Colombia
Hey guys and welcome back to another episode of what the heck and why not. In this blog we will share a story of how we got from the midwest USA to swimming in the Amazon River and back all in a 5-day weekend. The “what the heck” comes from finding tickets from our smaller airport to Medellin, Colombia for $200 per person round trip. The “why not” comes from the fact that we only had the ability to take 3 working days off since neither of us had any vacation saved up. With the weekend at play this gave us 5 total days with travel to make it there and back.
Now if you are a geography nerd like myself, you will realize that Medellin is nowhere near the Amazon River. On this trip we left on Wednesday night and road tripped to my brothers house a few hours away so we could catch our flight from the Kansas City airport to Miami before heading on to Medellin. Our flights were early Thursday morning and we got to Medellin later Thursday afternoon. Now like most older cities, Medellin’s airport is outside of the city by about 45 minutes, so given our next flight was earlier that Friday morning, we decided to order an Uber and venture to the closest town of Rio Negro. Here we found a restaurant with Empanadas (which you will quickly see are a must when traveling with Bre).
After dinner we ventured around the city before making our way to a huge mall in hopes to find wifi to order another Uber back to our hotel. Fun fact about ordering Uber in Colombia and a few other countries: they are illegal, so a majority of drivers ask you to sit in the front and pretend you are a friend so they don’t get in trouble. The next morning we awoke before the sun and ventured back to the airport for our flight to the tinier town in the heart of the Colombian Amazon named Leticia. (I know I didn’t realize Colombia was home to part of the Amazon either!) This town is sandwiched between Peru and Brazil in a tiny tip of Colombia that sits right on the River. The only way in to Leticia is via flight or boat down the river.
Our flight was something neither of us will quickly forget, the dense rainforest seemed to carry on for miles in every direction. It was nonstop trees, so dense you could never see the ground. The runway appeared out of nowhere and we made our way into the airport. Something new though was the on arrival Rainforest protection fee we had to pay before being allowed to leave. Thankfully it was not too expensive and we had the exact amount to cover us and one other stranger that was also unaware of the hidden cost, which was a good thing because this airport did not have an ATM.
After leaving the airport we made our way into town which was about a mile walk because I refused to pay the prices the taxis were asking for. Once we arrived at our fun boutique hotel and got checked in, we were off to find the river. The town of Leticia was so unique and felt virtually untouched by tourism. One of the more unique things we found about traveling Colombia was the lack of English being spoken anywhere. In most other places you can usually find some English being spoken but here it was a good thing Bre remembered some high school Spanish.
Once we found the river, we paid a random local about $25 dollars for an hour ride into the Amazon River. Our goal was two things, to cross into Peru by water and to try and see an elusive Pink River Dolphin, but what we got was far beyond what we expected. Our trip started off heading directly into Peru and seeing the floating village of Santa Rosa. From there we made our way into the thicker part of the overgown, almost swamp-like river. We saw some very unique birds but sadly no River Dolphins or giant Anacondas like the movies.
On our way back to Leticia we made our way to a large wide open part of the river where our boat driver in broken English muttered “jump in.” In my mind I thought we were going to be one of those stupid tourists you read about in the news. I mean in hindsight we are with a total stranger in the middle of literally nowhere and he is telling us to jump in, not a bad intro for a news article about missing Americans. Here is where it paid off that Bre paid attention in High School Spanish. Through our limited Spanish and his limited English we found out people like to swim in the river and he was encouraging us to do so.
Here are just a few facts for perspective of what he was asking us to do. The Amazon River at its deepest point is 330 feet deep, at its widest is 40 miles wide, is home to snakes and piranhas, and might just be the muddiest river I have ever seen. Now that the stage is set here is the only thing I know at this point, apparently people do this all the time and he ensured us there are no animals in this part of the river. Of course Bre being a fish out of water quickly jumped in without a care in the world. Once I witnessed this, I eventually followed her in. She swam around a bit but I bounced myself back into the boat as fast as possible. It was perhaps the coolest thing I have done in awhile but strangely the most fear-filled I had been in awhile as well.
