Letting go

Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005

It's easy to get a kick in Colombia - just strap yourself to a steel cable suspended over a ravine. Julian Glover tries canopying above the coffee plantations Julian Glover Wednesday March 16, 2005
http://travel.guardian.co.uk

"Put your legs out, grab the harness and don't let go." Juan was insistent. Clipped by a belt to a thin steel cable, I was standing on a wooden platform above a ravine in central Colombia and about to go canopying.

The sport - zipping from hilltop to hilltop slung from a high-speed pulley - is the latest craze to hit a country that never stops thrill-seeking. It looks perilous and probably is, but, jeered on by a busload of children watching a foolish gringo, retreat was impossible. So I jumped. Seconds later, I was swooping in the sun, flying fast above the steep, khaki-green slopes. Yes, the experience was bird-like - but it was the experience of a rather junior bird that that has no control over where it is going and hasn't learned yet how to land.

Far beneath, I could see coffee bushes heavy with red berries, ripe for picking. Above me there was a ridge of ice-capped mountains rising into the clouds, part of the Andean spine that splits Colombia, top to bottom, for 1,000 miles.

But my attention was fixed on something more immediate: stopping. Zooming towards the end of the cable, I reached up and held on with a hand protected by a frayed leather glove. Juddering to a halt, coffee branches whipping past my face, I tumbled into the red volcanic mud.

In Colombia you don't need to hunt for artificial excitement. The peril of being in a country routinely placed among the most dangerous in the world seems enough - even if, like my group of four, you come across no sign of the country's criminal and terrorist gangs. As the night flight from Miami to Bogotá escapes the US, slides over eastern Cuba and crosses the coast, all those Foreign Office warnings return to mind. "There is widespread guerrilla and paramilitary activity in most areas of the country," the FO warns on its website. "There is a serious risk of kidnapping and crime."

By the time the plane begins to sink into the darkness, fires burning orange in the forest below, the folly of taking a holiday in a country where 23,000 people were murdered in 1989, the worst year of violence, seems obvious.

Yet the idea that Colombia equals chaos falls away once you get there. Crime - though still high - is dropping under the aggressive rule of President Uribe. Large parts of the country too dangerous to visit three years ago are now safe - or so people tell you.

Most Colombians welcome the president's attack on the leftwing terrorists and rightwing paramilitaries who have brought misery to what should be a prosperous democracy, even if international observers are alarmed at the alleged human rights abuses that have resulted. I began in Bogotá, Colombia's capital. Big, sprawling and mostly modern, it's no beauty spot. But neither does it have the squalor of Lima or La Paz to the south. And its gentrified colonial core, La Candelaria, feels like a Spanish colonial city in the Andes rather than the wannabe Miami I had feared.

One very good reason for this is the Hotel de la Opera. A boutique hotel set around a pair of courtyards in a colonial house, it exemplifies taste and good service at prices which, thanks to Colombia's depreciating peso, few other places can match. Up on the roof, the hotel's gourmet restaurant offers a free-ranging view of the mountains that ring the capital and the colonial churches and contemporary skyscrapers that dot its core. Dinner was elegant, and a good bottle of Rioja cheaper than in Barcelona.

There was time in Bogotá, too, to see the Fundacion Botero, a stupendous collection of modern art donated by Colombia's foremost artist, Fernando Botero. One beautifully lit room contained enough Picassos, Miros and Dalis to make a Manhattan curator jealous. Botero himself paints Colombians as grossly fat, dancing, drinking - and occasionally fighting.

I hadn't come to Colombia for the cities, though. I soon caught a cable-car up out of the centre and onto the rim of mountains that overlooks it. At the top is Monserrate, a Catholic shrine that on Sunday afternoons sums up South America's dizzying social divide. At one end of a winding path, overshadowed by the Australian gum trees, smart city families sit lunching in restaurants. At the other side, Bogotá's, poor eat grilled maize in a row of tin shacks along a mud ally.

