Sat 2041 On hostel terrace with chilled bottle of water.
Feel I've been a bit slack today but never mind. There seem to be a lot more people floating round the hostel and perhaps because of that I feel a bit of a sad loser but whatever.
Got up in time for breakfast, a bit hungover but mainly just tired I think. Loitered round one way or another, in part as I needed to change room (now 208, I had started in 207 and was in 106 last couple of nights) and had to wait til it was ready, though really I didn't have much urgent need to go out. I half wondered if I should have eg gone for a second look round casa de la aduana, but I filled the day anyway (whether in a "useful" way or not) and it's not like I'm probably never coming back, I don't have to wring the place dry nor did I feel a positive compulsion to go revisit out of a genuine massive "this is amazing" feeling; it would have been a bit of a guilt-driven-ish thing.
I did eventually tear myself away from hostel to go withdraw some cash. Some fucker with a bike was loitering outside the Davivienda cash machine cubicle I planned to use; the police station is practically next door and cops were all over the place so really I probably wasn't going to get robbed there, but I got surprisingly worked up about it, walked down towards carrera 5 where a quick poke back at hostel on GM had shown some but a) that area feels a little bit dodgier b) I couldn't actually see any cash machines and didn't like to take phone out in street, and ended up going back to DV machine where fuckface had pissed off by then. Oh, I also managed to get mildly lost somehow en route to DV machine in first place, and I hadn't put any sunblock on as I considered this just a brief outing - probably be OK but fingers crossed.
DV machine was laggy as hell (multi-second waits after pressing a button before the next screen came up). I picked the 1020000 option from the list of suggested withdrawal amounts - why the odd 20k is there I do not know. It offered to do the conversion to pounds for me at IIRC 4100 to the pound, making the withdrawal IIRC 260 (those IIRC values are inconsistent, of course), so I pressed decline and figured the withdrawal would be cancelled and I'd have to find another machine but it spat the cash out and it looks from the Starling app as though the withdrawal went through in COP (and Starling will do the conversion at the decent Mastercard rate) with no fee at all, which is nice and maybe worth remembering if it means I can get smaller sums out.
I picked up a 4l bottle of water at that little chemist on way back to hotel, even though I had so much cash on me I'd ideally not be lingering.
When I got back to hostel reception was heaving and one of staff I've spoken to quite a lot said hello and seemed to expect more from me after we'd done the usual mutual acknowledgements, so I asked him about buses to BQ. I was maybe a little mulish aboutt this, but not too bad. Although I could get a taxi over to bus terminal, he also told me I could go to the Marsol office a few blocks away and get a bus from there, he said they do a sort of route and can drop you "near" anywhere, he suggested I go over then to book a ticket.
He also suggested I stick my water in the fridge. I went up to room, filled a litre bottle with water and stuck that in fridge then went up to terrace with Priv and another non-chilled bottle of water to book accom in BQ before going over to Marsol terminal.
OGB makes out parts of BQ are pretty rough. A quick poke on their updated version free on web isn't quite so heavy on this but not sure it's got all the text and as per MG review not entirely sure I trust them. Poked on hostelworld (very few properties) and booking.com and looked at map for something vaguely in apparently upmarket and safe-ish El Prado and after much dithering have booked a (possibly slightly run down if some reviews to be believed) suite (including kitchen?) with aircon at about £20/night for 5 nights. This takes me up to my insanely expensive dorm booking.
I did experimentally extend the dates for this suite for an extra 5 days to cover carnival and the total price leaped up to IIRC £500 or probably £700. So if I am (and I *probably* am) staying for carnival it's likely I'll be going with the expensive dorm. Some casual mentions of carnival on suite reviews makes me think I could have just gone for a few nights of carnival instead of whole thing, but I sort of didn't want to be arriving or leaving in the middle of all the fuss.
I don't have big plans for the initial 5 nights in BQ. Just settle in, perhaps cook for myself, get a feel for the geography/safety/taxis, etc. I'm not saying I won't do any tourist stuff, I'm just saying I'm not setting any big expectations.
£20/night isn't ultra cheap but it isn't insane, and given the possible iffiness of some regions of BQ I really didn't feel too comfortable going for one of the cheaper places. They'd probably be fine, but I didn't feel like taking a chance.
