South American Adventure: The tip of the continent...and finally...!

First of all. One quick aside. Colombia has no "u"s in it. Yep, none. Only "o"s. Now that we`ve got that clear...And how the heck has it been almost a month since we`ve posted?? Time flies when you`re out of internet range.

Even though our adventure is far from over, we have successfully traversed the entire South American continent. We made it from the most southern point, Cape Horn, Chile, to the most northern point, Punta Gallina, Colombia! I can`t believe we`ve done so much traveling. Also, another milestone just passed...5 months of traveling away from the US.

Before you check out the pictures below, it turns out that it`s pretty difficult to travel for this long. Of course, we miss all of you guys...our friends and family...but it`s also just taxing going from hostel to hostel every few days (not to mention finding these places that are in our limited budget and actually clean!), dealing with some of the South American attitudes (ie: lack of service or care at all for customers...we have so many freakin examples...like the bus ticket guy who I approached, asked for a bunch of information about the schedule, fares, etc. and he looked directly up at me, then proceeded to start a call on his cell phone. Come on.), and of course the budget. The never-ending part about having to be cheap to travel for this long. One of the ways that we`ve dealt with it is to camp. We`ve logged over 45 days of camping this entire trip. Crazy! And we didn`t even bring a tent down here, we had to buy it. It totally saves money and to be honest it is a lot cleaner than a lot of these super cheap places too. The second thing that we`ve been doing has to do with food. We`ve been cooking whenever possible and that definitely makes it cheap. Tonight, for example, we made pasta with fresh tomato sauce, garlic, sauteed onions, and broccoli. It cost us less than $5 for both of us. Done. We`ve also been splitting meals a ton. Turns out, we don`t really need two totally meals. Yep. Lastly, alcohol. Expensive. For special occasions only now! (kinda...). Of course, there is the once-in-awhile special occasion that we have to splurge on...see below.

So back to the awesome things we`ve been able to do since Cartagena...

One of the major things that I`ve been wanting to do down here is get some good kitesurfing time in the warm Caribbean water. It`s mostly off-season down here, but there is just ONE area where the wind blows all year long. The northern tip of Colombia has two spots, one called Cabo de la Vela (literally Cape of the Wind) and Punta Gallina (the far northern tip of the country, named "Chicken Point"). So what did we need to do? Figure out a way to get up there!

I got in touch with a kitesurfing instructor here named David of Kiya Kitesurfing. He was awesome. He decided to drive us up north to check out these two spots, and boy we were in for a treat, including a whole different culture.

Northern Colombia is home to the Wayuu people, who live in a completely different way than the rest of the country. It`s basically a huge desert up North, but completely beautiful, serene, and peaceful. There`s some interesting stories up there too, as the territory basically used to be controlled by the drug traffickers. With the drug cartels gone (since about 10 years ago), the locals don`t really have any way of making money. We were hooked up with an organization that ran a hotel (ha, barely..see the pictures below!) that we stayed in. This organization is great, it is a non-profit that is helping to expand tourism and trade within the local Wayuu villages up and down the coast. For example, lobster is plentiful here, but there`s no means of distributing it to the major cities down South, so they`re setting this up. They`re doing it all in a sustainable way. Very interesting. Life up there is really different too. Life is VERY simple up there, and super relaxing. It`s basically eat, sleep, and tend your goats (or in our case, kitesurf!).

Oh, one more thing. This place is remote. It`s about a 10 hour drive directly from Cartagena, then imagine yourself in a small fishing boat braving 15 foot waves. Headfirst, into the wind. When they told us to put on the lifejackets at the beginning we thought they were crazy, but after the huge waves that were trying to sink us, we thought thought we were crazy for getting into the boat!