Leticia, Colombia and going down Rio Solimoes, Brazil

Leticia, Colombia, and going down the Solimoes River, Brazil slideshow

I was glued to the airplane window when we were arriving in Leticia, the charming Colombian town on the border of Brazil and Peru. From the air, I saw thousands of tree tops resting against each other so tight together that it looked like one massive broccoli. The first view of the Solimoes river, running through the green forest, in its cafe au lait color, made my heart miss a beat. Even from afar, I could feel life breathing in and out of the forest, connecting with life breathing in and out of me. The forest and my body are made of the same things after all: hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, calcium, magnesium and the other 100 plus minerals forming the cells of life... complete ecosystems.

The downpour that started while I waited for my luggage at the baggage claim added drama and excitement to my arrival, cooling the air and drying the sweat off my body. I even had to dig the black jacket out of my luggage, for the first time in a month. Then I unzipped the hood to protect my head and walked out the airport in the pouring rain to catch a taxi to my hostel.

The Mahatu Jungle Hostel is a small cozy place with a kitchen, and a sweet garden in the back with trees. hammocks, birds and a fun owner - Gustavo. I used one of the two bicycles available to do all my errands and get ready for the four day boat trip to Manaus, the capital of the state of Amazonas in Brazil. I went to the post office and sent the rest of my winter clothes and sleeping bag to my mother's home, bought my boat ticket, a hammock and ropes from the market. The hammock was going to be my bed for four nights. The boat left the next day, September 26th, from Tabatinga, just a couple of miles away on the Brazilian side of the border with Colombia.

The following morning Gustavo and I got on bikes again and went to the local market to buy fruit for my boat trip. He also got us a snack to eat with coffee - larvae! I was a little resistant getting my first bite, but after I tasted it, I asked for seconds. Eatable larvae has 55% fat and 25% fat and it is commonly eaten by Indigenous people. I must say it went down very well with a nice dark cup of Colombian coffee.

The Voyager IV was a very nice boat and a lot less crowded than I imagined the trip would be. I was in a group of about ten foreign travelers with hammocks clustered together in the central area of the boat. Surprisingly, the days went by very quickly, in a sort of routine of mostly hanging out at our hammocks either reading or sleeping, getting up for meals, sunrises and sunsets. Most of what we saw for four days was water, water, water and sometimes we were close enough to the shore to see trees. The boat occasionally stopped at small towns along the river to pick up or drop off people. In the evenings, we would play cards, drink a beer and watch the news or a soap opera on a satellite TV on the boat. Hanging out at the deck upstairs to watch the stars and feel the soft breeze of the evening was also a favorite evening activity. The daily showers before bed/hammock time, refreshed us for another night. Late nights and early mornings were usually breezy and chilly.

Volcon del Totumo, Colombia

Volcan de Lodo del Totumo, Colombia slideshow

Today is my last day in Cartagena, and it has been a relaxing one. After a yoga session, I had a fresh pineapple juice, a large bowl of fruit salad and headed out to the Volcano El Totumo, 35 miles northeast of town. A dozen other tourists were already sitting inside the minivan when I joined them. Forty-five minutes later we were all floating on mud and being massaged by a crew of three experienced locals.

The crater of the volcano is 50 feet above ground, and although very deep, (I think I've heard it is 200 meters, or 650 feet) it is easy to float on top, once we are helped into a horizontal position on the thick mud.

Wikipedia tells me that approximately 1,100 mud volcanoes have been identified on land and in shallow water. This one was active nine years ago, our guide informed us, but instead of lava and ashes, it spews mud, a phenomenon caused by the pressure of gases emitted by decaying organic matter underground. After the massive mud bath, we were helped washing it all off in the cienaga, a lukewarm lagoon a few feet away.

We were also informed that the mud has over 50 minerals in it and it gets constantly renewed. I asked, because I was a little concerned with the large number of people and small surface where we bathed. But whatever there was in the mud, it made me even more relaxed than I was. Right now, as I write, it is difficult to keep my eyes open, despite the three small cups of coffee I get for free at my hotel lobby.

Tomorrow I am off to Leticia, and may as well be crossing yet another border, maybe the last one for the next while. Leticia is a border town, next to Tabatinga in Brazil and Santa Rosa in Peru. My plan is to go on a four-day boat ride from Tabatinga to Manaus to meet Peter there in a few days.