Then walked over to Marsol (where bus had stopped on way in, what feels like weeks ago) - guy I spoke to at reception told me it was safe to walk there, it is only a few blocks and except for a few kids in the street and the area looking mildly run down (and there's also a small funfair, which looked sort of weirdly clean-yet-threatening, not that I paid that much attention) it didn't seem too bad.
My Spanish just about held up OK to book a ticket for tomorrow - bus is at 12, I have to be at office for 1115 (hostel guy told me it was cheaper to get bus from their office than have them pick me up here at hostel) and it's about 2.5h trip. I gave them the address of my accommodation and they said I'll be dropped about five blocks away. I have favourited it on phone and it will be mid-afternoon (I can check in from 3pm, incidentally, and check out here is 11am so this all works fairly well) so fingers crossed that will be OK. They took my details from passport copy but didn't take any payment, though apparently I can pay by credit card (or cash, of course) tomorrow. TBH not sure I really *needed* to go book but I maybe feel better for having some sort of plan now. What didn't help was having to speak to the MS staff through a sheet of glass with no real holes in it.
I can look into maybe buying parade tickets (tho may well not bother) etc once I'm in BQ and have seen the lay of the land a bit and feel a bit less harried.
I then came back to hostel, left Priv charging (batt v low after all use it had during various slacking off periods today) and watched some YT/read a bit on HTC up on terrace. Just been back down before started writing this to put it onto charge and pick up fully charged Priv to come back up here. I need to repack properly, everything is a right mess, but it shouldn't take that long and I will do it in a couple of hours before I go to bed. Also gorged on one of the packets of peanuts and raisins I bought for hike, which was a bit lardy really. Oh, I forgot to say on way back from MS I realised I needed to eat and I stopped in at Cafe Medellin on Calle 22 (which had seen on earlier peregrinations) and had a really pretty decent carne asada (perhaps a little tough, but not really) with soup, chickpeas, rice and plantain and a small lemonade for 10k - I asked for the bill and was just told 10k, so as this didn't seem to allow for the standard 10% tip to be added and I'd somehow convinced myself it was going to be 12k and I was pleased at getting the salad undressed as I asked I handed over 13k, which is perhaps a bit OTT as a percentage but not a huge amount, and waitress seemed surprisingly pleased. Would definitely consider eating there again if I were staying longer.
Right, so I think that's today mostly written up. I have resisted any (mostly nonexistent TBH) temptation to go out and have a beer (or even coffee) either eg at MB this afternoon or tonight - I was out last night, I vaguely expect to be drinking a bit if perhaps quite moderately (if I'm on my own; need to be extra careful) during carnival, etc, and I really want to get a solid night's sleep tonight if I can.
So back to tour. Random observation while I remember: I would generally consider myself a pretty quick eater, I should probably savour what I'm eating a bit more, but I think pretty much every meal the guide finished eating way before I did (we didn't usually talk much over meals). I did once or twice flirt with telling him he didn't need to wait at the table for me to finish out of politeness, but I figured there were so many ways that might come out wrong and cause offence it just wasn't worth it.
TBH I may not get entire tour finished tonight but I'll do what I can and we'll get there in the end. Feels like a bit of a chore but I think it's in part because I'm getting edgy about leaving here and the transit to BQ and (though it's still a few days off) the potential strain of carnival and this expensive dorm and so forth. I've got myself into a fairly snug little routine here in SM now I'm not doing "tourist stuff" whereas the (minor, assuming no trouble with the brief walks at either end of ths bus trip) strain of moving to BQ tomorrow is a little disturbing.
Oh, excessive personal detail - had pretty solid shit this morning, then a bit later felt sudden urge to go again and had a huge loose-ish shit. Not deeply worried about this, it wasn't diarrhea as such and probably a side effect of being a bit constipated during tour, but FWIW.
So I think I'd left it as we were heading out on the morning of day 3. There isn't that much to say specifically about the walk. I think it was on this day that we went up the newly made (about 18 months ago IIRC) track - which was pretty steep, we left our packs at the bottom which felt mildly risky but really who was going to steal them there? - to a viewpoint opposite and about half way up a waterfall which is apparently 100m high. Pretty impressive and also stupidly cool to think I'm one of a relatively small number of people to have seen the view from that point.
