Hello! Hola! Konichiwa! Nihou! I am here!! MEOW!!!

Hi all.  I was planning to write a final post on my last week in Colombia, but now I’m two countries behind already so I will just have to say that Col0mbia is one of my all-time favorite countries and you MUST go, if you ever have the opportunity.  You will meet no friendlier people and see no better beaches, jungles and mountains, I promise.

 After Colombia I spent a whirlwind week back in California – a few days with my family in Los Angeles and a very quick weekend in SF.  It was delightful to catch up with everyone and eat all the food I had missed, but I am thrilled to be back on the road and away from “real life” yet again…

For the next leg of my trip (Turkey, Jordan, Syria, Israel, India) I am traveling with Colleen, one of my oldest and closest friends.  We spent four days in Istanbul before arriving at our current destination in Amman, Jordan.  Istanbul fulfilled many of the stereotypical images in my head as a bridge between traditional and modern, religious and secular, east and west.  I didn’t realize that there is also a literal bridge that connects the two halves of the city (old and new).  Istanbul is an incredibly massive, diverse, bustling metropolis.  We visited many different parts of the city but I felt like I needed weeks more to fully explore it.  We spent a fair bit of time in the historic old center where the Hagia Sophia, the Blue Mosque and our hostel were located.  This part of the city is incredibly picturesque but extremely touristy, which brings mediocre food, blaring American pop music and irritating carpet sellers.  Akbiyik Caddesi street is very similar to the abomination that is Khao San Road in Bangkok, but all the cheap hostels are located there so we didn’t have much choice.  Also, the backpackers you meet there tend to be very young and very green travellers - just out of college generally, with Istanbul being the “craziest” place they have ever been (not to be such a travel snob, sorry).  AND I had just met up with Colleen and we had lots to catch up on, so I wasn’t too interested in smoking a hookah with alcoholic 22 year old Aussies on the roof of the hostel.  Anyway…

Friday night we went out to Beyoglu and Taksim, a hip shopping district with lots of bars and clubs.  Beyoglu is full of energetic young Turks and plenty of women with their heads un-covered.   We went to a bar that was playing salsa music (random) and danced at an electronic club.  Good times.  The next night we took it easy and sprawled out for what turned out to be a five hour dinner.  We drank 10-15 cups of tea a day, and that night was no different.  The tea drinking culture in Istanbul is absolutely fantastic – it’s like enforced relaxing.  I loved wandering around the Spice Bazaar and taking in all the delectable aromas, and every time we walked into a cafe we were greeted with the fragrant haze of apple tabacco smoked in large water pipes. 

The main reason I didn’t totally fall in love with Istanbul, however, is that we were endlessly harrassed by men almost everywhere we went.  I do miss traveling with a man for that reason, because two girls alone is no different than one girl alone in terms of harrassment.  The title of this blog entry is how we were greeted by almost every shopkeeper/annoying tout as we walked by (I have a bag that says “Colombia” on it so people kept talking to us in Spanish, funny).  At first we were polite and responded “hello” back while continuing walking, but that would lead into inevitable conversations with lecherous men and pleas to have tea so we quickly developed the art of averting our eyes and not responding to anyone as we hurried by.  This wasn’t even the ideal solution though, because we found that some men would become really angry if we ignored them – “Are people unfriendly in your country? COME BACK HERE I AM TALKING TO YOU!!!” or an unfortunate incident at the club where a guy said “F*** you!  God will judge you!!” because I answered a question from someone else.  Ugh.  I pretty much stopped talking to any local men after that, which is so unfortunate because conversations with locals is one of the best parts of traveling.  Oh well.

I don’t want to leave the impression that all Turkish men were like that though, because we did also meet some friendly university students as well.  They didn’t believe in God, which was pretty shocking in a country that is 95% Muslim.  We had a nice chat with them in a hipster rock bar and left without anything lecherous happening.  Whew.  There were also plenty of men who barely noticed us in Beyoglu, which was really refreshing. 

