If good food, good wine and a party are your thing then a visit to Andreas Carne de Res in Chia should most definitely be on your to-do list. As soon as you arrive, a guy in a sombrero and poncho hands you a hollowed out lemon filed with a tequila shot…… before you get in the door. When you get in the massive restaurant you can’t help but smile. It feels like a party. Whilst it is huge, it is broken down into different areas so it doesn’t feel overwhelming, and all the staff are wired up so the place runs efficiently.

The food, funnily enough is meat based (the clue is in the name), and the steak is about as good as you can get outside Argentina. J even ate reasonably well.

People don’t go there just for a meal; they are there to celebrate something, even if it’s just being in Bogotá, so the party just starts. There is dancing, music, acrobatics and lots and lots of happy, friendly people. We loved it, and even managed to stay out until after 1am!

Minca, a small village in the hills above Santa Marta, is a favourite of the Lonely Planet and other guide books. It is also a place with a much too intimate relationship with ‘the violence’. It was first a thriving coffee town (in the mid 1800s) then when coffee was replaced with marujarana, it became a town with a strong community spirit. Then the guerrillas came, twice taking over the town (1988 and 1998), removing the police (in 1998, after a significant gun battle) and killing local businessmen. The last attack caused the majority of the inhabitants to flee to Santa Marta. Then the Paramilitaries came to ‘protect’ the population, and by protect, they meant rape, kill, extort etc. When the violence ended, the remoteness of Minca meant that peace came late and it has only really been safe for about 7 years.

The Paramilitaries were replaced by tourists and sharp business people who saw the tourist opportunity. It is close to a big tourist centre (Santa Marta), to a national park and is high enough to give people the chance to experience a cooler hill town, with coffee plantations, waterfalls, challenging hikes and natural swimming pools without venturing too far.

The town still seems to be coming to terms with this invasion and all those we spoke to talk of a divided town. There are the ‘real locals”, who through desperation, sold off great land to ‘outsiders’ who they now see making lots of money from tourists on “ their” land. The ‘outsiders’ feel that they have made the town viable again (cleaned up the streets and river, invested in new buildings, brought in the tourist dollar) with no support from the locals (some newcomers told us they have been taken advantage of and in some cases had their businesses sabotaged (water supplies cut etc). The truth is probably in the middle.

For whatever reason, the town is both popular and underwhelming. The countryside is beautiful, the town is scruffy and ugly and it is full of foreign backpackers and tourists. We saw more foreign tourists here than anywhere else in country and it felt very far removed from the Colombia that we have fallen in love with.

If you are only visiting the north coast of Colombia and want to experience life in the hills, a visit is worthwhile, but if you have been anywhere in the Coffee Zone, or in the beautiful small towns around Medellin, you will have had much, much better experiences already.

If you are there, do two things; go to the Mona bakery and have really good bread, and visit and Manuale at the very basic town museum. At the latter, you will learn a little about the recent history and it is a great way to understand the dynamic of the place. I would also recommend staying in Finca Bolivar. It is a great little Guesthouse in a wonderfully quiet oasis, has access to a great spot to watch the sun go down and is beautifully done.

When we drove down the hill back to Santa Marta Airport for our flight to Bogota (three of us and 6 bags in a very overloaded tiny taxi), I had to admit I was looking forward to leaving the Caribbean coast. It is not awful, but the tourists, the heat and the scruffiness of the area make it ok, rather than special.

Liz and I were a little smelly and tired when we got back to Santa Marta but after a shower, a curry (in a restaurant that had become J’s local whilst we were away) and a couple of hours Nana nap we were ready to hit the town (in the way that 48 year olds hit the town, which is less of a hit, more of a pat). J had done some research, talked to some people and identified a couple of restaurants for us to go to. She had been reliably informed that there was no need to book…………one was closed, the other full. Every reasonable restaurant was full. After wandering around for a while we opted for the Anglo Saxon plan; find a locals’ bar, sit outside it, drink cocktails and eat crisps. We ate a lot of crisps, drank a lot of cocktails and watched the increasingly odd world go by, and remarkably made it to midnight.