(There was another very nice but not so big waterfall another day, perhaps day 1. Incidentally I did "bathe" on one of the earlier days as well as day 4, it may have been day 1 but I'm not sure. The guide offered me the option to do this somewhere and I was a bit unsure and asked some questions and anyway I think it turned out the pool of water at that point was pretty deep and IMO not safe for someone with my negligible level of swimming ability, so instead I went in some approximately waist-deep at most water near some shallowish waterfall - I sort of floated on stomach over towards the water coming over some stones to feel the water moving. (I didn't *need* to float, it would have been trivial to wade over except the bottom was uneven and by floating on stomach and "walking" with my hands I avoided the pain of tripping over as my feet stumbled around on the bottom.)
IIRC walking on day 3 was not too bad. I was obviously a bit worn out from previous days but only a modest amount of willpower was needed and it wasn't that hard, for all that I was glad when we arrived.
Family had three young girls (won't name here for usual reasons), eldest of who was about 10 and I did end up speaking to her a bit (the girls sort of sat opposite staring at me and I thought I ought to make an effort), second was maybe 5ish and could speak a bit but not lots and youngest was maybe 3 and hardly spoke. Conversation sometimes a bit awkward - I'm not great with children on the whole, though sometimes I think I do OK by chance - but on the whole they were charming. (eg they had put some flower heads on the table in my dorm to decorate it, and towards the end of the evening the middle girl came in and rearrange them to make a "cruz de dios" ) In answer to some questions about my family I somehow found myself telling (without the actual bad language, and who knows how comprehensible I was) the eldest girl the story of Uncle Bob post-stroke saying out loud "it's fucking cold, I wish they'd bloody well let us into the church" (not his exact words, but the gist) as we waited outside at Nan's funeral and how it was sort of a bit of a tension reliver. (I wonder if my memory of this is accurate, but anyway.) I apologised if it was a depressing story but she said it was OK, I was talking about my family.
Didn't speak much with rest of family though they were perfectly pleasant. Oh, for some reason the guy I think was the father was really hard for me to understand, I honestly don't know why, maybe he just had a different accent.
Had quite a long chat with guide in the afternoon and also with him over dinner. Dinner made me a bit edgy as the kitchen area was *very* dingy and I was sat by the wall on a wooden bench with my feet pretty much in the dark and had horrible visions of something crawling up my leg or back, but nothing happened. (Not helped by a gigantic beetly thing flying around and landing on the floor - a good few metres away - and one of the girls sort of playing with/investigating it. Beetly things are broadly OK by me, but its presence suggested the possibility of other things.)
Oh, between that afternoon chat and dinner (IIRC) he showed me the shower. There was a cockroach on the wall which - although I said I didn't mind it - he picked up and threw out anyway. I then went into the shower and there was a pretty big (probably flat-ish) spider loitering on the wall you couldn't see from outside. I had already taken my top off by this point and on the whole (as with most of trip) I didn't actually freak out too badly, but I put my top back on and bravely stepped through the curtain before the fucker could start teleporting around the walls (I didn't see it move, but gut feeling was it was one of those fast buggers) and decided not to bother with a shower.
I was taken out in the evening (rather edgy about spiders) to see the fireflies. While at first not seeing anything (I was expecting them to be less bright than they were and was kind of straining and getting hung up on tiny imagined flashes of light) I did eventually see them and they were pretty cool; not sure if I had ever seen any before.
Stepping back for a second: dinner on the second night included what the guide said was a "volcano" - I thought this was a little joke, but he said that's what it was called - a sort of mound of (possibly flavoured with something; I didn't *like* this exactly, but it wasn't terrible) mashed potato with some chopped meat-and-veg mix sitting on top. This was fine (except slightly unhappy with the flavouring in the mash), just making a note.
Wind really getting up up here on terrace now. Sort of welcome but also a hassle and worried it might tear Priv out of my hands.
