Welcome to Miami...

There are so many beaches here, I get all confused... South Beach, Miami Beach, North Beach, Nikki Beach.. to me all of Miami is one big beach :)

I have had a really great time in Miami so far and I have done so many things already that it feels like I have been here for weeks. However, I am still acclimatising to the Western world, like to actually flush down the paper in the toilet. Don't ask, but this is a hard thing for my brain to pick up on after separating the paper for the last 6 months in Latin America. (It is probably more environmental friendly to separate anyways... so why do we flush it down?)

Anyways, back to my story and Miami.

After my short flight from Colombia to Fort Lauderdale I took the train downtown to meet up with my last minute Couchurfing host Mike at his place. Mike took me on even though I send him a request 1 or 2 days before my arrival :) I ended up having a great time with Mike and a couple of other couchsurfers that night by eating pizza (of course I am in the States, I have to have pizza) during a heavy rainfall and then drumming in the Full Moon on the beach with some 200 other people. Truly fun until the cops came and broke up the good vibes. But all good! Peace and harmony.... :)

After staying with Mike for one night I moved to another couchsurfer's place, Rochelle, which happened to be a really good friend to Mike, hence we all ended up spending a lot of time to together all weekend. Rochelle, took me out to Calle Ocho in Little Havana for a CS dinner on Friday and the night ended with dancing reaggeton and salsa on the streets. :) The next day, the Miami CS group had arranged a big BBQ on the beach and we all met up again and enjoyed some really really goood fooood. It was so good I didnt have to eat for 2 days......(Wow, I love BBQs, especially when you can take a dip in the Caribbean Ocean while the ribs are BBQing.) We had a really nice day (again!).

Yesterday, we again met up with a couple of CSers and went to the famous Nikki Beach to dance in the sand and enjoy some drinks in the hot sun. This was again a really fun day and we ended up playing adult Bingo at The Standard hotel and swimming in the pool and chilling in their jacuzzi until 2am!! I just love night swims :)) and we slept like babies when we got home.

Mike and Rochelle has been really good hosts and showed me some real Miami hospitality and taken really good care of me. Today, I am about to embark another Couchsurfer's couch here in Miami as I am moving place and staying with Earl for a couple of days until I am heading for Key West, the very southern tip of Florida.

Life is good! :)

(This Is Rochelle and Mike in the bathtub at The Standard hotel and Spa)

Tayrona and last days in Colombia...

For my last days in Colombia I spoiled myself to go to Tayrona national park and Cabo beach. After a hot bus ride 1h east of Taganga I had to hike and sweat for 2h to get to this beautiful spot. And it was absolutely worth it! These beaches had the same grand status as San Blas in Panama (!), sooo beautiful with white sand, crystal clear waters, coconut trees and hot thot weather. You can not go wrong with these combos! So I enjoyed two full days lazing on the beach and drinking coconut water and eating coconut meat. Yum yum.. so good! (How will I be able to live without coconuts?)  As it was very hot! I had to stay out of the sun a bit or otherwise I would have turned into a boiled lobster.

As the only budget option for accommodation was hammocks I had brought my own sweet black hammock with me to use as a bed and it wasn't as bad as I had expected. But your back have to get used to it, so the second night was better than the first night. I have also started to do morning yoga now and I think my back was really happy about that :)

As you sleep out in nature you tend to go to bed when the sun goes down and wake up when the sun rises. So I went happily to the beach at 5.30 in the morning to watch the sunrise. (Why don't I do this every day?? Maybe cos I don't live on a beautiful beach and don't go to bed at 9pm every night...).

Anyways, I truly enjoyed my time in Tayrona and now I am back in Taganga getting ready to leave Colombia. So I'm doing my last minute laundry, cleaning the mud off my backpack, throwing stuff away and packing and drinking as much fruit juice as I can!

I have quite a long journey in front of me. First I need to sweat in the minibus to get to Santa Marta bus terminal, then I will freeze in the air condition bus on my way to Barranquilla, where I probably have to sweat a little again in a minibus that will take me to the airport. Here, I have my flight to Fort Lauderdale at 8pm, but with a transfer and a 6h stop over in Bogota. Ahhh, what don't you do for a night at the airport :) I have stocked up on cookies and a good book for these pleasent hours in the airport. And then early tomorrow morning I am finally off to Florida!! yyeeeiiiii.... and straight off to Miami as I will go to couchsurf with some very cool people there :)

So, my journey has now ended in Central and South America and it feels good to say good bye. I have so many good memories from my last 6 months here. Ahhhh... :) But I am ready to move on and experience new crazy things in the States.

