Colombia - the jewel of South America (just keep it quiet, ok?)

The slogan for the Colombian tourist organisation is 'the only risk is wanting to stay' and I found it to be very true indeed. Colombia was a country I wanted to visit, even before my South American adventure began, however I wasn't sure if it was a realistic option. Mainly because, being a woman travelling on my own, I wasn't sure how safe I would be. But as I travelled I seemed to meet more and more people who told me how amazing Colombia was - very beautiful and relatively safe. So I did a bit of research of my own, and talked to everyone I could that had been there and I learned that Colombia is really trying to boost their tourism industry by making their country more tourist friendly - having better services for travellers, making it safer and of course, through advertising. Another traveller told me that it has become a safer place, even just in the last few years due too a few of the bigger drug cartels being busted. So feeling emboldened by my solo travel thus far, I decided to do it. I'd read that travel by night bus was not the safest (as I write this, some friends I met while travelling Colombia just told me they got robbed at gunpoint, on a night bus between Cali and Ecuador) so I decided to fly around Colombia. Avianca offers a cheap air pass whereby if you book a flight in or out of the country with them, you can book domestic flights with them for just US$70 per flight (except for a couple of destinations that cost US$140). I did some reading up on Colombia and decided where I would go in the two weeks I had. I decided to fly into the capital, Bogota, but nothing to see or do really stood out for me, so I headed straight for Salento, via Pereira. Salento is a small town located in the Zona Cafetera (the coffee zone) and as anyone who knows me will contest - I love my coffee, and I am somewhat of a coffee snob. I stayed in a hostel in a wonderful old plantation house (funnily enough, called Plantation House) which was owned by a very chatty British man, and his Colombian wife. They also owned a small coffee farm down the road, and the owner will quite happily take you on a tour (for a small fee of course) where you can see the coffee growing, and when it's the right season, see it being picked, dried and ground. There was free coffee in the hostel (which I totally overdosed on) and you could buy it to take home. The town is a lovely rural town in a picturesque setting of rolling hills. The quaint town square is surrounded with brightly painted buildings, there are restaurants where you can get a three course almuerzo (set lunch) for 6,000 pesos (about US$3), the locals all say 'hola' to you as you walk the country lanes and it's in close proximity to the Valle de Cocora, where giant wax palms grow, surrounded by little else. To get there, you go to the main square, get in a Jeep Willy and when it fills up (often with about eight people), off you go. When it drops you off, it's a five hour hike to the top of the hill but it was worth it. I got to see some hummingbirds up close, drink some weird tea that was served with cheese, and the view on the walk down from the top was amazing - hundreds of these tall wax palms swaying in the breeze. Salento, funnily enough, was where I met quite a few chicks travelling on their own - the only place I'd come across more was in Brazil. It was also the place where I was introduced to the awesomeness that is the game of tejo - a game involving throwing a metal disc at clay embedded with gunpowder, which explodes if you hit it. I don't usually have a talent for sports of any kind - but for this, I did. I think I need to find a local team and join up. Is it an Olympic sport? I may have found my niche.

After Salento, I flew to Santa Marta on the Carribean Coast. I went straight from the airport to the small fishing village of Taganga, minus my bag because it got left behind again - thankfully only for about 5 hours this time. I spent five days in Taganga, mainly relaxing and doing the PADI open water scuba diving course - something I've wanted to do since the first time I went diving in Thailand in 2004 and Colombia is one of the cheapest places in the world to do it, at a bargain US$300. Taganga was a very chilled little town with plenty of backpackers around and almost as many fresh juice stalls on the main road, where they'd whip up a combo of exotic fruits I'd never heard of for a ridiculously cheap price- a great way to start the day! After I'd been certified (as a scuba diver that is) I headed for

Tayrona National Park. To get to the park, you have to drive for about an hour from Taganga (in a van filled to the brim with backpackers, driven by a bung eyed, slightly sleazy Colombian who spoke no english) and then hike into the jungle for another hour and a half. But man, was it worth it. Beautiful beaches lined with coconut palms, crystalline blue water, and the only decisions that need to be made are whether to sleep in a a tent or in a hammock, and what to order for dinner from the one little cafe. I spent four great days here lying on the beach, trying to crack open coconuts in order to fill them with rum, hiking to the top of a massive hill, in jandals, to see some ancient ruins and.....not too much else. How's the serenity.

After my week on the Carribean coast, I flew to Cali. Cali is near the west coast of Colombia and has a reputation as a party city but I wasn't feeling so well when I arrived on a Saturday, so I didn't go out that night and I only stayed one more night, which was a Sunday and the hostel was almost completely empty. So I caught up on a few DVDs I've been wanting to see. Woah there - easy does it.

People ask me all the time what my favourite place in South America is, and I find it a pretty tough question to answer, but in the end I have to say Colombia. Despite the fact that the New Zealand travel advice website lists many of the places I visited in Colombia as being 'high risk' and the country in general as having a high incidence of kidnapping and a risk of terrorism, I never felt anymore threatened than I did anywhere else. The people are friendly, the landscape is beautiful, it's less well-trodden than all the other countries I'd been to so I felt like I was getting a bit more off the beaten track and there's great variety - whether you want to party, lie on a beach, hike, drink coffee, eat.....it's all there. And the more I saw of the country, the more I added to my list for next time - Cartagena, Medellin, Bogota - I will be back again for sure! Havana however, my next destination, was a different story altogether......