Salenta, Valle de Cocora, Bogota

After leaving lovely Medellín we headed to the small coffee and trout farming (we had trout for the first time, kinda like salmon) town of Salento. The town itself is pretty nice but most foreign tourists come here to take a hike in the Valle de Cocora to see the famous wax palms of the area, the largest palm trees in the world that grow up to 60 meters tall (almost 200 feet). We had to take a jeep to the town of Cocora and then started hiking up the valley through mostly cattle ranches. We could see some wax palms growing up the sides of the narrow valley. We evntually walked into the national park up the steep muddy trail to about 2900 meters through cloud forest and then proceeded to walk back to Cocora along a dirt road that meandered through the wax palms themselves and was actually the highlight of the walk. The jeep ride back got crowded and Kevin ended up standing on the back bumper with six other people holding on underneath a tarp becuase it was raining. It was a little crowded back there and his arm was very tired from holding on to the jeep on all of the curves after we made it back. We left Salento the next day and took a nine hour bus trip to Bogotá, the capital of Colombia with 8.5 million inhabitants, one of which we knew from Peace Corps Honduras. We stayed in or around Bogota for five nights, leaving on the sixth. Bogotá is a huge sprawling city that reminded us of LA except it was in a valley. We rode up to Monserrate, a hill on the valley wall, to see the massive expanse of Bogotá. The views are pretty good, unfortunately one of the many rainstorms started forming just before we went so part of the city was obscured by clouds and rain. We walked around La Candelaría, the colonial barrio of Bogotá, to see the old churches, museums and the giant Plaza de Bolívar that is home to hundreds of pigeons. The gold museum in the city center is pretty impressive as well. We also went to La Casa de Moneda which houses a few museums, one on the printing of money and one on Fernando Botero, Shannon´s new favorite artist, who draws and sculpts funny looking fat things from animals to people. Over the weekend we made a side trip to the salt cathedral of Zipaquirá, Villa de Leyva and Tunja. The salt cathedral was an impressive cathedral (the second one built as the first one is now closed) carved underground in the salt mines that produce 95% of the salt consumed in the country. Cathedral might be a little misleading as there is no actual cathedral but the inside of the mine is carved with carvings depicting the stations of the cross, and they even hold mass inside of it. It was something totally different than anything we have seen before. After the salt cathedral we went to Villa de Leyva, one of the most bautiful colonial villages in Colombia. It was a very quaint, very colonial town that also had one of the largest plazas in South America. We also had some very tasty passionfruit cheesecake there, the best cheesecake we have had in a very long time. We really liked Villa de Leyva with its colonial style houses and cobblestone streets. The next morning we went to the regional capital of Boyacá, Tunja. Tunja is known for its colonial architecture, elegant mansions adorned with some of the most unique artwork in South America, and mudejar art in its churches. One of the churches was very impressive with all of the designs and art on the walls and ceilings and was hard to imagine all of the work that went into its intricate details. We also took a tour of the mansion that had belonged to the founder of Tunja. It was built in the mid 16th century and shortly after was painted with scenes from floor all the way to cover the ceiling. After the owner died, his wife remarried and the new man had the house painted over and no one even knew of the paintings until recently when a roof collapsed and exposed ceiling paintings. Since then, they have carefully uncovered many of the original wall and ceiling paintings. Impressive! Our last night in Bogotá we went to one of the nicest parts of town with our friend John and his girlfriend and went to a microbrewery and Kevin got to have some good beer, even a dark one! He was happy about that. Then we back to John´s place where we stayed the whole time and ate some pasta and left at about 10 p.m. to take a 13 hour bus to Cali.

Medellin

After Taganga, we traveled on a bus for 16 hours to get to Medellin, the former stomping grounds of drug kingpin Pablo Escobar. Arriving into the city, we were really impressed with the city of 3.5 million residents lying on the valley floor and slowly creeping up the edges of the mountains. After finding a hostal to drop off our things for a few nights we walked around the central part of the city, admiring the old churches and buildings intermixed with the modern skyscrapers. Medellin is a very modern city. They have invested heavily into improving the city since the Escobar days, and it shows. They have built the only public transportation rail line, Metro, in Colombia and it is cheap and efficient. We loved it. Since building the rail line they have added two cable lines with gondolas to go up the sides of the valley to serve the poorer areas as well. One ticket of about 75 cents gets you anywhere you want to go within the system. They also have buses that serve the outlying areas to connect them to the metro stations. It is really quite awesome.
Over the next few days we walked a lot and rode the metro a lot to see Medellin. Our hostal was a few blocks away from the villa Olimpica. That place was huge. Besides the soccer stadium serving one of the pro teams, they have tracks, volleyball and basketball stadiums, six pools, chess, ping pong, skate park, and on and on. In other areas of Medellin we visited the free botanical garden, various parks and squares including one that is full of towers of lights and looks pretty awesome lit up at night as well as a park where you are encouraged to kick off your shoes and relax. We also decided to go paragliding while in Medellin. Shannon was terrified at first but Kevin really wanted to go, plus it is cheap in Colombia about half of what it costs in the United States or less. We took a bus high onto the valley wall that had great views of the city and there we strapped on our harnesses and hooked up with our pilots and parachutes and ran off into the wind to glide back down into the valley in silence. It was amazing and we both loved it. Shannon even said she would do it again.
We made a couple of day trips outside of Medellin as well. One day we went to a town called Santa Fe de Antioquia which is a small colonial town that is known for its tamarind candy among other things. We strolled around the city admiring its colonial look and many churches (of course). We headed toward a bridge outside of town that was one of the first suspension bridges built in South America and walked and walked to only realize we ended up going the wrong direction. (We blame Lonely Plant). So we didn't want to walk back and ended up on a bus back to Medellin. We also went to the town of El Penol which has a 200 meter high granite monolith near the edge of a lake. They have built a 649 step staircase into a fissure that allows visitors to climb to the top for some amazing views. From there we went to another town close by called Guatape which is known for its fresco-like adornments of the traditional houses that have brightly painted bas-relief depictions of people, animals and shapes that cover the bottoms of the houses. They were very interesting and fun to look at. The town has also become a weekend getaway for the residents of Medellin and is almost like a festival atmosphere on weekends with plenty of alcohol flowing. Colombians seem to really like their alcohol and beer is sold everywhere. While in Guatape, we took advantage of their 600 meter long zip line that goes over the lake. It was fun.
We really loved Medellin but had to keep moving on to see other sights. Next up: Salento and Bogota.

