Cartagena

Time to slow things down a bit!  It's been an epic month in Colombia, and same goes for the weeks spent on the road in Costa Rica and Panama.  I kept a little tally so I could track what we were putting Delcan through; and it added up to the following:

22 different Hotels/Hostels

23 Taxis

20 Buses

5 Flights (excluding getting to Costa Rica in December)

Although Declan was doing great and taking it all in stride.  He was getting a lot of lap time with mom and dad, or was always in our arms as we saw the sites.  He had a serious shortage of opportunities to get down and play/crawl, and our little budget rooms never seemed to have much room to move.  We always planned to find a place somewhere near a beach to spend some time and really get to know.  Well Cartagena is that place, and our apartment that we managed to score is nothing short of amazing...

This is us on route to Cartagena, our new home for the next month.  Declan is enjoying another one of his newly acquired favorite foods ~ french fries! Yeah, not the healthiest, we're definitely not in the running for parents of the year, but sometimes when you're on the move and kids are hungry, options can be a little limiting!  :)

We filled the bottom drawer of our new living room drawer with Declan toys.  We thought it would be a perfect place for them.  Of course it took 2 minutes for the inevitable to happen...

Yup, just made sense to play with the toys right in the drawer, why bother pulling them out...

Have to keep an eye on this guy, he's fearless when it comes to climbing...

The next month will be spent doing a number of things, and we're already worried about how fast it will go by.  There is no shortage of activities.  There are a number of sites to seen Cartagena itself.  We're going to visit the Rosario Islands just off the coast, and look into San Andres as well.  Our apartment is right on the beach, and it's 'the place' for kite boarding with dozens of kite boarders out everyday.  I'm definitely going to look into that and we'll see if I can remember those skills learned in the Philippines and Thailand.  Our apartment complex has a really nice gym, so between that and runs on the beach we'll see if we can get our fitness levels back up to snuff.  As well, we've hired a Spanish teacher, so hopefully we can make some strides in that department.

But more than anything, I'm sure we'll be logging some serious pool time!  We have 5 different pools here, and a few of them are GREAT for young kids like Declan with huge shallow sections.  He loves it so much, and we love it as well because of the smiles and laughs we get out of him while we play.  We're all very much looking forward to the next month spent here, and we feel like we chose the best place for us... 

Santa Marta & Tanganga

We arrived into Santa Marta just in time for Carnival.  We spread out a week both here and Tanganga, which is a little fishing village 10 mins away.  Although the chief destination for Carnival is Baranquilla, that sure didn't stop the people in Santa Marta and Tanganga from celebrating.

It was a pretty festive time to be there, so we were happy for our timing.  This 2 young guys had clearly bit off more than they could chew, partied a little too hard, and it showed!  Worthy of a picture we thought... 

 They had the same spray foam here that was used on us for Carnival in Ecuador 2 years ago, and it looked like this truck was hit pretty good!

 But time for the beach.. the rest of the photos are just random pictures from the number of different beaches that we visited.  Santa Marta and Tanganga have their own beaches, but just a boat ride away, or a bus/taxi you can find a few nicer ones...

 Beaches became a full days excursion.  Declan is still napping 2 times a day, and we wanted to spend more than an hour here, and an hour there.  We took off in the morning, brought his bed with us so he could nap, and didn't come home until sunset.  We all enjoyed it...

 Sunset in Tanganga...

Tanganga...

 Pub lunch!

 Another beach day...

Lunch at the beach!  A huge plate of fruit for $5...

Declan was supposed to eat the fruit, but he ate my fish instead.  He's developed quite the taste for fish. I can remember the last fish I ordered where he didn't end up eating more of it than me!

Distracting him with a fish head while I try to eat some of my meal... :)

View from our hostel in Tanganga...

Getting ready for another beach day; He seemed excited for it!

Nothing like water in a bag...

Manizales & Medellin

Arrived into Manizales on for the night, and we were immediately happy that we chose to do so.  Apparently little to no tourists take the time to visit the city, and our guidebook had nearly excluded it altogether as there we had next to no information about the city at all.  But in truth it is amazingly unique, and likely one of my favorite 'cities' in Colombia.

First impression was quite good, because how often does a city have a gondola as a mean of public transportation?  When you have a city built along and on top of a mountain its a pretty good idea...  We learned this on arrival into the towns bus station which seemed to be in the middle of nowhere and found ourselves looking at the start of a 10min Gondola ride.

 Declans first Gondola ride...

 The city center on the top and it's huge cathedral.  This was the view from our very nice, but budget hotel room.

 

 Another church along the way...

 Interesting sculpture...

Declan getting spoiled... yup he's polishing off an ice cream cone.  :)

 Next stop Medellin.  Medellin is Colombia's 2nd or 3rd biggest city.  Can't remember which. We had 2 days here, and we did very much enjoy our time.  If our trip was longer, we would have given it a few more days at the least.  That being said though, our first day here when we left the hostel we didn't bring our camera.  And then the 2nd day we plum forgot, so no pictures of Medellin!  Just Declan having fun in the hostels kitchen cupboard!  :)

 

 

 

Time to head back to the beach though!  We had another flight to get to Santa Marta.  We had nearly lost all our tan, and it Declan was keen to get back into the water!  Some beach time was long overdue...

 Declan making more friends in at the airport, as usual...

Salento

After nearly getting drowned out at Landrilleros we made the 3 day journey to Salento.  The 2nd night we needed to over night in Cali again, which worked out well, as it was Superbowl Sunday!  This is how we enjoyed it... Declan was asleep for most the game, but woke up in time to watch the end with dad.

Salento is apparently the 2nd most visited town by foreign tourists in all of Colombia (or so we were told).  We had no idea of this before we arrived.  It was a nice quiet little town that had some good restaurants on offer, pleasant central park, and mirador (lookout).  But what really gets people here is Valle de Cocora.  You'll see a few pics below; first the town... 

 

Declan doesn't mind riding on the shoulders every now and then.  Gives dads arms a break!

 Headed up to the lookout with a looking out I'd made friends with about 30mins prior in tow!  It started out with me accidentally tripping/stepping on the poor guy.  My apology that came with a few scratches behind his ears quickly won him over, and we had a friend that was going to follow us around for as long as he could... :)

Loading up in the Jeep to head out to Valle de Cocora...

 And this is Valle de Cocora.  It really was pretty. These are wax palms, can grow super tall (Jillene claims she read 60m, but that seems too high).  Either way, apparently they're only found in this one place in Colombia, yet they're Colombia's national tree...

 It is common for people to see the area by horseback. This guy all saddled up came trotting down the trail all saddled, but without the rider!  Declan and I managed to stop him, earn his trust and make a friend.  We never did find whom was riding him, but the horse definitely knew where he was going and where home was; so we let him continue on his way...

 And then it was time to go again... we were headed to Medellin but wanted to break up the trip to get there.  Manizales was our next destination.  Just waiting again for one of the 2 buses that was going to get us there!