Santa Marta & Parque Nacional Tayrona

Santa Marta is famous for being the place where Símon Bolívar, the great South American liberator, died in 1830. It also has a white cathedral (below) and a not so nice beach with a container port at one end, but not a lot else to write home about, so I only stayed there one night before heading into Tayrona National Park.

In Tayrona I stayed at Camping Don Pedro, which was a muddy 45-minute walk from where the minibus dropped me at the end of the road leading from the park entrance. It's located in a tranquil spot a short walk from Arrecifes beach, which is the closest beach to the park entrance. In the spirit of budget travel, I decided that renting a tent was too expensive, and I chose instead to sleep in a hammock. However, I soon discovered that this wasn't the most comfortable option, particularly as it got surprisingly cold in the middle of the night, and I had no blanket.

On my first afternoon in the park I went for a walk along the coast to see some of the nearby beaches. I arrived first at Arrecifes beach, which is scattered with huge boulders that were once worshipped by the indigenous Tayrona people. It's dangerous to swim in the sea off Arrecifes beach because it has a strong current (many people have died here), so the beach was pretty much deserted. I continued to La Amarilla beach (photos here and below), which is much more how you'd expect a Caribbean beach to look. I then passed through La Piscina beach, after which I walked past a colony of these funny blue crabs, which would scuttle away sideways into their dens as I approached them. I then arrived at Cabo San Juan de la Guía, which is the final beach you can get to without walking for several hours.

In the interests of travelling light I'd left my big backpack at the hostel in Santa Marta and brought only the bare minimum in my small rucksack. However, it turned out that I'd brought less than the bare minimum, because I forgot my swimming shorts, which meant that I couldn't really go swimming in the sea. I also forgot my torch, which is pretty essential when staying in places without mains electricity.

The following day I considered walking to El Pueblito, which is a pre-Hispanic village about 1½ hours' walk beyond Cabo San Juan de la Guía. However, my feet were hurting so much (due to my sandals rubbing against mosquito bites on my feet) that I decided against it, and instead just walked to La Amarilla beach again, had lunch there, then went back and read a book in my hammock. That turned out to be a wise move, because it starting raining soon after I got back to my hammock, and didn't stop until night-time.

I left the park early the next morning, returned to Santa Marta to pick up my backpack, and then began the long journey to Mérida in Venezuela. This involved catching a bus to Maicao, which is a town near the border, and then getting a colectivo (shared taxi) to Maracaibo, the first big city on the Venezuelan side, and finally an overnight bus to Mérida. I very nearly missed the bus to Mérida, because I completey forgot that there's a half-hour time difference between Colombia and Venezuela (thanks to a presidential decree by Hugo Chávez in 2007). I wandered out of the bus terminal to look for the 10:30pm bus at what I thought was 10pm, only to find it almost full and about to leave. I was very lucky to get one of the last two remaining seats, moments before the bus departed.

I've also had an interesting introduction to the way things work in Venezuela. In the journey in the colectivo, which was a huge, ancient, American-made car, I was sandwiched in the front seat between the driver and a friend of his. During the three-hour journey the driver stopped four times to allow his friend to go and buy beer for the two of them - at one point the driver had a beer in one hand and his mobile phone in the other, and I'm not sure how he was managing to control the car. Also, soon after crossing the border, the driver's friend instructed me to give him 20 bolívares (about £2) so that he could bribe an official not to search our luggage (I'm not sure why it was my responsibility to pay the bribe). The driver also jumped almost every single red light he came across, as did pretty much everybody else.

Having said all these things, the lady at the tourist information booth at Mérida bus station was incredibly polite to me and even complimented me on my Spanish, so it's definitely not all bad here.

Cartagena

I spent the last couple of days in Cartagena, which many people consider to be the most beautiful city in South America. And I'd agree, it probably just about beats Cuzco for the title of the most attractive city I've seen so far. I hear that Ouro Preto in Brazil is the only other South American city that comes close.

