After a couple amazing days (and some serious partying) in Medellin, an amazing city of some 3.5m people nestled among the mountains in the middle of Colombia, we headed south-west to the capital: Bogota. To break up the long drive we stopped halfway for the night at the riverside resort town of Rio Claro, nestled deep in a valley where the weather and water is warm and there are enough “extreme” attractions to keep the most hardcore extreme sports tour junkie satisfied.
The two day drive on a narrow two lane road took us through some spectacular scenery. It is extremely mountainous, with a lot of forest, ranchland, and some cropland.
The first thing we saw in the dark of night in Rio Claro is a rattlesnake on the path to the “cabin” in the jungle where we were staying.
Since we had partied it up over the weekend in Medellin, we entertained ourselves through the night in the jungle by making light paintings – using our headlamps and the long exposure setting on our cameras.
When we woke up in the morning we realized how awesome our rooms were – they were basically balconies that were fully open and looking down through the jungle into the river valley.
In the morning, we hiked around and explored the Rio Claro valley where we were staying. There was an awesome 8m diving board into the river which of course we all did. There were also plenty of options for organized adventure activities on offer: rafting, zip-lining (“canopy tours” – as required of any “ecotourism” destination), kayaking, caving, etc… However, we managed to scope out a cave ourselves, and having lots of experience with caves on this trip (from Oregon, Guatemala, etc… ) and now being experts in this field, we decided to lead the tour ourselves. We managed to penetrate the limestone for about a half hour, but scary birds that kept flying around inside this dark cave making lots of noise (not familiar to us from previous cave expeditions) made it quite unpleasant to hang out inside.
When it was time to leave, Jono adjusted his driving attire to reflect the fact we were no longer in the civilized city of Medellin but on a more jungle sort of trek.
Later on the road, we stopped for lunch at a roadside restaurant where there were some parrots hanging out. Ewa made the mistake of letting one sit on her arm. I later asked the owner if they bite – “Claro” he said, “Of course”.
Around dinnertime, everyone was craving fried chicken, and we finally found it at a roadside stall. They also gave us plastic gloves to eat it with so we didn’t get our hands dirty!
Finally, as the night set in we crossed a pass in the mountains and saw the lights of the sprawling city of Bogota filling the enormous valley in which it sits. With 9.6 million people in the metro area (7.4m city proper) this is quite a city. It’s also located at 2600m, so although we’re almost at the Equator, scarves and winter jackets are the standard clothing here year round.
It also didn’t seem to give us as friendly of a welcome as Medellin. Although not yet very late, the streets seemed deserted. Simon had a GPS on his iPhone which we were trying to use for navigation, but here and there we would try to turn down a street only to see a military roadblock. Soldiers in full combat gear (including helmets, goggles, and some serious weapons) stood ready at many street corners. We tried a few hotels, but managed to secure a reasonable rate and what appeared to be the most secure parking we could find (which was very important!) at the Crowne Plaza Bogota. Yes I know this sounds ridiculous – there were five of us though and Jono managed to negotiate a good corporate rate. Here’s a view over Bogota from the rooftop Helipad where we tried to catch the lunar eclipse (unfortuantely it was too cloudy).
In the daytime we walked around and explored the city, especially the colonial core. Here we have Simon chasing away the pigeons from the main plaza, but what is more interesting is that behind him on this central square in Bogota is a skating rink, and this is only 4 degrees north of the equator!
