Colombia: Pasto, San Augustin, Bogota, Villa De Leyva, Medellin

Hello all,

We crossed the border into Pasto during their black and white carnival. Two days when everyone, including police, spray each other with cans of foam and handfulls of talc and flour.

It's wicked fun until somebody loses an eye to a powerful jet of foam

Darryl´s new Colombian family bonding over shared griminess,

We arrived at San Augustin after an extremely bumpy bus ride from Popayan.
We celebrated Darryl´s bithday here by hiring some very fast horses to visit different archeological sites.

The statues are around 4000 years old

The one that looks happy about sacrificing a small child, still had color from tree pigments

That night we made Darryl a cake out of lots of love, and some fresh passionfruit

The official Parque Archeological had a huge collection of statues in the middle of the jungle.

a favorite, Mr. Burns


This little fellow was lost in the jungle,

This one had evil plans

and this one had a problem with muscle tone

Our most favorite hostel, Casa de Francois. Everything a (aged & married) backpacker could hope for, an amazing homemade breakfast, comfy beds, beautiful setting, lots of hammock space, hot showers, a clean kitchen to cook cheap meals and owners that are neither too inattentive nor anal retentive.

And they had midget doors!

Our next stop was Salento in the middle of Colombia´s coffee growing zone where Don Elias showed us the process from picking to drinking at his finca,

We ate ourselves stupid for 5000 pesos. Trout is a local specialty, as are arepas, platano, frijoles, the ubiquitous white arroz and jugo de maracuya.

The Valle de Cocora, full of wax palms that grow to 60 meters in a cloudforest, is very close to Salento

The reserve at the end of the hike is a hummingbird paradise. So drunk on their sugar nectar they don't care that you're a foot away inspecting each perfect feather

As far as eating was concerned, we were on a role, and so Bogota was mostly about trying new foods and visiting Botero artwork (everything large)-which had a kind of symmetry about it. .

Ajiaco Bogotano, made by a servant of a friend of a friend at grandmacita's house in La Zona Rosa

Obleas, head sized wafers bought on the street and filled with everything that is sweet and good

There was also an amazing gold museum (this is the bat god)

an underground salt cathedral nearby

and a view of 8 million Bogotanos, possibly worth the 14000 pesos out of our dwindling funds it took to get up there by furnicular

Villa de Leyva is a perfect colonial city several hours away from Bogota. It's hard to put the place into words, but if we had to try we might say; taste sensation, muppet, band meeting, chifle and wilson; which of course won't make sense to anyone but those who were there at the time, like Muppet who sits in quiet contemplation of his beautiful surroundings.

Next in Medellin, formerly home to Pablo Escobar's cocaine cartel, we celebrated Australia day complete with bbq, pavlova and lots of beer.

We started to look more and more like Botero's bronze statues. . .but kept eating anyway

Next we rolled ourselves up to Cartagena

Love, d&j

Ecuador. Fabulous.

Hello all(if anyone is actually still following this. . .),
Cuenca: We spent 2 weeks here taking spanish classes, eating cuy(guinea pig), visiting Parque Cajas and buying many many hats.

This is how we skewer the cuy kids,

Where Panama hats are born, the nursery:

Parque Nacional Cajas

Cuenca´s anniversary weekend included dancing, concerts and displays of the Vaca Loca--a paper mache cow that shoots fireworks from its horns into the crowd.

Las Tunas, a quiet stretch of beach south of Puerto Lopez with only a couple B&Bs and one restaurant serving nothing but fish, Jimmy´s.

Bahia´s main attraction, saved from the pot & dropped off by Galapagos sailors long ago, now living in a schoolyard.

Rio Muchacho, an organic farm, where we volunteered for a month.

Shoveling pig poo. (yes, we paid for this privilege. but not much.)

Cutting pasto for the horses,

Hunting prawns in the river,

Experiencing the joy of turmeric preparation, from the garden to a corner store near you.

and making chocolate from scratch,

Christmas Eve, our last night on the farm, we made Anzac biscuits in a woodfire oven.

That night our friend JP was chosen to be Joseph in the candlelight nativity procession, walking with a donkey from Rio Muchacho school to the farm. The locals sang a single 30 second song the entire evening--4 hours that have been burned into our minds forever-pajarito verde color de limon. . .

Canoa, where we spent Christmas Day until New Years.

Christmas dinner at Cafe Flor. Free from the vegetarian shackles of Rio Muchacho at last, Meat!

For New Years, they make paper mache people, cartoon characters, political figures(there were a couple GBs), then burn them in massive bonfires.

Our night started out pretty civilized with drinks on the beach,

Got a bit messier as the sun went down,

Until we couldln´t stand up without the aid of at least two other people,

And the last photos of the bonfire we can´t show you because by then not one of us could hold the camera steady.

The morning after, ready for a night bus to Quito.

I think Quito was better than Lima.

Otavalo markets. For everything you never knew you wanted. But ended up buying anyway.

On to Colombia.
Love d&j