A day later I flew to Manizales, a 30-minute flight (or six-hour bus ride) away, and a prosperous, pocket-sized, modern city at the heart of Colombia's coffee region. Thanks to earthquakes, no building seems to be more than half a century old. But it's a go-ahead sort of place, a bit like South Africa or rural Australia, full of students, nightclubs and jazz bars.

This was our guide Juan's hometown - and he was proud of it, even the insanely ugly concrete cathedral. Fit, friendly and relentlessly upbeat, Juan is a thirty-something explorer with a passion for mountains exceeded only by his passion for climbing them in cutting-edge outdoor gear.

In a week he took us up to the wind-blasted 5,100m glacial summits of the Parque de los Nevados, one of Colombia's 22 spectacular national parks, and then deep down into the tropical coffee country surrounding it. Along the way we climbed ice slopes, rode horses into Andean cloud forest, watched humming birds dart about the skies, swam in deep rivers, drank beer, ate steak, roast plantain and beans, and discovered a country that welcomes visitors with enthusiastically - utterly distant from Colombia's reputation for being good at narcotics, terrorism and little else.

"This is so beautiful," Juan would say every five minutes or so - and he was right. Colombia's national colour is yellow, but it should be green: not just for its emerald mines but for the plants that cover the country from the Amazon to the Andes. With 55,000 plant species, a third unique to Colombia, the country's ecology is the second most diverse in the world. Given the country's huge internal travel industry, the question isn't whether to explore, or even how, but what.

We concentrated on the mountains. For two days we walked and drove past volcano-blasted rocks and into a rare high-altitude wilderness, the Paramos, with sweeping views that could have come from the Scottish highlands - except for the condors flying overhead looking for carrion.

The valleys below, though, were best of all. At one end of the Nevados national park, Sorento sits at the head of the lush Corocora valley, its paddocks shadowed by elongated wax palms, the world's tallest palm species and Colombia's national tree. With its brightly painted wooden houses, white picket fences and a local obsession with horses, Corocora was part Kentucky, part Lost World.

That night we set out on bamboo rafts in the dark. As the stars came out above, our fisherman-cum-oarsman yelled monkey cries into the bush and cast his net again and again into the river. We dived off and swam alongside until there was no light left. Bouncing through rapids, we wished we had come with a full moon - though there was just enough light to eat our dinner perched on a rock, the white water splashing past and the banks lit by fireflies. "This is so beautiful," said Juan, yet again. And yet again, he was right.

Way to go

Getting there

British Airways no longer flies direct from London to Bogotá, but you can fly via Madrid with Avianca.

Getting around

Colombia is a large and mountainous country and security-conscious locals tend to fly on all but short journeys. Tickets on the national airline, Avianca, and most of its many private rivals, can be booked online from the UK. Avianca flies several times each day to Manizales and other towns in the country's coffee region. Flights take under an hour.

Colombia's roads are in good condition and the country has an intensive if confusing interurban bus service. Aggressive driving and the threat of terrorist and paramilitary activity mean the Foreign Office warns against travelling by road, especially at night. The seven-hour bus journey from Bogotá to Manziales is generally regarded as safe, but take local advice before setting out.

Safety

With care, Colombia is not a dangerous country to visit. Security has improved markedly in the last three years, particularly in the populous central part of the country.But many parts - including most of the Amazon region - should be regarded as off-limits and other areas, including some national parks, should only be visited after taking local advice. The Foreign Office discourages travel outside major urban areas or at night.

Contacts

In Bogotá there is the excellent Hotel de la Opera (bookings available online), in a restored colonial building in the city's historic Candelaria district. The hotel will collect guests from the airport.

In the coffee region, Juan Diego Giraldo is an enthusiastic, English-speaking guide working for a company that specialises in adventure travel in the Parque los Nevados and the surrounding area. He can provide up-to-date information on safety in the region, and can be contacted at jdgiraldo@starmedia.com

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
Parques Nacionales colombianos