2018 had been a busy and challenging year for us. Before we left we were busy at work, busy with Bundanoon Winterfest and not nearly busy enough organising this adventure. Since being away we have had a lifetimes worth of great experiences, caught up with friends in a multitude of interesting places and met some wonderful new people. We are excited about what 2019 has in store.

For me, the first day of 2019 began at about 4am bent over a toilet bowel being sick. To begin with I considered it fun tax, but 24 hours of sweating, swift visits to the loo, aching limbs and no energy made me realise it was perhaps something else, especially as J and Liz, who had matched me drink for drink were fine. I’ve had hangovers, quite a few in fact, and this wasn’t one of them.

Day three started before dawn so that we could get to the lost city itself before anyone else. This was put into jeopardy by the Colombian six who had a very Colombian attitude to time. Luckily Wilson was like a focused sheep dog, walking around the group with a serious face repeating ‘vamos!’ Until he got bored, when he headed off into the darkness leaving latecomers to catch up. The city is at 1200m above sea level and only one km from the last camp but the last 20 mins is spent tackling 1178 steps. It appears that in approx?????when the city was first inhabited, there were few building standards as referring to the ever ascending lumps of rock ahead of us as ‘steps’ seemed a little generous.

I am not competitive in the least………………but was delighted to be the first tourist to reach the city that morning……….delighted enough that a close observer may have seen me do a minor fist pump in the air and mouth ‘Winner!’.

The city is much more that the few stone circles that feature in the photos; it’s lots of stone circles over a large area of the hillside, some excavated, others still completely owned the by the jungle. If you are interested in the history, click here, but the potted version is a large tribe lived in it from 800AD to about 1650 And used it as their meeting point for important events in their semi nomadic existence. Up to 2500 people lived there, building wooden huts on stone terraces (hence only the terraces remain). The terrain protected them from physical invasion from the Conquistadors but not from the diseases the Europeans brought with them. About 50 people remained alive when they eventually left the city and the jungle reclaimed it.

Enter 2 farmers in about 1972, who found the city, found the gold in the burial chambers and spent the next few years digging stuff up, selling it in Santa Maratha for a fraction of its value, getting pissed on the profits, telling one or two trusted friends then repeating. By 1976 there were about 60 families doing the same and it ended in tears with someone being shot for a piece of gold. A man called Frankie Ray got scared by this and told some archeologists working on a different site all about it. With the aid of the military and police, the site was reclaimed. About a decade of painstaking excavations took place before a delegation of the descendants of the original inhabitants appeared and said “Oi! Stop! You’re digging up our dead relatives you are!’ It stopped and with the support of the indigenous people, tourism began (and the first guide was Frankie Ray, who was also a mate of Wilson’s, so this is where he got his break). The first trips took 9 days, then the narcos introduced their own tours that did not get to the city, rather it took narco tourists to cocaine labs nearby to see how it was done and get high. They even let a film crew in, but the resulting documentary meant that the government had to appear to act and a very brutal and destructive eradication program began. The governments enthusiasm was fuelled when a group of foreign tourists were kidnapped in the lost city on 2003 and the helicopters that formed part of the rescue mission were greeted with the site of hundreds of acres of coco plantations in the jungle below.

It is now a safely established tourist route and, though the scars left on the countryside by the chemical eradication remain obvious, it passes through a safe and beautiful environment.

In the city we met a ‘Mamos’, a spiritual leader of the local tribe who, with his family (and a small contingent of soldiers) is the only permanent inhabitant of the city. He is charged with keeping the place clean of negative energy and conducting the annual deep cleansing ceremony so that us visitors only get positive energy from being there. The Wiwa people are very connected to nature and are very concerned the overall health of our planet. Their opinion is that in 90 years, it will be completely fucked. Let’s hope they are wrong.

