"Si si, soy yo Juan Carlos": Colombia Week 2

I have a real thing for weekend trips. If I'm already in a country or area, I always want to be doing something on the weekends. One time, my friend Abby told me that if she ever wanted to go on a spontaneous trip to California at 3am, I would be her first call just because I'd be the most likely to say yes. She also said I was the most "send it" person she had ever met. Essentially, I will try most anything because I want to do it all.

Day 1

Fun fact about Latin Americans: they wake up early. This is mostly due to the fact that they are so much closer to the equator so the sun is up around 5 or 5:30 and goes down around 5:30 or 6 pretty much everywhere I lived. Because of this, I always had to adjust my schedule any time I lived down there. Church started at 8am, which just seems really early to me, but I don't make the rules.

I woke up at 7am, which is not that early, except for the fact that I hadn't gone to bed until 4am because of Cristhian's wild birthday party the night before. I was ready to get to church on time. I took a moto taxi there and was super stoked to go. I love attending church all over the world because it's the same all over the place, even if the language is a little different.

When we got to the church at 7:50, there was no one there and the church was completely locked up. They had a fence about 10 feet high around the whole thing. I ended up staying until 8:10 before starting to walk home. The church was about a mile away from my house, so I was prepared for a nice time to reflect. A car pulled over in the middle of my walk and the driver offered me a ride home. I was initially really creeped out until I realized it was the same driver who had given me a ride the Friday when motos weren't allowed. When I got home, I checked the church times. My house was close to two churches. One started at 8am and the other started at 10am. I had gone to the church that started at 10 thinking it started at 8. I had a good laugh at myself for that one.

Playa Blanca

At 10:30, my friend Rosie from the foundation came over. We took the same driver I had seen that morning to go to Playa Blanca, a beautiful beach about an hour away from our houses. Towards the end of the car ride, we were on super sketchy dirt roads with massive pot holes and water filled ditches. It rained so often in Colombia that I'm sure the holes were perpetually full of water. There were motos flying by us and I'm honestly shocked that no one got hurt or flipped end over end.

At the beach, we walked up and down getting absolutely accosted by vendors. The vendors are absolutely ruthless in Cartagena. It's probably my least favorite part of the whole city. That and how dirty things are all the time. To be fair, we attracted a lot of attention because we are both white with blue eyes and fluent in Spanish, which is a pretty rare combination there.

The worst part of the day came when I forgot my sunscreen. I got absolutely fried as we were there for almost 6 hours near the equator on a cloudless day. If that's the worst that happens to me on a beach day though, I'm completely content. Even though there were tons of people, we were able to just chill and read while taking breaks to go swim or talk to locals. We had to make sure someone stayed behind to watch our stuff and make sure it didn't get stolen, but that wasn't terrible. Overall, it was a really fantastic day.

Day 2

At this point, I had settled into Colombia pretty well. My routine was pretty set. I lived about a 40 minute and $6 ride from the beach one way, so a lot of times, I just stayed at the house and relaxed. This was the case on this Monday. I went to work at the foundation for 6 hours before coming home and mellowing out.

Two very interesting and potentially terrible things about Colombia: constant power outages and a shortage of water sometimes. That day, I wanted to come home and talk to my two best friends, Haley and Sala. Both of them were on missions. Sala was in Puebla, Mexico with Haley in the LA Temple Visitors Center. However, the power was out. This happened at least once a week the whole time I lived there. The power was out for 3.5 hours. This meant no one could cook, turn on fans (aka it was hotter than hell), or use the internet.

When we finally got the power on, the water turned off. It was only off for an hour or two, but it was still annoying. At this point, I had lived there for nine days and the water had gone off four of those days. The worst part about this was going to the bathroom and remembering everyone shared a bathroom and would see what you did when the water was turned off. Luckily (...?), you can't drink the water anywhere in Colombia, so we had a massive pitcher of water constantly out on the counter. We used a filter when filling it up. Our filter was attached to the faucet, so you could turn it on when you needed to refill the pitcher. The whole time I was there, I got really used to room temperature water.

