San Agustin, Popayan, Cali and Cartagena

From Bogota, we took another night bus to San Agustin. We spent a week in San Agustin exploring the town and surrounding area. We stayed at an awesome hostel with a rooftop overlooking the city with some hammocks up there. We found our favorite little cafe with a short ceiling and a cute overlook of the town square where we could get an americano, eggs and toast for $2.50 each. We hiked to a waterfall one day. Then went horseback riding around the area and saw rolling green hills, coffee plantations and plenty of banana trees.

We explored the arquelogical park that is found there. It’s filled with hundreds of statues from around 100-700 CE/AD created by an unknown pre-Colombian civilization that was in the area then. Nick met a man that was carving custom sculptures and had one made for his friends wedding. Then he got the pleasure of carrying around a 20 lb stone for the rest of our time in South America.

We also took a double ducky down the river with a guide and he let me take his kayak down a couple of the rapids. It was terrifying. The ducky with Nick was super fun though and we had a blast. One night we went and did a drawing workshop, we’ve both got a long way to go until we reach our Van Gogh potential.

From San Agustin we stopped in Popayán, famous for its white building in the historic center. When the town was created, chiggers were super common because of the climate and conditions. They discovered limestone kills chiggers so they coated all of the buildings in white limestone. We had some of the famous food and drink there, well I did, Nick got some sort of bug and was super ill during our time there.

We stayed there two nights and on the third morning we took a bus to Cali. I would start a ten day Vipasanna mediation course and Nick would recover in Cali for a couple more days before going to the Pacific Coast. More on the meditation course to come!

After that we reunited and spent a couple days in Cali, exploring the markets and salsa dancing before flying to Cartagena. We also hung out with a couple of Colombians that I met in the Vipassana course. Upon arrival in Colombia, we were a bit tipsy at the airport as it was New Year’s Eve, and had to buy a ticket out of Colombia. So without thinking we bought the cheapest one which happened to be out of Cartagena so we had to end our trip there even though that’s where Nick’s Colombia trip began. Anyway it ended up working out and being a lovely way to end the trip.

We got a hotel by the airport with a balcony overlooking the ocean. It had a pool, sauna and Swedish steam room. We swam in the pool, used the steam room and sauna, swam in the ocean and got one last fruit salad. We went into the walled city on the last day and got a really nice lunch and walked around a bit before heading back to the hotel and sitting in the jacuzzi for sunset.