Colombia

Our whole crew, minus Stefi. Can you tell which one hasn't shaved in 6 months?

The first thing we did in Cartagena was meet up with the Yancey brothers and Phil & Stefi. We had parted on separate adventures after our Uruguayan Christmas, and six months later we all finished our South American trip in Colombia. 

Fishing/spearfishing adventure. Add some bikini-clad women and you have a beer ad.

I caught two red snappers! They were delicious.

We wandered up the coast to smaller beach towns, where we fished, spearfished, hiked, and relaxed. We wanted to venture into the Tayrona national park, but instead of paying for the costly camping grounds, we just asked a local fisherman if he could drop us off on a secluded beach. After stocking up on water and pbj, we squeezed into his little boat and drove about an hour to a serene cove. We camped a few nights, busying ourselves with cards, campfires and little explorations. One night the boys ran around the beach chasing crabs and catching them with their hands. They were probably the smallest crabs to ever be eaten, but so delicious. They cooked them in salt water over the fire, and we got maybe two bites out of each one.

Phil, Stef, and the fisherman who steered us through an hour of ocean and dropped us off on an empty beach.

Our lovely campsite

The boys disappear and return with coconuts

Which are great for holding rum.

Then our beautiful, dizzying, relaxing, exhausting trip through five countries came to an end, and we flew back to the U.S. I'm grateful for every experience we had, from sharing a Christmas fish feast with wonderful friends in Uruguay, to running around salt flats and cactus forests in Argentina, hiking through gorgeous mountains in the Andes, chasing pumas in the Amazon, playing with Panamanian preschoolers, canoeing through tropical mangroves, and sailing through the Caribbean. I’m lucky to have a wonderful partner to meander through foreign countries with, who’s always open to a complete change in plans, always up for a drink, prefers living in tiny houses with minimal possessions, and willing to carry on the awkward or tiresome conversations with strangers when I get antisocial. We suffered together through altitude sickness, sea sickness, random mystery sicknesses, and all the transportation frustrations, miserable bus rides, fruitless hitchhiking, long boring waits in bus stations, border crossings and airports. TK has lugged my bags, taken care of jungle bugs for me (cockroaches in Panama are HUGE!), pushed me to do things I swore I couldn’t, sometimes made life more difficult at the time, but better in the end. We’ve woken up in countless hostels, bunk beds, mosquito nets, hammocks, cabins, and once to the stare of a spider monkey hugging the top of our tent.

South America has given me nearly four unforgettable years in all and we’ll be back, but in the mean time there are more huts, farms, mountains, and beaches to wake up to, in Africa!

So glad I quit grad school!