It was interesting to be amongst the Wiwa people. They pretty much live as they always have; they are semi nomadic, they wear traditional hats and clothes (all white), their homes are made from mud, local wood and palm leaves and they mostly survive off what they farm. You do occasionally see a set of headphones under their hats and notice western clothing under the children’s white clothing but I very much felt that it was a very unique culture living in close proximity to a very westernised one. None indigenous people can only go to areas below 2000m above sea level. After that, and there is a fuck of a lot after that, they get to live in total peace. Fantastic.

We left one of our party at this point. Charlotte was a fascinating lady from Cali, who as she hit 60, decided that she wanted to do the walk before she got too old (she was as fit as a butchers dog so didn’t need to worry). She was hugely enthusiastic about the flora and fauna, knew heaps about the local people and spoke good English. She was the owner and manager of the only tea plantation in Colombia, and the producer of Hindi Tea, which is everywhere over here. She also had a fascinating background, having worked in the arts, attended theatre school in London and lectured at Bogotá University until the murder of her brother by guerrillas forced her home to takeover the business (as I say, you don’t have to look far to find someone effected by the ‘violence’ and another of the group had had her father kidnapped). She had opted for the 5 day option which just means you go back slower, but her knowledge of local culture gave her the opportunity to stay in the lost city for the remainder of the day, when she would have had the place completely to herself.

266 floors, 304 floors, 217 floors, 274 floors. That’s the readout from my iPhone health app for the 4 days walking to the lost city. We had chosen the right walk to accept that J ‘fucking hates hills’ and should stay in Santa Marta whilst Liz and I walked to the Ciudad Perdida (Lost City). I think about 60% of it was very steep up and down, 10% flat and the rest a form of gradient. The paths are rather challenging too, some being slippy clay, some being sand/dust and all suffering from erosion (in some places the path had sunk about 3 metres). Liz (someone who knocks out a 4.20 marathon with no training, does 100km ultra marathons and is essentially as fit as a butchers dog) and I agreed that, where some walks claim to be challenging, and would only be so if you were 90 years old or had a 20 burger a day habit, this one met its claim.

In our group were Wilson, a local guide who had been involved with the site since about 1986, our translator Jeremy, a charming young German who had fallen in love with a Colombian, moved to be be with her and then learnt Spanish (I am trying to work out if not being able to understand a word your wife is saying is a plus or a minus) and 6 energetic, fit and friendly Colombians, of which the three males had known each other since primary school. They were an Instagram friendly bunch; the boys only body hair was the manly growth that appeared after 24 hrs, they did pull ups at every opportunity, threw themselves off the highest points they could find into the natural pools we found along the way and lacked any body fat. The girls were always glamorous, at least one had a change of swimming costume with her and make-up seemed to be non-negotiable, even for the 5am starts. I felt every bit the sagging old man that I am and I let Liz know she was letting the side down by not wearing at least a cocktail dress for our evening meals.

The walk itself is absolutely wonderful. At the end of day one we arrived at the first camp which marked the end of civilisation. From this point on only mule or foot transport was possible and the land was the preserve of the local tribe of indigenous people. On the route there were camps, a few shacks selling water, chocolate, crisps etc and the odd isolated indigenous farm, mostly made from local wood and palm leaves. The camps we stopped at each night offered a reasonable amount of comfort; electric light for a few hours, cold showers, loos that on occasion flush, good, healthy and filling meals and beer for sale (which got more expensive the further we went, but at its most expensive was still less than AU$4 or £2, despite it having to be transported by donkey for 2 days). Hurrah for beer. The beds were in large open dorms and had reasonable mattresses, clean under-sheets and very efficient mosquito nets around them. As the camps were always near the river, we fell asleep and woke to the sound of water…….. and snoring………and farting.

Between the camps, we walked for up to 8 hours each day, up and down hills through deep jungle, seeing parrots, the odd toucan, a baby snake and some hummingbirds. We stopped at crystal clear natural pools in rivers or at the base of waterfalls at least once a day to cool off (hence my rather creepy knowledge of body hair and swim suits) and whilst there were probably about another 120 people on the track going one way or the other, were largely on our own.