On Saturday I saw the sights of Cartagena, starting with the Puerto del Reloj (Clock Gate), which is the main gateway to the old town, leading to the Plaza de los Coches. I also saw several of Cartagena's churches, including the Iglesia de San Pedro Claver (here and here), the Iglesia de Santo Domingo (the city's oldest church), and the Cathedral (here and here, and a rare inside view here). I also went for a walk along Las Murallas, the old town's protective walls, which you can see below.

But maybe the best bits of Cartagena's old town are the ordinary houses, which, in contrast to the numerous white cities that I've visited, are very colourful, and remain pretty much unchanged after hundreds of years. There are a few examples here, here and here. But just to show you that that's not the full story of Cartagena, here is a photo of Bocagrande, which is a wealthy, modern part of Cartagena, and has the big hotels where most package tourists stay. And apart from these few areas that I've mentioned, most of the rest of Cartagena is pretty awful.

On Saturday evening I met up with Boyang, who once again was in the same town as me at the same time. We also met up with a Chinese friend of his, as well as a female Japanese friend of his Chinese friend (the only common language was Spanish). We were walking to the old town to get something to eat when the evening took a bit of a bizarre turn. In the Plaza de los Coches we bumped into another member of Boyang's Spanish course who's currently studying in Cartagena, and who that evening was acting as an interpreter for a group of Chinese travel journalists who were visiting Cartagena. When we met them they were interviewing a man who we soon discovered was the brother of Gabriel Garcia Marquez (presumably the man himself wasn't available). We hung around for a bit, and then joined the entourage as they were shown around the old town. We ended up in what appeared to be a private party in the garden of the Palacio de la Inquisición (the Spanish Inquisition museum), where there was a band playing traditional Colombian folk music.

We eventually left them a couple of hours later, at which point we were finally able to go for dinner. Later that night we went to Café Havana, which is a salsa club with a live band. I'd really been hoping to see a live salsa band before I left Colombia, so I finally had my wish fulfilled. I wasn't really in the mood for dancing, but a feisty Colombian girl (with her boyfriend sitting nearby) did her best to embarrass me by dragging me onto the dance floor, as you can see below.

On Sunday I once again wandered around the old town, and I also went to the Castillo de San Felipe de Barajas, which is a huge fortress built in the 17th century to defend the city. There was a pretty good view from the top.

That's about all I have to say about Cartagena, but just to show that I've got my finger on my pulse, look at what the BBC have to say about Medellín. Have they been reading my blog again?

I've now arrived in Santa Marta, which is another city on the Caribbean coast. I'm only planning to stay here for one night, after which I'll head into Tayrona National Park. I'm not feeling particularly happy at the moment, because at some point on my journey here I managed to lose my iPod. I'm not sure where it went, but I think it probably just fell out of my bag. It's pretty annoying, but I guess something like that was bound to happen at some point on my trip. I expect I'll cope without it.

Mompós

Monday was the first day of a two-day celebration of the two-hundredth anniversary of Colombia's independence. This meant that there was a big fireworks display in Medellín on Monday evening, which I wasn't able to go to because I'd decided to travel to Mompós that night. It also meant that the crowds were so big that it took me half an hour to get into the metro station to catch a train to Medellín's northern bus station.

From then on my journey didn't improve much. I had to take a twelve-hour overnight bus to Magangué, followed by a short boat trip to Bodega, and finally an hour's journey in a colectivo (shared taxi) to Mompós. The driver of the first bus chose to set the air-con to sub-zero, and I didn't have my coat with me in the bus, so it was like a prolonged torture for the whole night. I wasn't the only one that thought it was too cold - those in the know had brought blankets, but several others were just wearing jeans and a t-shirt, and I could see that they were really suffering. Anyway I've learnt my lesson - from now on I'll take my full winter gear on board any long-distance bus, particularly if it's sweltering outside.

Eventually after a 17-hour journey I made it to Mompós, and I guess it was just about worth the effort. Mompós is situated next to the Magdalena River, and it was a major port from the 16th century until the late 19th century, when the river silted up and shipping was diverted to Magangué on the other branch of the river. As a result Mompós was left isolated, and not a lot has changed in the town since then. As usual Lonely Planet exaggerates a bit when it says that many streets and squares look exactly like they did in the 16th century - well I don't think they had motorbikes and mobile phone repair shops in the 16th century. But it is true that there's hardly a single modern building in the town centre, and everywhere you see well preserved colonial buildings.

