When in Rome…

It’s been at least three months since we got on a flight and went on holiday, so must be time to dust off the passports and scratch the travel itch again! It’s also time to escape the winter weather in London – despite a spring-like week, we have now been plunged back into the snow with another blast of cold from the east. I don’t know about you but I am definitely ready for some sunshine and double-digit temperatures now in London!

So off to Rome we went for a short three-night break to cram in some culture, relaxation and some of my favourite food!

Our home in Rome was across the river in Trastevere – so called because it is across ‘tras’ the river Tiber – or ‘Tevere’ in Italian. Trastevere is a lively, colourful and extremely busy neighbourhood, with tourists and locals mingling side by side. Home to hundreds of bars and restaurants we were spoilt for choice and the standard of food and drink was generally very high – as you might expect in Rome.

We ate huge pizzas, stretched thin and stone baked; handmade pasta with delicious carbonara and amatriciana sauces; crispy, deep-fried Roman artichoke and decadent homemade tiramisus. This is no place to visit if you’re watching your waistline, though perhaps the several miles we walked every day might begin to counter the calories as we took in the sights. Perhaps not!

Tiramisu

As an aside, did you know that carbonara doesn’t traditionally contain any cream – just eggs, bacon and parmesan? It seems odd that in the UK it is made with cream. In any case, the Italian version is SO much nicer. We even found a restaurant that specialises in carbonara (and other egg-based dishes) and sat at a table overlooking the kitchen as the chefs prepared our patsa dishes before our eyes. I had a black truffle carbonara and Kev opted for the prawns with citrus zest version – so good!

Carbonara

Even our breakfast pancakes that I whipped up every day from our little apartment we were staying in tasted somehow better than at home – probably due in part to the fresh ingredients and higher quality of flour, since so much Italian cuisine requires a high-grade flour. Anyway, I digress…

On to the historical and cultural sights – of which Rome boasts so many it’s almost overwhelming to read the guidebook! Surely we’d need a month in Rome if we were going to even begin to see everything!

We started with the Coliseum – perhaps Rome’s most famous, or most popular attraction – and understandably so. Battling through the crowds of tourists, the first glimpse of the epic coliseum is impressive and the mind boggles at how it was built without modern day machinery, just human labour. Coupled with the stories of the battles/entertainment that took place within its walls, it is a sight to behold and so richly steeped in history.

The Coliseum

Inside the Coliseum

We continued our stroll through the Forum, taking in the structures and other monuments of ancient Rome, heading via the elaborate Pantheon, up to the ornate Trevi Fountain (throw in a coin over your left shoulder and it means you will one day return to Rome) and down the Spanish Steps.

The Forum

The Pantheon

Next, on to the Vatican city – though we decided against joining the huge snaking queue to go inside, instead choosing to soak up the culture from the outside.

The Vatican

It’s easy to see why Rome is so well-loved, with its cobbled streets, beautiful churches and painted buildings – in equal parts decadent and ramshackle. You don’t need to look far to experience its charm as it’s visible on every street corner and down every alleyway in Central Rome.

We didn’t quite escape Northern Europe’s weather though – and used the torrential downpours and thunderstorms as an excuse to bar hop, sampling some of the delicious local craft beers and locally-produced wines between the showers. I imagine the city is an entirely different place in the forty-degree heat of the summer!

At last on our final day in the city, the sun shone and we enjoyed a day wandering around with the Colegates, who happened to be passing  on their way through Italy (next stop Sicily.) After a final history lesson, pizza and glass of wine in the sunshine, we headed back to the airport for our flight home, already hoping we can one day return.

The Colegates - photo courtesy of Caragh!

Medellin

So, on to country number ten! After two changes of plane in Panama City (one stopover, one broken engine cover) we landed in Medellin. Known as the City of Eternal Spring, for it’s cool climate – so we were able to enjoy a few days away from the heat and humidity of the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica  – though that said, it was a different kind of humidity in Medellin as rainy season has just begun in Colombia, so we had some heavy rain and thunder storms most days.

Medellin is probably most famous for being home to the late Pablo Escobar, renowned drug-lord and dictator. Unfortunately, the recent ‘Narcos’ series on Netflix has glamorised Escobar’s life, which the local people are unhappy about as he brought about a lot of suffering, including kidnappings, murders on the streets of Medellin.

Pablo in prison

We went on a Pablo Escobar and City tour with Fede, the owner of our hostel, born and raised in Medellin, and who experienced first-hand life under the rule of Escobar.

 

Fede was friends with Pablo Escobar’s son at school and so spent time in his family home. Unrelated to this, he was later kidnapped by FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) Guerillas, held hostage for 17 hours, beaten and released only when his family paid the ransom. 

