Colombia trip post-mortem

[I didn't get round to posting this earlier; the timestamp on the draft suggests I last worked on it on 31st May 2020, but I think I'd written most of it within few weeks of getting back. Beyond the odd typo and re-phrasing of an all-caps TODO I never got round to explicitly writing, I'm posting this as-is with no further editing; it's supposed to be notes about things fresh in my memory at that point.]

I've been building this post up over the last few weeks since returning from Colombia. It's a miscellaneous collection of reflections on the trip, what went well, what didn't go well; the idea is that when the next trip rolls round I can look over this and try to do things better. This covers big conceptual things like "meeting people" and small but potentially annoying details like "handling my bag of liquids".

What worked well:

• Having two phones. Ignoring the weird Colombian rules about "approved" phones which might have stopped the HTC working (at least with the Colombian SIM) had I not been sent home early, this worked really well. I had my Colombian SIM in the HTC and my Three "travel" UK SIM in the Priv. The Priv essentially never left my accommodation except when I was in transit. Yes, this stopped me writing e.g. parts of blog posts on the HTC unless I was willing to suffer the crappy on-screen keyboard (though I never did try any potentially better third-party keyboard apps), but that's probably not entirely a bad thing. Otherwise it was pretty damn good. I hardly ever felt a single accident would make me lose communications. I was a little more immune to muggers as the HTC+Colombian SIM was effectively replaceable for probably £100-ish. I didn't stay in any dorms but even so the two phone strategy meant I was able to charge one while using the other, which was handy both for extended "days in" with a lot of battery-heavy YouTube watching etc, and on normal days I left the HTC charging overnight ready for the next day, used the Priv to read in bed before I went to sleep and then charged the Priv during the day while I was out. (Wrinkle: I typically hid the Priv in my bag when I went out if I expected the cleaners to come in and anything made me edgy, but I'd usually end up back in the room briefly and would put the Priv on to charge during the afternoon after the cleaner had been in for the day. And since the Priv hardly left the hotel room, if this didn't happen I could always charge it in bed from the powerbank.) Maybe I just got lucky but I never got any hassle at all at customs/security about this, no one even commented.
• The ultralight backpack instead of my usual travel bag, except that it ripped (but maybe it was just "too cheap" or I got unlucky?) and it feeling slightly over-packed when I had my fleece in it and/or the daypack containing the bag of liquids.
• Using two dry bags for dirty laundry, one for underwear and the other for outer clothing, was a good system. Unlike carrier bags the dry bags remained sealed in my bag in transit, and they kept smells in. Washing underwear and outer clothing separately also seemed a good system. My small dry bag is perhaps a bit too heavy duty, it weighs IIRC more than the larger dry bag, so a replacement might be slightly justified on those grounds, but this isn't a huge deal.
• The Three SIM with Go Roam worked well. The increased 4GB data allowance (plus the fact I didn't really find myself with bad wifi at any point) was sufficiently generous I never came even close to exhausting it; I did deliberately avoid using mobile data to watch any YouTube videos, but that was about all. I used it extensively for making phone calls back home, to family and to credit card companies, and although it's possible to use things like WhatsApp and Skype for this the voice latency seemed noticeably better on the traditional phone call, avoiding that awkward "talking across each other" problem.
• The local Colombian SIM worked well too, at IIRC £5-6/month this wasn't expensive, the 1GB data allowance (or whatever it actually was) was more than adequate for a bit of on-the-go browsing and WhatsApp use. I felt relatively comfortable giving my phone number (typically for WhatsApp, in practice) to people I'd just met because I knew it was disposable (and I could, and did, always exchange e-mail addresses with anyone I particularly wanted to keep in touch with).
• Taking my normal UK SIM with me, just to occasionally put in one of my phones either to receive a specific authentication text message or to see if any important/suspicious text messages had arrived.
• I'd struggle to say why, but I don't think I had any days (nights?) where I woke up at 6am with that weird sense of pseudo-homesickness which typically dissipates within a few minutes of forcing myself out of bed. There was some mild dread on a couple of school mornings but that was very different and specific.
• While I didn't exactly get up super early, I did mostly not stay out gratuitously late (unless doing something relatively fun/social) and therefore was usually (I think; I haven't checked older blog entries to verify this) leaving hotel 11am-ish. By many people's standards this would be wasting half the day, but as far as I'm concern it was fairly comfortable and gave me time to do something without feeling too rushed most days during the actual day (as opposed to the evening). Notwithstanding the disappointing experience with Couchsurfing and Meetup in Barranquilla during carnival, CS did prove to be a really good way to find out about the pretty decent language exchange and social scene in Medellin. For once I actually felt I was enjoying the "stereotypical" lively travel experience. This is probably in part a reflection on Medellin as much as on Couchsurfing, but I should definitely make a habit of checking these sites whenever I arrive anywhere new.
• Mainly towards the end of the trip I re-discovered the habit of keeping a few smallish banknotes in the knee pocket of my trousers so I didn't have to go into my other pocket for my wallet too much when out and about, and if I did have to pull out all the bills to pick one out I didn't show all my money off. The camera also lived in the pocket but with the headscarf and (sometimes) a scrappy folded A4 paper with my current accommodation address on there in that pocket it was kind of subdivided well enough that e.g. the banknotes didn't fly out when I yanked the camera out.
  

