Long weekend in Yopal

Yesterday we came back from spending three days in Yopal, it's my fourth time all in all going there. Apparently it's "winter" there now, this means it's still warm but it rains more than normal. We realised this when we came out of the plane and the rain was pouring down, not that it mattered since it still was quite humid and warm. Mateo's parents had already arrived the day before so together with them Betty and I went to the family's ranch/finca. I still don't know a good translation for this but finca is probably the closest one. Good thing for us the weather was better out at the finca; one reason is because you drive away from Yopal which is located just next to the mountains.

Day 1. We decided to go and ride horses while "helping" feed the cows, not that we really helped in any other way but supervising the cows, but it made us feel important. It's such a nice feeling when you are out on the horse and there is nothing but green fields around you, even the smell of cows makes you smile, you really forget that you were in noisy Bogotá just a few hours earlier. Mateo's dad wanted to measure some stuff on the field so he told us to wait inside the paddock for someone to open the fence for us. We did what we were told and we waited inside, sitting on the horses and doing some small laps around the paddock for almost an hour.. In the end we were not sure if we had understood what we were supposed to do and we got a bit restless so we decided to be real cow girls: I got down from the horse and gave my horse to Betty so I could open the fence for us, then we both passed and I closed the fence again (so the cows wouldn't get out). Wow - we felt so proud and amazing afterwards, really, for like five minutes, then we felt a bit stupid.. For what it's worth we had a blast inside the paddock talking about a lot of important and less important stuff. That was our adventure for the day ;) In the evening we went to have dinner at a restaurant while waiting for Mateo and his sister to arrive. During these kind of working days you are doing so much physical work and you are concentrating all the time so by 9 pm you just want to sleep, which we usually do.. 

Day 2. This morning we all woke up at 6 am to head out to the farm. It still takes a long time to actually get there even though we woke up at 6, we all have to get ready, go and have a large breakfast since we won't eat for the next 8-9 hours, and then finally drive out there which takes around 45 minutes. It was nice weather, not too hot thanks to the clouds but still warm enough to wear short sleeves. Almost all of us went out to the jungle. Two of us on a horse and the rest in a jeep. When we came to a really muddy road we left the car and continued walking. It was an experience to walk in that mud without falling down and without getting dirty. On the road we found a dead monkey who had just a few minutes earlier fallen down, poor guy had probably broke his neck in the hit. He was so beautiful and his fur so soft, I felt so bad for him..  I have never seen one of these monkeys before in the finca, maybe even never.

Day 3. This day we really were put to work. Mateo's dad joked that we had to work a bit to be rewarded to ride the horses. Our assignment for the day was to plant 24 trees, matarraton. It sounds easy but when the trees are 4 meters each and the place you want to plant them are 15 minutes away with tractor through the fields it is much harder. We all went on the tractor and I got to drive it, yes me, and I must say I am a very good driver :) We all drove the tractor in turns and we all helped, it's quite nice with this kind of work when you are all doing it together. We did experience one small accident, when the tractor drove over one of the electric fences and one of the strings got stuck in the tractor and broke, it hit two of us who got an electric chock and were thrown away a meter or two, nothing too bad but still something I haven't seen before. Mateo's dad got hit by the broken string, but nothing too bad happened, we were all lucky I guess. In the end we were too tired to ride the horses so we were left without our reward..

Mountain next to Yopal, seen from the apartment 

The entrance to the ranch

Day 1. Getting ready for the adventure

The real cow girls 

Left: Snake catcher Jessie
Right: Seen from the horse

Day 2. This walk in the jungle is harder than it looks

Mr and Mrs 

Betty on the horse 

 

Washing the horses afterwards

Day 3. Going to plant the trees

Planting one of  the 24 trees

Still smiling after a rough day 

Sometimes it feels the cows are more organised than the colombians

"Bull fight"

Who can find Jacobo the Parrot?? 

World Cup 2014: Colombia vs Greece

Last week the world cup started in Brazil (duuh). Colombia has been waiting 16 years for this moment, and now it's here! Colombia played their first game against Greece on Saturday. This was just perfect since everybody would be able to watch the game together. We planned beforehand to go to Parque de la 93 to watch the game where they had put up a BIG screen. We went there more than two hours before the game started to get good places. I thought we would be really early and we would have nothing to do, but the two hours went by very fast thanks to for example a show by Cali y el Dandee. The park was filled with yellow and red colours; shirts, flags, scarfs etc. There was such a good vibe going on and the atmosphere just kept you smiling the whole time. When the game started everybody were super excited and the crowd kept cheering on without getting tired.

