Tumbaco, Ecuador

Long, full days of transit are almost always challenging, especially when crossing a boarder is involved. From Colombia to Ecuador was no exception. Up and out at 6 a.m., for it’s necessary to cross the south of Colombia in the day time, as there are (apparently) bandits who hijack buses on this route. After about 15 hours of transport and 10 different types of vehicles later, I arrived for the evening in Ibarra, a pretty worthless town in Northern Ecuador. I wouldn’t call a place worthless lightly either – although maybe my jaded attitude at that point in the night had something to do with it. “Noches de Arabia” (Arabian Nights) and their shwarma and large beers saved the day.

By the time I reached Tumbaco, Ecuador, all the bothersome day before was worth it. The hills in the country side on the way are all shades of green, looking like patchwork on the sides of the mountains. Tumbaco is about 45 minutes outside of the capital, Quito. I arranged to stay with a family via Couch Surfing, and was utterly surprised when I arrived there. I knew they had a house with a farm and lots of animals, but I couldn’t anticipate how unbelievably beautiful it would be! Ingo is from Germany, Genny is Ecuadorian/Belgian/French, and the girls Elisa (11) and Emily (8) are Ecuadorian/French, but born and raised in various parts of Europe. The entire family is tri-lingual, and they are expecting an addition to the family in 6 months. I should say additional human and animal members, for the farm life is ever expanding as well! The llama, Pamela (a boy) is sweet as can be and will eat carrots directly from your hand. Ingo would say “look, happy llama!” when he was literally prancing through the field, bucking wildly up and down. There are outdoor houses for the turkeys, the chickens, the goats, the bunnies and the ducks, while the dogs and cats roam freely as they choose.

During my weekend on the farm, I helped out a bit by feeding and watering the animals with Ingo, including milking a goat for the first time. Aaaaand, then drinking the warm milk from it about 2 seconds later. It was a little off-putting, but it’s also clearly as “organic” as you can possibly get, so I took a few gulps strictly for the good enzymes, but declined the offers to add it to coffee and tea.

Saturday was Ingo’s birthday, and we commenced the day with thick slices of whole grain French toast with a distinctly fresh syrup and some lovely tea from India (Ingo and Genny traveled for 3 months there at the beginning of the year). We spent the afternoon preparing for the party and in the afternoon some of Genny’s family members arrived and the festivities began. We basically ate all day long – tostadas and burritos with amazing options: roasted red pepper, eggplant puree, mole, homemade guacamole, marinated chicken and sausage from the grill, vegetables and a smooth yogurt sauce and of course beans and rice. Topped off with homemade passion fruit juice and tomate de arbol juice (a tomato which tastes more like a fruit than a vegetable), perfecto! Not to mention the loaded piñata and the truly picturesque cake made by Genny’s cousin who’s a chef. Stuffed! As we sat around the living room drinking tea the whole day felt like a mix of elegance, authenticity and simplicity. After Genny’s family left, the 5 of us sat around and watched movies (Stand By Me and The Cable Guy) in blankets and had a relatively early and peaceful night.

I went to the Sunday market with Ingo and Genny, and as they literally filled 2 large burlap sacks with fruits and vegetables for about $6, all I could think about was why it can’t be like that in the U.S., why you can’t eat that healthy and fresh for such a good price. Although local farmer’s markets are a good start.

Later on we went “llama shopping” for a female llama (“so that every animal has someone to have sex with”, haha). The place was beautiful, up in the hills over-looking Quito, and the jet black llama they found will be a good extra to the farm family. That evening they dropped me off at a hostel in the city, just one street away from where I was to start language school on Monday morning bright and early. I gave them my thank you card and it was actually a bit sad to say goodbye – they are such a sweet and fun family, and they inspired me be dedicated to learning Spanish even more then I already was!

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a Colombia overview

People tend to pass judgment on Colombia and stereotype the entire country for 4 things: mountains, coffee, drugs and violence. After my (relatively short) time in Colombia, I can say that two of these things are true and the other two not. The terrain is indeed striking. The mountains are vast and they are everywhere, it felt a bit like Colorado, minus the attitude. Kidding (sort of). The hills are lush due to the climate of the country and the capital, Bogota, is the highest city of its size in the world. The Andes dominate Colombia, and I didn’t even enter the Amazon region of the country, so I can only imagine how prevalent the peaks are there.

Unfortunately for the sake of coffee lovers here, most of it is produced for export, so you are more apt to find instant coffee in general restaurants. However, when you order a cup and receive a strong smelling little glass, you know you’ve got some of the world’s best coffee in front of you!