Day 3

I had a pretty average day at the foundation. We did have a really hard time getting the kids to go down for their naps. We cover the floor with these yellow mats to make it a soft difference from the tile we normally have. They always like to try out all their tricks when we have the soft mats down. Eventually, they all settle down, but it takes a hot minute because they are all such good friends.

When I got home, I found the house full of people. Marcela had her sister over, who had this super cute two-year-old named Luciana with her. I ended up being the designated babysitter, which is great except for the fact that I ended up not having any down time to just chill at home, which is something I'm a big fan of.

With Marcela, her sister, and Luciana, we went over to Marcela's best friend's house. It was hilarious to see Luciana there because she's terrified of dogs and was threatening their cute little small dog with a broom handle. I love kids.

Marcela's best friend lived right around the corner from Rosie so I got to chill with Rosie for a little while as well. We ended up heading over to the track near her house for a little bit and just walking around over there. There were tons of people there as it's pretty much the only place to work out that I found in Cartagena. I'm sure there are lots of others, but this was the only public and easily accessible one I saw.

Day 4

Apparently this day was really an amazing one. However, I have no pictures so I must have also been super disconnected, which honestly is really healthy mentally. I actually really like to unplug and take some time for myself where I'm not on my phone at all. I think it's important to being a well-balanced human being.

Basically, I worked at the foundation all morning before coming home for a quick nap before babysitting Luciana. When Luciana and her mom left, I met up with Rosie. We talked and walked around our two neighborhoods, which were about a mile apart. Rosie is great because she is so easy to talk to. We also had similar beliefs on politics and how things should be run. She has interesting life experiences from growing up in Bermuda to living in England and Cuba. Mostly, I just really loved talking to her. We also planned a lot of trip on Friday, which you will hear about shortly!

Soccer field right after sunset

Day 5

Soccer became one of my favorite sports when I lived in Colombia. I watched a lot of soccer, both on TV and in person. It's an extremely cheap and easy sport to play (conceptually at least... execution can be difficult). After work, I was able to watch Cristhian and Jesus play soccer again with their friends. They had some good-looking friends, not gonna lie. Mostly I just enjoyed the opportunity to watch them do something that made them happy while chatting it up with Rosie, who came along most of the time because it was something to do in our small corner of Cartagena. We both lived a really authentic Colombian experience living where we did.

After soccer, I walked Rosie partway home. You have to be super careful in Colombia because people will rob you, no matter how careful you are. People also yell out at you all the time, even really disgusting things that you want absolutely nothing to do with. It's exciting stuff. On my way home, I also stopped by one of the bakeries around the corner and found out that cookies larger than my fist were only 17 cents. I ate at the bakery a lot more after that revelation.

Masaya roof pool in Santa Marta

Day 6

One of my favorite things about traveling and staying in one location for a while is taking tons of weekend trips. When you're based out of one location, you can really take the time to get to know an area really well and find out what the best places are to go nearby. One of these locations turned out to be Santa Marta. Santa Marta is about a five hour bus ride from Cartagena.

After working at the foundation all morning, Rosie and I headed to the bus station to go to Santa Marta. The buses turned out to actually be more like vans. I like buses a whole heck of a lot more than I like vans, just purely for the comfort level. Luckily, the van stopped for a twenty minute break in Barranquilla. Barranquilla is actually the birthplace of Shakira, which is a cool little fun fact. At the time we rode through, the Barranquilla temple had also just been finished and the open house started in two or three weeks. It was fun to see a new city so similar to Cartagena for just a little bit before we continued our journey on to Santa Marta.

We arrived at Santa Marta that night and took a taxi to our hostel Masaya. Our taxi driver was named Juan Carlos, and he gave us his card so we could call him for transportation to Parque Nacional Tayrona (Tayrona National Park) the next day.

Once at Masaya, we discovered it was right downtown and absolutely stunning. We spent some time walking around downtown and ate dinner at a little side street market cafe. They had live entertainment up and down the whole street, including a clear violin performance. It was crazy and beautiful and perfect. We also walked like 3 blocks to the ocean, just to see what was there. We finished the night off on the top of our hostel sitting next to our rooftop pool. They had a massive hammock on the roof as well. I ended up FaceTiming Ashlyn while I sat there for almost an hour. I walked downstairs to find out my legs were covered in the square imprints from the massive hammock. It was quite a funny and unique experience.