There's not a lot to do in Mompós, except walk around town or relax in a rocking chair. You really do see rocking chairs everywhere, including in my hostel (and here I am relaxing in mine). It was also absolutely baking hot, so for the most part I just took it easy for a few days, did lots of reading, and drank lots of fruit juice. Also last night (Thursday) I met up with Boyang again, who happened to be in Mompós at the same time as me - he's currently travelling around Colombia for a couple of weeks before his new semester starts next week.

I'm not going to give you a guided tour this time, but there are several photos of Mompós in my July 2010 album, starting with this one:

I've now arrived in Cartagena on the Caribbean coast after another 10-hour bus journey in ice-cold air-con (but I was better prepared this time).

And I'm not sure if this has been reported much back home, but the big news here is that Venezuela has severed diplomatic relations with Colombia. I'm not sure if this is going to affect me in any way - as far as I know the border is still currently open.

Medellín

I've spent the last three days in Medellín, which is Colombia's second largest city. For a period in the 1980s and 1990s Medellín was known as the most murderous city in the world, but that all changed after the death of the drug lord Pablo Escobar in 1993, and today Medellín is a thriving modern city and you'd never know about its violent history. It even has a modern metro system, which is the first I've seen since Buenos Aires at the very start of my trip.

Most of Medellín's colonial architecture has disappeared, although the old cathedral still exists, as does a new one. These days the city is more dominated by modern architecture, in particular the Coltejer Tower, which was built in the late 1960s.

On Saturday I visited the Museo de Antioquia, which is Medellín's most important museum, and one of the best that I've been to in South America. On the ground floor there was a temporary exhibition about Latin American music and dance, which was a lot of fun. There was also a large permanent exhibition of works by Fernando Botero, who's one of Colombia's most famous artists. He's known for his depictions of comically exaggerated figures, as you can see for example in these two pictures. Even his still lifes and sculptures are 'fat', for example this bronze sculpture of a guitar.

Outside the museum, in the Plazoleta de las Esculturas, there's a collection of 23 large bronze sculptures by Botero, including Perro (Dog) and Hombre a caballo (Man on a horse), which I took a look around. Later that day I also visited Medellín's botanical garden.

On Saturday night I went to see Toy Story 3 in 3D, at the cinema in the vast El Tesoro shopping mall. Animated films tend to be dubbed into Spanish here, so having found what I think is the only daily showing of Toy Story 3 in English in the whole city, I took my chance to go and see it. I hear grown men have been reduced to tears by the ending, so just for the record, I didn't cry (although the girl sitting next to me did). It was a great film though.

On Sunday I spent the morning updating my blog and the rest of the day wandering around the city centre, and this morning (Monday) I went for a ride on the Metrocable, which is Medellín's cable car, where there were good views from the top (here and below).

Best of all, a trip in the cable car doesn't cost £10 like the TelefériQo in Quito does. It's part of the metro system, so I was able to go all the way to the top for the price of a single metro ticket (1550 Colombian pesos, or about 55p).

Having been here for few days now, I'd say that out of all the South American cities I've visited, and with the possible exception of Buenos Aires, Medellín is probably the city that I could most imagine myself living in. Judging from the number of people in the hostel that I've heard are looking to buy or rent apartments here, I'm clearly not the only person to feel that way.

OK, I'm right up to date now. I'll be leaving Medellín shortly on an overnight bus to Mompós in northern Colombia.

Salento and Valle de Cocora

On Wednesday I arrived in Salento, which is a small town in the heart of Colombia's coffee-producing region. Having tried to stay at Plantation House, which is the main backpackers' hostel in Salento, and found that it was full, I decided instead to try La Serrana, a new hostel about twenty minutes' walk outside town. Gunther, the owner of Pelican Larry Hostel in Cali, had given me a flyer for La Serrana, so I was about to set off on the walk to La Serrana when by a pretty amazing coincidence the owner of La Serrana drove past, recognised the flyer in my hand, and offered me a lift to his hostel, thus saving me the long walk with my big backpack on.

