Bad blogger!

Believe it or not, it's been three weeks since our visit to the Amazon and we've covered a lot of ground in the meantime. In fact, we've moved countries, we're now in Colombia! For us, constant moving around subsequently leads to blog neglect. I'm trying my best to rectify the situation with a report of the last few weeks, not only to keep Mum happy, but for my own records when I get home.

I'm writing from San Gil, an adventure/eco-tourist town in central Colombia. We arrived here after a bus ride that was more like a roller coaster. I'm serious. The only difference was that there were no seat belts (added bonus), it lasted four hours and every now and then we passed soldiers armed with heavy-duty shotguns. But I wont harp on about buses again, even though this one was yet another gem. Having been wifi-less for some time now, we're skipping the abseiling and rafting opportunities in San Gil and opting for an 'admin day', to catch up on emails/blogs etc, before we hop on an overnight bus to the Caribbean coast. I have to say, it's a welcome break!

After our Amazon trip it was back to Quito, a city I've already mentioned as not having warmed to. So, not surprisingly, after tasting the Quito nightlife with some of our Amazon tour friends, we 'had to get the heck out of the area' (per 'Dimitri' on youtube) and head north-west for an overnight visit to Mindo, another adventure town similar to Banos. With plans for canopying - which entails zip-lining through rainforest canopies in a harness - we booked into the gorgeous Hotel Bambu which overlooks a nearby cloud forest. Unfortunately, the crumby Ecuadorian weather was not surprisingly uncooperative and canopying was not an option in the rain, so we spent a lazy morning waiting for the bus back to Quito as we were due to fly out the following evening. That night I was, however, compensated for Mindo's disappointments with a delicious (and enormous) seafood paella at Quito restaurant that lived up to its name: Paella de Valenciana.

The view of the cloud forest from our hostel, Mindo

The next day was spent killing time. Again the weather did not agree we us but, determined to spend the day outdoors, we spent $8 to sit on the covered Teleferico cable car which took us over 4km high and boasted 'sweeping views' of Quito. The car went about 1km an hour and all we saw were clouds. Thanks again Quito! One upside to the day was getting a seat on a very crowded city bus. I was impressed by how polite one local was when she tapped me on the shoulder as she got out of her seat. Thinking she was exiting at the next stop, I soon realised she thought I was pregnant, as I hadn't removed the bag I'd stuffed in my jacket to keep dry from the rain. Feeling slightly guilty, I couldn't bring myself to admit that in fact I wasn't an up-the-duff backpacker, so I spent the remainder of the trip sitting practically under her, with a maternal hand on my belly. Perhaps a strategy for naughty school kids back home who don't stand up for adults?

Me, with child (and our friend Anna).

Fiiiinally it was time to head to the country we'd heard so much about, Colombia. For some reason, my travel agent had booked a puzzling route for our reaching Colombia's capital: Quito - Lima - Bogota. Yes, that makes sense. Just for fun, why not fly south to Peru before heading north, crossing Ecuador again, to get to Colombia when there are direct flights between Quito and Bogota? To make matters worse, our landing time in Bogota was scheduled for 3.30am. So we knew we were in for a long evening and, when the whole plane simultaneously cheered when we hit the tarmac safely in Lima (is this not a normal event?), I was unusually apprehensive about the next flight. We did, however, arrive in Bogota and finally hit the pillow at 5am. This was neither in the hostel or neighbourhood where we'd booked which, according to our very friendly cab driver, was in an area that was 'no seguro' (not safe). By the third hostel we were in luck, this one found by our driver who had been getting in and out of the cab in the pouring rain to ask if there were vacancies. Our first experience of Colombian warmth.

I'm not going to lie, neither Bec or I are huge fans of big cities in South America. They're usually much more dangerous and far less appealing than the typically beautiful country towns. There's often a lot of cheesy tourist traps that can suck you in, such as the Teleferico in Quito - no more cable cars for me! So, when in big cities, I have to admit you might find us in the odd shopping mall here and there, or a movie cinema, luxuries you miss from home. This sometimes does have its benefits. In Bogota we went to see a film called 'Millenium' (based on the novel 'The girl with the Dragon Tattoo'), which was advertised as having Spanish subtitles. Almost always these movies are in English, but this one was in Swedish, so it turned out to be great Spanish practice. I was surprised how much I understood. Our trip to the mall also scored me a much needed new pair of non-imitation Nikes for our upcoming trek of the Lost City, something you don't usually find in the countryside.

 Some 'big-city' security in Bogota.

