Cartagena

From Medellin, our travels took us to Cartagena, in the north of Colombia on the Caribbean coast.

Tom on the city walls

There are different aspects to Cartagena.  You can see the area where the local people live; uneven road surfaces, market stalls and rundown buildings packed close together.  As you drive along towards the beach, you pass by the old town.  Within the walls of the old town are beautiful plazas where you can sit under the shade of the trees, jewellery shops selling the yellow gold which has been mined there for thousands of years, and old yet beautifully kept buildings and streets.  Upon reaching the beach, you find yourself in Bocagrande ('big mouth'), the commercial area where wealthy, sun-worshippers like to visit.  It has been very commercialised by people from the United States, and whilst it is a smart area, has lost a lot of the charm which is present in the old town.  There are many local people pestering tourists, selling tat and offering massages.  It doesn't make for a relaxing stay on the beach.

The old town is the real gem of Cartagena.  We walked along the walls, which were built by the Spanish to keep out pirates.  From there, you can see the whole city, a vast, clear view underneath the brilliant blue sky and blazing sunshine.  Inside the city walls, we visited El Palacio de la Inquisicion (The Palace of the Inquisition).  The museum details the role of Cartagena in the Spanish Inquisition and how witches and warlocks were interrogated, including instruments of torture.  We meandered along the walls and viewpoints and through the tunnels at the Castle of San Felipe, an impressive piece of architecture.  We also browsed inside El Museo de Arte Moderno, The Modern Art Museum.

Pot of gold at Museo del Oro

The most interesting visit we made was to El Museo del Oro - The Gold Museum.  There, we learnt about Zenu culture, the Zenu people being those indigenous to Cartagena, before the days of the Spanish invasion.  Gold has been mined in the area for thousands of years and the people traded with it as currency.  It also played a pivotal part in religious ceremonies.  Women were very important within the culture and would often hold the chief positon, rather than a man.  This was because women were viewed like baskets, vessels of life and fertility.  Gold figurines of female gods would often be worshipped, for both life and fruitful crops.

The old town of Cartagena is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful and interesting places we have visited, but the city is let down by its commercial beach area.  Depending what you look for during your travels, you will either love Cartagena or hate it.

Medellin: A Charming Colombian City

Many people who haven't even visited Colombia have pre-conceived ideas about what the country is like, Tom and I included, before we came here.  It is true that the drug trade is very prominent and there is a lot of political tension and violence as a result, but this has significantly reduced over recent times.  There is so much more to the country than cocaine and guns.

When we first arrived at the Colombian border, the first thing we were struck by was the immigration official.  She was friendly (at least, for someone working at immigration) and even smiled at us as she stamped our passports.  This was a contrast to the people working at Peruvian/Chilean/Ecuadorian border controls.

We were headed for Medellin, one of the largest cities, but hours of bus travelling are rather tiring so we decided to stop in Cali for a couple of days.  For a place which was only meant to act as a stopover, we liked it very much.  It is a modern city and very green, with huge trees along the sides of the road.  We felt safe in the quiet neighbourhood where we stayed, and our hostel was peaceful, lovely after the noise of where we stayed in Quito.

The Colombian Woman - Fernando Botero

Medellin is not as green as Cali, but it holds a lot of charm and there is a lot of impressive architecture.  The government has done a lot of work to clean up the streets and parks to reveal the beauty of the city, and improved public transport links (which frankly are better than those in the UK) to bring together the wealthy and poor areas.

We visited some fantastic places in Medellin, the first being El Museo de Antioquia.  Outside the museum are huge bronze sculptures of women, men and animals, the work of Fernando Botero, more of whose art is displayed inside.  Several different artists' work can be found there, including modern art and religious paintings, but there is a whole gallery for Botero.  His sculptures and paintings portay men, women and animals as being what some consider 'fat'; certainly they appear very rounded.  Even his still life paintings are created in the same style.  He was once quoted as saying that he makes his figures appear fat "to make them sensual; I don't paint fat people for the sake of fat people".  The most famous of his art includes The Colombian Woman.

