Colombia's Caribbean coast is the number one tourist destination here. I have now been twice, in 2011 and this year, so this is a mixture of what we did on those trips.

Cartagena: The cheapest way to get to Cartagena is to fly with VivaColombia from Cali. In 2011, we got a taxi to our Hostel, called Hostel Real that we booked online. In Cartagena it is worth booking somewhere in the high season and around Christmas/New Year as it is the busiest weeks of the year. You can get cheap hotels or hostels a short walk from the historic centre in old colonial buildings (like the one we stayed at, cheap and cheerful). Or you can get hotels in Bocagrande (the modern beach bit with no character but.. a beach!). This year, we stayed at the Playa Club hotel which was a cheap and cheerful hotel but right on the beach and with a great pool. You can get taxis cheap to get to the historic centre easily from Bocagrande. Other hotels there are significantly cheaper because they don't have aircon or a pool but tend to be the ones that don’t have online booking so you can go in person and barter it down. When we returned to Cartagena for our return flight for a couple of days in 2011, what we did was book a night in a normal hotel then we went to a couple of ones that weren’t advertised to haggle some prices (they are the hotels that Colombians stay in and bartering is part of the deal). Then you can move hotel for the cheaper price.

In Cartagena you can relax on the beach (and buy delicious fresh mango from sellers!) which has a nice breeze or explore the Colonial centre which has some great museums but it is very expensive for restaurants and bars. From Cartagena port, just outside the big beautiful city gate, you can arrange a boat to Playa Blanca near Baru if you want a proper Caribbean experience. This was my favourite part of our stay in Cartagena, although the boat ride was particularly uncomfortable! Ask at the port or at your hostel for tickets. Here are some photos of Cartagena and the islands from our trip:

Taganga: You can get a bus from Cartagena to Taganga which is an odd little coastal town just north of Santa Marta (you may have to change buses in Santa Marta). On the one hand it is a cool hippy beach town, but that is just the beach front and behind it is a pretty impoverished town. For Taganga, don’t book anything in advance - go to the beach and book into a cheap hotel there, once again, they don't advertise online. We made the mistake of booking one online but it was very expensive and nothing special. For a day trip, you can take a little boat (negotiate the price) to the beach across the bay and you’ll get lunch included in the price. Also buy/rent snorkels before going to see fish over there. I would say to stay in Taganga for no longer than 4 days as there is not much to do, but it is nice to relax there. From Taganga you can arrange a bus to take you to Tayrona or you can get a boat but we were warned that the sea can be quite rough so maybe talk to some locals before deciding. Here are some of our photos:

Tayrona: Tayrona is the famous national park and is beautiful but we had a bit of an unfortunate experience. It is extremely physically demanding and there is very little guidance or signs for tourists, so you’re kind of on your own. When you get there you either have to walk on a road for an hour or pay for a minibus to get to the jungle, then you have an hour's walk mostly uphill on rocky surfaces until you get to the coast and a little (very expensive) restaurant. From there, the most popular place to go to sleep is Cabo Can Juan which you see in all the photos but that is another hour+ walk along the beach which is really demanding. Unless you’ve got money (to rent horses to carry you or to rent a little house), you’ll have to walk for hours carrying all your stuff and then sleep on hammocks. We trekked all the way there and were told that all the hammocks were taken. Unfortunately, there is no information when first arriving to tell you where to go or the availability of hammocks so we had to walk another hour back to the first beach - but this time through the forest on a path, which is much easier than via the beach, but once again there were no signs or guidance that the path existed when we arrived. 

Sleeping on hammocks is really uncomfortable and was quite expensive ($17,000 or £5 each a night) given that there were basically no services available and the hammock hut was falling apart. There were no cooking facilities and all the food and water for sale was very expensive. Most people end up enjoying it but it depends on your budget, and that that time we were on a very tight one. If you can rent horses, do it! The beach we were staying near was very dangerous with huge waves so we walked to the other one the following day to explore a bit and it was very pretty and we saw some cool animals but the whole thing was just tiring and badly organised. Although, as you can see from my photos below, Tayrona is beautiful, the girl behind the camera was absolutely drained. It is worth doing and you do get great photos, but we were not at all aware of just how physical it would be and that we might not end up sleeping at Cabo San Juan and just kept hearing such great things about it so assumed it all was well organised and goes smoothly, so just be prepared!