I met up with a few people at the hostel, and that afternoon we decided to go on a tour of a coffee plantation about a half-hour walk further down the road past some more mountainous scenery. It was a small plantation in which the entire process of harvesting and processing the coffee is done by hand. Our guide gave us a short tour around the coffee fields, where they grow two varieties, Colombiano and Arabica, and he then explained to us the process of picking, peeling, drying, roasting and grinding the coffee. He told us that they don't generally roast and grind the coffee themselves, but instead they sell the dried coffee beans to a cooperative, which then performs the rest of the process. However, for our benefit he gave us some coffee for us to try that had been prepared entirely by hand and on-site.

The following day I decided to go on a hike around the Cocora Valley, which was the main reason I'd come to Salento. I'd met Robyn, a Canadian girl, the previous day, and she also wanted to do the hike, so we decided to attempt it together. We set off in the morning, and were soon walking through some very green and tropical forest and crossing a number of rivers. However, before long it started to rain, and by the time we reached our lunch stop at a humming bird reserve we were both pretty wet. We had to pay a small entry fee there, and in return we received a bowl of hot chocolate and a big lump of cheese (apparently you're meant to dip the cheese in the hot chocolate), and we got to see a lot of humming birds very close up (some photos here, here and here).

After lunch the weather situation deteriorated further, and the rain started coming down very heavily and didn't stop for the rest of the afternoon. Here I am at La Montaña, which is the highest point on the hike - I'm standing in front of what might have been an amazing view, but unfortunately we could see absolutely nothing. The paths we were walking along soon turned into muddy rivers, and our shoes became full of water and mud. Once we'd reached that point, it was actually quite liberating - it was impossible for our feet to get any wetter, so we were happily wading through ankle-deep water.

Eventually we reached what I'd come to Salento to see - the wax palms. These trees grow to 50 metres and even higher, and are the tallest palm trees in the world - they're also Colombia's national tree. There was still heavy cloud cover, but for brief periods the cloud did break enough that we could see the palms. In the distance we got an eerie view of the trees poking through the mist (here and below).

We made it back to Cocora in time to catch the last jeep for the 11km ride back to Salento. These jeeps can comfortably seat six passengers, but there were about twelve people who wanted to get on it. In true Colombian fashion that wasn't a problem, so they crammed as many people as possible inside the jeep, and I was one of five people standing on the platform at the back. About halfway along we stopped briefly, and I was in such pain from clinging on with one hand that I decided it would hardly be less comfortable to get onto the roof, so that's what I did. I then spent the rest of the trip riding on the roof of the jeep in the pouring rain - it was absolutely the most uncomfortable journey of my life.

The following morning I'd just about recovered from that very cold and wet experience, and I caught the bus to Medellín, which is where I am now.

Cali

I've got a bit of catching up to do with my blog, as a result of the wi-fi not working in the hostel in Salento (which is where I went after Cali). Anyway, here's what I've got to say about Cali.

I had two busy days in Cali, which is a big, hot modern city about three hours' drive north of Popayán, and it was a welcome reintroduction to civilisation after the previous few days I spent out in the sticks. I arrived at Pelican Larry Hostel on Sunday night to discover that there were five people staying there that I'd met previously in either Ecuador or Colombia, so I immediately felt at home. That night Gunther, the hostel's owner, hosted a great barbecue that almost all of the guests attended, and I discovered that a fair number of them hadn't been to sleep since the previous day, having been out partying all of Saturday night. For that reason most of them decided to get an early night after the barbecue had finished.

I spent Monday seeing the sights of Cali, including the Cathedral, the Iglesia de San Francisco, and the 16th-century Iglesia de la Merced, which is Cali's oldest church (the last two of these are surrounded by buildings that are more typical of Cali). In the afternoon I went to La Tertulia modern art museum, where I'd heard that the Bodies exhibition was currently showing - that's the one with the dissected and plastinated bodies.

