South America Travel Blog

Ecuador cuisine is as diverse as its geography, and varies according to the region’s elevation. Along the coast people prefer foods like plantains and seafood. In the mountains people eat a lot of starches (potatoes, rice, bread, corn and yuca or cassava are all common) and meats. Eggs are the most common breakfast food, often [...]

I’m sitting in a house that is half empty and half mine and, mentally, I’m only half here –  if that much. In-between times just suck. Basically, I am taking care of all the details that are necessary to complete a successful time trip from here to the closing date for the house. That date [...]

Cartagena de las Indias is a large city on the Caribbean Coast of Colombia. It has a population of a little over 950,000 people. Pedro de Heredia founded the Spanish Colonial city in 1533, naming it after Cartagena, Spain. It became a holding place for gold and treasures from the Americas until ships came to [...]

Guillermo León Sáenz Vargas, otherwise known as Alfonso Cano, the latest leader of the FARC insurgents, was killed during a military raid of his mountain top hideout in Cauca, in the southwest of Colombia. Cano, a Marxist, lead the FARC since 2008 when their co-founder and legendary leader, Manuel “Sureshot” Marulanda, died of a heart [...]

The Juan Curi Waterfalls are located about a half hour from the town of San Gil in the state of Santander, Colombia. To reach the waterfalls you can take a minibus from the local bus station in San Gil off of Calle 10. Ask the driver to let you off at las cascadas, waterfall in [...]

“Don’t drink the water.” This has to be one of the most commonly offered advice to a traveler going to Latin America. Don’t drink the water? THE water, in this sense, means that which comes freely from the tap. This advice is not unfounded in many parts of Latin America is palatable only by those [...]

The following photos are from Bogota, Colombia, and were taken in 2011 by Wade Shepard. They feature the districts: La Candalaria, Chapinero,and Parque 93. Bogota is one of the largest cities in the Americas — currently third only to Mexico City and NYC — and is a cosmopolitan world city in its own right. Bogota [...]

Here is a collection of tips about how to stay healthy when traveling in Colombia. It sounds strange to people who have been traveling throughout Latin America, but the tap water is actually safe to drink in some cities. In Bogota, Medellin, Manizales and Pereira, travelers can safely drink from the tap. In some smaller [...]

CARTAGENA- Colombia- “Waste is big business,” spoke Cameroon’s delegate to the tenth meeting of the Basel Convention in Cartagena, Colombia. We were sitting at the breakfast table of a hotel, across from him sat the environmental secretary of Nepal, to his right was the delegate for Cambodia. These men were here with 115 other delegates [...]