Rico Colombia

How rich is life! - Rico can mean so much as “rich, wealthy, varied, contrasting, substantial, delicious, tasty”, as taught by a Colombian saying right at the beginning, and it couldn't summarize our journey any better. :)

After our farewell week, our 12-hour journey flew by - sitting down, falling asleep, eating, falling asleep, being there. And once again, the excitement and joy of seeing Carolin were enormous, so enormous that only a very, very big Colombian beer could do justice to this joy. Luckily, Carolin had a few days of head start in Colombia and could already read up on the best types and value for money. And so it happened that our arrival was perfectly planned and we could be happy to be together again and even in Colombia!!!

And with this joy, we started our first evening in Colombia in Cartagena. Carolin showed us the area, which had now become her hood. We ate excellent meat skewers in the church square, which seemed to be the center of life, admired breakdance artists, and enjoyed the Colombian atmosphere. But what would a Caribbean evening be without a cocktail? So we strolled to the Mojito Bar, admired the same breakdance artists again, enjoyed free mojito refills (which in this case meant simply pouring more alcohol into the glass, but who would see it that way?) and let ourselves be sold funny bracelets. With all that done, we strolled through Cartagena's beautiful colonial old town and on its city walls. It's no wonder they say Cartagena is the most impressive colonial city in South America...! The fabulous evening was rounded off with salsa dancing in the locals' bar after we weren't willing to pay an outrageous 7 euros entrance fee at the tourist bar. It was a phenomenal start to this wonderful journey!

We already had an idea for the next few days, so early the next day we were already sitting on the bus to Tayrona National Park. You can imagine it like all these Caribbean posters with palms, sea, and sand that you know and right beside it starts the jungle (only with some tourists in the picture.. ;) ).

At the park entrance, lack of preparation (we still couldn't believe that we were already in Colombia, so we obviously hadn't planned anything) met massive indecisiveness (who would have thought..) and in the end, it was just the grandma at the park entrance who planned our stay in detail. So we spent the first night in a hammock at a camp near the park entrance, playing in the waves in the evening, enjoying the beautiful evening purple, and witnessing spectacular lightning over the sea. And yes, you can sleep surprisingly well in a hammock, unfortunately, you wake up with every turn, but nobody got seasick or anything like that.

For the second day, grandma recommended a private room in the next camp. So after breakfast, we happily walked through the jungle, passing gigantic ant trails and beaches where turtles nest, to our next accommodation, where we quickly dropped off our things to start our visit to the amazing beaches of the park and let God take care of the rest.

Back at the campsite, refreshed after an open-air shower, we met two guys (one from Colombia and one from Mexico) at the dinner table who were completely amazed and asked if it's always so peaceful here and where the people with the music and the booze are, because they were expecting a proper beach party. Long story short - we became new friends and got to know Aguardiente (literally translated as “watering the tooth”), a Colombian anise schnapps that people like to drink by the gallon here, and thus sweetened our evening until the generator was turned off and the insects swarmed on our flashlights, and therefore us.

We used our departure day to have these beautiful beaches all to ourselves early in the morning, build sandcastles, and learn how to do headstands. Que rico es la vida :)

Because we are all damn good at sunbathing and hanging out on the beach, we got bored exactly at 10 o'clock and started our journey to the next stop: Minca - a small mountain village known for yoga and idyll. At least that's where we wanted to go.

We had already booked a wonderful hostel with various pools overlooking the surrounding mountains, which seemed very close to Minca. However, the taxi driver pointed out to us that that was not the case at all and that Minca was a 3-hour walk from our accommodation and you can only get to the accommodation with a 30-minute motorbike taxi ride.. Well, then everything is completely different, but what is booked is booked. Once we arrived at the accommodation, Minca didn't matter anymore because everything was so nice and beautiful here. The only downside: A tree had recently crashed onto the power line and there was rarely any electricity, so the internet wasn't reliable either... but the next day we had two job interviews and we chose the accommodation because of the “great” Wi-Fi... Thanks to the understanding and effort of the owners, the interviews could still be conducted with the help of a generator. However, they took place at the pool with 2 people acting as guards to prevent people from going swimming.

The interview office...

Once we got over the excitement, we were able to fully enjoy the idyll with walks in the jungle, to waterfalls, a mini ciudad perdida (remains of an ancient city ruin), viewpoints, swimming in the most beautiful pool, great food, and a visit to a cacao farm with an informative tour and a chocolate mask!

By the way, here's the view from the job interview:

Actually, we wanted to stay a bit longer in the north and actually go to Minca, but then came the day when Carolin had to start her journey back to Cartagena and ultimately to Germany via Asuncion way too quickly. It felt very wrong to dissolve the great Colombia team here already, so we all traveled back to Cartagena together and got another Caribbean evening as a gift! In memory of the wonderful evening we had in Cartagena, we did everything just like last time, except this time we dared to try the one particularly huge meal from the street. What you saw from a distance: Baked banana topped with vegetables, meat, cheese, and sprinkled with onions - amazingly delicious. What it was really like: Fried plantains, topped with all conceivable types of meat + sausage slices, mixed with lots and lots of cheese, and sprinkled with fried onion chips - an absolute mammoth task, even two street dogs refused to eat the leftovers. :D

Uh... thanks :D

Our further travel plans also developed spontaneously and in a flash, we were able to accompany Carolin to the airport in Cartagena, and then we ourselves took a flight to Medellin while Carolin slowly but surely began her journey home to perform the Schultüten song (tradition in German schools) in front of the first graders two days later.

Que rico es Colombia!