Category: Travel

Parque Nacional Tayrona

As Alex described in her previous post we went to Santa Marta with the aim of visiting the Parque Nacional Tayrona. We didn’t really go into this adventure knowing much about the park but it featured in “The Gringo Trail” by Mark Mann, one of the books I read before heading out here, so we thought we go and have a look for ourselves!

After a long sleepless night we headed over to the market to catch our bus. We did have the option of a door to door transfer with our hostel for the equivalent of £4 each but we opted to pay just over £1 for the local bus. It wasn’t really about the money though as we really wanted to see the journey from a more local perspective.

Motivation aside we wound our way through the market area looking for the intersection of Calle 11 and Carrera 11. It all started to feel just a little less salubrious around us and all of a sudden none of the streets were labelled. To cut a long story short we eventually managed to overshoot our destination by a street and by the time we got to the bus we were sweaty and exhausted. Luckily we had a 40 minute bus ride to recover so we set off and kept our eyes peeled for our stop. As it happened our stop was impossible to miss due to the obvious park entrance, the conductor shouting Parque Tayrona at us and all the other Gringos getting off the bus with us.

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Sleepless in Santa Marta

Hi Guys, Alex here, I (well Chris) thought it was about time that I wrote a post so I’m going to cover Santa Marta and Chris will be back to cover Tayrona National Park.

Santa Marta is a city on the Northern Caribbean coast of Colombia, it’s mostly a stop off point for travellers visiting Tayrona but is also a huge holiday destination in it’s own right for many Colombian tourists.

We arrived into the tiny Santa Marta airport right next to the sea and were met by a wall of heat and humidity when stepping off the plane. We grabbed a taxi and headed to our hostel. Along the way the streets looked far more colourful and vibrant than in Bogota with lots of people selling things on the street and a much more casual dress code!

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Baby Steps in Bogota

Our first day in Colombia started slowly. There were a few things bits of admin we needed to urgently sort out that we just hadn’t had time to do in the UK. The other important thing to do was to work out what we’d be doing after Bogota. We were now three nights away from having nothing booked and having no idea what we were doing next. We did some research and came up with a draft itinerary for Columbia:

Bogota (4 nights)
Santa Marta
Tayrona National Park for a night or two exploring and sleeping in a hammock
Cartagena via another night in Santa Marta
Pereira (in the coffee growing region)
Back to Bogota
Ecuador

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So it begins…

We have arrived in Bogota, Colombia. More about that later, I really want to use this post to document some of the fun we had in the week or so prior to our departure.

I had a nicely phased exit from work. Thanks to the Cunningham’s wedding I was able to do a three day week and then finish on a two day week. On the Tuesday night of that second to last week I had a great night out with the work team, followed by the wedding two days later. Finally we had a party in London for friends attended by some of our closest friends from work, university, London and even a few school friends. Even though it was all a bit last minute and hectic, it was a lot of fun spending a few nights surrounded by some of our favourite people. To top it all off I was presented with a huge pile of gifts from my work colleagues including some very useful items (new flip flops, awesome portable BBQ, disposable ponchos, US Dollars) as well as some amusing but slightly less useful gifts (rubber duck, fake moustache etc). That weekend we went up to Nottingham for a leaving party with the family, and to deposit my car safely on Dad’s drive. The party was a roaring success and a great way to see everyone.

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Chris & Alex’s Travels

After a year or so of procrastinating Alex and I have decided to take some time off work to spend 6 months travelling around South America. You are probably reading this because we’ve given you the web address so that you can keep up to date on our exploits! Since we haven’t actually gone anywhere yet I thought I’d answer a few questions that have come up when we’ve told friends and family about our plans.

Why?
This is an easy one. We’ve both loved travelling since we spent part of our gap year in Botswana. For me this was an experience that totally changed my outlook on life and made me a happier, less material person.