As for drugs and violence – all the local people that I was fortunate enough to get to spend time with more or less said the same thing. They all resent the hell out of the fact that people believe their country to be filled with drug users. It is true that in the 80’s the drug cartels in parts of Colombia were out of control and flooding the world’s market with cocaine. And of course it’s true that there are still drugs being produced and exported out of the country today (what country doesn’t?). However, it is not the norm, by any means! Almost 20 years have passed since the fall of Pablo Escobar and the cartels he controlled, and during those 20 years Colombia has seen the rates of drugs and violence drop drastically.

I am not suggesting that Colombia is perfectly safe, because it definitely is not. There is always that lingering feeling of peril in the air, whether it’s real or just imagined. It is best to keep eyes wide open at all times, no matter where you are. You shouldn’t walk around at night in many places – just as you shouldn’t walk around in certain parts of Los Angeles, St. Louis, Madrid or Paris at night. To travel in Colombia only requires that you take precaution and don’t be a dumb ass.

General tips:
- As with anywhere, never separate yourself from you backpack. Take it with you on the bus (unless they have a system which they give you a ticket stub for it and the company is reliable) and absolutely never put it in the trunk of a taxi! Someone can pop the trunk while you’re stopped, the driver can pull away when you get out, the possibilities for bad things happening are plentiful.

- Bring layers of clothes to wear while in transit. The buses either have no AC and are like a boxed in sauna, or, they try to freeze you out for some unknown reason, but there’s rarely a happy medium.

- If you want to get on a good bus company (Bolivariano, Expreso Palmira/EP), you should book on line in advance. If you turn up at the bus station without a ticket, you are likely to have to wait for hours for an available bus from one of these companies. You can always find another bus available; it just likely won’t be as nice. Also, booking on line will help you avoid getting ripped off because you’re a gringo.

- You can drink the tap water in Colombia. Always wipe off the tops of bottles and cans before drinking out of them.

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Popayán and Silvia, Colombia

From completely crazy to completely calm, from bars to brassieres, from Cali to Popayan. Another beautiful bus ride through the Colombian country side, filled with awe inspiring mountains and scenes of humanity all around. Popayan is known as “the white city” in Colombia, with Spanish-colonial architecture and mostly white buildings, trimmed with some color and filled with beauty. I stayed at the Hosteltrail Guesthouse ($8/dorm, very nice, very noisy – bring earplugs) and immediately started wandering around this charming and quaint city, which is small in comparison to anywhere I’d been in Colombia thus far. The main square in town, Parque Caldas, is lovely and very European feeling, with cafes and restaurants all around. In fact, Popayan is celebrated for its cuisine, and in 2005 it was named by UNESCO as the first city of gastronomy (relationship of food and culture).

There are chic looking restaurants all around, and at first I was almost hesitant to go into any of them for fear of seeing a huge price tag – but I went to my first meal, lunch at El Morro, and was pleasantly surprised. I wasn’t quite sure what I was ordering, but with the help of my electronic dictionary I realized after the fact that it was a massive bowl of mango and banana covered in a fresh raspberry puree, an oatmeal raisin torte (clearly fresh and homemade), a salad, Sicilian style eggplant (amazing!) and very fresh squeezed lemonade, all for $2.50. After, a nice cup of black coffee and a good book and I realized I could get very used to life in Popayan!

There is something about the citizens there which seems refined and educated, something classy and timeless about the whole place. I basically spent my days exploring the city, eating, reading and drinking coffee. In a way it felt a bit lazy, but also incredibly good to relax and enjoy life doing things I love so much. Made it a point to eat champus every day at a tiny little place with a miniature door that looked perfectly out onto a side street, creating some sort of enchanting, far away feeling.

In Popayan I didn’t make one friend. I didn’t even catch the name of one person at the hostel I was staying at, although plenty of people were there. Instead I enjoyed the solitude and splendor of the city in my own time, until I couldn’t quite take the charming and romantic feel of it any more.

About an hour outside the city is a town called Silvia, where on Tuesdays the indigenous people from nearby reserves gather for a huge outdoor market. The people are the Guambiano’s, and they are very detectable due to the fact that they wear either black or grey skirt or pants and bright blue ponchos (everything is lined in hot pink). Top that off with ankle high boots and bowler hats, and you’ve got a group of people quite unlike any other. Not only have they survived colonialism, so have their language and customs (and clearly their clothing). For myself, indigenous groups such as this stir something inside of me so alive. The fact that the world is becoming more and more uniform, and specifically more and more “Westernized”, is such a travesty. Beautiful cultures, languages, currencies and customs are disappearing all over the globe as “globalization” becomes the reality. That native peoples still exist is a testament to the human spirit and the irreplaceable qualities that diverse groups have to offer!