Fede took us to Escobar’s first family home in Medellin, the prison that was both built by and housed Escobar and the house in which he was later shot (apparently by the Colombian Police, though many believe he killed himself before the police could get to him).

The view from the prison was stunning – essentially affording Escobar a view over all of Medeillin – and despite being locked up, he could see exactly what was going on with views over the airports and oversee his business still being run.

 

View from Pablo Escobar's prison cell

On the tour, we also visited Barrio Antioquia, famous for being the dodgy suburb, next to a very well-to-do suburb – and one that the police won’t go in to.

 

Fede drove us through the neighbourhood pointing out to us who was selling the drugs, as well as the ‘watchers’ on every corner, checking for suspicious activity, unknown vehicles and so on… We even saw someone indiscreetly handing over a roll of banknotes in exchange for drugs in broad daylight. Fortunately, we viewed all this from the safety of the car and didn’t stay for long!

Lastly, we went to Comuna 13 -  once Medellin’s most dangerous neighbourhood, now transformed into a vibrant and colourful district, where local residents are no longer afraid to leave their homes – and it’s a destination for tourists alike.

 

Comuna 13

Colourful Comuna 13 

The ramshackle brick houses atop one another climb up the hill, in a very densely populated neighbourhood. Where once the close proximity of the houses meant gang-members could make a quick get-away (it is said there are secret passageways between some of the houses to facilitate an easy escape), then are now painted brightly with street art and a series of escalators run up through the comuna and the streets are filled with enterprising locals selling empanadas and mango ice cream, and tourists taking photographs against the colourful backdrop.

Kev posing by the street art in Comuna 13

We had an alternative view of Comuna 13 when we took a cable car over the city to Park Arvi, where we planned to do some walking, however, it started raining heavily pretty much as soon as we got out, so we stopped for a craft beer and a game of chess at the top then jumped back on the cable car back down as it looked like the thunder storm and rain was about to settle in for the afternoon.

There’s a great foodie scene in Medellin, along with some great local and national beers, which we are gradually working our way through! Favourite so far include Club Colombia, Chapinero Porter from the BBC Bogota Beer Co. and Medellin brewed ‘3 Cordilleras Sweet Stout’.

Live from the BBC (Bogota Beer Co)

Next, we are on our way to Cartagena, via Tolu and the Islas San Bernardos, an archipelago of ten islands in the Caribbean Sea, including Santa Cruz del Islote, the most densely populated island on Earth – every part of the tiny island is covered by houses.

 

Santa Cruz del Islote

We made a stop on Tintipan and spent the afternoon on the beach, but unfortunately it meant for sand-fly bites for Kev!

 

Isla Tintipan

I’ll write again from Cartagena.

Oaxaca

We’ve spent the last week in Oaxaca City, set amongst the mountains in south-west Mexico at an altitude of 1600m. It’s a colourful place, literally and metaphorically, proud of its music, culture and food.



Oaxaca's main pedestrian street

As in other parts of the country the buildings are brightly painted and the region is famous for its colourful handicrafts, as touted on stalls and by every street corner by enterprising locals.

 

Plaza Santa Domingo

One of Oaxaca's many churches

In the Zocalo, Oaxaca’s central square, there is live music every night – from traditional ‘banda’ (Mexican brass band), to mariachi bands, marimba players and buskers singing and playing guitar or cello.  At any one time in the square, you’re likely to hear at least two performances going on – I’m not sure how it’s possible for the musicians to concentrate and tune out the other music – but they are all keen to earn their evening’s tips!

I don’t think I realized how much of the music I like it influenced by the warm Mexican big-band brass sound. Of course, now it’s obvious, many of the bands I like are from the southern states in the USA, not too far from Mexico, so it’s obvious that the influence might creep across the border.

Here’s a track for you to listen to – and for those of you who know the bands Beirut, or Neutral Milk Hotel – see if you can hear the similarities (though less so in the vocals!)
 

The Zocalo is also home to many shoe-shiners and balloon sellers – there are surely too many of them to all compete with each other, but it all adds to the colour of the square.

Shoe-shiners in the Zocalo

Balloon-seller

One day we did a trip to nearby mountain village, Cuajimoloyas for some hiking and zip-lining. At an altitude of 3200m it was much cooler and a welcome relief from the scorching temperatures in the city. A three-hour hike, however, was exhausting at that altitude, where the air was so much thinner!

 

View from Cuijimoloyes

 

Looking down on to Oaxaca City

We ended the day zip-lining from one mountain village to another – a one kilometre zip line, eighty-metres high and travelling at 60kmph! Well done to Kev for facing his fear of heights to do this!