Our Bogota explorations did, however, go further than the Zona Rosa mall. We enjoyed an 'Almuerzo' (set lunch) at a local haunt, and ate an unidentifed piece of meat - who eats wins is back! We ventured to the gorgeous 'Plaza Bolivar' and enjoyed a spot of people watching and dodging of sky-bombing pigeons. We took an interesting tour of the National Police Museum which is also the office of the Bogota Police Major. There were plenty of acne faced teenagers who were just starting their careers as policeman, conducting tours and proudly showing us the variety of artillery used by the Colombian police over the years. Their hospitality even extended to an offer to taste Colombian coffee, which is fantastic by the way. The big finale was a trip to the Museum's basement, which is dedicated to the hunt and execution by the police of Pablo Escobar, Colombian's infamous Drug Lord. The room is fit with some gruesome photos of the dead Escobar, along with some of his accomplices, and also houses a plank of wood with the remnants of blood stains from the final shot to Escobar's head: nice. What's more, the place was swarming with school children. Not exactly the most uplifting or G-rated location for a school excursion! We ended the day with a visit to the oldest chocolate shop in Bogota, and an art museum boasting some big names like Picasso and Cezanne, quite cultural of us really. Finally, I was able to catch up with a friend of a friend from university who's living in Bogota working for the UN. She took us out in the Zona Rosa and then back to her house where we met some of her Colombian friends and chatted a lot about the country's interesting history. It's always nice to hear a local perspective.

 Bec in the Police Museum.

Bogota was also our base for a day trip to Zipaquira, a small town around 45 minutes away and well known for its Salt Cathedral. The catch is, the Cathedral is built in a salt mine and is 200m underground! After a 15m walk uphill through a park swarming with families for Mother's Day, we reached the Cathedral's entrance. We were taken on the underground tour, past fourteen small chapels representing the Stations of the Cross and on to the huge Cathedral itself. The whole place is architectually amazing and was well worth the visit.


I also had a pang of homesickness in Bogota, as it was while I was there that two of my good friends from home were married in Byron Bay. While I tried to be there in spirit by toasting them with a glass of champas, it was hard knowing that some of my best friends were all congregated in the one place while I was across the other side of the world. Photos have starting circulating on facebook and it was the most beautiful wedding, congratulations Belly and Clare!


It only took a rainy Monday for us to decided to move north-west to Medellin, another big Colombian city. The main reason for our choosing Medellin was so Bec could welcome 25 years in a place where there was good nightlife and somewhere we could celebrate in style. The celebrating in style part came off well, but unfortunately the nightlife part fell well short of our expectations. Being 'foodies' (we're both lovers of good food and wine), I took Bec to a trendy restaurant/bar called 'Herbario'. The place was like any you'd find in Sydney, complete with a jazz band on the second floor. We spoiled ourselves with goat's cheese, proscuitto, prawns, steak and copious amounts of wine, finished off with a creme brulee with mango coulis (I even had the waiter put a birthday candle on Bec's dessert, to her utter mortification). A little boozed and ready for a party, we headed to Medellin's stylish Poblado region, to find all the bars closing within the hour. Apparently the clubs and bars only take off on weekends, so it didn't help Bec's birthday falling on a Wednesday. So the night ended with vodka and oranges at our hostel, chatting to Jorge, the hostel night employee, about his university calculus homework...interesting. Not to worry, there was still the following day, Bec's actual birthday.

 Bec and her birthday dinner.

After a little sleep in and an impressive lunch at a Thai restaurant, it was time for the birthday present: a three hour pampering session at a local Spa (and a one hour massage for me - the birthday girl can't have all the fun). When booking, I was offered the 'Mother's Day Special', which included a free blow-dry, so all Bec knew when she got to the Spa was that if there were any quesitons about her children, they were at the hotel for the day. Massaged, facialed, parafined and blow-dried, Bec emerged from the Spa a little older, probably not much wiser, but a new woman. With plans for an early departure to the Colombian coffee region the following morning, we had a quick bite at a Mexican restaurant, and headed back to the hostel. You can't reach the big quarter of a centuary without a birthday cake so, as my last surprise, we gobbled down cake in our dorm room while chatting away to our American room mates until the early hours. Who needs bars when you have chocolate cake?

Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My!

Ok, so there weren't any tigers but there were four lions (actually six, after the birth of two cubs), and a paddington bear look-alike who scaled the walls of his enclosure like a mini MacGyver. Only in Ecuador (or South America generally) could you volunteer to work so closely with these types of animals. I refer to the last two weeks spent at the Santa Marta Animal Rescue Centre. In previous posts I've erroneously referred to this place as an animal sanctuary, which it's not. Tucked away on a dairy farm and reached via a very bumpy ride in the back of a truck to high above the small town of Tambillo, this place works closely with the Ecuadorian police to rescue animals, many of which have suffered some form of abuse or have been kept illegally in domestic homes. If possible, once the animals have been rescued and often brought back to good health, the centre prepares them for release into the wild or at least to rehabilitation centres or zoos.