I didn't realise it at the time, but this is actually a rival exhibition to Body Worlds, which is the original and the one that you've probably heard of. Even though it wasn't the original, it was still interesting, and good Spanish practice too, because all of the explanations were in Spanish - I learnt the translations of such useful words as hip, bladder and spinal cord.

The following morning I'd arranged to go on a hike with Boyang, who I first met in Baños in Ecuador, and who's currently living in Cali, where he's studying Spanish for a year as an exchange student from Beijing University. Boyang had only just returned to Cali after being stuck in Ecuador for six weeks as a result of being mugged and having his passport stolen in Quito. I met up with him and three of his Colombian friends in the city centre, and after waiting for an hour for the rain to stop, we set off on the hike up to Cristo Rey, a statue on the top of a nearby hill in a similar style to the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro.

After about two hours we arrived at the top of the hill, where we had great views of both the statue above us and of Cali below us. By the time we'd walked back down the hill I was pretty sunburnt, and it was already mid-afternoon, so we decided to go to the house of the uncle of one of Boyang's friends to order a takeaway for lunch. That was an interesting experience in itself, because it gave me the opportunity to see the inside of a middle-class Colombian home. I wouldn't say it was a typical house though, because it was decorated in a pretty extraordinary fashion - almost every available surface in the house (including the dining table and some of the chairs) was filled with garish antiques.

Cali is known as the world capital of salsa dancing, and I'd hoped to be able to go to a salsa night with a live band while I was here. However, I'd arrived at completely the wrong time of the week for that, because Sunday, Monday and Tuesday are the deadest nights of the week for going out in Cali. As a result I left Cali without seeing any live salsa. I still hope to see it before I leave Colombia though, and I think Cartagena is my best remaining chance.

San Agustín, Desierto de la Tatacoa & Tierradentro

I've now returned from my five day trip to San Agustín, the Tatacoa desert, and Tierradentro. It involved a lot of long bus journeys along very rough roads, and it was pretty exhausting, but it meant that I got the chance to see some interesting sights that very few tourists make the effort to visit.

I started off by catching the 6am bus for the six-hour journey to San Agustín, which is the location of hundreds of statues carved from volcanic rock by a group of people that lived in the area between the 6th and 14th centuries AD. The statues are located next to the tombs of tribal elders, to honour the dead.

I arrived in San Agustín around midday, and after lunch I walked to the Archaeological Park, which contains some of the most impressive and well-preserved statues. I spent a couple of hours at the park, and you can see pictures of some of the statues here, here, here and below.

There's also a general view of one of the statues sites here, and a photo of the view from Alto de Lavapatas, which is a site located at the top of a hill, here. I then returned to my hostel, Casa de François, which has probably the most idyllic location of any hostel I've stayed at so far, on a hill overlooking the town. That evening I also booked myself on a jeep tour of the more remote archaeological sites, for the following day.

I turned out to be the only non-Colombian person on the jeep tour, which I guess was actually a good thing, because it meant extra Spanish practice. Our first stop was at El Estrecho del Magdalena (Magdalena Narrows), which is where the entire Magdalena River flows through a channel less than two metres wide. En route to our next destination, we passed a panela factory, so we got out to take a look. Panela is basically solid unrefined sugar, which is made from sugar cane - you can see the finished product here. They gave us some of it to try while it was still hot and liquid, and it was so sweet and tasty that I bought a small block of it later when we stopped for lunch. However, when I tried to eat some that evening, I discovered that it sets so hard that it's more or less inedible without heating it up, so unfortunately it ended up in the bin.

We continued to Alto de Los Idolos, where there are some fairly impressive tombs, for example here and here. After lunch in San José de Isnos, we stopped off at Salto de Bordones, which with a drop of 400m is one of the higher waterfalls in the world. Our final archaeological stop was at Alto de Los Piedras, where we saw the 'Doble Yo' (Double Me) statue, which represents the supposed duality of body and soul.