Zipline from Cuajjimoloyes to Benito Juarez

The foodie scene in Oaxaca is also something they are very proud of and it’s possible to eat very well and very cheaply, with lots of family-run traditional restaurants, food markets and local specialties, including Oaxaca’s own ‘string’ cheese (a bit like mozzarella), locally brewed craft beer, stout and mezcal.

Breakfast of champions!

We enjoyed a meal in the local market – a passageway full of barbecues serving grilled meat, chorizo, chilies and onions. We got rather more than we could eat – our limited Spanish meaning we were unsure quite how much we were getting and the locals taking the opportunity to sell us things by blinding us with science! The meal was cheap and delicious, however!

This led us to signing up for a crash course in Spanish – sixteen hours over four mornings – so whilst we’re still very much beginners, we can at least say a few sentences now and conjugate a few verbs! We’ll practice what we’ve learnt during the rest of our trip – all of which is in Spanish-speaking countries.

Next, we'll head down to Zipolite on the Pacific Coast next for a spot of beach time. I'll blog again from there.

 

Tulum

A relatively quiet week (in terms of activity) for us this week as we took time to stop and stay in one place for a while. We’ve been to Tulum a few times before so we knew we’d be happy to spend a bit of time here. It’s also a good place to get some work done so we worked and relaxed hard on the many lovely beaches in the area.

Tulum Beach

Posing on the rocks!

Not so quiet was our week in terms of noise, as our ten-day stay just so happened to coincide with a ten-day Mayan music festival to celebrate the harvest. We found out the festival takes place twice a year and in our case, took place on the exact dates of our stay in Tulum!

The Mayans sure know how to party, kicking off around 10pm and finishing up around 4.30am every night. Lucky for us we were well-equipped with earplugs and decent noise-cancelling headphones as the music was so loud!

Unimpressed at the lack of sleep on our first night, Kev took it upon himself to craft a two-page letter to the accommodation management, written in Spanish (using Google Translate) at 4am – I would pay good money to see a copy of this letter now and wonder if it made sense in his sleep-deprived, non-Spanish speaking state!

We have been ‘glamping’ this week – essentially canvas tents with thatched, cabana-style roof and a real king-sized bed inside. All brand new and very comfortable with a pool and free bike hire to get around town.

Kev chilling out in the pool

We made the most of the bikes to cycle down to the beach and back most days – a respectable 15km round trip. The beach is stunning, on the Caribbean coast, but it has been really windy, which has washed in a lot of seaweed. However, it’s also a nice cool breeze to cut through the heat of the day and good fun playing in the waves, despite the odd piece of seaweed hitting you in the face!

Dodging the seaweed at Tulum Beach

We also went to visit some of the other beaches and cenotes just outside of town: Ixcacel beach (also very windy) is where the turtles go to lay their eggs, though being there in the daytime, we didn’t actually see any whilst we were there.

Turtle Beach at Ixcacel

A cenote is a fresh-water pool formed when a limestone cave collapses. There are loads of them in this part of Mexico and are great for swimming and snorkelling. The colour of the water is just gorgeous too.

Ixcacel Cenote

Kev claims he once saw a baby crocodile in one and today, in Casa Cenote, we were talking to a scuba diver who had just seen a six-foot croc during his dive in the same cenote! He said the croc was eating a duck when he saw it, so wasn’t concerned that it might also be interested in him for lunch, but I think he must have had nerves of steel to not freak out!

 

Casa Cenote

We went for a swim but after hearing that story we stayed pretty close to the edge, in case the hungry crocodile comes back out! Sat on the edge, we had our own mini 'fish spa' with little fish nibbling at our toes!

 

Our own mini fish spa!

We made friends with the owner of a local Mayan restaurant during our stay. Having planned to just pop in for a quick drink on our way back from the beach, he kept bringing us tortillas, salsas and Mayan specialties that he wanted us to try, to get a real taste of the region. In the end, we didn’t have room for dinner that night, but we did make sure we gave him a particularly generous tip when only charged us for the drinks.

We went back for dinner again a couple of nights later and loved the local fresh fish, ceviche, refried beans and other specialities he prepared for us. We continue to eat well – especially when tacos for two cost as little as £1.50!

Kev and the Mayan family

The contrast in Tulum is the glut of high-end resorts and Western-style restaurants versus the local Mexican and Mayan establishments – there’s a real divide between the rich tourists and the locals, but it’s still a nice town and done on a budget it is possible to live cheaply – fortunately we’re still on budget!

Today we head an hour along the coast to Playa del Carmen, then hop on the ferry across to Cozumel Island – most famous for scuba diving, and will be our first dives of the trip.