Last year, one of my Bolivian friends got engaged. She told me right when it happened and that the wedding would be in Bolivia in 2026. I made a mental note of it, wondering when it would be. She then told me in October that it would be in April. Thus, I had six months to plan a vacation that would at least take me to Bolivia, and hopefully another South American country.
I wasn’t expecting to go back to Bolivia so soon after my last trip in 2023, but I was grateful for the opportunity and felt honored that my friend invited me. Upon receiving the invite, I wanted to add on another country I had never been to and decided on Colombia. I figured it would be a nice excuse to see one of my closest friends from law school, who had moved there after graduation, and who recently had a baby. I also wanted to go to the beach and, after doing some research, settled on the tropical Islas del Rosario in the Caribbean coast. With that set, I requested my two weeks off from April 17-May 4, I ironed out the details in the months leading up to the trip, and after a hectic start to April with work, I embarked on my much-anticipated return to South America.
I found that two weeks was a long time to be on my own traveling, changing places every couple of days. I always seem to make intense itineraries for myself when I go to South America. The latter half of the trip, I slept in a different place every night from Tuesday to Sunday. Granted, I was able to sleep a lot and sleep well, but it still felt taxing to constantly be on the move and on my own, fielding the same questions over and over, like “Are you traveling alone?” “Why didn’t your partner come with you?” “Why is your Spanish so good?” (It is primarily because my Spanish is so good that I feel completely confident traveling around South America on my own. That and the unlimited data roaming plan.)
This trip was primarily a social trip, since I was invited to a wedding after all. As such, I don’t have too much of my usual political commentary that I imbue my travel entries with. Perhaps this is a welcome change for my readers? So if you would like to see pictures of yummy food, cute dogs, and gorgeous people, read on! If you are here to read incisive social commentary, I suggest you read either of the following entries: the entry about the Galapagos, the entry about my custom-made ukulele, and my favorite entry about Bolivia. I am too pooped from my trip to make this entry of a caliber comparable to those entries.
I won’t go through a day by day account of what happened, as that would take too long. I will instead do a highlight summary of each place I visited that includes a brief description of what I did and photos.
CHICAGO: April 17-19
The trip began with a train ride to Chicago from Detroit. James joined me for this leg of the trip, and we met up with a couple friends while there. While there, We took an architecture tour with our friend and former roommate Meiry, and got dinner with our friend and my former coworker, Annika. Food wise I made sure to have my favorite ramen dish, tsukemen, because I can’t find it in Detroit, and we also checked out a delicious Kazakh cafe. We also visited a stationery store that I had been wanting to check out called Atlas Stationers. I marveled at the fountain pens crafted with exquisite and painstaking detail that cost thousands of dollars, and I treated myself to a new journaling pen that did not cost thousands of dollars.
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| Spicy tsukemen, my fave! |
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| I loved this pen but it was out of my budget. |
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| Delicious Kazakh burger at Tary Cafe. |
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| Amazing architecture. |
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| Me, James, and Meiry. |
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| The Chicago Tribune Tower has a ton of rocks and architectural fragments from around the world, and I found one from the Cartagena city walls, which was significant because Cartagena would be the final destination of my two-week trip. |
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| James, me, and Annika at a Filipino Cuban restaurant. |
SANTA CRUZ DE LA SIERRA: April 19-21
On April 19, I flew out of Chicago, passed by Panama City, and landed in Santa Cruz, Bolivia. My friend Jose Ernesto picked me up at the airport. He and I first met in 2015 when I was a college student and he was doing an English program in Boston, and we met again in 2017 when I was in Bolivia doing field research for my anthropology thesis. I hadn’t seen him since, so it was amazing to see him again. I stayed with him and his parents in his childhood home, where he continues to live. Although he was working during the day, we were able to catch up at lunch and dinner. He works as an interior designer for a construction firm. I also met up with my friend Fabiola, whom I also hadn’t seen since 2017. On my first visit, I went to Bolivia with one of my best friends from college, Julio. Fabiola is Julio’s cousin, and we laughed at how she’s seen me more times than she’s seen him since he moved to the US. After my steak dinner with Jose Ernesto, I got brownies for dessert with Fabiola, and we made sure to FaceTime Julio while we were together.