I am not even sure it's possible to describe the feeling when Colombia scored the first goal, it was amazing, it was crazy, it was like there was nothing else that mattered but jumping and screaming with your hands in the air. And the whole park did the same, and I'm not kidding but there must have been a couple of thousand inside that small park. Just amazing!! Nobody cared if you stepped on their feet or if you hit them in the head - you still were on the same yellow team! Besides this, the crowd started spraying foam out in the air as well as throwing flour on everybody. The end result was that we were all white, but again that only made you happier and more excited about the game. I guess there is no point of explaining how the rest of the game went.. Colombia won 3-0 and every time they scored it was the same excitement in the air, such a patriotic feeling.

Even if the game ended, the crowd didn't. We just continued out to the streets doing the same thing: spraying foam, throwing flour, screaming, jumping and smiling the whole time. People went absolutely crazy! Cars were honking, and driving around with the colombian flag outside the window, the traffic probably stopped a few blocks around the park for all the people jumping around. I guess this is comparable to when Finland won the championship in Ice Hockey, except that Colombia "only" won one game. Anyways, I am very happy to have been here in Colombia during this football-go-crazy-experience, since I doubt Finland will be in the world cup anytime soon..

Waiting for the game to start

The people behind us 

GOOOOOOOOOL!

After the game

San Andrés

After the amazing three days we spent on Providencia we enjoyed two more days in San Andrés. The same hostel from Providencia also had space for us in San Andrés so we decided to stay there since we had been so happy with the one in Providencia. We went back with the same catamaran but this time we knew what was coming and the waves were on "our side" so it wasn't that bad. The only thing I am still a bit confused with is that they showed some really violent movies on the boat even though half of the passengers were children. 

San Andrés is a bigger island than Providencia, which means more people, more tourists and more hotels. It's not as plain and laid-back as Providencia but it still has a lot to offer. In the end you are on an island in the middle of the caribbean sea!! The owner of the hostel gave us a lot tips what to do but we decided just to take it easy. Early the next morning we went to the main beach in the north of the island. It was really pretty, I don't know why people told us it would be very crowded and not nice at all.. I can believe this is under normal circumstances, but beginning of June is low season for traveling. Anyways, the main beach is a typical caribbean beach; white sand, turquoise water, palm trees and some hotels. In other words, quite nice and what we were looking for. It was just really weird because there was quite many people who wanted to take pictures of us; some were polite enough to ask, some put their 6 year old son to ask and then there were the ones who just sat down between us. I still don't understand them, I got really mad at them and the only thing they answered was "it's okay, we are on holiday"… Yea, like that's good reason!!! 

We stayed the entry day on the beach, apart from going to have lunch at Fisherman Place, a lunch place I read was popular to go to if you want to support local fisherman and have a good meal. The restaurant is on the other side of the beach which also was nice so we could walk along the beach to the restaurant. The food was really good, and not expensive at all. We wanted to try the local dish "rondon" but unfortunately they didn't have it. In the late afternoon we went to walk around the shopping streets to see if they had something nice to offer. It's quite difficult to find beach clothes in Bogotá so you have to take advantage of the situation once you are on a beach resort. 

On our last day we went to a National Park called Johnny Cay, which was located on an island just 1,5 km outside the main beach. We thought it would be a deserted island with only beaches and palm trees, at least that's what you see when you stand on the main beach. I also read before in a guidebook that you have to "fight for your spot with iguanas" - that I don't agree with at all, it's more to fight for your spot with other tourists!! We went there early in the morning, around 9 am. We arrived and we got so disappointed; half of the island looked like they had planted palm trees there recently and in a specific order, and the other half of the island is covered with bars and tables.  This is maybe a bit exaggerated but that's the first thing you see when you get there and the first opinion you get.. They told us the only place where we were allowed to go swimming was only a small part of the beach, maybe 50 - 100 meters. We decided to walk around the island to find a quiet spot, which we did, for like 30 minutes until people came and sat down half a meter from us. We went walking around the island to take some nice pictures and to enjoy the beautiful ocean. Once we got back to the main area we just wanted to go swimming, but we couldn't because there was just not enough space in the water. I don't know how they can allow it like this, it even looked a bit dangerous when a wave came and all the people were smashed together.. We were just exhausted from all the emotional stress (which you are not supposed to feel in a national park, and definitely not on a paradise island) so we decided to go back to the main island where we knew we could enjoy swimming and the beautiful beach. We tried to ask so many boats if they would take us back but nobody wanted to. It was impossible and just irritating how rude the "captains" were!! If we wouldn't have been able to communicate in Spanish I think they would all just have ignored us… Thankfully, we managed to find one boat that offered to take us back. The rest of the afternoon before heading back to Bogotá we enjoyed the quiet main beach, which I think was the perfect ending to this trip.

