From Cartagena i flew to San Andres, a small island of the coast of nicaragua, that belongs to Colombia. I stayed there for a day before moving on to Providencia, another island belonging to colombia, a 20min flight from san andres. The only way to get to providencia is via san andres. I said hello to a fellow traveller, Pheobe, as she arrived at the same time as me to my hostel, before being told that we actually already met at El Rio, she was friends with Amy and i was too drunk to remember…. Oh dear. We walked about the island and swam in the sea.
On the evening we made friends with Sam, from near birmingham and his friend. They work on plane engines and travel about to work at different airports! They were in Bogota for a couple of months and took a break to come to san andres. We had a few drinks and the next day i departed to providencia on a small 20 person plane.
One of the main purposes of my trip to providencia was to do a lot of diving, it is a tiny island with 5,000 people, with a really relaxed atmosphere and is far less touristy than san andres. If and when i go to the Galapagos, i need more diving experience. There are areas with strong currents and it is recommended to have done at least 20 dives. I did 2 dives a day for 4 days, and saw many reef sharks, lobsters, a huge sting ray and various fish. One dive we were able to swim around huge shoals of fish, which stayed fairly motionless, resting. That dive was shallow (around 10m) and i dove for 70 minutes (The air you recieve from your scuba tank matches the pressure of the outside water, and so the deeper you are, the more air you use and the shorter amount of time you can dive). I also did my first wreck dive, a huge ex oil tanker, where we were followed around by 3 reef sharks. At one point, i went down to look at an eel, looked back up 10 seconds later to see a shark face on 2m away – quiet a surreal experience! Got some really good videos from the dives, but for some reason i cant upload them here (only photos). Look out on instagram for some of them!
I rented a scooter and did a lap of the island on one of the days.
The day i left, on the morning i climbed up the highest peak on the island, which is around 380m above sea level. Saw lots of big Iguanas, a small snake and cotton trees with spikes on. I had more photos from the peak but they seem to have not backed up, and were lost when i had my phone stolen (a week after these photos were taken).
From providencia, i went back to san andres and then on to Medellin. In medellin i stayed at Los Patios hostel for a week. As i write this i am about to leave to Salento, on the night bus in a few hours time.
On the Friday, I met up with Max, Fran and Matt who i had met at El Rio before, and made some new friends drinking on the rooftop bar. We went to a couple of different bars.
On Saturday I went on a tour of Communa 13, a neighbourhood that was once one of the most dangerous places in the world. It has since been transformed and is a safe place full of art, dance and music. I wrote some notes in my phone about the history we learnt, but they were lost when my phone was stolen… I also lost all my photos from the day, but Dylan (from Melbourne) and Maartje (Dutch but lives in london) sent me their photos from the few days we did things together in Medellin.
On Sunday, we went to the Nacional vs Junior Barranquilla game, sat right next to the Nacional ultras. The atmosphere was absolutely amazing, all through the game. The stadium holds 44,700 and was almost full. Barranquilla won 1-0, scoring in the 79th min. Somewhat bizarrely, the few hundred fans Barranquilla brought, were kicked out the stadium after they scored! (Again, i took photos of this but lost them…)
Maartje, Dylan and Me 
After the game, we took the Metro home, which is when one very kind person, managed to pickpocket my phone. I didn’t notice a thing, they are very good at what they do, and many other people in the hostel said they had also been pickpocketed. One person even said someone had been cutting through the bottom of their bag, to try and get their purse from the bottom. You always hear the warning to watch out for pickpockets in big cities, and maybe i didn’t take it seriously enough, as ive never really heard of it happening to anyone i know until I came to Medellin. The most annoying thing at this point is lost photos, but for a while it was quiet stressful; The people who stole my phone managed to hack my facebook, which left me wondering if they had managed to unlock my phone and access all my emails, banking apps etc. This led to a panic of changing all my passwords, calling my bank to lock my account etc. These few hours of hassle meant no dinner that night, and lots and lots of insect bites, as i was too distracted to notice.
What they had actually done, i have now figured out, is that they swapped my sim card into another phone. They could then reset my facebook password in order to log in (when you click forgot password, you can get a reset code/link to either your linked email address, or phone number. They had my phone number now!). After they were in my facebook, they could go into my settings and see my email address for facebook (different to my icloud email address). Once i had remotely wiped and locked my phone via icloud, and blocked my sim card, they proceded to send me icloud phishing emails to my facebook email address. This was an attempt to get my details to be able to reset the phone and sell good as new. Instead, they have an icloud locked phone, which is useless other than for parts, and ive lost photos and notes from my trip. But we move on! I got a new phone (not as nice as my old one 😦 ) and now I’ll be more wary of the threat of pickpockets.
On monday i did a spanish lesson in the morning, and a bike tour of the city in the afternoon. The bike tour was a nice way to see the city outside of just the tourist attractions. There is bike lanes everywhere, and free bikes!
On Tuesday we went on a tour to Guatape. All of the buildings in the town are decorated in bright colours.
