It's just gone 7am and we are on a long distance bus having just completed our first overnight bus journey. In fact we've been on buses now for 22 hours. The air conditioning on this one is on full blast and it's bloody freezing! The more experienced travellers all bought their blankets and sleeping bags with them. Unfortunately we did not.
Our journey started in Villa de Leyva, itself 4 hours bus journey from Bogota, on in our case 6 hours due to heavy traffic, rain and a very nasty bus crash going in the opposite direction. Villa de Leyva is a lovely old town high in the hills. Formerly on the main road from Bogota to the coast it has now been bypassed which has allowed it to remain unchanged for centuries. A big central Plaza Mayor, cobbled and surrounded by almost Turkish looking low houses with wooden balconies. We became proper tourists for a couple of days.
The bus to Villa de Leyva was full of Colombians, us and one American guy. We talked briefly as we passed the bus accident and arranged to meet him in a restaurant the following evening. Ron is 77, from Portland, Oregon, is a previous Episcopelean priest and gay rights leader, restaurant owner (never again), and then upmarket worldwide tour leader for 30 years. As usual he was travelling alone and we had a great evening with him. Conversation never stopped. We even have an open invitation to visit him and Yellowstone National Park if we ever make it to the NW USA.
Update from Cartagena
Cartagena is on the northern Caribbean coast of Colombia. Colombia has both a Caribbean coast and, to the west, a Pacific coast. This is the furthest west either of us has ever been. It's a bustling mix of a city and definitely more western than the interior of the country. Spanishy, Mexicany, Caribbeany. It's at sea level too so we came down on the bus through mountains for eight hours and then VERY steeply and twistily through the night onto the large coastal plain. The gods were with us though and the bus finally pulled up in Cartagena bus station at 9.30am.
Hats are all the rage in Colombia. Further south all the old guys wear really cool pork pie type hats and here there are wide brimmed ones on sale with (for Emma and Jenny) plenty of other 'tourist tat'.
The Old Town though is very beautiful especially early in the morning before the crowds are out.
An excitement this morning was haircut time. I'd been looking a bit bushy so decided a crop was in order. We had passed a street barber yesterday and eventually we found it again this morning. It was all a bit hit and miss but I was pretty pleased with the outcome in the end. It took over half an hour, and all for 20,000 Colombian pesos, around £4.50, and I still probably paid twice the local price.
Then it was off to the gold museum. Apparently a poor substitute for the one in Bogota but it was still pretty impressive. Apparently in days gone by it was not unusual to find nuggets the size of hens eggs in the rivers south of Cartagena. The local tribes knew what they were doing with the gold too.
At lunch yesterday in an excellent vegetarian restaurant (Jen, we've founds loads of good, cheap, fresh food here) we met Ricardo, a Colombian chap who runs an English language school. He left Colombia when he was six and lived in Philadelphia for twenty years. He came back in 1995 and told us of hairy stories of the guerrila road blocks. If you were western you would be kidnapped and if you had the wrong Colombian surname you were never seen again. Apparently at one time Escobar the big bad cartel leader offered to repay Colombia's entire national debt. Like all the Colombians we have met though Ricardo is very proud of his country now.
Tonight we meet our fellow sailors for the catamaran trip to the San Blas islands on Monday. Then there is a free classical music concert in the main square. It looks as though this will be broadcast on national television.
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