Playa Costeño & Cartagena

CORONAVIRUS UPDATE: Juli and I are both safe and healthy and are locked down in the country house near to Medellin (see blog 1 for pics). The whole of Colombia is under quarantine until April 13, although this may be extended. As things stand Colombia and South America in general appear to not be as badly affected as Europe so we are hoping we will still be able to travel at some point within the next few months, but who really knows… In the meantime we are continuing with writing up our trips which happened before the lockdown began! Will provide further coronavirus updates in future blogs. Stay safe all xx

Following a great couple of days in Minca, we took the crowded commuter bus up the coast to a hostel called ‘Los Hermanos’ (The Brothers) on Playa Costeño, not far from the town of Palomino. The hour’s bus journey included a man travelling with a rather grumpy chicken which he just held in his hands and a small child vomiting on my bag – we were happy when we arrived. Our hostel was located on a beautiful, unspoilt section of coastline, the kind of place where the only shade is from palm trees and there are no beach vendors at all. The sea was really rough so you could only paddle but we were very happy to have the opportunity to do some more relaxing on the sand. I was wondering when I might get my first sun burn of the trip and I was caught out here following a haphazard application of sun cream to the chest. For three days we settled into the hippie vibe, drinking beer and playing Uno and table tennis with other travellers – one evening we joined a salsa dancing class put on by the hostel which was entertaining for onlookers I’m sure. The most active thing we did was tubing down a nearby river with a group of others, literally it’s just sitting in car tyre inner tube and floating down the river with a beer. We don’t have any photos of that due to the water but it was great fun and included a few small rapids, a cliff jump and rope swing (all very safe don’t worry mum).

Keen to see as many of the best beaches in Colombia as possible, we bought bus tickets from Santa Marta to Cartagena, the most well-known city on the Caribbean coast and a place we both love. After about a 4.5 hour journey back west along some spectacular stretches of coastline, we found ourselves in a great apartment on the fourth floor of a new high-rise block looking right over the seafront to the north of Cartagena’s old town –restoring our faith in Airbnb. Unfortunately Juli picked up a bug somewhere and was not well our first night and day, so we chilled in the apartment before heading down to watch the sunset from the pool the following evening. The next day Juli was feeling a bit better so we spent much of it on one of Cartagena’s famous beaches – they are enormous and the water is beautifully warm. In the evening we met up with Juli’s former boss from her architectural firm in London, Charles, who happened to be travelling to Colombia with his wife Joanna. Cartagena’s colonial old town is beautifully maintained and has an amazing energy and charm to it. Tiny streets are lined with tall, vibrant pastel-coloured buildings many of which have small wooden balconies draped with flowers overlooking the bustle of people below. Honestly if you haven’t been put it on your bucket list, we couldn’t recommend it highly enough. After wandering around we ducked into one of these bright buildings for dinner and enjoyed traditional Colombian food like Ajiaco and Sancocho (meat and potato soups) plus some great seafood. We were also treated to live traditional ‘Cumbia’ music and a dance performance from two amazing dancers in the restaurant! Later on we took a walk on top of the huge walls which surround the city, built to protect Cartagena from 16^th century pirates following a successful assault by Sir Francis Drake – us Brits eh?

We flew back down to Medellin the next day and before our next trip to the region of Armenia (next blog), we met up with Charles and Joanna again for a day trip to see ‘La Piedra de El Peñol’. This is an enormous rock overlooking a vast reservoir which was created in the 1970s when a dam was built, flooding the town of Peñol! It is really spectacular and we climbed up the more than 700 stairs built into the side of the rock to reach the viewing platform at the top. We also had lunch in the nearby town of Guatapé, another lovely little colonial village famous for its colourful fresco-like panels adorning the lower parts of the houses. The pictures of these and from El Peñol tell a thousand words, so I’ll stop here!