View from the trail in Parque Tayrona

Day 7

Rosie and I woke up early the next morning to beat the crowds at Parque Tayrona. We bought some bread and fruit from a farmers market and corner bakery before calling Juan Carlos, our taxi driver from the day before. When he answered the phone, he said, "Si si, soy yo Juan Carlos," at least six or seven times before we got down to the meat of the conversation. Rosie and I were laughing so hard and it immediately became an inside joke to us.

When Juan Carlos picked us up, we rode with him for about an hour to the entrance of Parque Tayrona. We arranged for him to pick us up at 5:30 so we could have plenty of time to walk around the park and explore. When I'm abroad, I have no cell service, so I have to be really careful to arrange all transportation and meeting spots before leaving the house, otherwise no one will know the plan. It makes things more complicated, but there's not much you can do about that. Luckily, most people are super understanding about that and are willing to make the effort to keep their word to spend time with you, at least in my experience.

First beach in Parque Tayrona

When Rosie and I got to Parque Tayrona, we paid for our tickets and then bought a bus pass to have someone take us to the head of the trails. Tayrona is a combination of hills and mountains covered in rainforest. If you walk deep enough in, you encounter beach after beach. Because they didn't want to destroy a lot of the rainforest, the ranger station is farther out so you have to take a bus to get to the head of all the trails. Tayrona is also a walking park, so you have to walk to get to any of the beaches and see any of the sights.

After the bus, which was really just a van once again, we started the trek to find the beach. It was about 2km to the first beach. After that, you follow the trail through many various beaches. I lost count of how many beautiful beaches there are. Each had super fine white sand and turquoise blue water. I've never seen a more gorgeous place in my life. Between the rainforest up until the beach and the mountains covered in the most vibrant green color, it's stunning. There are also very few people there, which is a huge draw for me when I want to get away from it all.

One of the many beaches at Tayrona

Rosie and I were aiming to see Pueblito, some ruins within the park. From what we had read, it was 3.2 km from the trailhead. We had been hiking for hours when we ran into some locals who told us that it would be another hour or two before we made it to Pueblito. It had also been raining for a few days, so we were slogging through mud. I was in only Tevas, a bikini, and a sundress cover-up. Rosie had on a bikini top with jean shorts and sneakers. We hadn't come prepared to hike tons. When we got back to the hostel, we found that we had actually hiked 21.4 km (nearly 11 miles)!

Me looking through our hidey hole

Because the hike was so long, we decided to just head back to one of the beaches that had caught our eye. Because we had hiked for like 4 hours at this point, we were far enough along that we only saw one other family the entire couple of hours we were on the beach.

At the beach, we discovered a massive rock covered in cacti. Through the rock, there was a hole that the ocean farther out would come through. I'm pretty sure that when it was high tide, the hole would be nearly completely covered. Unfortunately, we did not have enough time to stick around and see what would happen because we had to pack up and meet Juan Carlos.

We packed up and headed out. We hiked another hour and a half to meet the van that would take us back to the entrance of the park. Once we were there, we found Juan Carlos waiting for us and ready to head back to Santa Marta. It was truly a magical day.

Sunset right next to the entrance to Parque Tayrona

Once we made it back to Masaya, we showered before heading out to find some food. We had only eaten some bread and fruit during the whole day and had hiked quite a bit, so we grabbed some street food. I had fries covered in carne asada and cheese. They were pretty yummy, not gonna lie.

Back at our hostel, I called my mom for a bit. It was the first day of general conference for my church, so it was interesting to hear some of the updates. The main one came in the form of two hour church, starting January 2019. This was earth shattering because we had attended three hour church my entire life. I was sad to be missing general conference, but I did not have the amount of internet necessary to stream the conference for myself. I am so lucky to have an amazing mother who will encourage me to travel and keep me updated on the happenings of home!

Life Lessons

Always check the length of a hike with locals before trying something, or you may end up changing plans mid-day because you are too tired to hike any more.

Weekend trips are a must.

Rooftop pools are the best and so are massive hammocks.

Do NOT forget your sunscreen if you're going to the beach all day.

I am not the only person in the world who is deathly afraid of dogs.