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| Chirimoya, a fruit native to South America, which I love and only ever have when I'm there. |
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| Walking around Santa Cruz's main square. |
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| Jose Ernesto and me. |
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| Fabiola and me. |
COCHABAMBA: April 21-24
If you have been on my blog before, you probably know how much I love Cochabamba and consider it my Bolivian hometown. This is primarily because I have an adopted family who lives there, who put me up in my own studio apartment for my visit. It belongs to Rafa, one of the siblings, who currently lives in Ireland and rents the apartment out on Airbnb. So if you like what you see in the pictures and want to go to Cochabamba, make sure to check it out! While in the city, I tried to spend as much time with the family as possible. The eldest daughter Jime’s twins, who were 5 when I last saw them, were now 8. I was surprised and touched that they still remembered me. The family’s dog I met in 2015, Josefina, had sadly passed away in the last couple years, but the family now has a new dog, Emilia. Ignacio, the youngest and my friend from my exchange student days, accompanied me on some of my Cochabamba bucket lists for this trip. Namely, to eat local food and check out Westeros Cafe, a Game of Thrones themed cafe where we could dress up and take pictures. We also made sure to jam a bit, and thankfully we still had instrument accompaniment through his guitar since I didn’t bring my ukulele this time around. This was the quickest trip to Cochabamba I had ever taken, but I am so glad I was able to spend a few days in the city!
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| Rafa's Airbnb. |
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| Emilia! |
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| Sharing a pitcher of mocochinchi, salchipapas, and sushi with Jime at the outdoor food court near her home. |
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| Going out for salteñas! |
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| Sopa de maní. |
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| Ignacio and me having traditional Cochabamba dishes for lunch. |
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| Westeros Café. |
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| I am sad this picture turned out blurry! |
CAMARGO: April 24-26
My friend Niky’s wedding was scheduled for April 25 in a small town called Camargo in Bolivian wine country. Considering its distance from Cochabamba, also Niky’s hometown, it was a destination wedding even for Bolivians. From Cochabamba, I had to fly to Tarija in the southern part of the country, and from there take a shared taxi three hours to Camargo. I arrived on the same flight as Niky’s best friend, Tefy, and her boyfriend Camilo. We ended up in a taxi with the groom Rodri’s brother, Jorge, and his wife Sol, since they were picking up alfajores for the wedding. I think it will make the most sense to recount the rest of the leg of this trip through pictures, since the pictures from the festivities are plentiful and merit more descriptive captions.
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| On the day I arrived, I joined an optional tour with a bunch of other wedding guests. We toured a historic (no longer operational) distillery of singani, Bolivia's national liquor. Singani has been distilled for centuries and initially was commonly consumed by the miners in Potosí. It was a working class drink, whereas wine was reserved for the elites. I got to try a lot of singani this weekend. |
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| A fun picture taken by Malu, one of Niky's bridesmaids. |
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A cute dog that accompanied the group on our tour of Bodega Leyenda, where we did more singani and wine tastings.
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BOGOTÁ: April 27-29
There is only one direct flight between Bolivia and Colombia, and it happens to leave at 3 AM. I was dreading this leg of my trip the most. After checking out of my hotel in Camargo on Sunday afternoon, I would first have to take the shared taxi three hours through mountain roads back to the Tarija airport. The scenery was magnificent, and I spent the entire ride taking it in and marveling at the breathtaking landscape. I arrived at the Tarija airport at around 6:30 PM, when my flight wasn’t going to leave until after 9 PM. Fortunately, I ran into Tefy and Camilo, and we were able to spend a little more time together before they flew back to Cochabamba on the flight before mine.
I initially was supposed to stay with my friend Benjamin in his house, but it was still undergoing construction and quite hectic, especially with a 7-month-old baby. So as not to inconvenience them and for my own peace, I decided to book another place to stay. I was still very grateful that after my flight arrived early, I could visit them briefly to take a shower and wash my clothes, as well as meet Benjamin’s wife Sara, their baby Addis, and Sara’s 9-year-old son Aníbal. I found a place to stay closer to the city’s historic center that had a steam room and sauna, which I decided to take advantage of. After my exhausting trip it felt amazing, and once I could check into my room, I took a nap. That night, I had dinner with an old friend, Estefania, whom I had met while on Eurotour as exchange students in France. We got along well and never forgot each other, so it was lovely to see her again after 13 years. She treated me to a lovely dinner at a place called Crepes & Waffles, which she described as French Colombian fusion. It was the perfect place for us to reunite!
On my only full day in Bogotá, I made sure to spend more time with Benjamin. I visited him at the place where he has a coworking office, La Casa de la Paz. It’s a really cool social justice space that houses a brewery founded by FARC members who signed the 2016 peace accords with the Colombian government. Benjamin gave me an overview of the armed conflict in Colombia, and some peacebuilding initiatives that were being implemented since the peace accords were signed. I had previously spent a semester in Rwanda studying post-conflict peacebuilding, so I appreciated the opportunity to revisit the topic in a different country.