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Cali, Colombia

Left Medellin on a Friday morning for a stunning drive to Cali, all the while trying to block out the highly disturbing film that was playing on the bus. Gotta love ipods. Enjoyed the immense mountains, dramatic drop offs and small towns all along the way. That evening arrived in Cali and was met by Jose, who I arranged to stay with for the weekend via Couch Surfing. Before I knew it we were zipping crazily along the streets of his city on the way to his home, where we met his sister and shortly after went to meet his mother and father who were having a beer nearby. My Spanish isn’t exactly comprehensible at this point, so we communicated through Jose who’s quite proficient in Spanish and English alike. After a quick Cerveza Poker, we headed to pick up Anita and were merrily on our way to a popular local salsa bar, La Fuente. It was tiny and packed inside with people dancing and there were at least a hundred people on the side walk and street drinking and dancing as well. It’s here I learned what an institution that salsa really is to this country, and specifically to this city.

Cali is known as the salsa capital of Colombia, and thereby could really be the salsa capital of the world! As the night went on we were joined by Jose’s amazing friends, all of whom I feel lucky to have met. I attempted to follow the feet of the girls and watched how they moved, to see if it was possible for my tall, uncoordinated self to dance such a quick and flowing step. While I had a great time trying, I definitely was doing something which only very slightly resembled the actual dance. Enter into the picture Aguardiente, the Sambuca like drink which people buy by the bottle at bars and take shots of all night long, passing around plastic shot glasses you receive when you purchase this deliciously devilish liquor. A few dozen shots later and all the sudden I’m feeling the dance a little bit more. Whether the dance was feeling me is another thing entirely. Either way, had a tremendous time with Jose, his friends from Cali and foreign friends as well!

Saturday was naturally feeling a little bit like I got hit by a truck, so often the price you pay for such a night. But Lucia’s large homemade lunch revived my spirit and my stomach, and I sat there in amazement at the fact that an entire family plus myself was sitting down to a fresh, hot meal in the middle of the afternoon. It seems like in the U.S. it’s a stretch to even have that happen for dinner anymore, so lunch on a Saturday was a real treat! Jose, his parents, brother and I all headed to a town called Pance, about 30 minutes from Cali, in the mountains and on a river. Jose and I swam in the beautifully clear and frigid mountain water and I adore situations like this because it really does feel so out of the ordinary.

After some sangria by the pool of a friends place, we went for cholados, a delicious and colorful mix of tropical fruits, condensed milk, shaved ice and a wafer cookie. Before going out that night also had some great little empanadas and champús, which is probably now my new favorite thing in the world. It’s a mix of lulo (a delightful fruit only found in Colombia), pineapple, corn and a plant called limoncillo – almost like a drink but you need to use a spoon because of the corn. A.ma.zing.

Salsa dancing round 2. At Tin Tin Deo, a spacious and stylish spot for both locals and foreigners, the people do not mess around! It was fantastic to watch – most of the time people switch partners continuously, so you can see how everybody seems to work together and how different that the same basic dance can be. It’s really quite beautiful and festive and makes me wish I knew how to move my hips like that! When talking about religious fanatics, I told Jose that I’d gone to a high school which was so absurd it didn’t allow dances…. he reckoned that’s why I don’t understand how to salsa. Maybe I like Widespread Panic so much because there I can dance. Or so I think I can dance.

Somehow more aguardiente and beer went ‘down the hatch’, another remarkable night in Cali! Ate late night food at a place called Mario Brothers, felt just like home. Sunday morning Jose and I went for some pandebono, a baked ring of cheese bread, and also some seafood empanadas, my favorite kind yet. Despite wanting to gag at the thought of alcohol, gave a couple sips of Crema de Viche and Tomaseca (liquors from the Pacific area) a try, as it might be my first and last time to do so. That day we wandered around Cali, and Jose was the best tour guide I could ask for! We saw all the places on the check list and I really feel like I got a good grasp on what the city has to offer.

After some nice churches, buildings, rivers and views of the city from high up, we made our way to the amphitheater where the world festival of salsa 2010 was being held all week. Incredible! A free event and packed to the brim, we took a seat and listened to the entire crowd make noise and music – people had brought their own instruments and everyone was in such an exuberant mood, it was exceptional to be a part of! There were 51 groups, and we stayed until the very end, each one seeming to be better than the last.

Monday morning I said goodbye to Jose and to Cali – and I am still kind of in awe as to what a perfect time I had there and to what a considerate and warm hearted person that Jose is (and also his family and friends). I know that had I gone to Cali by myself, or even with another traveler, there’s no way that I could have experienced the city through eyes like that!