We also visited Parque de Bolivar, which is small, but holds an impressive statue of the liberator Simon Bolivar and has a lovely fountain in the centre.  It is bordered on one side by the Metropolitan Cathedral of Medellin, an architecturally impressive building whose construction took 40 years.

El Parque de los Deseos

El Parque de los Deseos - The Wishes Park - is a modern sight of the city and is so named because people travel there to look up at the stars and make a wish.  It is home to the Planetarium and the Casa de la Musica where opera music is performed and has some striking features, including two large, convex, stone pieces, the outer surfaces of which are intended to resemble that of the moon.  The insides of the curves face one another, several metres apart.  If one person speaks into one of the curves, a person stood at the other curve can hear them as if they were stood side by side, even though they are metres apart.  Of course, there is a scientific explanation for this, but that is not in my remit.  We were impressed.

El Parque de los Pies Descalzos

El Parque de los Pies Descalzos - The Barefoot Park - has a peaceful Zen garden of bamboo trees.  The park is so called, because there is a rocky walkway where you can walk barefoot, for exfoliaton, then there are cool, fresh pools where you can dip your feet in and relax.  Walking barefoot on the rocks was a little painful, but the pools were very refreshing in the midday sun.



Many people seemed interested by our presence and were friendly; the majority of visitors to Medellin were Colombian so we stood out.  The number of foreign travellers to Colombia is still rather low compared to other South American countries, due to the stigma of drugs and violence.  Many Colombian people want this to change and for more foreigners to come and visit this beautiful country.  We spoke to one local man who works as a tourist guide, and he told us that it is very important for him and his country that visitors from abroad speak well of Colombia so that others will travel here.  Yes, there are drugs and dangerous people, but that is the same everywhere.  We didn't feel unsafe, and honestly it is the first country we have visited in the continent where we haven't been offered illegal substances.  Colombia is a charming country, rich with history and culture, and I hope that more people continue to visit.

Quito, Ecuador

Quito is a beautiful city, the centre of which is split into three main areas: the old town, new town and La Mariscal, which is an area linking the old and the new.  There are modern buildings such as you would expect of a capital city, but also old, historic buildings.  At this time of year, the days are hot and sunny, but the nights are still cool.

During our time there, we visited the National Museum of Quito, an impressive place which displayed many artefacts from Ecuadorian history, including from the small town of Validivia where I had volunteered at the aquarium.  There were different galleries within the museum, displaying ceramics and pottery, religious paintings and also a cartography gallery, showing old maps of how people believed South America really looked before there was modern technology to show otherwise.

Parque El Ejido

For a city, Quito is rather green, with several large parks.  We strolled around 2 of these, La Carolina and El Ejido.  There, people can relax in the sunshine or lounge in the shade under the large trees, take bike rides or play sports.  On a Sunday, many local people flock to La Carolina where they can partake in a salsa type exercise class - quite interesting to watch.

As with every other place we have visited, our sight seeing would not be complete without visiting a church or two.  The first was Catedral Primada de Quito, which these days is utilised more as a museum than as a place of worship.  It was majestic inside, with tall pillars, elaborate paintings and statues of religious figures.  The second was La Basilica, a building which was impressive and imposing through its gothic architecture.  It wasn't decorated extravagantly inside like many of the churches we have visited, but it was incredible nevertheless, with huge towers which we were able to ascend, Tom climbing right to the top (and wishing he had worn his brown trousers, it was so high).

View from the top, La Basilica

The area we stayed in was La Mariscal, popular with tourists and young wealthy Ecuadorians.  There are many bars and restaurants there, and it was in the main square that Tom and I ate some of the best tapas we have ever had - juicy king prawns, tender pork belly and marinated beef, all washed down with a couple of mojitos.


When our time in Quito came to an end, we travelled by bus to Tulcan, where we crossed the border into Colombia, marking the next stage of our journey in South America.