This is the mud volcano. It was muddy. And kind of crowded. I touched a lot of bodies that I didn´t mean to. After we got massaged by some natives inside the mud, some native women washed us in a lake. They tried to pull down our pants, i sort of stopped them. I wish I didn´t.


After the mud, we went to Taganga and went fishing. I harpooned this one. And tried to eat it right away because I was so excited. Ryan caught a couple fish with a fishing line. Literally just a fishing line. They made us pull the line in with our bare hands. I felt like we were in Old Man and the Sea. Ryan was the only one who caught one this way. I was the only one who harpooned one. Which way is manlier? For you to decide.


This was our fishing guide, Leondardo. I think that was his name. He caught a lot more fish than we did. He was a mer-man. Seriously. Without any fins, he could dive 30 feet to the bottom of the sea floor, while carrying a 10 pound harpoon in one hand, seek out the largest fish within 10 meters, and kill it. I couldn´t dive down more than 5 feet or so. Neither could the Dutch guys that were with us. Leonardo must have had magical swimming powers. He kind of looked like Mario effortlessly swimming in Mario 64. I think he caught about 10 fish or so. Above he is showing us how to gut and fillet what we caught. Ryan´s two fish are the pinkish ones in the foreground. We cooked them ourselves that afternoon, they were delicious!


Then we went to a huge national park called Tayrona. We hiked in a few hours through a sweaty jungle full of monkeys, and mosquitoes ready to infect us with Malaria and Yellow Fever. But in the end we got to see some awesome beaches. I really liked it here (even though Lewis said it was boring) because I could swim, sleep, play, climb, and go on adventures all day long. Below is me on a big rock. I did a triple somersault into the water right after this was taken.



These two girls are ´the kates´ both of them are named Kate. One is from the UK the other is Australian, but they both seem Australian. We ran into them multiple times throughout our trip and spent the whole time in Tayrona with them. This was our departing photo. It was very sad to see them go. They were awesome.


Then we went to San Gil, a small town in between the northern coast and Bogota. The first day we went white water rafting, which we don´t have any pictures of. But it was awesome. The next day we went rappelling down a 180 meter water fall.

That´s me up near the top in the green shirt and that´s Lewis half way down in the white shirt. Ryan had finished already and is taking the picture.

Exhilerating! w00t!




But our journey is now over. We are getting ready to fly away from this tropical hideout this afternoon. There are many more stories and photos to see, so find us and we will be happy to share!

After rappelling down the waterfall, we headed back into San Gil and caught the bus to Bogota. It was the first leg of the long journey home. Also, Ryan, Neil and I have been turned into two dogs and a cat. Here we are in front of the waterfall.

The bus service we used to get to bogota was Concorde. We chose Concorde for two reasons: one, their motto was "Always on time!" Two, the man at the desk kept yelling that they have buses gigantes. I don't know why this persuaded us, since both saying "Always on time" and saying "buses gigantes!" are costless and unverifiable signals. Any equilibirum where they are persuasive is unsustainable, because every single carrier can make unverifiable and costless claims so that then no information is conveyed by any single carrier doing it. As it turned out, the equilbirium is especially unsustainable, because Concorde is not freaking on time. They were an hour late getting to san gil, and then the trip took an hour and a half longer than it was supposed to. We didn't get into bogota until 130 AM.

Today we haded out. We're going to spend tonight in Brooklyn and then take a bus to philadelphia and drive to pittsburgh tomorrow.

Yesterday, we took a cab to a place where there was a bus. We took the bus to an old farm in the middle of the country. We asked a lady at the farm to locate a trail for us. And then we hiked the trail almost straight vertically for about 40 minutes. At the end was...a magnificent waterfall!

Two or three Colombian dudes offer a rappelling service where you literally just rappell over the side of the waterfall. As you descend the 180 meters, the water pounds down on your head like pennies someone keeps throwing down. The side is extremely slipery but there's lots of crevice to put your feet. I was scared as shit, needless to say, but I pulled it off. The hardest part of rappelling is the very start, when you have to fight every instinct and lean backwards off the side of a cliff. I made it a point to not look down until like a third of the way down.

Once I was going down, I noticed that my rope had periodic bundles of electrical tape to cover up frays. This would never fly in the states, but oh well, I made it.