Compared to the rest of Latin America, Colombia is definitely not the cheapest. But I attribute this to a smaller tourist industry, especially compared to Peru and Brazil, for example. There is less of an established tourist infrastructure meaning that there is less competition driving prices down. That said, you can travel for cheap if you travel like a Colombian and don’t book hotels in advance and use buses instead of flying. 

I have found that online you can either book bog-standard hostels with dorm rooms for cheap, under $20,000 per night depending on the city, or more luxurious or multi-national hotels which are more expensive from around $170,000 per night for a private room. There is a big price gap online but once you arrive somewhere and ask around, you will often find independent hotels with private rooms that simply don’t advertise online as they serve Colombians rather than international tourists and often you can negotiate the price down to around $60.000 per night upwards for a double room. 

A bus from Cali-Medellín or Bogota for example would cost around $30,000-$40,000 each way but this takes a long time which people working here often don't have and tend to travel on bank holiday weekends. Thankfully for air travel, Viva Colombia, the new “budget” airline, offers an alternative to the other companies. Nevertheless, relatively speaking it is still expensive compared to, say, Easyjet with a flight Cali-Bogotá starting from $80,000 each way if booked well in advance. But, again, this is due to the newer tourist industry and hopefully prices will begin to decrease.

I will follow this post with location-specific information regarding what to do, where to stay and how to get a good deal on the Caribbean coast and around Cali.

San Andrés is one of the most popular holiday destinations for Colombians. Although it is an island near Nicaragua, it belongs to Colombia and has a long history or invasion both by the Spanish and English pirates, leaving it with an interesting cultural mix. My boyfriend and I (sort of) won a holiday there (winning something is never as simple as it sounds in Colombia!) which we had to take before Easter so we went a week ago for 4 nights.

Weather: Being a Caribbean island, San Andrés is normally hot and sunny. However, due to some unusual weather (ahem, climate change) happening in this part of the northern hemisphere recently with the incredible snow and ice in the states affecting weather down here, unfortunately, the island was incredible windy. It was still definitely hot, but not unbearable as I am sure it can be. This also meant that sunburns were almost unavoidable as you don't feel like you're burning.

Accommodation: Since what we won was only for a couple of nights, we added a couple more in another (cheaper) hotel called the Portobelo. It is spread over three sites so gets a little confusing but we were in the Junior which had a sea view and we thankfully got given a room with a balcony - very lucky. We were not so lucky with the room, however. Although it was very big with 3 beds and a fridge, it was run down and dirty. I won't go into details! It was quite pricey for the quality but I guess you pay for the location. It cost us $424.000 for 2 nights. Then we moved into the hotel where we won some nights called the Casablanca and this one was also right on the beach but was a four star hotel which was really pretty with a pool in the middle and 3 restaurants. We were given a cabin which we were surprised to see had a full flight of stairs taking you from a large living area, bedroom and bathroom to the master bedroom with a huge bed, a spare single bed and bathroom. It was really great. Since we were given $80.000 to spend at their hotels, we had breakfast there on the last day for a whopping $20.000 each, however, it was nothing special. A lot of choice but not great quality and certainly not worth the money if we had been paying ourselves. All in all though, a great hotel if you can afford it!