One part of the main beach

Looking out from the main beach while walking to Fisherman Place (Johnny Cay in the back)

The food at Fisherman Place

    

Looking at San Andrés from Johnny Cay Natural Regional Park

Jump - Jump 

Our private spot for 30 minutes

Pictures from Johnny Cay Natural Park

Providencia - an untouched paradise

Providencia is just amazing!!! I can't find the words to describe how beautiful it is, the ocean is just crystal clear, around the island you find corals which makes the water turquoise, the white sand beaches are quiet, and there are no big hotels anywhere to be seen. It feels like the island is living its own life, which is true. The locals speak their own language, creol, which is a mix of Spanish, English and French. We thought that we understood some words here and there but to understand what they were talking about was still too hard. 

The most popular area where to stay is Fresh water Bay; there you have a super market, "many" restaurants (more os less the only ones..), you are close to the main beaches and you can book everything from there (trips, snorkelling gear and tours, scuba diving tours etc). This area is also known for it's crab migration, there are thousands and thousands of big crabs moving up from the beach. I have never seen so big and so many crabs in my life! We stayed at a new hostel which had opened only a month ago, The Blue Almond Hostel (bluealmondhostel.com), which we thought was perfect. It's located in Fresh water Bay, the room was quite big and cozy with a small loft, you had a swimming pool, air conditioning and a small dock from where to enter the ocean. 

You don't really need to plan ahead what you want to do, it's really a "mañana-mañana" atmosphere on the island. It's so easy just to walk to a beach and forget about everything and you don't even realise the day is passing by. I liked best the beach in South west Bay, it was so quiet and relaxed. This beach is also a bit covered from the ocean so there are no big waves and wasn't really windy (the time we were there). 

It's relatively easy to go around the island. You can rent a scooter or a golf cart, hitchhike or wait for a "collectivo" to pass (you never know if there is one coming or not). We rented a scooter for 60 000 COP (25 EUR) for 24h. It was so much fun!! I have never really driven a scooter, only tried a few times like 10 years go.. Well, we managed to make a scene only once when we (or I) almost drove the scooter up-side-down because of using too much gas and breaking with the front wheel at the same time.. We laughed a lot because there were so many people coming to the rescue of the two lost blondes :) 

During our few days we had we tried to do as much as possible, even though I feel like I missed out on a lot of things, well, I can always do them the next time.. Santa Catalina is a small island where we went snorkelling. The walk there is really beautiful because you walk next to the crystal blue water and you can also see how the locals live. The beach was quite small, I still think we didn't find the real beach, "Morgan's head", only a small version of it, but it's okay we were still very happy. Betty even got to hold a lobster, which we probably had for dinner later that night.. We also drove to the "best beach" according to all tourist guides, Manzanillo Bay, it was fun to go there because there is a must-see bar called Roland's place or something, he is a typical local who really doesn't worry about tomorrow. This beach was  more windy and here were also more waves so it was a bit harder to just float around in the water. 

On our last day I went to the Peak, it's a hike up to the highest point of the island. Betty wanted to stay and relax so I did this hike alone, with a guide so I wouldn't get lost. The hike up to the peak takes more or less one hour, it's quite tough since you walk uphill all the time. The view from the peak is breathtaking and beautiful! It's just one of those views you can't catch on picture, even though I tried my best.. From the Peak you can see all the island, and all the corals. My guide told me that during a clear day without the fog you can see San Andres and even the coastline of Nicaragua! Walking up I took my chance and asked a lot because he is a local and he knows best about the island. Some of the facts he told me was that there is a lot of boa snakes in the woods, I really wanted to see one but without any luck.. There was also a lot of orchids growing in the wild, it's funny to see since back home this flower is one of the more expensive ones and here they just grow in the wild. He also told me that during this time it's forbidden to catch any crabs from the streets, if you do it you get a fine of 120 000 COP (45-50 EUR).   

I could just post all my pictures but to relate to some of the stories, I have selected a few ones to more precisely describe our adventures.  

View of the beach in South west Bay

Beach in South west Bay

Behind the scenes of my blog ;)

To the left is Betty enjoying the sun

Above is one of our many fish-dishes. 

A normal house in Fresh water Bay, all the houses were so pretty and colourful

On the road

Walking over a brigde to Santa Catalina 

"Must-do-pictures"

House on Santa Catalina

Santa Catalina

The small beach we found on Santa Catalina. Here we went snorkelling in the crystal blue water. 

Betty caught our lunch

Found a small dock where we took I don't know how many pictures

We had to stop the scooter to take a picture of this beautiful coral reef

Manzanillo Bay

Found some swings on the beach.

Lobster on the beach - YUMMY!

Coco Loco - basically a coconut
filled with all the alcohol you can find..

    

Here is where I started my journey up to the peak

The Peak

 

Above you can see a blue iguana, very pretty. Below you can see an orchid growing on a tree 

This is how we enjoyed the last afternoon