A small departure from the travel blog, reliving last years prep for the Winterfest and hoping to get some more people involved in this years event.

July 2017…… No Winterfest………. Bugger. This is what I think many of Bundanoons’ inhabitants thought when we realised this great event was not going to happen. Whether you had been to all of them or just one, it was a special night where we got to meet neighbours, eat good food, have the odd glass of booze and dance badly in the forgiving darkness of the high street. The workshops that followed were an added bonus.

The good news is that Bundanoon is the kind of place that doesn’t accept defeat and in late 2017, a small group of volunteers began to meet to ensure that the village would not be disappointed in 2018. None of the team had been involved with Winterfest before (other than enjoying being there), but how hard could it be……………?

Over the next few months a core team of 5 began meet regularly to get the event on its 112exxcxcsaasscxacsxacsxacsxcascsxacsxcasxacxacsxacscs6axxacsxacsxacsxacsxacscsccscssc6acsxzc6acsxz6acsx6acsxcz6acsxcsccsz6acsxzxasc6cfåß≈Ωfeet. What should be the theme? How do we get sponsors? How much money do we need? What band? What stalls? These were the key questions among hundreds of others.

Early on it was decided to keep close to the old format that we were sure was arrived at through the hard work and trial and error of previous organising teams. Even with that decision, there was still much to do.

By early 2018, things were taking shape and the team began to focus on the detail. Often this was done with the aid of tea, biscuits and, occasionally, something stronger, sitting round kitchen tables in the homes of the team members. A group of strangers began to get to know each other’s strengths & motivations and bonded well.

We’ve all seen the pictures of dodgy estates in the UK where people have Christmas light wars each year and light up the place so that you can see it from space. Over the top, a bit naff, brightly coloured and confuse the innocence of Christmas with the gaudiness of a Vegas lap dancing club.

Take this principle and apply it to a whole country, and you get to understand a little what Colombia is like at Christmas time. Now, I like OTT Christmas, so I loved this. Every town square is awash with lit-up stuff, some relevant – like the Three Wise Men, others less relevant – like Cinderella’s pumpkin carriage pulled by creatures born via a love match between rabbits and tigers. Every apartment block is covered with lights and every street has a least half a dozen houses with enough of them to keep a nuclear power station working hard. It’s wonderful.

Then there are the fiestas that I have already mentioned. Every night, everywhere, you sleep to the sound of at least two parties, all listening to pretty much the same stuff. This party loving nation comes into its own at Christmas.

San Andres and Providencia Islands are confusing. They are in the middle of the Caribbean, closer to Nicaragua than Colombia and once home to pirates. They were, for a short time, British (1629-1641) and despite the fleeting-ness and distance in time of this, the Brits left a lasting impression on the place. This means that those who consider themselves proper locals speak Creole, English and Spanish and have that order of preference. They aren’t so keen on speaking Spanish. However, lots and lots of people only speak Spanish. Most of those who speak Creole and English are very dark skinned, but not all dark skinned people here speak Creole and English. So, to start to speak to a black person in English may look a little ignorant if they are native Spanish speakers but would seem polite and thoughtful to a Creole/English speaker. Worst of all, we can find ourselves stumbling through a conversation using our bad Spanish only to discover the other party is a fluent English speaker. As I say, all very confusing.

The Islands feel very, very different from mainland Colombia. Every gorgeous beach has a shack selling cocktails, Reggae music is everywhere and everybody eats fish. San Andres is reasonably well established with shops you would recognise, great quality restaurants, an Airport etc. Providencia is much less developed and is beautiful for it. The beaches are pretty much deserted, the restaurants and bars are literally just shacks, everybody is very laid back and they go horse racing on the beach. It is a little scruffier too; there is a reasonable amount of rubbish in the villages, abandoned cars and motorbikes and lots of homes that need TLC. The beaches are clean though, the water is incredibly beautiful and it is safe. I think the locals not directly involved in the tourist trade are a bit less happy to see tourists than they are on the mainland but I get that; tourists can be annoying.