I think Istanbul would have been a radically different experience if I had been traveling with a male companion, but… well, lesson learned I guess.  I would love to go back and explore the rest of the country sometime in the future.  We did have some excellent food experiences – Turkish yogurt (yum), gozleme (kind of like a crepe stuffed with cheese, spinach or meat served with an array of spices) and manti (ravioli-type things served with yogurt, garlic and some harrissa-type spicy sauce).  But…er… the food in Jordan is blowing me away right now, so I think it wins for best Middle Eastern food so far.

I hope all are well, I will post about Jordan later!  I love it here!!

 

Lost in the Jungle

After a week of adventure boot camp, Darren and I took an overnight bus to Taganga, a tiny town on the Caribbean coast. We wanted to go on the famed Ciudad Perdida hike, which travelers in Colombia rave about.  Ciudad Perdida (¨Lost City¨) is a series of ancient ruins nestled deep in the jungle of the Sierra Nevada mountains, accessible only by foot.  You are required to go with a licensed guide, so we signed up with Turcol and ended up in a ragtag group of nine with a people from London, Los Angeles, Seattle, Bogota and France.  It felt very much like adult camp.  Or the first week of freshman year. After hiking, eating and sleeping together for six days, we became comfortable very quickly and spent an inordinate amount of time talking about the state of our digestive systems.  Travellers LOVE talking about parasites and tropical diseases they have acquired/staved off. 

 The trip cost $230 for the six day hike, all food and accommodation (hammocks) included.  Every day except the fourth day (which was spent wandering around the ruins) we woke up around 7am, ate breakfast, and hiked until about 2pm through steamy hot jungle and crossed the river many times.  In the afternoon we would have lunch and usually jump into a pristine swimming hole.  This left us with a LOT of free time.  It´s an interesting social experiment to see how nine adults entertain themselves with no booze (the delicious cheap rum-iodine tablet water-tang cocktails ran out after day 2), no music, no internet and no activities – just birds chirping and pitch black darkness beyond the candle on the camp table.  We held insect championships by catching them in plastic cups and trying to force them to interact with each other, vigorously scratched at the hideous number of bug bites we received and had lots of discussions about travel and politics.  I led an impromptu yoga class after the Colombians asked me about my idle stretching, and we all received mini-massages from Erin, the masseuse and self-proclaimed ¨hippie plant girl¨from Seattle.

Ciudad Perdida itself was pretty stunning, lots of circular stone ruins set into the green, green jungle.  I think we definitely appreciated the effort it took to get there. About forty soldiers patrol the area, and they are all young, friendly and very bored.  We heard them shrieking as we climbed the last 1200 steps to reach Ciudad Perdida.  When we got to the top we realized what was causing all the commotion – they were taking turns swinging on a vine into the trees, Tarzan style (not paying much attention to their M-16s).  Since the last incidence of guerrillas kidnapping tourists in 2003, the government has stationed soldiers there around the clock and it is extremely safe now.

I loved the fact that we saw almost no other travellers during the entire hike.  Generally speaking, the only people we passed were indigenous people living in the area.  If Colombia continues becoming safer and safer, this hike is going to explode in popularity. 

On day six, we returned to Taganga, where I had my first real shower in a week.  We became so dirty during the hike that I almost forgot what my skin looked like without mud or hundreds of insect bites from mosquitos, bees, sand flies and spiders.  Darren is now calling me ¨refugee legs,¨ with all my cuts, scratches and bites.    I have so many bites on my back that several people have taken photos of it (which I am not posting here).  But I have to say that despite all this, the hike was totally worth it.

After Ciudad Perdida, we hopped a bus to Parque Tayrona for a few days.  Parque Tayrona is a national park on the north coast of Colombia with gorgeous PERFECT Caribbean beaches.  We hiked a few hours to the best beaches and slept in hammocks.  Waking up in a hammock to the crashing morning waves may sound pretty idyllic, but hammock sleep is not good sleep.  You spend a lot of time swatting at bugs and tossing and turning in the hammock, which almost never leads to a comfortable position.  But you really can´t beat $5 a night in Colombia, so hammocks won out.

I just arrived in Barranquilla last night for Carnaval, the city with the second largest Carnaval celebration after Rio.  I am staying with a friend of Brendan´s in a beautiful, huge apartment.  After all that outdoor time I am reveling in clean sheets, chic plateware, air conditioning and Argentinian wine. Life is good.