Colombia: reality bites

Massimo, our eccentric Italian hotel manager in Bogota, explained that when he was younger he had wanted to go to New Zealand or Australia, but they wouldn't let him in. He worked his way down his list of emigration possibilities and repeatedly had the door slammed in his face...until he ended up at the bottom of his list, in Colombia, where the doors were wide open.

I have to be honest. Matt and I are not enamored with Colombia. It has not delivered much of what the guidebooks, websites and traveller reviews claim is on offer. Maybe it's because our generation is so well travelled that there are few places in the world left to "discover" and people are desperate to be at the vanguard of a new destination. Or maybe some people genuinely like it here. I am not one of them.

I maintain that when you travel, sometimes you get lucky and a place unfurls itself. Your accommodation exceeds expectation, the weather is perfect, you stumble upon a great place or restaurant or meet some cool people, everything just comes together. Maybe our trip to Colombia is the antithesis of that or maybe Matt and I have very different world views from other people who travel here.

Fruit seller in picture perfect Cartagena

Cartagena may well be on the Caribbean, but "beach resort" it is not. Dark sand renders the sea a bleak murky stain, and though I'd agree that the old town is an "architectural gem" with its myriad crayola-coloured buildings, cascades of bougainvillea and pretty wooden balconies, after Mexico and Cuba our quota of Spanish colonial architecture has been filled to the brim. Maybe it is the quiet season, but the old town lacked a pulse.

Civil disobedience: tagging in Bogota

As for Bogota, it is a city of many faces, and one of them is moon-shaped. In certain areas, people defecate in the streets. And, as we observed with utter consternation, some of them make their deposits into bags and set them alight.

Paradise lost: Taganga

Place after place failed to live up to expectation. Our recurring disappointment plummeted to the depths of disbelief when we caught a collectivo from Santa Marta to Taganga, described by many backpackers as "paradise". In fact, we found ourselves in an uninspiring, dirty, fly-blown dump of a beach, with a few party-worn travellers littering the bars.

Coconut grove: road to perdition

A couple of days ago, I sat hiding from the rain in a dank "natural tent" on a beach north of Parque Tayrona, part of a fledgling surf camp. There was no surf, it was humid as a steam room, it was raining, and the rooms advertised on the website were at least two months off completion.

Natural tents

The so-called surf camp's website promised an "ecolodge" with en suite rooms. Instead we'd arrived at a building site, with four palapa shelters for sleeping and one for eating. I'd emailed asking about their four-day surf safari which promised a private room, all meals, surf lessons and board rental, and transport to the region's best breaks. I'd received a response saying that they did have room for us and I confirmed our arrival time. When we got there, they seemed totally unprepared.

The owners, two hapless Canadian brothers, clearly have some sort of vision, but both seem oblivious that at this stage it is nothing more than a pipe dream. With some people you feel like you can see the cogs going round, their brains operate at such low speed, but these guys seem trapped in a perpetual daze where senseless conversations skip and repeat, are forgotten, and then repeat again.

"So, which room shall we take?"

"Any one. There's the three palm tents, and there's a room upstairs"

"Okay, can we have a look at the one upstairs then?"

"Um, nah, I think some guy has his stuff in there"

"Oh, okay, well, which one should we take then?"

"Ah, any one"

"O-kay, we'll take one of the palm tents then"

"Cool, yeah, I need to get you guys some sheets"

"So, which one shall we take then?"

"Oh, yeah, I'll show you down in a minute"

It starts to rain, again. We shoot the breeze for a couple of minutes.

"Okay, I'd better get back to raking"

"Okay, cool, so, do you want to show us which room is ours then?"

[Blank look] "Oh, yeah, I completely forgot, follow me"

It took us 30 minutes to actually figure out which "room" was ours, another 30 minutes and circular conversations to get some sheets for the mattress, and another couple of hours to procure one towel for Matt and me to share between us.

Nice beach, pity about the rain & sand flies

I've been reading a book about three Americans who were held hostage by the FARC for six years in the Colombian jungle so I tried to remind myself that our accommodation was probably pretty good compared to theirs. The obvious fault in this line of thinking is that we are not being held hostage by machete-wielding guerrillas.

Once bitten, twice shy: surf camp bites

After an uncomfortable night on a damp mattress in our airless shelter, sharing one pillow and ravaged by insects, I walked the beach at dawn until the owners surfaced and could book us a taxi back to Santa Marta. The place has sucked us dry of any good feeling about Colombia - we both have colds and are covered in bites. I have never been bitten so badly in my life and spent the night scratching the hell out of my feet and legs, so vigorously, that at one point I managed to stub my toe against the wall (sadly, the pain wasn't sufficient to stop the itching).