"Sucursal del Cielo" - branch of heaven

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Medellín, Colombia

I haven’t been here long enough to make any real analysis of Colombia as a whole – but I can say for certain that it’s hard to believe Medellin was once the most dangerous city in the world. It feels exotic and a bit edgy, but not too much of either. I was welcomed off the plane by Pablo Carvajal, someone who I met through a great resource called Couch Surfing. I saw his smiling face and a sign with my name, and was immediately at ease after a red eye flight from LA to this new continent. We rode in his car to a great restaurant where I had my first Colombian meal – arepa (thin bread made from corn), rice, beans, fish, salad and platano (plantain) for dessert. Yes! Back to the tipico meal!

I went with Pablo to his home and met his lovely mother… they were both so welcoming and she gave me a bracelet that I love so much, I’m not sure that I could have picked a better one myself! We went for delicious desserts and then I took the bus into Medellin city center. I went to the apartment of Kevin Post, also a Couch Surfer who transplanted from the US to Colombia. Immediately entered a party which lasted until the wee hours of the night… tested out the Colombian rum (pass) & attempted to dance the salsa (fail).

Checked into Palm Tree Hostel ($9/night, good for socializing, horrible beds) for a few days and have met some very interesting and intelligent people. I feel elated by the new perspectives and stimulating insights. It feels great to affirm once again why I love travel so much! The growth and experiences cannot be equated in other environments.



Medellin is a mountainous city, and three times I’ve rode up different cable cars to the tops of the mountains to have a view over the city. The amazing thing is that the slums are located up the sides of these lush hills, so you get a very close bird’s eye view of an area of the city you probably would never see otherwise! Amazing to see the dilapidated tin roofs, crumbling brick buildings, clothes lying flat to dry everywhere there’s space, kids running around, dogs barking, people cooking, music playing… life is everywhere in this area.



Have wandered all over the city on foot, there are plenty of parks and museums to see. One of my favorite areas is Parque Berrio, where there are sculptures everywhere by famous Colombian artist Fernando Botero. I love art museums because they express the ideology and culture of an area so much more than any words can ever say. At the Museo de Antioquia there are so many Catholic scenes depicted, and of course all the portraits of important people are males with fair skin. This predictable uniformity saddens me – but it is the reality of South America and I know I need to get used to it. There is plenty of amazing art that expresses the real passion of the people here and I loved getting to know it through their work!



Got vaccinated for free for the Yellow Fever, so check that disease off the list for the next 20 years. Went with Pablo to his University while he did some paper work – was nice to be there and have that collegiate feeling once again, but only as a tourist this time. All in all, Medellin has two thumbs up in my book. A nice way to start off this South American adventure!

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a peak into Cambodia

After all these months of being stationary, I realized I forgot to even mention word of Cambodia, one of the countries I’ve visited which had the most impact on me. After a tearful goodbye to Chiang Mai & my lovely family of friends there, I took the overnight bus to Bangkok and then local buses to the Cambodian border. I first made my way to Siem Reap, which was at that point the place I wanted to visit more than anywhere in the entire world.



Just 3.5 miles away lies Angkor Wat, a complex of huge, beautiful, enchanting temples which are the essence of Khmer architecture. Built in the 1100’s, Angkor Wat was at one point the center of power for all of Southeast Asia. Hard to believe that center could reside in Cambodia, which today is a genocide tattered fraction of the glorious nation it once was. But the temples remain, some looking more like ruins then anything, but stoic & stunning nonetheless. I rented a bike for a few days in the town, and the time I spent alone, peddling through all the many miles of amazing Angkor Wat, are among my best days in all of Southeast Asia. The temperatures were scorching hot, so I would leave my $1 outdoor, mosquito net covered dorm bed very early in the morning, sit in the shade somewhere for an hour or two during lunch & the peak of sunshine, and continue on until sunset before returning to town.



I made 3 friends in Siem Reap that I went out with every night & drank way too much cheap whiskey with – but each morning when I left for Angkor Wat I left alone. There was something so profound to me about this place, I had to soak it in in my own time, in my own way, and the feeling of euphoria & connectedness I had there cannot be paralleled.



With the friends I’d made at the guesthouse, we moved from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. The drinks we consumed on the bus ride there had us feeling a little goofy on our stereotypically insane tuk-tuk ride through the city once we arrived. I had a very good friend from Thailand living there at the time, so I called good old downtown Molly Brown to meet us for dinner & drinks in this curious capital. We sat on the sidewalk of a decent place right along the Tonle Sap River, and had countless limbless people come to ask us for money during the course of our meal.



