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Two hours on a rollercoaster bus ride later, we arrived in the quiet lakeside town of Guatape. Being the driest season in 25 years, the lake was totally dried up. However, we had a great week doing walks, swimming in the rivers and making our own meals, so we could avoid eating more Columbian slop. We went on a boat ride to see one of Escobar's many mansions. Its now bombed out and mostly destroyed as rival cartels tried to find his money believed to be stashed in the walls. The lake is actually man made and is used to create hydro electricity. They flooded a town of 12000 people to build the lake. Its quite shameful to see the modern innovative ways a ravaged country can generate electricity when in Guernsey we still burn oil.
On route to Bogota we stopped at Puerto Trionfo. For the sole reason to see Escobar's zoo. The man was so rich and eccentric he had his own zoo built and even had Hippopotamus' shipped over, a bull ring and a mini airport built. When Escobar died his Hippo's escaped into the wild and multiplied. Columbia now has the world's second largest population of wild Hippo's. The whole compound is now run as an amusement park and has a mini water park too.
The last 2 nights of our trip were to be spent in Bogota. This city felt extremely unsafe and has many homeless people. We spent our 2 days seeing the gold museum, doing a grafitti walking tour and taking a cable car ride to a nearby mountain to see the city from up high, didn't get to see anything due to our cloud following us.
Our flight back was with no frills (understatement of the year) airline Iberia via Madrid. When we got back to London we had a great night out at the Comedy Store, despite the jetlag. By the time we got back to our hotel we'd been awake for 33 hours. An exhausting end to an exhausting 6 month journey. Need a holiday now to recover.
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