We set our alarm for 6:00am as we had a tour leaving from the harbour at 8:00am. The harbour was about a 45- 50 minute walk from our hotel. We ended up leaving the room at 7:00am and walking through the old town and making it to Pier 3 with 10 minutes to spare. I guess we were walking slowly this morning. A few weeks before I had booked a tour of the Rosario Islands on Tripadvisor. I had never booked a tour through Tripadvisor before, but it worked out pretty well. The Rosario Islands are a protected natural park because they contain very important ecological coral reefs, mangroves and seaweed beds. In the 1980’s it was incredibly dangerous to go to these islands as Escobar had a mansion on one of the islands, which has now been reclaimed by nature. We entered the Pier area and boarded the catamaran , “Bona Vida”. It was a huge solar/wind powered catamaran! We grabbed a welcome watermelon drink and sat in the sun. The boat took a while before it left the port for the Rosario Islands. 

After one and a half hours of sailing we reached our first stop. I don’t know where in the islands we were, but it was a small bay and we were quite a ways from shore. You could borrow snorkels, pool noodles etc but you had to give them an I.D to hold in exchange. We hadn’t brought I.D on the boat, so JIves went without a snorkel. I however am a fish at heart and always travel with my own snorkel. We got in the lovely clear and warm Caribbean water and swam about. There really was nothing to see with my snorkel anyways (the water was very choppy) so Jives wasn’t missing much. I have heard there is incredible snorkeling around the Rosario Islands, but clearly this was not the spot. It was still lovely. We took turns jumping off the catamaran and filming it. We were stopped at this first spot for about an hour and a half. Guys on kayaks paddled over to the boat to sell drinks and mussels off of their kayaks. 

We cruised around a bit more and stopped again, this time within swimming distance of the shore. This island looked a bit bigger than the first, with a resort on the distant shore. Lunch was ready so we ate before we went in the water. We were given the option of veggie, fish or chicken when we boarded and I chose veggie. We had a plate of veggie fried rice and salad you can prepare yourself, as well as broccoli penne with pesto and a beverage (soda). It was pretty good and definitely enough food for me. 

We then jumped in the water and swam to the shore. The shore had lovely white sand and coral washed ashore. We stopped here for almost two hours which was more than enough time. The waves had picked up a bit, but it was super easy to get to shore and back. 

We then sailed back to Cartagena, passing naval ships and a submarine, arriving at the port in the old town around 4pm. We waited quite awhile to disembark the boat.

Overall the tour was a nice relaxing break. The lack of coral/ sea life to see was a bit of a disappointment, and I wish there was a bit more information provided before the tour, but overall the tour was worth the about $140 each we had paid. 

We then walked back to our favourite Cartagena restaurant “Fernando’s Madrid” where we ordered a margarita pizza to share and two beers (to not share). Fernando was not there. The young boy serving us pretty aggressively asked for a tip… but oh well. At least we weren’t really ripped off for a third night in a row. We then walked back to our hotel as the sun was setting.

We woke up once again at 6am and we were out of the room by 6: 30. The security guard took our key as no staff seemed to be around. We then walked about 30 minutes to the airport. Cartagena airport is tiny! We then went through security quickly, with the power off briefly. I was behind a couple that were upset that their handcuffs were confiscated. 

We found a spot to sit in the tiny departures area (only five small gates) and I went and purchased two coffees and a cheese croissant. The coffees were some of the best we had all trip and the warm cheesy croissant was awesome (all very cheap too). 

My name was called as my seat had been changed, in a very weird way… Jives’ seat remained unchanged and we were seated togetherish…

We boarded by walking directly onto the plane from the airport, which I always love. The flight was so short. It said 1.5 hours, but I doubt it was even 1 hour flight time. 

We landed back in Bogota at around 11am. We went through baggage claim and ordered food at a small cafe. It took forever to get food, and they had nothing that was on the menu. I got a cheese bun, which I thought was vegetarian but it had ham in the cheese, like almost everything in Colombia. We got our coffees after we had finished eating our cheese sandwiches with the ham picked out. The bill came to 135,000. Each sandwich was supposed to be 35,000 and coffee was 8,500… so there was a HUGE service charge. The guy asked for a tip and I said no, but then he added a 18,000 tip for himself. Colombia, you are doing it wrong, I was sooooo tired of being ripped off. Colombia is the worst place I have travelled to in the WORLD for this. 

We then waited for the K86/M86 to the city centre. There was a very established line with two line monitors watching it, yet people STILL pushed by and were sent back. … That’s Colombia for you. 

We were so excited to get two seats with our backpacks on (actually pretty small backpacks, but heavy to have on your back for over an hour standing.)… but the bus stopped at El Dorado station and we had to get off and back on the same bus, this time without seats. Cool. 

Our hotel was in La Candaleria again (technically Zona G), a very very nice neighbourhood and one the safest places to stay in Bogota. We got off the bus and walked 10 minutes to our accommodation “BS Rosales”. It was after 1pm, but check in was at 3pm so we went in to see if we could leave our bags there and they offered to check us in instead. 

Our room was on the 7th floor with a pretty nice view over the area. We could even see a BBC (Bogota Brewing Company) , our favourite place in Bogota, from the window. 