Mud Volcano and Scuba Diving in Taganga

Before we left Cartagena, we went to a ¨mud volcano¨. It was like a small volcano but instead of lava, it was filled with mud. We climbed stairs to the top of it and then submerged ourselves in the mud pit. It was really interesting as the mud was really thick but liquid and it was hard to sink down very far. After we had played around and were covered in mud, we went to the nearby lagoon and washed ourselves off. It was a very different experience but super cool. Now our skin is nice and mineraly! We spent our fourth anniversary traveling to Taganga. We stayed in a nicer place and went to dinner and had some yummy passion fruit daiquiris. It was a nice, semi-relaxing day. We are in Taganga now, on the Carribean Coast of Colombia and just completed a three day scuba ¨safari¨ which included our advanced certification. It was all in Spanish too so it was good practice for us. We stayed two nights in hammocks on a deserted beach and dove during the days. It was an awesome experience! There were ten of us that went and three of us in our course. All of the others were Israeli and Shannon was the only female. It was interesting to learn more about Israel. The course consisted of eight dives which we did over three days. We had to do a navegation dive where we had to use a compass to go in a line and back, make a square, a triangle, and go to a rocky point and back. We got to do that dive totally alone without our instructor and it was cool since it was the first time we were on our own. We also did a night dive which was really awesome! Shannon was of course really scared to do it as she doesn´t like to be in the water when she cannot see, but once she was in the water she realized that it was not scary at all. Everything is totally different at night as you use a flashlight which shows you the real colors of all the fish and the coral. These colors are not always visible during the day because the deeper you go, the less light there is. The first color to go is red so it was cool to see all the red fish and coral at night that look black during the day. The corals are also open at night and not during the day so a lot of them looked like little flowers. Crabs, eels, and lobsters also come out at night so we saw a lot more of those as well. The company we went with has a coral station where they are growing some of the types of corals that are the most endangered so they can replant them. We got to go there and help clean off the nets and corals (really hard when there is current and you are trying to stay still underwater). It was cool to be able to see this and help a little. All in all the trip was amazing! It was a lot different than our previous diving as the water was not as clear and there was a current, but it was interesting to see different things. Now we´re off to Medellín and the zona cafetería.

El Fin de Cuerpo de Paz y El Inicio de Otra Adventura

We did it, 27 months of Peace Corps in Honduras! We officially finished on September 24! It was definitely sad saying goodbye to friends both Honduran and Peace Corps but it was time and we were both ready to move on. It was definitely a great experience and we are glad that we did it. Was it what we expected? Of course not but we feel that we got a lot out of it and learned a lot about ourselves, Honduras, and of course lots of Spanish all the while helping people the most we could. We both drastically improved our Spanish levels and that is something that we really wanted to get out of this experience. We started at Novice High and Kevin ended at Intermediate High and Shannon at Advanced Mid. And we feel fairly comfortable conversing and can do everything that we need to. After a week in Tegucigalpa seeing doctors and dentists (we went two years without any worms or stomach problems!) we headed out on a ¨luxury¨ bus to Panama to begin our three months of travel in South America. We spent a night in Nicaragua, 8 hours in Costa Rica walking around, and a night on the bus and finally arrived in Panama after three days on a bus.

Panama City was amazing! After two years without seeing a big city it was very impressive (Shannon now realizes that after two years of no development she loves it). We didn´t realize how big it is and how many sky scrappers there are. We went to the canal (not that exciting because we were not able to see any ships go through) and walked all over the city. It was weird being able to walk around with a camera and not be afraid of being robbed! We then headed to Portobelo which is a tiny town on the Caribbean side of Panama. We took a 5 day sailing trip to Colombia and spent three days at the San Blas Islands, gorgeous white sand deserted islands off the coast of Panama. It was a great trip, our captain and chef were awesome and we got to see a ton of fish while snorkeling among the islands. Kevin saw a Nurse Shark but luckily Shannon missed that one! It was a great way to get to Colombia and we arrived in Cartagena as the sun was rising.

We are now in Cartagena, a quaint colonial town set on a bay. The entire city is surrounded by old walls that protected it and there is a lot to see and do. It is very developed and also a shock to us as we haven´t been any place like this in quite some time. It is a good start to our Colombian adventure. Next up, scuba diving in Taganga!