Food: This was our biggest annoyance on our trip. There were barely any restaurants on the island and the main beach front was full of Subway, Corral and Presto (burger places) and other 'American-style' fast food places. There was only one semi-affordable restaurant we could find outside of hotels called Margherita e Carbonara. It was quite expensive though around $25.000 per pasta dish and $30.000 for a pizza. The quality wasn't amazing though and no view. It seems that most people who go to San Andrés buy an all-inclusive deal so eat at their hotels and this has pushed local restaurants out of business. One alternative we did see were a couple of old women selling home-made food out on the pavement, presumably for cheap. This is a good option if on a budget. Apart from the Italian place, we did eat at Corral when we first arrived out of pure necessity, and it has a great terrace right on the beach, but once again it was expensive and poor. We ended up eating at the Casablanca hotel café, on the sea front, which we had first assumed was going to be far too expensive but it is a great option for tourists on more of a budget. They do pasta, pizza, sandwiches, soups etc for reasonable prices and in a nice setting. My tip though, bring your own snacks and fruit to get you by.

What to do: Unfortunately, due to the weather, Johnny Cay and the Aquarium were closed but they are apparently great day trips. So, instead, we rented a golf cart for $80.000 for the day and went around the whole island stopping off at various cliffs and beaches. The best place to stop is West View where you pay $4.000 entrance and there are some cool wooden huts selling drinks and cocktails by some cliffs that go down to the sea. Fortunately, there is a metal ladder and a diving board to get in and we saw such beautiful colourful fish and some people were even scuba diving under there. Well worth the trip! Other than that, you can see how the locals live and it really is quite impoverished. The wealth of some of the hotel resorts clearly does not spread to the rest of the island which is a shame. The houses dotted around the countryside are quirky and often very colourful and the scenery is beautiful with palm tree forests and the turquoise water.  

Other: One thing I really enjoyed was listening to what language the locals were speaking. Mostly we heard them speaking Spanish but that was normally when they were talking to tourists but when there were groups of locals talking among themselves, often they spoke English. It was amazing to hear Colombians speaking English like natives, albeit with an accent not to dissimilar to the Jamaican.  Another thing we noticed was that the island was full of stray dogs who were always (hopefully) asleep. We barely ever saw a dog awake or moving around so it made for a pretty creepy experience as on the beach, pavements, night or day, there were dozens of dogs lying down with their eyes closed not moving. No idea what makes them do it but it really was very strange!!


All in all it was a good trip, although if you are looking for a more cultural/foody holiday with more activities than just lying on the beach, perhaps San Andrés isn't for you. But it is a shame to come to Colombia and not see it's best sea and the Colombian's favourite holidays destination!

I had to go outside of Colombia to pick up my work visa for my new job so I decided on Panama (as I had already been to Quito) and my boyfriend and I made a mini holiday of it. Here is a short guide of Panama city and what we got up to. 

Getting from Tocumen airport to the city: You can get taxi from the airport to the city but they are pretty expensive. If you opt to take a bus, here is what we did. When you leave the airport, turn right and keep walking until you get to a small alleyway behind a shop or office. Walk through the alley and keep going slightly right through a car park until you get to some roads. You are aiming for a bus stop right on the other side of all these roads. When you are stood at the bus stop with the airport in front of you, you want to take a bus going to your right. You can take the air-conditioned white buses but you need a card so can give someone the money to swipe you in (it should cost around 75c). We opted for a 'Diablo Rojo' (Red Devil) bus, which are the old classic Panamanian buses that look like Colombian Chivas. It cost 50c and had no aircon and online I saw it described as the 'poor people's bus'. But it was fine and felt safe as everyone had their iphones out. It took around 50 minutes to get to Vía Espana where we got off for our hotel. You pay when you get off the bus 

Hotel: We stayed in the Veneto Wyndham hotel in el Cangrejo neighbourhood. We got a good deal for £140 for 4 nights for both of us and we were really impressed with the hotel. It had a Las Vegas feel to it as it had a casino on the lobby floor and quite grand decorations. It had a free rooftop pool, gym and pingpong table and the rooms were huge including a massive double bed, flat screen TV, desk, fridge and huge walk-in shower. The street it is on isn't exactly nice, but it had a few nice restaurants on it and some minimarkets. It was also just down the road from the metro stations and was only a 15 minute walk to the sea. The only downer from the hotel was that on our last day, my boyfriend left $20 on his bedside table and when we went to the pool for an hour, it got stolen. This is in spite of the fact that we kept the 'do not disturb' sign on the door the entire time so cleaners should never have gone in. We complained to the hotel but they denied it. So be careful what you leave out as it will probably go missing!

