24 July 2010, Manizales

My trip has definitely gotten better since leaving big cities. I am also hostelling for a bit, which means I meet people who speak English to hang out with.

On Thursday and Friday I was in the quaint city of Salento. It is a small town of very colourful restaurants and artesan shops. On Thursday I walked the religous steps up a mountain - with messages about Jesus - and then found a trail. I met a man who asked me if I wanted him to take me to the river. I said yes because the river looked and sounded so good. We walked through barbed wire, mud, swamp and when we got to the river he started massaging and kissing me. I wouldn't let him kiss me on the lips, nor would I engage in chatter about his penis size, nor did I touch him back. He was a bit angry. But I bought him a beer and then went back to the hostel, a lovely, small, clean, wood-floored place.

On Friday I went hiking with the other folks in the hostel - young Americans and an old German couple. We walked through a valley of farmland with vews of the mountains before and behind us. We entered the non-cleared part of the mountains and it was beautiful ´bosque´, rainforest. It was such a gorgeous walk that I felt wonderful. Though it did get hard at the end as we kept climbing up and up and up. Finally we reached a mountaintop house serving hot drinks with cheese (this is normal in Colombia). After drinks and a rest we walked all the way back, which took half the time (maybe an hour and a half).

I spent the evening drinking beer with an interesting Israeli boy and left for Manizales in the morning. It was a beautiful mountainous bus trip and Manizales is such a pretty city, strewn through the mountains on all different levels. There is a cable car up to the top, the historic centre, and I took photos.

Today, I spent the day in a national park, in a bus driving from cloud forest to desert. Then my group spent 3 hrs climbing a snow-topped peak. We didn´t climb very far but we climbed to 5,000 feet so it was really hard going. We stopped every 5 minutes to recover our breathing. Climbing at high altitude is not fun and it is cold, and bare dirt peaks covered in snow aren't beautiful to me, but I am glad I made the climb as I kept wanting to give up.

After a big Colombian lunch, we went to hot springs for an hour. In a half hourwe party.