Colombia – Bienvenidos al GSB

After a month in Ecuador spending less than $200 a week, it was time to step it up a little (or a lot) and meet some future classmates in Cartagena, Colombia. Little did I know that meant staying up until 6am every night and being a part of a group of 36 that drank 64 cases of beer and 90 handles of liquor. In addition to learning that my future classmates are fellow alcoholics, we had an amazing time in Cartagena.

We spent our first three days in an island resort just off the coast. In addition to hammocks and card games, we had a sunset booze cruise. I also went scuba diving for the first time (before the cruise). Apparently in Colombia you don't need to take a class and can learn everything you need to go down 75 feet on the boat ride out. After finally figuring out how to make my ears stop hurting, it was awesome. Lots of colorful fish, a really cool coral reef, jelly fish, a lobster, and I did not die (despite the lackluster guide).

Back in Cartagena we stayed in the center of the gorgeous old town in a massive house (rarely seen in the ATL real estate market, this was a '12/11.5') with 4 live-in staff.

Some highlights in addition to chilling out at the pool and drinking with new friends:
-A rowdy night out at Mr. Alligator's, a distant cousin of Senor Frogs
-Befriending a guy with a pet sloth (picture a strange looking monkey-like creature with the temperament of a koala). You could just hold him at a party and he would chill while all the girls would come up and pet him. My best bar prop ever
-Going 8 and 1 at beer pong with my new partner from Bain LA
-Tango lessons with 36 new friends. Let's just say that I don't expect to be asked to dance by classmates anytime soon.
-A ride around town in an open-air 'chiva' (loosely translates to booze bus in english)
-After the president was re-elected last week, the government imposed a 4 day 'dry weekend' to ensure people stayed calm. We were not slowed down by the heavy military presence and frequent flyovers by attack helicopters, however, and our staff kept making runs to black market liquor stores and returning to the house with cases of beer and handles of rum hidden in trash bags.
-A surprise 13 hour layover in Bogota on my way to Peru due to a cancelled flight. Struggling to stay awake on 3 hours sleep, it turned out Bogota is a great city. I walked all around downtown, into a few really nice churches, a bunch of free interconnected art museums downtown, up a cable car (ala Quito) overlooking the city, and to the 'best science museum in South America'.
-Learning that our hosts (the Colombian girl who is going to Stanford who organized the trip) no longer actually lives in Colombia. To make a long story very short, her Dad narrowly escaped a kidnapping incident that actually took the life of the current president's brother. So their family made a very quick move to the US.
-Colombia's contrasts. Cartagena and Bogota were both very modern with nice, US-quality infrastructure (with the exception of the occasional llama in the streets and the stray dog sleeping in the airport terminal). The old walled area of Cartagena is one of the prettiest downtowns in the whole world. There is a large upper middle class, and both cities were as nice as any place I've been in South America. Street crime seemed almost none existent, and walking in the streets even late at night was safe (or least incident-free for us). Instead of the minor problems though, there are the occasional giant problems - like kidnappings and fears of missile attacks and bombings from drug lords. But I guess that's what keeps things interesting.

Well that's the really long update from me. Today is day 1 of 2 weeks in Peru, followed by a week in Buenos Aires. I'm off for a dune buggy ride in the desert.

Ecuador - Stunning Contrasts

Two years ago, I was convinced that Namibia was the land of stunning contrasts. Ecuador and Colombia, however, have been trying to make a case for the title - Ecuador, because it has a whole world of nature packed into a tiny country, and Colombia because the contrast between safety and sketchiness or normalcy and lunacy is always evident.

It seems like forever ago that I started towards South America via a broken down Marta system and a hurried cab ride to the Atlanta airport with my college roommate and trusty travel amigo Ian. After a few days acclimatizing in Quito and digesting the guide books we cracked open on the flight, we headed off via rickety bus on windy roads through the cloud forest to the jungle. We had an awesome two days of whitewater rafting through amazing waterfalls, canyons, and dense jungle. We went about 70 km down some of the biggest tributaries of the Amazon. We looked for but did not find any monkeys (apparently since they are eaten by Indians they have learned to avoid people), saw a bunch of birds, and had a brief hike that I quit for good after our guide scared us with a fake anaconda. We also had an unexpected but awesome swim after the 10 foot tall wafleria (waffle iron) rapids capsized our raft.