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Muang Thai, Brighton

Muang Thai is situation near Brighton’s remaining pier, one road back from the seafront. From the outside Muang Thai looks like any other pleasant but fairly generic Thai restaurant. Inside, the decor is clean and light but very obviously a Thai restaurant. My meal consisted of a green papaya salad and a vegetable Thai Green curry with steamed rice all washed down with a couple if glasses of the house red wine.

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Day 2 – Sights, Sounds and Saris

First a photo:

The Streets of Bangalore
The Streets of Bangalore

Day 2 is our formal kick off. Formal because we sat in a circle and introduced ourselves. We all introduced ourselves in turn. I’m used to the standard “Hi I’m Chris and I work in ITS, Server SPL, Microsoft and VMware delivery”. This time we all spoke about our background and how we ended up on this adventure. I was amazed to discover that everyone in the group had a fascinating story to tell. I’ve rarely met a group of people who are so open and honest amongst a group of virtual strangers. This could have easily been a stage for the more senior members of the group to talk about themselves at length, we are no stranger to self promotion. However everyone seemed keen to listen to everyone else and nobody used this as an opportunity to show off.

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Bangalore or Bust

The following is my post from the official CSC blog:

Firstly, a quick introduction. My name is Chris Greenwood. I am an IBM employee based in London, England and this is the very first post from a journey that promises to be a great adventure.

I was lucky enough to be selected to participate in IBM’s Corporate Service Corps. I was assigned to the ‘India 9’ team (or Blue Tigers as we are commonly known) along with 11 others from 9 different countries. Unfortunately before we even left a broken ankle reduced our team of 12 to 11.

It’s now the end of my first day. I’m sitting in my hotel on the roof terrace. I’d like to say it’s peaceful but I’m surrounded by the noise of cars, rickshaws and bikes and the incessant sound of horns that seem to permeate everywhere you go. What follows is the story of my first 24 hours…..

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Off to Bangalore

So I’m sitting at gate 20 in Heathrow terminal 4 at the crack of dawn waiting for a flight to Paris. The gate isn’t open yet and won’t be another 10 mind yet there is a queue forming in front of the desk. Why are these people in such a hurry to get on a plane? Do they think the seating is unreserved? (its not). Do they think they’ll get the Paris faster by standing 10 meters closer to the gate that my semi-comfy chair? These both seem unlikely, maybe they’ve realised that they’ll be sitting down for the next hour or so and they’re enjoying their last few minutes of Standing freedom.

I’m now on the plane I managed to get an emergency exit seat so I have about 2m of leg room but no window. Sounds like a fair compromise to me.

Think I better send this and turn off my phone. The cabin attendant just decided to remove my laptop bag from the overhead locker, drop it on the seat then move it somewhere. I said don’t worry its just my laptop but I don’t think it crossed the language barrier.

I’ll return later and explain the title of this post!

Hue

We arrived in Hue and checked into our hotel, Binh Duong 1. We had been offered a basic double room for $8 but decided to splash out and go for the $12 room that contained a computer with internet access as I was getting very far behind on this blog. The room was on the top floor of the hotel, was very clean, well equipped and had a great view. We left the other six of our group downstairs to decide where to stay, giving them our room number so they could get in touch. About an hour later we had a call on the room phone from three of the guys who had decided to hire bikes for an hour for a quick ride around the citadel. We decided to join them and paid for a half days bike rental though this only came to 15p! Our hotel and pretty much all hotels and restaurants are located on the south side of the river in new or European city and the main city itself is across the river. The entire old city on the north side is enclosed by a 20m thick wall that run around the city in a square with each side of the square being 2.5km long. We cycled across the bridge and through one of the gates into the old city. Inside the old city is 2 further walled areas. The first that you reach is the imperial citadel which would have been used by the mandarians, civil and military noblemen as well as everyone who served the emporer. Inside the imperial citadel is a further enclosure called the forbidden purple city. This area would have been used solely by the emporer, his wives and concubines. In fact the only men allowed inside the forbidden purple city who weren’t related to the emporer were eunuchs.

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