The following morning I left San Agustín for my next long journey to the Tatacoa Desert. This involved a four-hour bus journey to Neiva, followed by another hour in a colectivo (shared taxi) to Villavieja on the edge of the desert, then a short ride in a mototaxi (tuk-tuk) into the desert. I decided to stay at a space observatory which is located in the desert, because I'd heard that it was possible to visit the observatory to get a guided tour of the night sky from the resident astronomer, Xavier Restrepo. After having missed my chance to go to the star-gazing tour in San Pedro de Atacama in Chile a few months ago, I was keen to take this opportunity instead.

When I got there, I discovered that by a fairly remarkable fluke I'd arrived on the first day of the annual Fiesta de Estrellas (Star Party), which is a four-day celebration of astronomy. The first thing this meant was that all of the cabins at the observatory were occupied, so this became my bedroom for the night. However, it also meant that there was a special star-gazing lecture that evening, so I couldn't really have picked a better time to have been there.

In the afternoon I had a brief walk around the desert, although it was extremely hot so I didn't stray very far from the observatory. I did see some interesting landscapes though, for example here, here and below.

In the evening I went along to Xavier's lecture, which took place in a field where three large telescopes had been set up. There was quite a lot of cloud cover, so it wasn't a perfect night for looking at the sky, but Xavier was able to point out several of the zodiac constellations, as well as Venus, Mars and Saturn, which were all clearly visible in the same part of the sky. He then set up the biggest telescope to point towards Saturn - I took a look, and I could clearly see the planet, including its rings, which was a pretty amazing sight.

Overnight there was a massive thunderstorm, which I found surprising considering this was supposed to be a desert. Fortunately I'd put my tent next to the main observatory building under the shelter of its roof, which meant that the tent stayed dry, but everyone that was staying in the main campsite woke up in a mud-bath. I got up just after dawn and had planned to spend an hour or two exploring the desert, but I soon discovered that all of the sand in the desert had turned to mud, and it was almost impossible to walk in it. As a result, after about ten minutes I returned to the observatory, packed up my things, and set off for Tierradentro.

This turned out to be the most marathon of all of my journeys on this trip, because I had to change buses at both Neiva and La Plata, and the buses are quite infrequent on this route. I had a 1½ hour wait at Neiva and a 2½ hour wait at La Plata, and in the end the 100km journey along horrendous roads took ten hours. I arrived in Tierradentro at about 6pm, and checked into a hostel in which I was the only guest. I then had dinner at Tierradentro's only restaurant (when I went in, the lady had to check if she had any food left to serve me). It was becoming clear that Tierradentro was about the least touristy place I'd ever been to. I heard that the reason Tierradentro receives so few tourists is that until fairly recently it was a guerilla stronghold. That's no longer the case, but the tourists still haven't started arriving in large numbers.

The following morning I set off to see what I'd come to Tierradentro to see, which are a set of tombs built between the 7th and 9th centuries by a disappeared tribe of indigenous Colombian people. The majority of the tombs are situated at four sites that are dotted around the surrounding mountains, and it takes a full day to see them all. I first visited Segovia, which is the most important site, with 28 tombs. I was allowed to go down into several of these tombs by an attendant who unlocked the trapdoors covering them, and to enter each tomb I had to walk down a steep spiral staircase. There were some well preserved wall paintings on some of these tombs, as you can see here and here. In one of the tombs there were also a number of burial pots.

After seeing another set of tombs at the next site, Alto del Duende, I stopped for lunch in San Andrés de Pisimbalá, which is a tiny village with a 400-year-old thatched church at its centre. After lunch I climbed up to the next tomb site, Alto de San Andrés. The tombs there were a bit more difficult to see because they're unlit, and flash photography isn't allowed in any of the tombs, so I had to view them by torchlight. I did however get a pretty good picture of one of the wall paintings.

I then set off to the final site, Alto del Aguacate, which is high up on a ridge, a seriously tough 1½-hour hike uphill from Alto de San Andrés. The scenery was spectacular though, as you can see here and here. I finally made it onto the ridge, where there were a number of tombs, most of which are now just holes in the ground, because they've been destroyed by grave robbers. Below is a picture of me, very hot and sweaty, at Alto del Aguacate. (Incidentally, you may notice that, for now at least, the beard is back.)

It was then a very steep downhill hike back to the hostel, through some more mountainous scenery.

