - Reto Müller. I had already completed the next certification up, so just joined them for some fun dives. Unfortunately, the visibility was often not great for much of it and the currents were quite strong. This made the conditions quite tough, which I guess is a good way to learn!

Wearing diving t-shirts at Casa Baba

While Ralph and Shehnaaz have continued on to the northernmost point of South America, Punta Gallinas, we are returning to Cartagena to then fly to San Andrés. This is a Colombian island in the Caribbean Sea, close to Nicaragua and supposed to have excellent diving.

New Year in Ecuador and on into Colombia

We were sad to leave our lovely hostel in Quito but we had decided to spend New Year in Mindo, a backpackery little town in the cloud forest. The bus from Quito took about 2 hours, winding down through beautiful scenery with tree covered slopes.

Hummingbirds around Mindo

Mindo is down at 1200m and the climate is completely different to what we've got used to recently - very humid and pretty hot during the day. The town is mostly unpaved roads and has quite an outpost, jungly feel, with cloud forest all around. This feeling was enhanced by the amazing diversity of birds (and insects!) everywhere. Most cafes and hostels have hummingbird feeders outside and we saw so many beautiful examples of this tiny bird. We'd expected Mindo to be full of backpackers, but actually it was quite a mix of people, including a lot of older tourists here for birdwatching.

Peering in at one of the very large owl butterflies (they can have a wingspan of up to 16cm!)

We arrived in Mindo mid-afternoon but still managed to fit in two activities that day - a butterfly farm, and a chocolate tour. We started with the former. You might ask, why on earth would someone with a butterfly phobia possibly want to visit a butterfly farm?
 Well, I guess I thought it might be good for me - after all, I would actually like one day not to be in mortal fear when a butterfly or moth is in my vicinity. I braved entering the big netted off section with the butterflies once, and did okay until some of the gigantic owl butterflies started flying around. After that I made do with sticking my head through the entrance and withdrawing it whenever one came near. I think it did help, a little. Exposure therapy! But my bravery diminished rapidly that evening when we were confronted with the biggest moth I have ever seen, just casually sitting on the hostel wall. That was truly something out of my worst nightmares and it took a while for me even to pluck up the courage to run past it back to our room.

Cocoa beans drying, part of the chocolate making process

Immediately after the butterfly farm we did the aforementioned chocolate tour, which felt like a reward for surviving the house of horrors. Mindo has its own chocolate company, and over the hour or so of the tour we saw all stages of the chocolate making process, from the cocoa pods on the tree, to the finished bar. We also got to sample several of their chocolate products, including the (amazing) chocolate brownies, sea salt chocolate, and liquid 100% chocolate (added sugar required!).



We spent the first of our two full days here hiking in the jungle around Casa Amarilla. This, as you might expect from the Spanish, is a yellow house, owned by a friendly local lady. She also seems to own the surrounding jungle for miles around; at least, if you pay her a small entrance fee you can spend several hours exploring the paths she's made. We think it's great that she's chosen to open the area for hikers and birdwatchers, rather than getting rid of the trees to make room for cows, or digging for oil. The circuit we did took about 3 or 4 hours and included an enchanting viewpoint, looking down on tiny Mindo surrounded by cloud forest for miles in all directions. We met a Dutch guy and chatted with him for most of the hike; maybe we were making too much noise as we failed to see many birds!

View of Mindo (in the distance) from viewpoint during our jungle hike

Our second day in Mindo was New Year's Eve. In the morning we had a go at ziplining - zooming high above the trees along cables. For $20 we got to do an hour or two's circuit of 10 different ziplines ranging from 75 - 400m in length. It was great fun! Especially trying the 'Butterfly' position - literally upside down, with your legs in the air! Absolutely terrifying, but awesome. We spent the evening hanging out with some fellow travellers, enjoying free cocktails courtesy of our hostel, and then plenty of beers outside watching the festivities in the square. It is traditional in Ecuador to make sort of large dolls, a bit like the 'guys' on Guy Fawkes' Night, and burn them in the street at midnight. Often the dolls have masks representing unpopular politicians or celebrities. There were also kids running around everywhere in masks, and the odd guy or two wearing drag (another tradition apparently)! It felt more like Halloween than New Year! Really fun though, and interesting to see another culture's completely different style of celebration.

Ziplining and the 'Butterfly'

New Year's celebrations in Mindo

We returned from Mindo to Quito on the 1st, feeling a little the worse for wear after the night before (the twisty bus ride didn't help) and spent that afternoon in our hostel recovering. We had intended to proceed to Colombia the next day, but we'd not bargained on the city we were heading to in Colombia, Pasto, being so booked up and expensive! It turns out that Pasto has its annual carnival on the days we were planning to be there. It's so popular that Colombians book up all the places to stay months in advance. The only place we could find to stay was an (expensive) AirBnB, so we ended up prolonging our stay in Quito by a day so as to just spend the one night in Pasto. We were pretty happy to have an extra day in Quito at our favourite hostel, anyway! That day we visited the Basilica del Voto Nacional, a huge neo-Gothic church, and climbed up to the top of one of the towers. The ascent began like normal stairs but ended with some quite scary vertical metal ladders! The view from the top over the historic centre was worth it though.

On our way up the Basilica in Quito

On the Sunday we finally left Kinde House for good and proceeded 5 hours north to the Colombian border by bus. The Ecuador side of the border had a horribly long queue, due to mainly to Ecuadorian citizens returning from a weekend in Colombia. Anything in Ecuador that is imported carries a huge tax. Thus a lot of locals hop across to Colombia at the weekend to buy things like electronics and toiletries there - it's so much cheaper it's worth the journey! Luckily the queue moved quickly and within an hour we were through both Ecuadorian and Colombian immigration.

The Las Lajas church in the daylight...

Our first stop in Colombia was the small village of Las Lajas, only a few km from the border. The main reason for visiting here was to see the famous church, El Santuario de Las Lajas, which is literally built across a gorge. We expected this place to be very quiet but actually it was heaving with crowds of local tourists - it's something of a pilgrimage site for Colombians, it seems. The only place to stay was a sort of convent converted into a very basic hotel and run by nuns. The room was like a cell and the bed might as well have been a rock. I'm not sure being a nun is for me... The one consolation was that it cost £5.60 for the night.

...and by night

In the evening the church was lit up with neon lighting, constantly changing colour, which we found somewhat tacky but quite amusing. We got up early the next day and had a better look in the daylight with fewer tourists. It's certainly a spectacular setting - hopefully the photos demonstrate this better than I can describe. We have now arrived in Pasto for our night in an AirBnB around 10 times the price of last night - about 10 times nicer too. Tomorrow we are flying to Cartagena, on the Caribbean coast, and excited to be meeting up with our old travelling buddies Cindy and Julien again there.