Another small incident on third afternoon was one of the three dogs (they also had a cat, which I only saw in kitchen and never got near - it did look quite big though, which seems unusual for Colombia) came near me and I stroked its head a bit and it seemed to like it and got a little bit more affectionate. And then the other two dogs came over and wanted some attention, and this was all kind of nice except they started to put their front paws up on my leg (I was sitting) and try to jump up at me, and when I stood up they kept kind of jumping up at me and with the three of them it was a little bit intimidating (I knew it was all friendly but still didn't like the jumping up and the mobbing aspect) and I don't know enough about dogs to know how to dissuade them, so I had to get the girls to help and felt mildly foolish.
On a general note, on a handful of occasions during the actual walking I did see largish (size of the one on floor in hostel second night or the shower wall one third night) spiders scuttling out of the way in the leaves on the path, but nothing insanely huge and these were all brief encounters, not particularly in your face. I did worry a little bit about one hanging around on a bush and getting onto me as I squeezed through (the path was relatively often fairly overhung) but mostly I just didn't think about it and it wasn't a huge concern.
That reminds me that I think mostly during day 3's walk the guide had his machete out chopping the foliage back to clear a path for us at times. At one point it felt like the backswing came within a foot or so of my face; it probably didn't, but after that I was a bit paranoid and made sure to hang back while he had it out. (And yes, on a different level I was a tiny bit nervous - especially on day 1 - about being alone in the middle of nowhere with a guy with a machete, but this wasn't a huge concern, just one of those fleeting paranoid thoughts.)
Guts suddenly giving a mild churn. I felt a little bit of this during dinner as well. I think I'm mostly OK but I guess still not quite 100%. Unless of course this is just normal biological body noise and I'm on a hair-trigger looking out for signs of illness.
Another random note: there are eg some good walking prospects in La Guajira peninsula, I think. Just noting this as something I could do on a subsequent visit.
Some very loud pseudo-chanting coming from direction of PdlN. (Incidentally don't think I have any really good photos of PdlN, but I do have some snapped from tables at MB which in practice is probably how I mostly saw it. With there usually being a lot of people hanging around in there I think I didn't often like to haul camera out and take some snaps while walking round the edges of it.)
Didn't see any spiders in dorm on night 3. I went to bed not feeling too much under seige. However, I kept waking up in the night with a kind of heavy feeling in my guts and/or feeling thirsty but not wanting to reach out for my nearby bottle of water - *not* a spider concern, I get the same at home sometimes, where I'm thirsty but reaching out for the water by the bed feels like too much effort for no clear reason, though perhaps on night 3 I also had a slight "I might want to be sick if I drink some water and I really don't want to be sick and I also don't want to have to go off in the dark with my torch to find the toilet esp given risk of spiders on the walls" . (Toilet with sink were in one room, shower was a separate cubicle next door, incidentally, and I never did actually see a spider in the toilet room.)
So while I didn't feel terrible the night rather dragged by. I had been told I needed to be up by IIRC 6 so we could be off by 7. About 530 (really not too sure about times here) I decided to get up, it was starting to get light out, electricity was off. I think I went to toilet but nothing really came out. I had (guide suggested later it might be due to stress) been kind of constipated since starting tour, had had a few shits but always very small really.
I'm actually not quite sure what happened but around this point I started to feel really quite shitty, sort of queasy and weak. I remember I went through to kitchen to say that I didn't want much (which was happily interpreted as "any" ) breakfast - the thought of facing a big plate of anything was stomach-churning - and maybe after that I went to bog.
Guide was (naturally) a bit concerned about all this. Can't remember if already wrote this up but whatever. He offered to bring me a cup of some bitter-ish herbal infusion they would take for this kind of thing, and I accepted. It was only a small cup, he suggested I should neck it as taste was bitter, I did (it was a bit bitter but not terribly so) and - as I'd feared, and said - the sudden influx of liquid gave me an unavoidable urge to vomit after about thirty seconds. I charged across to bog - pretty sure I already wrote this - and vomited three times. What came up was mostly liquid but I was a bit surprised how much was in my stomach. I think I had been sipping some water gradually a bit earlier - I was perhaps already forming the dehydration hypothesis - and I now remember I had made up some dioraltye and had sipped that down but obviously unless that worked very quickly I would have lost that at this point.