Taganga Beach, Colombia

Taganga, Colombia slideshow

Taganga is three kilometers from Santa Marta. A relaxed fishing village, packed with boats and open air restaurants, but the beach is not the best. I just relaxed at our hotel for a day, swam at the swimming pool and relaxed at the hammocks. The next day I went to Santa Marta to get my things and return to Cartagena.

Tayrona National Park, Colombia

Tayrona National Park, Colombia slideshow

Tayorona National Park is an hour east of Santa Marta, which is four hours from Cartagena. Although on the Caribbean coast, travelers go there mainly to go to the beaches at Tayrona National Park. The other reason, would be to arrange trips to Ciudad Perdida, Lost City, one of the largest pre-Columbian towns discovered in the America, built between the 11th and 14th centuries on the northern slopes of Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta.

I spend a day in Santa Marta and considered going to Ciudad Perdida seriously. It is a six days trek in the jungle among mud, mosquitoes, crossing six or seven rivers that would come up to my chest, but the beauty of the area and the fun swimming in rivers is worth all the suffering, I was told. But six days is all I had for the area, and besides, I did not so much looked forward to mud and mosquito bites. Instead, I decided to relax in Tayrona and surrounding beaches.

After the van dropped us off at the entrance of the park, we walked through a mixture of jungle and ocean views. An unspeakably beautiful scene. Legend has it that the Tayrona Indians (related to the cannibalistic Carib Indians) created the bay to allow for easy access to the ocean and fishing. Thus, upon rounding the tip of Arrecifes, the gorgeous rock formations sticking out of the sea and large sand beaches composed a picture of vast beauty that often kept me standing still for several minutes admiring all that beauty. But the sun was beating hard on my hat, so I kept walking another 45 minutes to Cabo San Lucas where I rented a tent.

My plan was to stay for four or five days, but after day two, the rain and lighting were becoming more frequent, so it was time to move away to another beach. When the rain stopped in the morning, Erika, an American woman from San Francisco and I gathered our things and went to nearby Taganga.

Playa Blanca, Colombia

Playa Blanca, Colombia slideshow

You can take a 45-minutes fast boat ride and go directly to Playa Blanca. Or a three-hour ride on a big slow boat, visit Isla del Rosario and the Aquarium on the way. I hesitated. Is this another touristy trap that will keep me hostage for three hours and not see anything interesting after all? I went back and forth in my mind on what I should do and asked for the fast boat ticket without much conviction. The clerk handed me the ticket, I looked at it and vacillated. The clerk was nice – they are almost always nice south of the border. Yes, I could change.

The ride was too long and not so interesting and the Aquarium only kept my attention when the dolphins did their show, but I am not complaining. At least I got to stay at Playa Blanca for five days and almost everyone else returned to Cartagena on the same boat only a couple of hours later.

Warm, vivid green/blue turquoise water reflected small colorful fish through my goggles during daily swims at the Caribbean sea. The beach was blissfully quiet before and after the boats arrived, and on Monday there was peace all day as no large boats arrive on this day.

That is, there was a lot of peace at Playa Blanca, but not complete, only minus the vendors of necklaces and bracelets, the massage girls, and the fruit, coconut, ice cream and desserts vendors. The latter I consider were providing a service since I loved the fruit and all the eatable items. But some of the vendors, the ones selling things I did not want but did not want to give up selling them to me, were border line harassing me.

But life was good at Playa Blanca. I slept in a tent in a very secure “oasis”, composed of a few hammocks, tents, cabanas, a full bar and kitchen that turned up fresh coffee every day. Fruit was always available by vendors on the beach and there was no shortage of fish meals. Beer and any kind of drink was also prepared to order by our host, in addition to lobster, prawns and fresh fish. The owner was a mean-looking macho guy but he knew how to smile and be nice at the appropriate times. Although his macho ways did not jive with me in any way, I was very happy to see how he kept the place very organized, clean, and everyone else who did not belong there, always an arms length away. And that is all one needs in a such a warm culture as the Colombian, when a five-minute talk is all one needs to consider you a friend or even an intimate.

The bath was the hard part. It consisted of an allotment of a few buckets a day. But all I needed was to shake off the salt from the sea anyway, so life was really good. Lots of food and drinks available, comfortable chairs with parasols at the beach, and guests to hang out with when I was not reading my Paulo Coelho book in Spanish, “Valquiria Decide Morir.” I read three of his books the last month an.d that did a lot for improving my reading and comprehension skills in Spanish.

