Two weeks in San Carlos, Antioquia, Colombia

It was really, really hard to leave this place. If an alternate lifestyle is what you’re after, it had everything!!! Let me explain; with more photos & videos than usual.

Have you ever been to a foreign town where, not a single local speaks your language so you are forced to learn theirs? (Okay that’s a lie, a handful did, out of around 8,000). Where the nearest city is a 4 hour off-road bus journey? Where the town is surrounded by beautiful waterfalls to be climbed, rivers and natural pools to swim in and jungle to be hiked? Where a beer costs less than £1 and coffee less than 25 pence. Where you work for 2-3 hours per day using whatever skills you can provide. A town which, only 7 years ago, was run by a terrorist group forcing the residents to leave. Since the group was forced out, residents returned and are in constant celebration of their towns freedom, packs of them head to the Plaza during weekends. This is probably the most social and happy town I’ve ever been to.

Okay let me elaborate why I’m here. I realise that my previous posts didn’t really address why I chose South America or Colombia.
I chose South America because their language is Spanish. I’ve been wanting to learn a second language for some time and liked the idea of Spanish.
I chose Colombia because it’s close to the top of South America and it would be logical to start at one end and work toward the other.
For anyone who knows me well, they will know that I genuinely didn’t put any more thought into it than that.

I visited San Carlos for a few reasons.
A. I wanted a retreat from built up, city life.
B. I wanted to experience genuine Colombian culture, not “touristy” stuff. Sure, touristy stuff is touristy for a reason, but I wanted more than that.
C. There was a perfect volunteering opportunity here.

One of the main reasons this whole trip to-date has been possible for me is a website called Workaway. For a small fee (around £25 for 2 years), you can apply around the world for volunteering opportunities (you can search for free); anything from helping run a hostel, house sitting, to working on a coffee farm.
The typical rule of thumb? You work 3-5 hours per day, 5 days per week in return for at least 1 meal per day & a bed.

Let’s put this into numbers. In the two weeks I spent in San Carlos, I spent circa £180. The best bit? £120 of that was on private Spanish lessons. Imagine this, without those lessons, I’d be spending around £120 per month to live. In comparison, whilst living in Leeds my living costs were circa £1200-£1500 per month (rent, bills, lifestyle etc. included). Obviously I was earning money back then, but the concept of earning money somewhere like the UK for 3 months, then spending 9 months living on that money somewhere like Colombia is entirely feasible and I just made hard evidence of that. If you can remotely run a business from somewhere like Colombia, you really are laughing. More on that in a future blog post.

So what was I doing whilst Volunteering? Spanish Adventure is a language school teaching Spanish in a truly unique way. Not only do the two Colombian owners, Daniel and Camilo teach you Spanish; one of the benefits of being in such a remote town is the ability to test your Spanish on the locals, because if you want a beer or directions, you have no other choice. It doesn’t end there. 5 times per week, they take you on an adventure to explore the amazing surrounding nature.

Okay I admit, when I first arrived, I felt like an adopted child to an established family. But, after just 24 hours, I felt like I was already part of that family. The amazing part of this story? I had not only left the UK and Europe, but travelled to Colombia, South America, and then onto a tiny town hours way from the major cities and somehow, somehow I still manage to meet such incredible people at Spanish Adventure – this still amazes me today.

So what were my highlights and lowlights (is that a word?)? I realise my last post was rather lengthy so lets look at a typical day as a volunteer in San Carlos.

09:00 – 10:30am – Wake in a shared dorm. Luckily for me, I shared the 4-bed dorm with two really awesome gals who were dead easy to get along and share a room with. Grab breakfast (granola with chia seeds, fruit & nuts, with slices of plantain (Colombia’s answer to the banana)). I’m actually eating fried plantain as I write this post.

10:30 – 12:00 – Private Spanish lesson – I loved Daniel & Camilo as they took the classes at my (very slow) pace, and to my delight, injected humour into the lessons whenever I was looking confused (very, very often).

13:00 – 14:00 – Almuerzo (lunch) with the other volunteers. Lunch was included and provided by the superb local restaurant downstairs. Genuinely delicious food and great variety throughout the week.

14:00 – 15:00 – trabajar (work)/workout with Tracey. Work was really relaxed here, as long as you made a fair contribution during the week, it didn’t matter when, how or where you worked from. Before I left the UK, I took about 10 free classes at Google’s pop up store in Sheffield (I believe its’ still there – definitely recommend). I learnt about digital marketing strategies, starting a “startup” business, writing for social media etc. I figured this would be useful for my travels as all businesses need help in these areas. And lets be honest – what tiny business in Colombia needs help with Cyber Security? My lack of skills outside of technology resorted to my Workaway profile reading something like, and I paraphrase, “I try really hard at things, please choose me”.

If we weren’t working, we were following Tracey’s awesome bootcamp workout. This was tough and my abs have never ached so much, but definitely worth the pain, such a great motivator! Sometimes we would do this in the evening and watch the fireflies as we run around the track. One night after a workout, we just laid and stared at the clear sky and twinkling stars – beautiful.

Back to San Carlos, if you search Google for keywords such as “Spanish language immersion” and ever see an ad from Spanish Adventure – that was me! Oh, and if you’re interested in digital marketing, or run your own business with a web presence, I would recommend a book called “The ultimate guide to Google Adwords”. It’s interesting to see what Google really does behind the scenes of their search engine and advertising network.