As often happens, I actually felt hugely better after vomiting. The prospect of the day's walk - 19K, albeit with a horse to carry the bags - had seemed pretty fucking terrible (if mostly unavoidable, given we're in the middle of nowhere and the only way out is to walk) beforehand, but after vomiting it seemed unappealing but doable.
I described the feeling to the guide as like being hungover without having actually had any alcohol the night before, although it was more in the guts/stomach area and not so headachey.
Who really knows what caused it but I do suspect dehydration was a factor. I had been - pretty sure I already wrote this - too cautious about keeping a reserve of water during the walks, and hadn't necked the rest freely during the afternoons/evenings due to mild difficulty of getting a resupply.
I had a coffee and a bit of a chat with hostess and girls before we set out. Guide put my bag on the horse (he did actually refer to it as "la mula" IIRC, though spanishdict does not seem to translate that as equine "mule" in English, but maybe it was a mule - I wouldn't know, but I'll keep calling it a horse as that's what I called it when speaking to guide and in my head during the trip) and after a few photos (theirs, not mine - though I should have a poke on their Facebook page eventually and see if I can see any of these) we left.
I tried to be positive but while I wasn't feeling terrible I didn't feel great. I kept telling myself if it was a kind of hangover it would gradually get better over the next few hours. I tried to take a bit of water quite frequently rather than gulp a load and risk puking it up. I did ask for quite a few rests but I also knew that the more we rested the more we'd get delayed. I took an ibuprofen after a bit and the guide seemed convinced that that was what really helped turn me around. When level in water bottle got low enough I added my remaining two dioralyte sachets and gradually sipped at that.
Rising on the stepping stones of my dead self to higher things, as is my custom, I did start to feel about 90% OK after a few hours and things felt better. Before this I had been listening with a kind of polite deadness while the guide occasionally explained things, after I was able to take a more genuine interest. I did intermittently feel a little bit worse, but we might say I always felt at least 80% OK. I had worried a bit I'd have a kind of relapse to the pre-vomiting sick feeling, but it didn't happen.
It was a long walk all the same and of course I was knackered from the previous days, being ill didn't help and there were some awfully long downhill and uphill stretches which really felt interminable. (Yes, some cool views, see photos, but hard to really appreciate them.)
I think I already said guide offered to let me ride the horse but I declined, with no experience whatsoever it would prob have been unsafe even if he'd lead it, and it might have made me feel queasier, and I think also at back of mind I did want to complete the walk under my own steam.
I don't want to over-egg the pudding, but while obviously not heroically epic, I do have to give myself some credit for facing up to the need to just get on with the walk despite feeling shitty.
Guy smoking marijuana up other end of terrace. Couple of other guys doing it earlier. Bit jealous but it always pisses me off that people feel so fucking smugly self-confident they don't worry about doing something illegal openly. Not for them concerns about getting dragged off by the cops, oh no. (To be scrupulously fair my in-passing information picked up from web suggests possession of a small amount may actually be legal, though that isn't to say buying it is necessarily legal (or safe on other grounds), and I still feel there's a lot of either smug-gittery or stupidity or both in being confident enough to possess/smoke marijuana in a foreign country.)
I am feeling a little bit tired and the wind is getting up. I might go pack and go to bed earlyish and finish the trip writeup fresh-ish tomorrow. Think I'll go down to room and poke at the packing anyway. It's 2234.
2345 Mostly packed. That reminds me, I did wear the fleece (pretty much necessary) and the shell jacket (minor luxury) during the hike (mainly while at hostels, not walking). I didn't use the waterproof over-trousers, but having them and the shell jacket would probably have helped a lot (the guide had no such stuff, but then he's used to it etc) had it decided to rain.
Howsarlock seems to have gone missing. Can't quite think how or why I could have lost it. Will maybe have a really good hunt for it once I get to BQ.
Incidentally (I took a photo of a semi-humorous thing they had on table under glass) it was Restaurante Medellin today, not Cafe Medellin.
Sun 0029 Wind really does seem to be getting up. Anyway, going to go to bed I think. Had a quick shower (also shave, no shit) as don't want to assume will have time in morning and this is better than nothing.
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