But eventually I got tired of life in paradise. I missed the Internet, counted the days and realized I needed to keep moving in order to see everything I wanted to see near Cartagena and be in Manaus in time to meet Peter. So I left on the big boat that afternoon, five days after my arrival.

Cartagena, Colombia

Cartagena, Colombia slideshow

Cartagena de Indias was found in 1533 and it was the main Spanish port on the Caribbean coast and getaway to the north of the continent. Full of history, Cartagena is walled by Las Muralhas, the thick walls built to protect it. Treasure plundered from the indigenous people by the Spanish was stored here before shipped to Spain. As such, it became a target for pirates and, in the 16th alone, it suffered five sieges, one of them led by Francis Drake in 1586.

Despite the hot humid climate, Cartagena inspired me to throw away from my checklist of museums and instead stroll through the maze of cobbled alleys and enjoy the many fresh juices and fruit salads available at almost every corner. The city's ethnicity and climate reminded me of Brazil's northeast. This is where I saw the largest number of African descendants, animating the city with music dance and vibrant colors.

Cartagena is Colombia's largest port and an important industrial center of 1.1 million inhabitants, but the old town has changed very little. It is a living museum of the 16th and 17th-century Spanish architecture.

Bogota, Colombia

Bogota, Colombia slideshow

The museums and the efficient public transportation – TransMilenio were the highlights for me in Bogota. The green buses have their own street lines, uninterrupted by other vehicles and it is very inexpensive. Although always crowded, I loved seeing the efficiency of these buses and wished we had the same in Brazilian cities.

Of the several museums I visited, Museo del Oro and Donacion Botero were the highlights for me. I learned about the history of gold, how the Indigenous people used as ornament of the ruling class, offerings back to nature as a way to give thanks and foster abundance. Over 34,000 pieces housed in the museum show how techniques used for transforming the mineral into jewelery with simple tools were highly developed in pre-Hispanic cultures. It was customary for chiefs and royalty to be buried with their gold, turning these sites vulnerable to robbers after the Spanish colonization.

It was a pleasure to see the originality of Botero's work, highlighting the beautiful roundness of his models. I also went to the Museo Historico Policia, mostly a propaganda for the Colombian police force, but it was interesting to see some of Pablo Escobar's memorabilia and the hype about his capture. Cocaine is such a household theme in Colombia that there is a current soap opera about the capture of a group of traffickers.

I also enjoyed staying with Maria and Fernando, a charming couple working on their PhD in Electronic Engineering. But Claudio, their cat, was the real joy of the household for all of us.

Bogota was the last cool city I visited, at over 8,000 feet, the temperature hovers around 20 degrees Fahrenheit all year round.

Quito, Ecuador

Quito, Ecuador slideshow

Unfortunately my visit to Quito was a quick one since I wanted to spend more time in Colombia. Although it just market my transition between Peru and Bolivia, I was able to stroll on the street of of the old town and enjoy the scene of upscale Mariscal streets full of night clubs and restaurants.

A Unesco World Heritage Site since 1978, the Old Town retains the working class and indigenous character. Quito was a major Inca city that was destroyed by its leader shortly before the arrival of the Spanish Conquistadores. Thus, the present day capital was founded a top the Inca ruins in 1534 and the large number of churches and monasteries made a new statement of who was in charge of the place.

I was very impressed with the public transportation in Quito. Troles and Metrobuses were fast and inexpensive means of green transportation, a breath of fresh air in South America where lack of standards allow buses to spit out mass amounts of dark fume in the crowded cities.

Quito is located where the hemispheric line marks the Mitad del Mundo, middle of the world. Well, there is the official site, where most people, including me, take their pictures. But according the GPS measures, the place is about 240 yards off the mark, where an alternative museum, Museo Solar Inti Nan, is located. I visited both sites to cover it. At the alternative museum we had an interesting tour with experiments such as water draining counterclockwise north of the Equator and clockwise three yards away, south of the Equator, a phenomenon called the Coriolos Force.

From Quito I took a five hours bus ride to Esmeraldas where I got on a plant to Cali, Colombia. I almost could not board the plane because I didn't have a round trip ticket, a strange requirement for foreigners, since I was going to continue my travels from there. But everything worked out in the end.