On Sunday morning I again got up at dawn to catch the first bus back to Popayán, with the aim of getting back in time to watch the World Cup final. I did get there in time, but as I'd discovered the previous Sunday, almost everything in Popayán is closed on Sundays, and I couldn't find a single bar in which to watch the match. In the end I gave up and decided to fetch my big backpack from where I'd left it at the hostel, and catch a bus to Cali. The driver did tune into the match on the radio, and although the commentary was in Spanish and I didn't understand much of it, the 20-second shout of 'GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL' towards the end was all I really needed to hear.

Ipiales and Popayán

I've now arrived in Popayán, at the start of what will probably be a four-week stay in Colombia. Contrary to what you might think if you've never been here, Colombia is no longer a country riven by murder, violence and kidnapping. The security situation has improved a lot here in recent years, and most of Colombia is now perfectly safe to visit, and in particular is considered to be safer than either Ecuador or Venezuela.

On the way to Popayán I made a stop in Ipiales, the first town on the Colombian side of the border, to see the Santuario de Las Lajas, which is quite an impressive neo-Gothic church built against the cliff face where a local man called Maria Mueces claimed to have seen an image of the Virgin Mary in 1754. It's built on a bridge spanning the gorge of the Guaitara River, as you can see below.

I then spent the night in Pasto, another couple of hours up the road, before leaving for Popayán on Saturday morning. Popayán is famous for its Spanish colonial architecture, much of which appears perfectly preserved, although in fact much of it has been rebuilt in recent years after an earthquake in 1983 destroyed much of the town. This morning I saw the sights of the city, most of which are churches, including the Cathedral, Iglesia La Ermita (Popayán's oldest church, dating from 1546), Iglesia de Santo Domingo, Iglesia de San Agustín and Iglesia de San Francisco.

I didn't really choose the best time to come to Popayán - yesterday was Sunday, so everything was closed, and today (Monday) is a public holiday in Colombia, so almost everything is closed. One museum, the Casa Museo Mosquera, was open though, so I went for a look around. It's the former home of General Mosquera, who was Colombia's president from 1845 to 1867. Below is a photo of the courtyard of the museum.

I also saw the early 18th century Puente de la Custodia, and wandered the streets, of which this is a typical example. Like Sucre in Bolivia, this is a very white city.

Tomorrow morning I'm planning to head off to San Agustín, which is the site of one of South America's most important archaeological remains. Depending on how things go, I may then go a bit off the beaten track and spend a few more days seeing Tierradentro and the Tatacoa Desert before returning to civilisation.

Cuyabeno Wildlife Reserve

I got back from Cuyabeno a few days ago, but I've been on the move ever since, so I've got a bit of catching up to do. Here's my report from the jungle.

It took the best part of a day to get to our accommodation in the reserve. First I had to take an overnight bus from Quito to Lago Agrio, where I met up with the rest of the group. A private minibus then took us to the end of the road in Cuyabeno, and finally we had a two hour ride down the river to the lodge in a motorised canoe. We stayed at Jamu Lodge, which is one of a handful of lodges in the reserve. There were twelve of us in total, including people from the USA, France, Germany, Malta, as well as me from the UK. Half of us (including myself) stayed for five days, and the rest stayed for only four days. There's a group photo below.

We saw our first wildlife even before we arrived at the lodge. We saw a couple of different types of monkey (here and here), as well as a stinky turkey (or hoatzin to be more scientifically accurate). Time and time again our guide, Rodrigo, or our motorboat driver would spot animals in the jungle that the rest of us would never have noticed - it was pretty amazing. The exception to this was the stinky turkey, which was quite difficult to miss.

We arrived at the lodge in the late afternoon, and after a short break to settle in, we set off in the canoe again to the Laguna Grande, for a swim and to see the sunset, which was pretty impressive, as you can see here and below.

It was dark when we left the lake to return to the lodge, which made it an even better time to see wildlife, because it's estimated that around 70% of species in the Amazon rainforest are nocturnal. Luckily for us, a caiman came right up next to the boat, and we got a great view of it.

