And we're off!

It's been about five and a half months and we are returning to the states tomorrow. We're flying from Cartagena to Miami so for the next few days, we'll still get to use our awesome Spanish skills ("awesome" meaning sputtering out sentence fragments and looking confused). But South America is a trickster, and we are not escaping without some horrendous stomach issues...

On Sunday, we took several confusing bus rides to Parque Tayrona, a national park on the north coast of Colombia. On the hike in, I started to feel queasy and by dinner that night, it was full blown vomit time. I decided to walk out to the beach to get sick, and for about 15 minutes, I did the whole hands on the knees, bent over, sick thing. And of course I had to eat pasta which is the worst when it comes back up. Towards the end of my vomit time, I see this guy walk by and I was like, "Brandon?". He looked a little scared and didn't really want to talk to the girl that was barfing all over the beach, but he was nice and answered back. Turns out it was Brandon, an American we met in Rio on our first day in South America that stayed with us at our mutual friend Mara's house for Carnaval. So it was only fitting that we saw him at the beginning and the end of our trip, almost exactly six months apart. And since I haven't seen anyone (except Liz) from back home in that same amount of time, expect the same greeting. You know you're excited.

And vomit seemed to be the topic of that trip to the park because that night, when were crammed into some sort of hellish hammock spot (about 50 hammocks all next to each other all next to the stinky toilets and kitchen), the guards and workers in the park decided to get loud on the guitar and drunk, and one of them was staying in a hammock next to all the tourists, and this ARMED and drunk guard, leaned out of his hammock and threw up all over the belongings of the tourist girl next to him. THEN he just laughed about it and she had to clean it up in the morning. Gross.

Besides the vomit, the park is very pretty with nice beaches but I couldn't swim much due to lack of food and general queasiness. So we hiked out after one night in the park, and then stayed one more night in Taganga, and this morning took a mini bus back to Cartagena. That's about when Chris started feeling sick (but mostly out of the other end) so like I said, South America is holding on and doesn't want us to go.

Every traveller I meet has their own epic vomit or poop story and those stories usually come up within about 3 to 5 minutes of meeting each other, usually before we get their names. I guess that line of conversation has gone into this blog, sorry.

But besides the sickness, and some other random things, I am sad to be leaving already. So here's what I will miss about South America:

1. The general drive and ambition of people to help you or answer a question even when there is a language barrier or they have no idea what you want or where you want to go but they try and help anyway, even if the information they give is 100% incorrect

2. The ability to carry an open beer pretty much anywhere

3. The cheap wine in Argentina and Chile and the cheap fresh fruit smoothies in Colombia

4. The way Colombian people break out into song at anytime, including on the bus, waiting for the bus, walking down the street selling fruit, whenever. Kind of the same way Brazilians break out into dance.

5. Cheap spa services, including waxing and facials and massages

6. The lack of swimwear on the beach and the way everyone wears it with no shame (even when they should have some shame, in my opinion)

7. Meeting loads of interesting people from all over the world

I have many more, but this will go on forever, so here is what I will not miss about South America:

1. The general "machismo" that goes around on this entire continent. Last week, I asked a bar tender on the beach to give me an extra cup to share Chris's beer, and Chris jokingly said to me, "No, get your own". Well, all the bartender heard was "no" and he snatched the cup away and that was that. Chris's word is always worth more than mine and they listen to him more. I think most women rank just below the pet dog out here.

2. The way all fat Colombian men tuck their t-shirts under their man boobs to air out their guts and walk around like that ALL DAY LONG.

3. Long bus rides. A few weeks ago, Chris figured out we'd spent over 13 days (like, 24 hour days) on buses since we got here in February.

4. The gangs of street dogs; they are sad and terrifying at the same time.

5. General inconveniences like most items on a restaurant menu never being available or taxis only being around when you don't want one.

6. Having only ham and cheese to eat in Argentina and Chile even when there are loads of vegetable stands all over the place, no one seems to want that in their restaurants

And again, I can spout off more things, but I need to get back and work on the laptop to get the photos of Taganga and Parque Tayrona up. Hopefully I can post them in Miami. And just because we're in the states, that doesn't mean we won't have blogs and photos because we have 3 more weeks to play tourist and visit such missed locations as Cracker Barrel, Gatorland, and the Smithsonian. So keep checking back!

Hammock Bound

Just a quickie to let you know Chris and I are alive and well in Taganga, Colombia. Chris has spent the last three days diving, and I opted out of one day. But we both dived yesterday and I did my first night dive. It wasn't scarey but I did think it was uncomfortable because I felt like I was going to run into someone or something the entire time, and add in bad visability, and it wasn't my favorite. The coral here is varied and nice, the visability isn't great, but the water is pretty warm and there are a lot of small fish. Yesterday, I also saw a seahorse and that was cool.

Today, we are taking a bus into Tayrona National Park. Apparently, they have the best beaches so we are going to stay today and sleep in a hammock tonight and return to Taganga tomorrow. Hopefully this whole experience will be relatively mosquito free. In Taganga, the beaches range from dirty to nasty so I hope these ones don't disappoint.

Tuesday we take a mini bus back to Cartagena, and Wednesday we fly to Miami. Yikes. Sorry to Liz and my parents that I have been MIA lately, Skype here isn't the greatest.

Diving in Taganga

Our plans for Taganga changed a little from what I wrote last time. Instead of going on a three day diving trip in Tayrona National Park, we are staying in Taganga and diving for a few days and then visiting the Park afterwards. The dives are actually in the park, but we come back to Taganga after each dive and stay at our hostel. The dive company we´ve been going with is Aquantis Dive Center and I recommend them to anyone who visits Taganga. Stef and I both went yesterday for a two tank dive and I went again today. Tomorrow we are both planning on going again for an afternoon dive and a night dive. They have a digital camera that they let me use on the dives, which is great because I didn´t bring the housing for mine. I haven´t seen the pics from the first two days yet, but hopefully some of them came out all right. The coral here is pretty spectacular. Much better than in Hawaii, I think.

Other than the diving, we haven´t been doing much here. The beach is kind of crappy, so Sunday we will head to Arrecifes, which is located in Tayrona National Park and is supposed to have really nice beaches. We plan on sleeping in hammocks on the beach on Sunday and then returning to Taganga on Monday. Tuesday we will head back to Cartagena and then Wednesday we fly to Miami. But I´m trying not to think about that right now.

Taganga

We arrived in Taganga this afternoon. It was about a four hour bus trip. And by bus I mean a 10 passenger van with 15 passengers in it. The seats were about half as wide as the crappy seats in the back of an airplane with about a third of the legroom. A couple of hours into the trip, some people got off and I was able to move to a spot where I could actually sit with my knees in front of me.

The town itself seems pretty cool so far. It´s just a little fishing village tucked away in a bay on the Caribbean coast. There isn´t much here besides some good seafood restaurants, some hippies, some street dogs (that don´t appear to be doing so good), no ATM´s and a lot of dive shops. That´s why we are here. Tayrona National Park is not too far away and you can get good deals to go dive there and spend a few nights sleeping in hammocks on the beach and just hanging out. We haven´t made definite plans yet, but I think we are going to do a three day two night trip to the park that will include seven dives (one of which is a night dive and one of which is a cave dive). It should be pretty sweet. Unfortunately, I left my underwater housing at home and can´t take any pics on the dives, so you´ll just have to believe us when we write about it afterwards.