General perception of the city: The city feels very different to Colombia. Of course the huge sky scrapers give it a more American look but it is actually more of a facade. One you get up close and walk around the streets, there are a lot of run down buildings and blocks of flats in between these multi-million pound skyscrapers. One of which, an amazing spiral tower is brand new but has actually been empty for 4 years, as a taxi driver told us. So it seems that, like in Colombia, Panama has problems of government abandonment, corruption and illicit activity, meaning that the economy fluctuates massively and leading to inequality. This was confirmed when talking to other Panamanians we met who told us about the mafia that has de facto rule there.

The Cinta Costera, a walk way along the coast it lovely, although there used to be a beach which was ruined by unregulated building and pollution of the water, so a beach would have been nicer! They are planning a regeneration project over the next 10-15 years to restore a beach and clean up the water so hopefully that will happen. It is used a lot by locals for walks and running or skating, although for me it would be far too hot! The old town, called the Casco Viejo, was beautiful with old colonial buildings including the presidential palace. However, even in this tourist attraction where the president lives, there were extremely run down and abandoned houses and a lack of maintenance. It was bizarre to have such lavish and pristine government buildings right next to abandoned and burnt down houses. One thing we found strange during our holiday was that we didn't find a supermarket anywhere, not even in shopping centres. And the shopping centres we did go to in the city (excluding Albrook) were deserted! 

Budget: Although we were advised that Panama was quite cheap, we found everything more expensive than Colombia. The minimum for a meal was $6 and average taxi rides were $3/4 but you had to haggle hard and still much more than in Cali. We planned a budget of $20 a day each for transport and food and we ate breakfast in our hotel room by buying milk and cereal - proper shoestring traveling! This would be the absolute minimum you could go with.

Night out: My boyfriend has a friend from Cali who lived in Panama so we got in touch and her and her husband picked us up to go for dinner. My boyfriend had warned her that we were on a very tight budget so needed to go somewhere cheap. They picked us up from our hotel in an American-style Ford Raptor pick up truck that made other 4x4s look like children's toys! I have never been in a car I had to climb two steps to get into and I felt like I needed a rope to abseil down it to get out! They took us to the old town to this beautiful rooftop restaurant overlooking the city skyline and we took a look at the menus. I pinched by boyfriend's leg. Nothing was less than $18. We sat there awkwardly trying to telepathically decide how to play this and eventually my boyfriend told them that this would be too expensive for us, to which they expressed surprise. They clearly have a certain lifestyle and income over there as they picked this place out because they thought it was cheap! Awkward minutes of silence followed and then they said they would pay. We ended up having a really nice night and the temperature was incredible. However, not only was the food extremely over priced, but it was nothing more than tiny pretentious portions, less than I would consider a starter! It was delicious but we left still feeling famished after our day of traveling! 

I felt pretty embarrassed that they ended up having to pay, but our lives are just in very different places and they were quite a bit older than us. Or that's how I justified it to myself anyway. I tried to explain our situation to them and said that I haven't been working since finishing my Masters to which she replied that that sounds brilliant as I have been on a long holiday in Colombia meanwhile, but I explained that I have been just job hunting and I wouldn't call it a holiday. Clearly still not getting it, when we asked for somewhere low-key and cheap to spend the New Year, they suggested the $150 a head Hard Rock Café! I nodded politely and recounted my $20 a day budget for Panama. It was very amusing and goes to show how some people live here! 