Casa Verde: our Santa Marta sanctuary

To be fair, I have to admit that there have been some good parts to our experience of Colombia. Our hotel in Santa Marta is gorgeous and the guy who owns it is cool. It's a restored colonial home with a courtyard centred around a green-tiled plunge pool. Planters are filled with ornamental coca and dope plants.

La Candelaria: Bogota's oldest area

La Candelaria, the oldest part of Bogota, was interesting, and between the piles of human excrement are cobbled streets lined by painted colonial buildings, graffiti, students and grimey bars. Our hotel owner, Massimo, is a classic character who loves nothing more than holding court in his reception and telling random stories about datura, the mafia, his sideline in writing erotic fiction, his dogs and his attempts at becoming a dad. His righthand man, Danyel, is a sweet-natured guy who gave us lots of advice and insights into life in Colombia.

Bolivar Square: come saints, come sinners

Danyel believes that Colombians need to learn how to be good citizens, because the period when the FARC and Pablo Escobar were reigning terror across the country and countless politicians were abducted and assassinated was so divisive and encouraged the mentality of every man for himself. The collective mindset has suffered and Danyel pointed to the state of the streets, the reckless way people drive and the huge amount of tagging in Candelaria of examples of people not considering the impact of their actions on society.

He mentioned that one of the city's mayors, Lithuanian Antanas Mockus, had tried to teach Bogota's population to be good citizens. One initiative involved deploying mime artists armed with red and yellow cards to let drivers know when they'd wronged. Failure to give way to pedestrians: yellow card! Running a red light: red card!

Being under threat was part of Danyel's everyday life when he was a kid, his school's windows were taped up and bomb alerts and explosions were common. He said he remembers being quite desensitised to the violence. He did, however, become very afraid after an incident where the FARC fired a gas cylinder into a church where women and children were hiding, killing 130.

Not many people could make cycling look this cool

We did an excellent bike tour around Bogota with an American former journo, Mike, whose anecdotes provided some political and social context to an incredibly complicated place. These days, Colombia is one of the most politically progressive countries in Latin America. Abortion is legal (under certain circumstances), as is prostitution and euthanasia. Up until a couple of years ago, it was legal to possess drugs for personal use.

Tourists? Us? Incognito in Bogota

We visited the abortion district (the clinics line the streets around a major church), the fruit and vegetable market (where we sampled Colombia's abundant and unusual fruit, including quite a few we recognised from home such as feijoas and tamarillos), a chocolate factory and a coffee roasters, the informal street-side emerald exchange where men flash their rough gems on scraps of paper and negotiate sales, the site of presidential candidate Jorge Eliecer Gaitan's assassination, a square where children ride alpacas, a cevicheria selling "natural viagra" milkshakes - berraquillo - containing blended live crab which are claimed to compel imbibers to engage in "savage love", the cemetery (home to countless assassinated politicians), and the bull ring where more men have died by the hand of another than the charge of a bull.

Museo del Oro: Bogota's excellent gold museum

Bogota's Gold Museum is without a doubt among the best museums I've visited. It is world-class with an astonishing number of gold treasures and it is incredible to consider that what remains is a tiny fraction of what was taken by the Spanish, melted down to bullion and shipped back to Europe.

Ceviche: prawns, fish, squid & smoked mantaray

Arepa: street food goes gourmet at Lulo

We've eaten well in Santa Marta. The day we arrived from Cartagena, we had ceviche of prawns, fish, squid and smoked mantaray at Donde Chucho. As we sat on the edge of the plaza in the sunshine, Fat Freddy's Drop boomed out from the restaurant and we thought maybe it was a sign, perhaps our luck would turn. We also had excellent arepa (maize cakes) topped with steak, avocado, salsa and sour cream, washed down with passionfruit shakes at Lulo.

Cartagena: oh so pretty

The drive from Santa Marta to surf hell took us around the base of Tayrona National Park, a lush mountainous jungle. And Cartagena did indeed deliver on the promise of gorgeous architecture.

Back at the oasis of Casa Verde in Santa Marta, our flights have been rearranged and we are getting the hell out of Colombia a week early. Brazil is calling. Maybe we're missing something but I can't see any point sticking it out at the bottom of the list.