After the jungle we headed for the relaxing scene of Banos, a town in the mountains known for its hot springs (which were quite nice). A local described it as a good town to 'chill and grab a pizza in'. So we did. But...our R&R was interrupted around 5pm on day two by a massive volcanic explosion! Some quick history, Banos was evacuated for 6 months in 1999. But after there was no actual volcanic eruption, just a lot of lava and smoke, residents were let back in. So when we first heard about our eruption, we immediately booked a night tour up to see the fun more closely. Just as we started to go, however, the local police stopped us and started arguing about taking tourists to an erupting volcano. The news got wind of the conflict, and soon there was a camera crew filming us being stopped. Finally the local police let us go, but within seconds, we were stopped by the national guard. Eventually our guides talked our way up to the lookout. Quite exciting to see the lava but the sky soon become quite cloudy with smoke and ash and after an hour we headed back down. Even when the police shut down our bar (and rather than make us leave, the bar locked us in) we were still not too worried. But around 1:30, there was a huge explosion which rattled the entire bar. All the bartenders and the few remaining locals said adios! and immediately head out. Walking to our hostel, we passed countless cars full of belongings and families headed for safety. But there was really nothing for us to do at 2am. So we decided to go to sleep and catch the first bus out. Around 5:30 we woke up. Neither of us had heard anything through the night, so we briefly thought we were overreacting and decide to snooze. Around 5:31 a massive explosion shook the hostel. So we were out the door and at the bus station by 5:45. We talked to some neighbors who apparently could not sleep because of the eruptions every few minutes. Apparently we just slept through it. The only problem with our escape was that there were no buses. As it turned out, the police blocked off all roads leading to town, so buses could not get through. Around 8:00 we gave up and started to hitchhike to safety. We took a pickup truck to the police checkpoint - like 5 miles - for 50 cents. We then found a chicken truck on the other side who took us to the next village for a dollar. We then caught a small bus to the next major town and a real bus that could take us away from Banos's biggest eruption in 15 years.

After getting our fill of volcanoes, our journey to the coast took us on 2 trucks and 5 buses (the last sharing seats with some argumentative ducks and chickens). As we deftly handled the numerous transportation challenges presented by the volcano specifically and the Ecuadorian transit system in general, it became apparent that we had 'hit our stride' in Ecuador.

We finally settled in a very chill, awesome town called Canoa. We had a 17km beach set among cliffs and jungle to share with about 30 other people. After 4 days without shoes or shirts, countless meals of encocado pescado (local seafood specialty), days spent surfing and hammocking, and nights at 75 cent happy hour and in our $5 cabina in the sand (complete with bucket of water to wash your feet before bed), we had a hard time pulling ourselves away from Canoa´s “tranquilo” lifestyle.

We spent a few more days hopping among coastal beach towns (and spent a day whalewatching and wandering among the blue-footed boobies on the poor man's galapagos) before Ian decided that he had fallen in love with enough teenage latin women for one trip and had to go home. I headed to Quito (my count of unrequited latin love continues to escalate uncontrollably) for a couple weeks on my own.

I took 7 days of pretty intense spanish classes from a great Quichua woman who spoke spanish but no english, an interesting way to learn a language from scratch. I improved from knowing nothing to high beginner proficiency, but my confidence and language skill was tested when we took a field trip to a fruit market and I accidentally tried to order a juice known locally as 'nature's viagra'. Other than a few mishaps like that, which I will optimistically classify as minor, I have gotten along pretty smoothly.

A few highlights from Quito:
-Meeting an Ecuadorian guy who had lived in Norcross, GA for a year, about 10 minutes from my parents house. Also interestingly, he worked as a taxi driver for illegal immigrants. Apparently the risk of being caught with improper paperwork while flying or taking trains is too great, so he charged people as much as a thousand dollars to ride in his taxi to Arkansas, Texas, Florida, or wherever they needed to go.
-Taking the cable car way up over the city and hiking for half a day among the 4600m mountains with a guy from Alpharetta
-Hiking for a surprisingly intense 5 hours (having forgotten to buy water before arriving at the lake) up and down and around the crater of a gorgeous volcanic lake 100 km north of Quito.