A quick tour of the place on our first day confirmed the type of work the centre does. There's Barbosa, a majestic ex-circus lion with one cloudy blue eye, blinded after it was whipped. There's Brenda, a beautiful jaguar that despises humans after her 'owner' continually poked and prodded her so she would growl for snap-happy tourists. You can see the animosity in her eyes as she stares you down while pacing in her enclosure, there's no way you'd come out of that cage alive! Then there's the amazing Galapagos turtles, one of which had his shell used as a shooting target, and by shooting I mean with a gun. And everybody loves the always-energetic Coatis that crawl up and kiss you on the neck, but you can't help but notice the one missing an eye. He lost his eye when his 'owner' got impatient and used it as a cigarette stub.

These stories were just a few of the terrible accounts we heard. There are other types of sad though, not the out-right abuse kind, but the stories of animals so far domesticated that they are beyond help and will never be released back into the wild. These animals include two woolly monkeys. Both arrived separately having been fed with bottles and kept in nappies. One even puts his hands over his face like a crying baby to get attention. There's also Leo and Pumana, two beautiful pumas that were kept as pets and can be pat through their enclosure just like domestic cats but cannot be contacted directly, as their idea of 'playing' could kill or seriously injure you - they are pumas after all. Then there are the countless talking birds, nick-named the 'hola birds'. They will never be released into the wild purely because they could threaten whole ecosystems by introducing Spanish/English words to natural habitats.

So it was an eye-opener from the first day and my first 24 hours was a mixed bag. Before cleaning out the mammals’ enclosures, I was an accidental witness to a donkey being slaughtered for the sake of a lion, something that happens a couple of times a week here. Luckily I didn’t have to be part of the machete-armed team that carved it up, as nobody has to kill an animal if they don’t want to at Santa Marta. I was then on ‘cub watch’, making sure the two cubs that were born hours after we arrived made it through the night. The centre owner was concerned they wouldn’t because they were the offspring of a circus lion which may have been inbred but, two weeks later, they are still going strong and the plan is for them to be airlifted to a nearby animal rehabilitation centre. I can’t say I’ve ever approached a new mother lioness in the middle of the night with a torch before, but I’ll tell what, you she will roar if you get too close to her cubs (which I had to in order to see they were still breathing). Now that was a tad scary!

During the week we’d work from 8am-1pm and then 4pm-6pm and had weekends off after feeding the animals on Saturday mornings. The days were long and the breaks cherished, particularly after sometimes hours of physical work deconstructing cages or lugging buckets of puma poo from their enclosure to a waste-pit 400m away (that’s some heavy shit…). We were lucky to have two lovely roommates - Iza from Poland and Andrea from Portugal - to share laughs, recipes and beers with. Iza was particularly taken by the popular Australian dish of ‘fairy bread’ – I’ll call it a dish (bread, butter and sprinkles). Bec and I produced it on ‘cake night’, a Thursday night centre ritual.

The highlights? I definitely had a few favourite animals - both woolly monkeys and the amazing Galapagos turtles, which were surprisingly full of personality and loved a rub on the chin. The contact had with the pumas was a once in a lifetime experience too. We also had a weekend in Banos, a gorgeous little town hidden in a valley three hours from Tambillo with a reputation for massage therapy, so you can guess what went down there. On one of our last days we had to say goodbye to around 45 animals, most of them birds but some of them a fair bit bigger. One lovely memory I have is of the delighted smile on local cab driver Danilo’s face when he was recruited to help an eight-man team heave a sleeping (tranquillised) lion up to his cab which was that day loaded not with people, but a zoo-worthy cargo. Imagine passing that taxi on the highway, another only-in-South-America moment!

Of course there were the downsides too, caring for animals you knew had not long to live, such as rabbits and guinea pigs, often menu items for the animals. Bec and I had a morning of chopping up the bottom end of a guinea pig we’d fed the day before. But I guess the snapper turtle we were preparing it for had to eat something, just like the lions, jaguar and pumas. We also volunteered to take shifts feeding a very sick rabbit that had contracted an infection during pregnancy and were there at 2am when she decided to fly the coup and go to bunny heaven, us still holding her. Then there was the misogynistic macaw, ‘Evil bird’, as named by previous volunteers. He hated woman and would attack any female that came near him. Evil bird, however, had no issues with men or police, and police sometimes have to drive their car a little way up the driveway before getting in, in order to get away from the bird, which always wants to come too. Maybe the police saved Evil bird from a wicked female owner, who knows?!

So you can see, Santa Marta is an experience in itself, so many charismatic animals with different personalities. I would recommend it to any animal lover who is willing to work hard and doesn’t mind getting their hands dirty…very dirty!