After not being killed or left in the river, we made our way back to town for a bite to eat. Here I had chicken and fries and of course Bre ordered Piranha. You won’t have to read many of our blogs to realize Bre is for sure the more adventurous one. I will add in though that I did eat the Piranha and it was very good. The rest of the day we meandered around Leticia and even had the chance to walk to the border town of Tabatinga, Brazil. We wandered around Tabatinga for a few hours and I of course found a glass bottle of Brazilian Coke to try.
Since the sun had gone down we found our way to the main park in Leticia for the night. Here was a smaller night market and a phenomenon that can only be described as smelly, and well I guess amazing. In this park are tall canopy trees and at night they are home to thousands of parrots and parakeets. The smell comes in with the amount of bird poop on the ground. Also I am unsure of how you slept if you lived within earshot of the park as the noise was tremendous.
Anyways back to our timeline because as you may remember it was extremely fast. The next morning, Saturday, we woke up with the sudden ambition to see if we could do a hike into the jungle. We asked reception at our hotel and after just pointing at a spot on the map she told her uncle who drove a Rickshaw where to go. At this point we only had a few hours to kill before our flight. We made it to this tour building in the middle of the forest to find out that we had missed the most recent tour by just 15 minutes and that there wasn’t another for about an hour. Not having that kind of time, we attempted to bribe our way into a personal tour. Thankfully they agreed and guided us through a hike around the Amazon rainforest. During this hike, it sounded like the sounds of the rainforest CD I had back home when I was a kid. We saw several bugs, monkeys, and creepy crawly things that could probably kill us. The tour ended with our guide making a very impressive crown out of a fern for Bre.
A short while later we were on a flight bound for Bogota. Here we had a 5 hour layover to attempt to see what we could see in the city. Upon arrival in Bogota, we hopped in the world’s fastest Uber and made our way to the Monserrate, a gondola that took us to a church that overlooked the whole city of Bogota. We made it just in time to catch one of the most beautiful sunsets you could hope to see. After exploring the church and surrounding area, we made our way back down and found a taxi back to the airport.
The next day we were met by our uber drive from our first day in Colombia, David, who had agreed to take us 4 hours to Guatape, a large rock with several hundred steps up the side of it that overlooked a quaint little village. David, being the amazing guide he is, waited for us and then guided us around the colorful town of Guatape. This is where Bre fell in love and decided she wanted to move… just like everywhere we go. For lunch I had a filet mignon the size of your face with a half pound of bacon and gravy smothering the top of it. In the States, this meal would run you anywhere from $80-100, but here in Colombia thankfully it was $12. Bre on the other hand decided to go the more traditional route as usual and ended up ordering bandeja paisa, the local dish comprising an assortment of meats, a fried egg, rice, plantains, beans, avocado, and more.
After making it back to Medellin, we tried local coffee at Pergamino followed by a hike around Communa 13. For those of you who don’t know what this is, it was formerly one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the world that was previously ran by Pablo Escibar, amongst other gangs and guerilla groups. Thankfully, a lot has changed as we decided as we to forego an organized tour and venture into the neighborhood by ourselves. The beautiful graffiti artwork sprawling all over the hillside was well worth the free price of admission.
Now you may be saying “wow Josh and Bre are really good at planning trips and everything always seems to work out for them,” well here is where Spirit airlines is here to tell you that that is not always the case. Thankfully the majority of our weekend trip went off without a hitch. However, our lovely budget airline graciously overserved the passenger next to us who decided to be loud and obnoxious for the entire duration of the flight home. Aside from that, all in all it was a pretty successful weekend trip. A lot of what we did was unplanned and last minute. However, everything seemed to fall together and make for the perfect extended weekend getaway.