We had a day with a man called Harley in his small boat on a tour of the island, visiting small beaches, the incredible Crab Cay and the reef. Snorkelling is great as the water is so clear and apart from lots of small tropical fish, we saw a turtle, a sting ray and a big bloody thing that I don’t know the name of. J, who is not keen on fish, stayed remarkably calm throughout all of this and only tried to drag me under a couple of times.

We were staying in a small Posada above a shop in South West Bay. I chose this place because South Wets Bay has the best beach, a couple of good places to eat and, if you are lucky, horse racing on the beach. Normally this is on a Saturday and we thought we would miss it, but due to a bad weather forecast, it was brought forward to Friday. There are only two races and the same two horses in both, and it is a fantastic spectacle; tens of locals getting excited, tourists looking bemused and two incredible beasts thundering down the water line. Wonderful.

At night, the front of the shop below becomes a local hang out and a huge set of speakers, the kind that could keep a warehouse full of drugged up teens making shapes until dawn get wheeled out to blast out music to the half a dozen customers, and I really do mean blast. I popped down to get some lemon Fanta (a great mixing with gin in the absence of tonic) and could barely hear the lady behind the counter. I was amazed that the two old men sitting no more than 4ft in front of the big speaker, just starring at them, did not have blood pouring from their ears. Luckily, this frivolity ends at about 10.30 and our room was very peaceful.

I also got to see a local butcher experience in the village. Just down the hill, on a bit of wasteland, a whole skinned cow appeared and I think that locals turned up, pointed at the bit they wanted, it got hacked off then shoved in a bag. V glad J missed out on that.

On the subject of good restaurants, I was temporary custodian of some rather wonderful lobster from a popular place up the road. I say temporary as I think it was inside me for about 45 mins, which is a shame but is rather good for weight management. I don’t think it was bad lobster, but clearly something didn’t agree with me.

My stomach was tested on two other occasions; getting between the two islands. Normal mid sized planes fly from a number of Colombian cities to San Andres, but the hope to Providencia is a little less well served. There are two flights a day on very small planes (less than 20 seats I think) and they were full when we tried to book a month in advance. The other option is the Catamaran Ferries that depart twice a day as well, one boat having about 50 seats and the other 70. They are not posh. Think about sitting in a down at heal cinema, based in an old porta-cabin that you could drown in, and you pretty much have the picture, The journey takes between 3 and 5 hours, depending on the weather and the worse the weather is, the longer you have to endure it.

My image of the Caribbean Sea is a crystal clear flat thing but this is rather wrong, as I discovered as we battled away from San Andres in the early morning, with our cinema (playing Wonder Women on the TVs on a loop) getting tossed around from wave to wave. The picking started about 2- mins out and continued until we were in the lee of Providencia (J and I are blessed with reasonably cast iron stomachs so were able to read, sleep and occasionally feel uncomfortable). I felt sorry for the crew member whose whole journey was spent collecting sick bags). The way back was a little better as we were going with the wind and swell, but if we were to go again, we would book the plane 6 months in advance.

When will everything stop being so beautiful? If you like green hills, mountains, small villages with charming squares surrounded by cafes, lush countryside everywhere, windy roads, flowers and interesting wildlife, it is hard not to love pretty much everything we have seen.

Our trip from Medellín to Cali took us mostly south via two nights in Jerico, one near Santa Road de Cable, another two in Filandia, in the heart of the coffee region and a final one in Cali airport so we could catch an early plane to San Andres. We almost had a night in Salento to meet our friend Liz until Booking.com informed us we already had a booking in Cali Airport for that day and we realised the FTs had lost track of time……

Jerico is a little like Jardin; a reasonably sized hill town, surrounded by gorgeous hills, coffee plantations and stunning views. It has a square that is the centre of activity and at this time of year is the home of more Christmas lights than a council estate in Swindon. It has a big ugly church, a smaller lovely church, a steep hill overlooking it with a big Jesus on top and, perhaps best of all, a convent where the nuns make wine and biscuits.