15:00 – 18:00 – adventure time. There are so many to choose from here but I’ll try to summarise my favourite three.

1. La roca. They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Have 3,000.

The rock from the Spanish adventure balcony (also pictured is perhaps the world’s naughtiest cat, Natsu – and no, he shouldn’t be on the roof…):

Me climbing the top end of the rock (credit to Tracey for taking the pic!):

The view from the top of the rock:

You can just make out a built-up area in the middle of the picture, that’s San Carlos.
About 10 mins after I took this picture, cloud surrounded us for the next two hours, protecting us from the sun. We could see nothing as we blindly flew kites and ate BBQ seasoned chicken topped with drizzled honey (try this!) and lime flavoured wafers (definitely try these!). On the way back down we jumped in a natural pool to cool off and grabbed some beers.

2. La Planta
A short walk from the house, here we played (somewhat competitive) Volleyball, cooled down with beers from the bar, played futbal (England beat Venezuela – great game Anthony) and cooled down further with a swim in the river and chilled with more beer and the odd smoke. Amazing place but it’s truly the company that make it special.

3. Cielo Escondido (Hidden Heaven)
This place was special. We swam against the river’s current up towards the waterfall and when we get there, we jump in at the top and let the current take us down the waterfall and the best bit? If you go down the right way, the strength of the current at the foot of the waterfall plunges you underwater for 3-5 seconds and gently pushes you back up. Such an exhilarating feeling. The locals said this was “un poca peligroso” – a little dangerous – yup.
Okay so the actual best bit? Me accidentally being taken down the waterfall head first, whilst sensible Aleah was patiently waiting.
It get’s better. The legend known as Tatiana caught this on video. I actually upgraded my free WordPress account so that I could upload this video, and you know how tight I am, obviously I scoured the net for a discount code (wordpress.com/tim), but still. Enjoy!

Hope you enjoyed that as much as I crapped my pants (and by pants, Sam, I don’t mean trousers).

18:00 – 21:00 – free/work/cocktail time. I would sometimes hit the plaza and grab a few beers whilst reading, writing my blog, working etc. and grab a cold (not out of choice!) shower before dinner (sometimes…). That’s if we weren’t at the cocktail bar with the group, £1.25 mojitos, yes, you read that right, and they were so so good.

Two of the volunteers would cook in the evening for the whole group, once per week, allowing every volunteer to cook whatever their home comfort food was for the group. I think tacos were my favourite. Obvio (this is actually the Spanish translation for obviously – how cool) when I cooked it was so bad that, half the group didn’t return from the cocktail bar to sample my not-so-delightful-pasta-stir-fry gone wrong; do not blame them one bit.

21:00 – 22:00 – dinner. I obvio got ripped by the Canadians and Americans for calling this “tea-time”. Dinner it is.

22:00 – indefinitely. Perhaps my favourite time of the day. Chimbita time. “Chimbita” translates to “cool place to hang” (I think). Be careful using this word as “chimbia” translates to “vagina”… Here we played games, drank a lot, took the piss out of each other a hell-of-a-lot, smoked and most importantly, bonded. Chimbita time in action:

What else?

• I got burnt, and lost, again.
• I almost, almost lost my swim-shorts when being dragged by the current in a different river. To my embarrassment, although the group watched on whilst I was being dragged away, they don’t know how close I was to being naked for the rest of the adventure, perhaps until now.
• There were two house bunnies that lived with us at Spanish Adventure, they ate the world (literally) and also some very valuable plants…
• The weather in San Carlos was the total opposite to England, it was consistent. Every day practically guaranteed sun in the day and storms over the hills at night. Check out the storm which woke me and the other volunteers at 3am one morning:
  
• One night I was rudely awakened by Natsu who jumped on my top bunk and was trying to work out how to get through the mosquito net. To my horror, I couldn’t sleep for the next 30 minutes as one of my fellow volunteers was rather vocally having a great time with a local in the room next door. Lovely. It would be unfair to name names. Her first name started with a T and ended with an A.
• One night, as part of my Spanish language learning, I had to sing a Spanish song on karaoke in front of the group – La Primavera – Manu Chao (have a listen and imagine how shite I was). I partially made up for it by singing Oasis, Wonderwall – what else???
• The cockroaches are big in Colombia:
  
• Thank you Aleah for showing me how to make Arepas!
• Aguardiente, the national Colombian spirit tastes like Sambuca. It brought back some really bad memories. Just saying.
• Somewhere in the two weeks, I went 3-4 days without showering – instead bathing in rivers or waterfalls – that’s okay, right?
• The cats at Spanish Adventure (primarily Natsu) love toying with their prey, if you don’t agree with mother nature, don’t look at the next picture (a giant cricket, still alive, being tortured, in turn, by the two cats):

Travel tips: I thought it may be useful to leave some travel tip’s I’ve learnt along the way, in case others plan on taking their own adventure:

1. Using Google Maps, download an offline map of the area you’re visiting, before you visit.
2. Download the Google Translate app and download the language for where ever you are visiting. Google really is your friend.
3. Don’t bring waterproofs unless you plan on doing a lot of hiking, I took far too much “just in case” stuff. I may do a post in future on what to bring and what to leave at home, now I’ve experienced it for myself.
4. Visit Colombia – it’s beautiful, if you aren’t tempted yet, you’re a little broken.

Next I’m off on a spontaneous trip to Guatape – talk soon.

TSTFDCMCMAJAL