We rested for quite awhile, heading out at 4pm to eat at the BBC. This BBC was actually pretty large. We chose a spot and ordered two veggie burgers and potatoes and porters. These veggie burgers were even better than the ones we had had at BBC before! Each BBC seems a bit different. After a lovely relaxing meal (Valentines dinner), we stopped by the grocery shop down the street to get water, bananas, chips and canned mojitos to share in the room, and then we headed back to the room to relax after a long day. 

I woke up quite early, before 6am. I had a lovely shower and a few coffees while waiting to check into our flight home. We headed out to the old town around 9: 30am. The bus to old town L81 took about 30-40 minutes and we got off at San Victorio station (or something very close to that, I think the spelling is wrong). 

We visited the old town on our second full day in Bogota, but I really wanted to see inside the Candy Stripe Church (Santuario Nuestra Senora del Carmen) so we headed there first as the internet said it was open to the public from 7:30-11:30am. 

The church was closed, even though we arrived at 10:26am. No interior of the Candy Stripe church for me. We then found a cafe nearby called “Gastrobar”. I find the name revolting, why put “gas” in your restaurant name? Ew, but the food was amazing! We both ordered toastadas avocado y heuvos or toast with avocado and eggs, plus an americano. It was all for 20,000 pesos each! The decoration was cool and artsy too, I really liked the place. We enjoyed our meal and went to pay. They charged us the correct price and didn’t demand a tip, which was so nice after a week of being ripped off… so I tipped the lovely servers better than I had anywhere else on the trip (being nice pays off). 

We then walked towards Pl. Del Chorro do Quevedo where the weird window wall is and street art streets are more prominent. There was a huge police presence here as there was maybe a show being filmed and a group of girls acting or something. 

We walked around the graffiti streets and filmed a few rap takes. We photographed a lot of street art before heading back to “Plaza de Bolivar”, stopping to see the interior of ‘Igelisa do Nestra Senora de la Candelaria’. The ceiling was an incredibly gorgeous renaissance like painting and the walls were white with gold trim on everything. The main altar was gold gold gold with pocketed alcoves where gold figures were placed. We dropped a donation in the box as we exited. It was stunning. 

We then took the D81 (L81 in the opposite direction) back to our hotel to regroup. 

We headed out a few hours later to visit a park nearby called “La Veja” I think… It was a beautiful little retreat in the city, with pathways made of sliced logs of wood. It was a bit of a climb to see the park, but it was along a lovely stream with many waterfalls. There was a wide variety of plants and so many flowering varieties. There were also signs throughout the park illustrating the types of flora and all the bird varieties that live there as well. After thoroughly enjoying the park we walked back down to the main road where we decided to have dinner at a vegan restaurant called “Elektra Punk and Food”. I ordered the “soupy rice” which was like a mushroom risotto, and Jives got a pizza. The waiter suggested I get a milkshake with guava and mango. Everything was amazing! My soupy rice was the best food I had on the whole trip. The rice was in a green broth with an assortment of mushrooms and onion and some greens. The flavour was so rich, and it was like comfort food. So so amazing. The total came to 101,000.

We then walked to the grocery store and got some snacks and drinks to have in the room as we packed our bags. We filmed a little “ in summary video” and packed up all our stuff before an early night. 

We woke up at 5am and finished the last of the packing, drank a coffee and had a banana each. We left the room at 5:30ish and went to the bus stop to catch the K86 to El Dorado airport. We somehow managed to have almost exactly enough money left on our Bogota metro card for the trip to the airport with 500 pesos left over (about.15 cents)

We waited for about 20 minutes for the bus, which we got on around 6am. The ride took 50 minutes (on another crazy packed full bus where I thought I was going to have the air pressed out of my lungs), at the airport for 7am. We went through the initial boarding gates no problem but had difficulty at the immigration ones. You punch your flight number in and put your passport in and it photographs your eyes. I got through, but three machines would not let Jives get through. We then joined the giant crazy long non sense line for security. Of course our line went soooo slowly. Air Canada suggested getting to the airport 4 hours early because of this, but taking the earliest bus only allowed us 2.5 hours to get through security and when I saw the line I started to panic. We made it through security and had a little time to buy Beth a bag of coffee and hot sauce for checking our mail for us while we were away. I also purchased my mom a pair of hummingbird earrings as she loves humming birds and they are everywhere in Colombia. We also bought us some mediocre breakfast, a turkey sandwich and a weird rice bowl with orange juice. We used up the last of our Colombian pesos which was nice. We then waited for our flight to board. We actually managed to sit together with an aisle and window seat!! The flight was delayed about 45 minutes which was fine, we were just glad to not be beside a drunken asshole like the flight over. 

Overall it was an odd trip. It was a lot of work for a vacation, and certainly not a beginners vacation. I don’t think we were wrong to worry about our safety beforehand, but it was not as unsafe as we expected. Our sim cards were integral to navigating Bogota. We had never purchased sim cards before but I was so glad we had. It was also the country where I needed to learn the most language, which shocked me. You really need to know some Spanish to travel in Colombia, but I did find that my knowledge of French helped a lot. We got by with our super basic Spanish, but I feel we would not have been taken advantage of as much if we spoke more Spanish (especially in Cartagena). 

We loved Medellin and Cartagena was good but Medellin was a bit better thanks to our awesome accommodation. Bogota was a surprise for me, and much better than I thought. I’m not sure if I will ever be back, but I don’t regret going. Continent number five, baby! Country number forty-one in the bag!