Later that night, I took a walking tour of La Candelaria, the neighborhood in Bogotá’s historic center, with a couple of girls from the hostel where I was staying. Then I got Peruvian food for dinner, since I always make sure to have it whenever I’m in South America. It’s my favorite South American cuisine (it beats Bolivia because of the seafood, sorry), so Peru will have to be my next destination on the continent…
CARTAGENA: April 29-30
After Bogotá, I had no more social plans. I felt like the vacation-and-treat-myself part of my trip had finally started. But I wasn’t getting off that easy. There were heavy storms in Cartagena, the likes of which hadn’t been seen all year, that caused the Cartagena airport to pause operations. We were temporarily diverted and had to land in Barranquilla. I was really upset and wanted to go home right at that moment, especially because I wouldn’t even be able to get off the plane and see the Shakira statue in her hometown. However, this only set me back around two hours, and I have definitely been through worse while traveling.
Cartagena’s weather was a drastic change from Bogotá’s. Although both places were rainy that day, Bogotá was chilly, while Cartagena was hot and humid. I took a taxi to my hotel in the historic center, which was very loud and touristy. I’m not a partier so it’s not my favorite vibe, but the charm and vibrancy of the buildings as well as its historic ramparts and location by the sea made up for it.
My main agenda for the day was a photo shoot I booked through Airbnb. I have booked photo shoots while traveling before, both solo and with James, and I find they’re a great way to get amazing souvenirs and a tour of whatever place I’m doing the photo shoot in. Verónica and Carlos from Treinta Fotografía were the photographers, and since I was the only one who booked the tour for my time slot, we spent over an hour just walking around and taking pictures of me.
The photos turned out incredible. While I don't have the final edits yet, I will return later to add a few and for now leave this link to the previews.
ISLAS DEL ROSARIO: April 30-May 1
This was the part of my vacation I was most looking forward to, because I live for beach time. I’ll take any body of water to satisfy my emotional needs really, but if I can, I will seek out a tropical beach. I hadn’t heard about the Islas del Rosario prior to planning this trip, but I am very glad I know about them now. All I did was search “snorkeling in Colombia” and the islands popped up as an option. I saw that they were accessible from Cartagena, which is in northern Colombia with direct Delta flights back to the US, so it made sense for it to be the final destination of my trip as I made my way back home. I also wanted to stay overnight on the islands, which, after seeing how loud Cartagena got at night, I knew was the right decision. I would just have to decide where. I looked at many tantalizing beach resort options on Expedia, but eventually decided on one called San Pedro Majagua. I chose this place because the website was clear about what excursions I could book at the hotel, which included snorkeling, and I also learned that the hotel participates in coral conservation efforts in Colombia.
I took the hotel’s only boat leaving Cartagena for the islands and enjoyed the one-hour trip through Caribbean waters. I thought about how far away the Bolivian mountains felt, though it had only been days since I traveled through them. When we arrived, we received a very White Lotus welcome with cold towels and refreshing drinks. I couldn’t check into my room yet since it was only around 9:30, so I dropped off my backpack at reception and go on a tour of mangrove tunnels. All the guides are local to the island, which has around 1,500 inhabitants. Apart from mangrove tunnels, we also got to stroll through their village.
Once I got back, I had lunch in the restaurant. Then I went for a quick snorkel. I took a boat with a couple guides to a tiny private island not far from the beach and jumped in and snorkeled around a bit. I saw a lot of the usual fishy suspects, and particularly enjoyed seeing the school of bright blue fish. After I got back from snorkeling, I checked into my room and booked a massage and exfoliating treatment at the spa.
After all that, I continued relaxing in my room before getting dinner and then going on the bioluminescent plankton tour. With Alejandro, one of the guides from the mangrove tour, we walked through the dark until we reached a place called the enchanted lagoon. We got into a canoe and paddled to another platform on the edge of the lagoon. Alejandro told me that the lagoon was the only place that the plankton could be seen because it was deep enough, while the other lagoons were shallow. To see them, I would descend into the water using a ladder attached to the platform I was on, and with my mask and snorkel, look underwater beneath the platform and wave my hands and feet around. I admit seeing nothing but blackness freaked me out a little, but my fear was quickly replaced by what I can best describe as glowing ectoplasmic blobs emanating from my hands and feet, peppered with glittering speckles. I had never seen anything like it before. It looked like how bubbles might look when you swish your hands and feet around underwater, but if bubbles glowed eerily in the dark.
I asked Alejandro if he could take a video for me, but he said that the plankton wouldn't show on the video, and people have tried. I decided to accept that and keep the magic to the moment itself rather than try to capture it.
The next day, after a wonderful night's sleep, I got breakfast and then hung out at the beach. I painted a watercolor scene and then made sure to jump into the water and swim around for a while. After checking out at noon, I had a nice lunch and lounged around at the beach waiting for the boat that would take me back to Cartagena.
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