Safety: In general, Panama City felt significantly safer than Cali and the Colombian coast, perhaps due to the smaller population (the whole country has the same amount of people as Cali), the more established tourist industry, or some other factors. We felt totally fine walking around at night which we would never do in Cali unless we had to for some reason, and were never approached by anyone begging and hardly saw any homeless people compared to Cali. My boyfriend's friend who we met up with who is from Cali confirmed this and told us that she felt so safe living in Panama and in Cali she would be very careful but was robbed at gunpoint inside her car numerous times in daylight and got her phone stolen at knife point when she was walking in her strata neighbourhood. Another Colombian we met from Bogota who was the owner of a restaurant also agreed and said that living in Panama was just completely different safety-wise.

Shopping: I had intended to buy some work clothes in Panama so I had withdrawn some dollars for it and we went to Albrook Mall by taxi ($3) as we had heard it was relatively cheap and the biggest shopping centre in the country. We were very disappointed. It was small, expensive and there were no suitable clothes. Another day we went to Multicentro shopping centre near the consulate as my boyfriend's friend had told us it was the best and poshest one, so we were expecting more choice or quality cothing, but once again, it was small, non-airconditioned and very disappointing shops. Compared to the shopping centres in Colombia, what we were told was the best one in Panama wasn't even as good at the not-very-good ones in Cali. All the clothes in Panama were either designer sport-style clothing like Lacoste or Tommy Hilfiger or were extremely tacky, overpriced clothes with sequins and diamantes or big slits to show off surgically altered bodies. There was also almost not option to buy cotton clothing and most of it was synthetic which is crazy for the Panamanian heat! These types of clothes certainly exist in Colombia too, but tend to be the lower end of quality and price and in nice shopping centres or outlets stores you can find shops selling nice designs and cotton clothing! Needless to say that I didn't end up buying anything!

Getting around: Panama is a strange city transport-wise and you need a travel card to use the metro and buses (which you need your passport to buy) so most tourists opt for taxis. However, in Panama, they are not required to have taxi-metres so just charge whatever they want, which tends to be more for foreigners. Thankfully my boyfriend is a 'local' and is used to bartering but we still got ripped off as we didn't know how much rides should cost. After our trip, we can confidently say that the average taxi ride, lasting 10-15 minutes should cost $3-$3.50 and no more! Although the taxi drivers are stubborn and often will not budge. For the same trip, one taxi driver would not move from $8 and made it seem like we were ripping him off, but then we found another that charged us $3. Another strange fact about taxis in Panama is that when you are in the middle of a ride, they will slow down and beep at pedestrians, offering their services, and will stop to pick up more people. So it is more like an expensive bus than a taxi! 

American influence: One of the main things we noticed about the city and culture is that it is extremely 'americanised'. Not only do they have the dollar as their currency, but their police wear identical uniforms to American police, the police cars are the same as in America too and even have the slogan 'Protect and Serve', and there was an almost total lack of Panamanian businesses. There were so many American restaurants like Popeye's chicken, Wendy's, Dairy Queen, Taco Bell, dunkin' Donuts, almost all the television programs we saw were Colombian and the rest were American and most of the banks were Colombian. I thought Colombia was very 'americanised', but that is nothing compared to Panama. The links between Panama and America due to the building of the canal and the use of the currency has obviously had an effect on local businesses and has been used to America's advantage. There were also a lot of American tourists and expats who live there who we saw walking their dogs along the cinta costera. 

Language: Another side effect of this 'americanisation' is that we noticed that a lot of Spanglish was officially adopted. For example, many signs used the English term instead of the Spanish such as 'Parking' instead of 'Parqueadero' and many more such as 'soda' instead of 'gaseosa. Spoken Spanish also seemed to have deteriorated and we heard locals say 'llamar patras', which literally means 'to call (someone) back'. But this is solely an English phrase and in Spanish it should 'llamar más tarde' or 'volver la llamada'. Apparently they speak like this in Puerto Rico too, as it is basically part of America.

We had a really good trip and it was really nice to get out of Cali after 3 solid months! It was very interesting visiting a country that is so similar yet so different to Colombia but both share a common history and used to be one country. Next time, when we have more time and money, we would like to go to the beaches and islands to the north of the city. If you are planning on going, prepare for the extremely hot and humid weather that is significantly more uncomfortable than Cali!