When we returned to the lodge, we realised that we were most definitely not alone there. We had quite a few visitors, including hundreds of moths circulating around any light sources, a large gold-coloured cockroach, as well as this little chap. The noise from the creatures in the jungle, particularly at night, was pretty incredible - it was probably about as noisy as a busy road, but strangely it didn't stop any of us from sleeping.

On the morning of the second day we went for a hike in the jungle, and we saw a few more interesting jungle species, including a walking palm tree (socratea exorrhiza) and a leaf frog. It was a pretty wet and muddy hike, as you can see here, and I ended up with both wellies full of water, as did just about everybody else. One thing I learnt is that once something gets wet in the jungle, it tends to stay wet, because there's so much moisture in the air. Most of my clothes got wet on the initial canoe trip to the lodge, so I ended up wearing wet clothes pretty much for the whole five days.

In the afternoon we went piranha fishing, and by a considerable fluke I managed to catch the only piranha that was big enough to be worth eating. And here is the same fish on a plate a few hours later. Because I caught the fish, everyone felt they had to ask my permission to try a bit of it, which I found quite amusing. After the piranha fishing we returned to the Laguna Grande for another swim, and this time I have proof that I actually went in. We then went for a night canoe trip to look for a bit more wildlife, and we managed to see an Amazon tree boa.

Day three was our opportunity to see how the indigenous Siona people live. On our way to the village we spotted a pink river dolphin (we saw quite a few of these, but this was the only time I managed to catch one on camera). Firstly we had an audience with the village's shaman (here's a photo of me with him), who told us a bit about the role of a shaman and answered any questions that we had. He then asked for a volunteer for a demonstration of a medicinal plant that's meant to be good for the circulation. Erin volunteered, but she ended up regretting it, because the shaman beat her back for a couple of minutes with a branch of this plant, and she ended up with a horrible-looking rash that still hadn't gone away by the end of the trip.

We then went to an isolated house about twenty minutes from the village, where we learnt how the Siona make a type of bread called casabe, which is made from a root vegetable called yuca (or cassava). We went through the whole process, starting with digging the yuca out of the ground, peeling and then grating it, drying it, sieving the dried yuca, and finally cooking it and eating it, and amazingly it actually did taste very good. Apparently this bread will keep for several months without any preservatives, and it will remain as good to eat as it was the day it was made.

This was also the day we saw an anaconda, which is a pretty rare sighting. It was just a few metres from our boat, and I managed to get some great shots of it, one of which you can see below.

In the evening we went for a night hike in the jungle, and we saw a few more fairly horrifying creatures, including a couple of types of large spider (here and here), and a venomous snake whose name I can't remember. According to Rodrigo, if we were bitten by this snake, we'd have about two to three hours left to live, unless we could get medical help in time, which is pretty unlikely this deep in the rainforest.

On day four, half of the group went home, and the rest of us went on an all-day canoe paddling trip, which was a great opportunity to see our surroundings without the noise of a motorised canoe. We saw more wildlife, including a woodpecker, and paddled to a laguna which had an interesting ecosystem of trees growing in the lake. Here we did a bit more piranha fishing, but I had no luck this time. We went ashore for lunch, and then we went for a short walk in an area of completely unspoilt rainforest, which Rodrigo told us that only his company go to. We spotted this scorpion there. We also encountered an army of giant ants, which caused problems for those of us that had left our wellies at the lodge. Here you can see Thomas having a few problems with them. The ant bite situation got so bad that we ended up running back to the canoes. An ant bit me on the foot at this point, and it hung on so firmly that I had trouble removing it. Rodrigo offered to help, but when he saw how huge its pincers were, rather than removing it, he started showing it off to the rest of the group while it was still attached to my foot, which was very kind of him!

And that's pretty much all I have to report, because the following morning the remaining six of us left the lodge for the long journey back to Quito. All in all it was a great five days, a lot of fun, and definitely another highlight of my trip so far.

This also brings an end to my time in Ecuador, even though there are so many places that I haven't had time to see (to name just a few: Cotopaxi, Otavalo, Mindo, the Quilotoa Loop, the Pacific coast, and the Galápagos Islands). I guess that means I'll have to come back one day.