So bye bye Colombia! Thank you for everything :)

Taganga

I am back up in the north... in a small beach-fishing village called Taganga, just 10min outside of Santa Marta. And I can just say one thing, IT IS HOT! Thank lord for the ocean!! as a dip in the Caribbean Sea is just sooooo nice and cooling.

I have exactly 1 week (!!) left in Colombia before I head north to the States so I am truly enjoying my last days in South America by having fresh fruit juices every morning. (I soo need to keep up with that habit when I am back home.) If I am lucky my D.C. friend will join me here in Taganga and Tayrona Park for my last week. Cross my fingers!

Feel strange to be at the end of my Central America + Colombia trip but I alm also getting excited for my north American excursion :)

Time to cool down in the ocean! Ciao!

busy Bogota and tranquilo San Gil

So I ended up crashing at Charley´s (Elena and Chris´s friend) place in Bogota and I enjoyed four relaxing and hectic days in Bogota. It was relaxing as I basically had the whole apartment to myself and I could sleep as long as I wanted and it was hectic as soon as I stepped out of the apartment and into the busy life of Bogota. There lives around 9 million people in Bogota and everybody seem to go to work at the same time so the traffic is insane and if you get stuck in it, it will take you hours to go from one side of the city to the other. One good thing though is the TransMileno bus system they have which will sweep you downtown in 20 minutes or so. It is basically a bus working as a metro as it has its own lane on the road. Very efficient but very crowded. I had the same love hate relationship to it as I have for the tube in London.

In Bogota I met up with another Finnish girl that was doing her internship in the city for 4 months. She found me on CouchSurfing and asked me on a coffee date. It was very nice to meet a fellow citizen (there are not that any Finns out there traveling..dont ask me why...) and she showed me around the rich part of Bogota and I was truly impressed. Prices in this part of time is the same as in Finland... which is very odd to me.. and how can they afford anything?? There is such a big difference between the rich and the poor in Colombia that it is almost scary. However, there is the presidential election in two weeks and I hope this gap will get smaller with the new president, which I hope will be Mockus! Anyways, Bogota was interesting but not my kind of place.... now you see San Gil on the other hand is my kind of place.

A 6h bus ride north of Bogota up and down and around the mountains there is a small town called San Gil. It is the xtrem sports town of Colombia. Here you can go white water rafting, paragliding, rappelling down a 180m waterfall, swim in natural pools and much more. So I like!

After couchsurfing for 2 weeks or so it was about time for a hostel again and right now I am staying in one of the nicest and friendliest hostels I have been in throughout my trip. It is called Sam´s VIP hostel http://samsviphostel.minihostels.com and it has the most perfext location right at the central plaza (park). Sam decided to make his beautiful house a hostel and I love it!

Here I also met Chris and Mandi, a couple I met earlier in Leon Nicaragua 3 months ago! So random and fun to see people you have met before. I have had a blast in this place and enjoyed the nature and the small town feeling. The other day we went to the very beautiful 180m waterfall swimming and splashing in the water in the middle of the jungle. It was a true Indiana Jones feeling! Loved it!

Saturday night also included a lot of rom drinking in the hostel, in the park, and the club. We had a crazy fun time and ended up in the local hot spot dancing salsa, merengue, and other fun Colombian dances with the locals. I havent had so much fun in a looong time. Ah looooooved it!

Then yesterday we went to the telenovela (soap opera) city of Colombia, Barichara. This was the most pitoresque, tranquilo town I have been in so far and so beautiful. A perfect day trip for a hangover Sunday. To me this town gave me a true Zorro feeling. I could imagen Zorro and his horse running down the streets fighting bad guys and rescuing pretty Caterine Zeta Jones from the flower-covered bacloneys. Ah so romantic! :)

Now, we are off to explore the local natural pools that is suppose to be somewhere in the forest. As it is very hot here during the day it will be so nice to cool off with a swim.

Hasta luego!

Cali - so much more than salsa (!)