We met the nuns early, buying a bottle of ‘nun juice’ and some biscuits through a barred window in the entrance hall to the convent. It felt like buying drugs in a crack house, except that the drug dealer was a kind old lady dressed as a penguin and the house was a very quaint and clean convent. So probably not like buying drugs in a crack house at all.

Nun juice is lovely. It is organic, a little cloudy and tastes like a good port. On day one, we bought a bottle. On day two, as we left, we bought two more. They have now gone. We are now in search of more nuns coz we want their juice!

When not getting obsessed with the above we went on a tour of the town in a tuk-tuk with a guide/driver (James) and an interpreter (Elvis). The village has an interesting couple of museums (one containing the biggest nativity we have ever seen), craft shops that make the most extravagant ‘man bags’ you will ever see, homemade sweet shops, the aforementioned churches, the most spectacular views and a coffee shop that also sells hats (J and I now have new hats). Not on the tour, but seen on independent wanderings are some great restaurants, a lovely botanical garden, a bar that has tango and lots of beer and people who come into town on their horses for a beer.

The hills thing makes running a little difficult but the owner of the hotel we stayed in gave me directions to a ‘reasonably flat route’ which was only reasonably flat if you normally live halfway up Everest. After running down hill for 3 out of the 4.5km out, I knew that he had been mistaken and that the trip home would be a bit crap. It was. On the upside, I met a man with three horses who stopped me for a chat and a man who shouted from his house for me stop, asked where I was from and what I was doing, then gave me a round of applause when I told him. Nice people.

On our final day we went to Cali via Salento and the Valle de Cocora with it’s majestic wax palms which grow up to 45m high. J and I decided to do the 12km circuit walk the anticlockwise ‘challenging’ route as we were told that once you got through the really challenging bit, it was just down hill, rather than the up-down clockwise route. They were right and I was reminded just how much J hates walking up hills. I took a bit of time out to consider if, over the past 25 years of holidaying together, J has actually liked a hill walk. Snowdonia, the long route to Machu Picchu, Mount Kinabalu, a jungle trek in Malaysia…… and many others………she hated them all. It is important to finally accept this. In a week or so I am trekking to a lost city in a national park on the Caribbean coast. The trip takes 4 days and has hills and rivers. I am doing it with a friend, Liz. J is staying in a nice hotel nearby!

We got to Cali airport just after dark and settled into our functional room in the hotel in the terminal, with a sense of relief I returned our hire car in one piece, we brought an overpriced bottle of wine and some fast food in the airport food court and got ourselves ready for the Caribbean leg of our Adventure.

If you look at beautiful or interesting things all the time, you stop seeing them. When I used to jog through Hyde Park in London on my way to work, I found it odd that tourists were fascinated by squirrels. In the UK, grown-ups seldom notice wonderful robins are (though I had a great relationship with the one who used to help me garden in Etchilhapmton). In Australia, parrots, cockatoos and kangaroos are not that special. If you see them everyday for most of your life, the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge may no longer things to marvel at. They are just there. I am sure that if you spend enough time in the Antartica you may get bored of penguins, though this is less likely.

The wonderful thing about travelling is that we get to see so many things for the first time and see the full wonder of them. We can get excited about the little things. Driving through the Colombian countryside, is incredibly special, as was driving around Corsica, floating down the Nile and seeing the Douro Valley outside Porto. Seeing hummingbirds, watching skilled horseman taking their beasts to the boozer of an evening, witnessing just how much Colombians love Christmas, sitting outside an ordinary café talking about very basic things in very basic Spanish to a stranger, these are all things that after a while are simply normal but for us are incredibly special.

We get many wonderful benefits from travelling, and the icing on the cake is getting daily joy from the simple things. Travel more.