We watched the end of a game, which we were told was 12-0…
We took a boat trip along one of the lakes and had a picnic. On the way, we saw one of James Rodriguez’ houses, which is nextdoor to one of David Ospina’s (colombian footballers, James plays for Real Madrid and Ospina plays for Napoli, formerly arsenal). This whole area is manmade lakes for hydroelectric power. Colombia produces 800% of the power it needs, a big part being hydroelectric, and sells electricity to pretty much every south and central american country, in addition to the US.
Rodriguez and Ospina’s houses 
This cross stands where the church was of the old guatape. The town had to move to accomodate the hydroelectic power production.
We also saw one of Pablo Escobars houses, that he built for his daughter (he supposedly had over 600 properties). The property, like most he had, was heavily reinforced and bomb proof – a bomb was set off inside the house yet it is clearly still standing. Apparently when his properties were abandoned, people would break in and try to look for money in the walls or in the ground etc. It has been abandoned and falling apart for 30 years.
After the boat trip, we climbed up El Peñón rock, providing fantastic views of the surrounding area.
That night, back in medellin, the hostel hosted Karaoke. I had enough beers to embarrass myself and join in, performing Summer Nights with a girl called Jessica from San Fransisco. Later on, we all went to a bar that had a large pool/ball pit to jump into…
The next day, I did the “Do not say his name” tour. A tour about Pablo Escobar and the influence he had on Medellin. It is not allowed to use his name to promote tours. It was interesting learning about this dark time in colombias history, but I felt bad going on the tour, finding out that a lot of the locals really hate tourists doing so. They want to just put the past behind them. It is an odd situation though, because there is still large groups of people who love him, for building them houses, football pitches and giving money to the poor, despite the horrific acts he also committed. He paid off all of the TV stations to report on his “genorosity”. The tour guide said that you could have two neighbouring familes, one who loves him for giving them a house, the other who had most of their family killed by one of his bombs. He did all the bombings to fight the government and extradition. Eventually people were sick of the bombings and protested for the government to end extradition so that the violence would stop. People were scared of being near police because Pablo would pay 1 million pesos for each police person killed. Young people do not learn anything about him or what he did in schools, and their opinions are formed by their family. The opinions and stories of people in Medellin vary wildly. Most of what i have wrote here has came from the tour guide, and may have some inaccuracies.
Pablo said that one day he would be president of colombia, if people didnt vote for him he would buy the votes. However, to be president you have to be over 40, so before he reached 40 he ran succesfully for senator (1982). No one knew at this point how he was rich, which is not allowed. He was exposed by another senator in 1983 for the real origin of his fortune.
We then went up to the site of La Catedral, where the prison was that Escobar built for himself. He agreed to end the war with the government, and hand himself in, if he could build his own prison. The police were not allowed within 2 miles of the “prison”. It wasn’t really a prison, more of a palace, but it ended the violence in colombia for a while.
One of the “Watch towers” of the prison, that they just put manequins in… 
Prison helipad 
Inside a small part of the prison that is left 
The area where he grew up is full of football pitches that he built. Many people in the neighbourhood still love him, their hero and wanted a monument/statue for him – which obviously wasnt allowed. Instead they did graffiti of his face. He did things for them and put money into developing the area when the government wouldnt help. It is evident just how controversial he is, although also obvious that the vast majority of people hate him, and most of the people who love him are in this area. He grew up poor and was a criminal all his life, earning money however he could no matter what the consequences, so he had empathy for the poor and helped them with his ill gotten fortune. At the time, when he gave out all these donations people would return the favour by telling him when the police was coming. For a while people thought he was rich from business and his narco involvement was just rumours, they defended him.
Teenagers could not go to jail (not sure if this is still the case) so it is said that he built all of these football pitches for recruitment of kids. He supposedly had 3,000 kids working for him. He gave them guns, motorbikes, money, houses for their families.
At the site of his, some of his family and some of his associates graves, we were told that people often leave and take things related to him and his life. For example leaving bullets.
There are so so many different stories and versions of events depending who you ask. Government say they killed him, dea say they did, guide says he killed himself when he knew there was no escape. He said he would rather be dead in Colombia than in a jail in the US. He always had with him a gun with 1 bullet. His body had a gunshot through his ear. He asked Doctor where the best place to shoot is if he wanted to die. Lots more bullet wounds as after he shot himself they all shot and claimed it.
After he died his family were put in a hotel in Bogota for 6 months, then kicked out with the government saying they can’t protect them their whole lives. They were given a change of identity and lived normally for a while. When their accountant found out he tried to extort them to not tell anyone. They went to the police and were put in jail. After this, everyone knew who they were so they decided to use the publicity and publish books etc. They say that they are poor, because if any assets are found from pablos crimes they will be taken. Last year 16 houses were taken by the government that turned out to be given to people related to Pablo and involved in crime.
And now you are up to date on what I have been doing in Colombia! As I write this, I am about to leave to Salento to see the Cocora valley. Stay tuned!
P.S. I’ve done these 3 catchup posts all in the last day, covering the last 4 weeks of travel. Not really proof read them so apologies if they don’t read too well- at least i’m now up to date again and there is some photos!
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