What didn't work too well:

• My bag of liquids was a pain in the arse. I had a scrappy plastic bag which was ripped and didn't seal properly (luckily none of the airports seemed to care); the plastic bags I bought at a supermarket in Colombia weren't big enough to fit everything. The travel detergent was leaking slightly because of the makeshift toothpaste cap and I had to have it inside a second sealed plastic bag inside. As I nearly always had a private bathroom and wasn't moving around that much on a day-to-day basis this wasn't too bad, as I just left things like toothpaste by the sink, but really I could have done better. Maybe simply ensuring I had an intact correctly-sized bag for transiting airports would have helped, but it's probably not ideal to simply leave stuff in that bag all the time. Maybe if it were durable enough it would be fine.
• My single long USB cable having a slightly dodgy connection with both of my phones (though it worked reliably with the powerbank) was annoying; it meant I had to prop the cable up on something when charging to ensure a good connection which might have put a bit of strain on the USB sockets on the phones and perhaps made it more likely I would knock the phone off the surface it was charging on. I should really have given the cable a better test before leaving home. It isn't a super premium cable but it's not an ultra-cheap one either, so I had thought it would be reasonably solid; maybe I just got unlucky here.
• I hardly wore the short-sleeved shirt (i.e. "smart casual" shirt with collar) I took with me, so in practice I was only wearing one of my other four tops most of the time.
• I have mixed feelings about the thin long-sleeved wool tops in the heat. In reality they were fine and their presumed sweat-odour-reducing quality was probably a good thing, but I'm just sufficiently bothered about wool (even this very fine wool) that I never felt completely happy with them.
• The poor battery on the HTC wasn't a huge burden, but it did go dead on me once or twice while out and about, luckily in situations where I already knew how to get home and didn't need to look at a map or use a taxi app. I tried to be aware of this and switch it into airplane mode and/or extreme power saver mode when I was out and about with no pressing need to be in contact, but it would have been better if I'd had a reliable battery in it. I may try to replace the battery before my next trip, but I may also end up buying another phone because of the "unauthorised in Colombia" issue, but we'll see.
• Not a huge deal, but leaving the long and annoying labels on the back of the neck on the wool tops in case any laundry staff looked at them was pointless. In practice I got asked how stuff should be washed and I doubt the staff would ever look at the individual labels. I should have just cut them off - they're so long they have a tendency to flap out, I don't think I did end up walking round with them hanging out but it required a bit of attention. I think they're intended to be cut off after purchase, I just didn't do this because of the laundry consideration.
  

[I had a note in here to write about what I didn't pack and wish I had, but I never did, and I'm not filling it in from memory over a year after the fact. I'm sure individual blog entries will touch on this if there was anything.]

What did I pack but not use (not to say that any or all of this stuff should be omitted from future trips, just making the notes while I'm unpacking and the trip is fresh in my mind):

• Waterproof over-trousers. This is a bit unfair, I took them with me on the Valle de Ñymejan tour and had it rained I'd potentially have worn them. The "shell" (it's really not that thin, but whatever, the one that goes with the fleece) waterproof jacket also got taken on that tour and only escapes a mention here because I did wear it a bit in the evenings, but it wasn't absolutely essential since it didn't rain.
• Gorillapod. I've waffled about this and associated camera paraphernalia in the past so I won't repeat it here. Still, if memory serves I did not actually use it at all on the Colombia trip.
• Nail scissors. I did use these, but once they were confiscated as terrorist materials at security I managed OK with just the nail clippers. Cutting my nails with nail clippers was in some ways better than using the scissors, and not as scary as I remembered it being. Using nail clippers to cut things like tenacious tape and wrist bands wasn't ideal, but it was just about doable. I'd probably be inclined to take nail scissors regardless on a future trip, but only if I thought I was in with a fair chance of not getting them confiscated one way or another.
• Prescription sunglasses.
• Small gifts, e.g. the two London fridge magnets I bought pre-Guatemala in a bit of a panic. I did toy with giving these (or, following onebag.com's suggestion, some clean £1 coins I took with me starting about the same time) to the girls at one of the VdN tour stops, but I never did - I have no idea if they had a fridge, and even though I wouldn't be giving them as money I felt a bit bashful about giving a coin to the girls. In hindsight if I'd thought about this I could have done this fairly casually, and I think it would have been fine and probably welcome, but I didn't, anyway.
• Travel clothes line. I don't think I used this, but maybe I did once or twice - certainly not regularly. It would probably have been better to use it but I tended to be lazy (and/or struggled to find attachment points) and just hang stuff up willy-nilly to dry after washing.
• Head scarf. To be fair I mostly don't expect to need this, it's kind of there for emergencies and while it is mildly bulky it mostly sits unobjectionably in the knee pocket of my trousers and serves as a kind of barrier (admittedly a bulky one) helping to divide the pocket up into two separate areas.
  

On a random note, despite widespread comments on web that the water in Medellin was safe to drink, I did note the FCO site said it was only safe to drink the tap water in Bogota. I did drink the tap water in Medellin for (the blog probably says exactly when I started) about a week with no trouble and I would probably do the same on a subsequent visit. I do recall one web site saying the water in Medellin was "delicious"; I wouldn't go that far, although the fact I was drinking it relatively lukewarm out of the tap (not having a fridge) wouldn't help. While I've kind of got used to it again, the first few days back home I did really appreciate being able to drink virtually limitless quantities of chilled (tap) water and I definitely drank way more water than I did while I was away.

On another random note and I am mildly drunk as I write this, it does occur to me - I am thinking back at my visit to museo Carlos Gardel, but the point generalises - that really on many occasions it would have been better to just ask a random person on the street for direction than (as happened in practice) to get worked up as fuck about the shittiness of GPS directions and spend ages staring at my phone. Yes, it is touristy, but even if we ignore the fact it's Spanish practice, it's actually probably way less blatantly touristy than bitching to myself as I stare at my phone.