Bad Girl, What ya gonna do?

We flew from Bogota to Baranquilla in the north of Colombia and caught a bus to Santa Marta which is a pleasant enough seaside town. It was 38 celcius and extremely humid. The main attraction was the local national park which has some great beaches and excellent snorkelling. Bring your own snorkelling gear as its passed directly from previous renter to you, snot, spit and all - yeuch!
There seems to be 3 price levels for most things (taxis, hotels, beers)
1. Local yocal cheap price
2. Local tourist cheap price
3. Gringo Paddy, rip the shirt off your back price!

Guess which one I was being asked to pay?

Its expensive here for food, hotel etc even when you haggle the local tourist price.
Next we visited Cartagena (5 hours east) which is steeped in historical significance. It has an old castle overlooking the city and an old town section surrounded by a fortress and some beautiful colourful colonial style buildings.

We stayed in a hostel and woke up at 5am to a full on brawl going on in the courtyard. Some loud ass drunk bee-atch was screaming "Llama la policia Mama!" (call the cops - yo!) over and over. Thankfully after 30 minutes of this farce she got her wish and the boys in blue hauled her drunk ass down to the station for being drunk and disorderly!

We sang ourselves back to sleep to the tune of "Bad Girl, Bad Girl, What ya gonna do? What ya gonna do when they come for you?" - FYI - Theres a law against disturbing my sleep - Youve all been warned!

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Bogota, Bogota, So GOOD they named it once!

The missus and I had a few hectic days (including a friends wedding in an estancia outside the capital) before we flew to Bogota, Colombia (via Lima). We arrived at 00:45am and by the time we picked up our backpacks and reached our hostel it was close to 2am.

It had a tall, wide imposing metal gate but there was little sign of life beyond it. I must have rang the buzzer and rattled the gate a dozen times but got no answer. This was neither the city nor the hour to be stranded without a roof. Just as we were starting to sweat (a.k.a. piss my pants!), a head appeared at a window and thankfully a security guard let us in. After a little confusion (they had no record of our reservation!) we were able to check in. It turned out there was an electrical fault which prevented the buzzer from working and the lights on our floor were also not working so we had to resort to candles. Relieved and exhausted we collapsed into bed.

The following day brought altitude sickness, cold chills (picked up a bug on the plane I reckon), squirt alert, nausea and generally wasn´t a great day. The famous Museo de Oro was closed for renovation but we did get to see a cool salt cathedral built into an old mine about 40kms outside the city in Zapaquira.

The city is a heaving, swarming, fast city but the public transport system is impressive with dedicated double lanes for the extra long bendy buses. About 70% of the traffic seems to be taxis and another 20% is minibuses.

There are armed guards everywhere. Army, transport police, regular police, special police, extra special police, security guards. They all had guns, machine guns, rifles, revolvers. Charlton Heston and his buddies in the NRA would love this place!

There aren´t that many tourist here so I was being stared at as something of a novelty. Dinner is early here (approx 7-8pm) compared to Argentina (10pm-1am). Public transport shuts down early (10pm in the outskirts) for security concerns.

On our last day in Bogota, we headed to the old town section of the city and ended up in the middle of a protest which turned nasty. We were literally caught in the middle of a narrow street with rock throwing yobs (their faces shielded by scarves) on one side and the riot squad firing tear gas and water cannons on the other side. It was a hairy scary moment and if I had anything left in my bowels (squirt alert was still going strong), I probably would have shat myself. It took us about 30 minutes to walk clear of the trouble and in the aftermath there were 40 people arrested and there was substantial damage to banks and businesses. Windows were smashed and paint splattered everywhere. Translated News article here.

Bogota has a bit of a reputation as a dangerous city, but like any big city you just need to keep your wits about you and stay clear of the no go zones. Oh and don´t forget to bring your own stash of loo roll for those little emergencies!

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