Something you might not know about Cambodians – they have been to the edge & back. Between 1975 – 1979, the leader of their country, Pol Pot, tortured, murdered, exterminated and drove to death through forced labor nearly 1/4 of the total population. This “cleansing” was aimed to bring civilization to “Year Zero”, through killing all educated people (including people that could merely read or wore eye glasses) and having a peasant class which served as a collective/Communist society. There is an entire generation of people in Cambodia that almost doesn’t even exist today. An entire generation that doesn’t have parents, and many generations that live in distrust of their government or anyone around them. If you pick up a book such as First They Killed My Father, it’s not hard to see why.



The Viet Nam War ended in 1975. Although Cambodia wished to remain neutral, their proximity to Viet Nam cursed them to even more death & disaster. Because southern Viet Cong were escaping into Cambodia, America took the opportunity to carpet bomb the countryside in search of them, while innocent Cambodians paid the price. Today, Cambodia has one of the worst land mine problems in the entire world – it is not safe to wander off the beaten path there, as active land mines are triggered all the time. Hence, the limbless men, women & children roving the city. It’s upsetting & tragic to think of all these people have gone through & then to see the results in your face when you are in a city such as Phnom Pehn. Nevertheless, Cambodians are a very resilient people & they have a good Buddhist attitude for the most part.



Throughout my time in SE Asia I met a lot of Cambodian monks who impressed me more than almost any group of people I’ve ever met – that they could remain so peaceful & understanding after such utter devastation is beyond me. When you compare this attitude to the one of over-privileged Americans & Europeans who complain about things so trivial and worry about matters so meaningless, it makes me slightly nauseated.

Back to Phnom Pehn – had a good time with Molly, as always. It was different from our carefree attitude of Chiang Mai, however. In Cambodia we had some very real conversations; some very real tears were shed on both our ends when discussing the horrifying history of these people.



I went to visit a place called S-21 while I was there. A former high school turned security person under Pol Pot & the Khmer Rouge, it is the location where blameless Cambodians were brought in by the truck load everyday (about 20,000 people were brought there in 4 years) & repeatedly tortured in unspeakable ways & then brought to the Killing Fields for execution. The floors of the building are stained in deep, dark blood. Now a genocide museum, you can see instruments of torture on the floors of some rooms, along with the iron beds inmates were tied down to. There are entire rooms on the bottom floor filled with “mug shots” of people – the Khmer Rouge kept systematic records of everyone they persecuted. There are entire rooms filled with pictures of women & children who were brought in to S-21 to be brutally tortured and killed. I walked silently up & down the aisles of pictures and sobbed. A Cambodian woman grabbed me by the hand and said “look at them, look at the children”. The walls felt like they were caving in & I felt an inward desire to run away.



The last area of S-21 is filled with cells that prisoners were held in before being taken away for their imminent death. They are barely as big as a person can fit in width wise and not long enough to stretch your legs out while sitting. Blood again fills these floors & the bricks provide no sunlight or hope to anyone who must have been unfortunate enough to be in them. As I was in this room of cells there were also 2 monks quietly passing through, poking their heads in each one, contemplating, and then moving on. These cells started to feel like my own & I practically had to run out of there to get fresh air for fear that my lungs were going to collapse & I would suffocate under the sorrow. Imagine what the prisoners must have felt.



I took a motorbike taxi to the Killing Fields, where prisoners of S-21 were brought to die in mass graves. Walking around there it seemed like an oddly peaceful place; birds chirping, trees all around, away from the buzz of traffic & people. It started to rain which was such a blessing; because my emotions were so exhausted I hardly knew what to think anymore. I threw on a poncho & hopped on the back of my driver’s motorbike & away we went back to the city. There was a tremendous amount of traffic & I looked around to everyone else on their motorbikes… some entire families on one bike, some people who must have been over 80 or 90 years old, some infants, some monks, some professionals, some people in the oh-so-charming Cambodian style of wearing long sleeve & long pant pajama sets as regular clothes. All the sudden my heart, which felt so depleted after what I’d seen that day, was once again filled with hope & love for these incredible people. A monk on the back of a motorbike next to me must have caught my exuberant smile, because when we made eye contact I could see his eyes laughing & his whole face lite up in a gigantic smile as well. We were in it together – caught in the rain, on the back of motorbikes; dirt, people, animals and road side stands all around.

Cambodia touched my heart in a very special way – I cannot wait to return, hopefully to work teaching English to the people who want more than anything to be educated & make a better life for themselves & their families then what the generations before them have had.

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