As it turned out, Cali is so much more than salsa. I had a great, great time in Cali due to the fact that I met the sweetest couple in town that offered me an air-mattress on CouchSurfing :)
After spending five days I can say that for me Cali is is about:

• the people (their hospitality, their smiles, their curiosity and their laughs)
• family (I happened to be there on Mother´s Day, which I ended up celebrating with my host´s big big family that had the most amazing food ever)
• all about sharing and caring for each other
• FOOD and FRUITS (delicous Cali food such as the ones in the picture: boiled platanos covered with cheese, chicken, beans and salsa sauce and not to mention Lulada juice!)
• sun, sun, sun and hot weather
• salsa music and dancing (of course)
• fake boobs, butts and prostitutes (the famous "love motels" :)
• crazy Colombian traffic

My CouchSurfing hosts Elena and Chris showed me true Cali hospitality and I would like to thank them for putting me up in their place and taking their time to show me around Cali and inviting me into their lives for a couple of days. I had some fun and interesting discussions, loved the time swimming (not to mention the sauna(!)) at the county club, the salsa club (as you can see in the picture I am trying top get into the salsa beat), loved the jewerly making 101 course, the ice-cream (!!), the arepas, dinners, and visiting Chris´ family for Mother´s Day!

Last by not least I would like to thank Charly (in the pic), who saved me from the crazy taxi driver when I arrived on my first day and thought me about "70 iputa" and for offering me his place in Bogota!

Have a great trip in Europe Elena and Chris! You will love it :) Gracias por todo!

Cali - the salsa capital of the world!

I am now in Cali - the salsa capital of the world - they say... but I got to know that they only dance salsa in the weekends ( so much for salsa capital of the world!) due to the fact that Colombians work A LOT... six days a week from 6am to 6pm...wow...crazy.. no wonder thet don´t have any energy left to go out and dance.

Cali is otherwise not the most beautiful city I have seen. I did expect some prettier things... However they do have palm trees and it is hot here! So it is not that bad. You can see some pics of Cali here.

The people is lovely though, like in the rest of the country, and at the moment I am couchsurfing with a very fun and cute couple Elena and Chris. I have my own designated spot on an air mattress in the living room - not bad :) Last night, they took me out for dinner to enjoy some delicous "tipico" Cali food. I had a platano (plantain - that is banana) covered with frijoles (beans) meat, cheese and some good sauce. Wow it was good and soooo filling :) I also got introduced to a sour fruit juice called lulada ... yum yum so good. I absolutely love Colombian food!

peaceful Guatape and Salento

After spending more than a week in Medellin is was defintely time for some country side adventures. I had been recommended by my couchsurfer hosts to visit Guatape, a small town 2 h from Medellin, and in no time I had found an American guy who offered me his couch in Guatape. Greg, my host, had just moved to Guatape and was looking into starting a hostel in town and managed to show me the property he was looking into. He had found a beautiful house in a hill overlooking the town. The business deal has not gone through yet but I def think Guatape is THE place to start a hostel. It is such a pitoreque little Colombian town with tons of lakes and montains surrounding it. It is also famous for its big ROCK, El Penol. This humongous rock probably hit the earth millions of years ago and is now a popular tourist attraction. You can walk up the 200m rock, 465 steps up and get the most amazing view of the Colombian country side! It was breath-taking! I will soon upload some trillion pictures of this rock... :)

After relaxing and breathing fresh air for 3 days I headed back to Medellin to spend my last night with my dear CouchSurfing hosts Ana and Jesus. We ended up going out salsa in Rumbantana and drinking some Colombian rum :) It was a great last night before I headed south to Salento.

After a short ride on the night bus (I arrived 4am in the morning to the bus staion in Pereira instead of 6am that I had planned) and another short minibus ride I arrived to the mountain and coffee town Salento 7am in the morning. Salento is another pitoresque little town that you fall in love with in seconds. It is located in a valley in between green lushious bamboo forests and mountains. Here I stayed in a beautiful coffee farm hostel called Plantation House. You can check it out here http://www.theplantationhousesalento.com. It is owned by a British man Tim who has settled and married in Salento. They had dorms both in the hostel house and at the coffee farm itself and I ended up sleeping at the coffee farm,which was built in the green mountains hills among bamboo trees, banana trees, coffee plants and the rain forest. It was peaceful, quiet and just lovely. The view from my room was just breath takingly beautiful over the green valley and I couldnt have asked for more. And when I say green it was this fresh kind of green that you see right after it has been raining... you just feel like eating it! hehehe at least me. I truly enjoyed my stay there :)

Pictures will be coming very very soon!