We started our trip in Cartagena - a city on the northern coast of Colombia. It is a great city with colonial style architecture, 500-hundred year old forts, and still has intact parts of the wall that surrounded the city in Spanish colonial times. The people of Cartagena are really friendly and were always warning us against the money changing magicians - men on the street who offer "too good to be true" deals in exchanging money.

From Cartagena we went to Santa Marta - a pretty seaside town with lots of street vendors on the beach selling everything and anything, but most importantly - great inexpensive jewellery. It was a pretty town except when thunder and lightning storms brought rain that flooded the drains and made sewage flow through the streets. This river of unbelievable stench had us walking several blocks to find high and dry parts of the streets to cross. A little Venice in Colombia if you will.

I did a scuba diving trip in the Caribbean Sea out of Santa in very warm 25°C water (no wetsuit required!) and saw amazing coral formations, tropical fish, and the biggest pufferfish I have ever seen. Even my dive guide said he'd never seen them that size!

We spent 3 days in the Tayrona National Park - which is considered by some as one of the Top 10 Beaches in the World. The beaches were pretty spectacular - but I think the Abel Tasman National Park in NZ could give it a run for it's money! At the entrance of the Park our bags were thoroughly searched by armed soldiers. The situation seemed all very intense and serious until the soldier searching my bag pulls out my silk boxer pyjama shorts and proceeds to laugh and call me "Rocky Balboa". At this point when I think I can't turn more red with embarrassment, he calls over another soldier to show him. After that he obviously decides the Rocky chick can't possibly have drugs, so he sends me on my way through the gate whilst he and the other soldier call out "Adios Rocky".

We walked for an hour and half through tropical rainforest to get to the furthermost beach where we slept in open air hammocks. In theory this sounds very exotic and cool - but horribly uncomfortable and resulted in some awkward moments and positions whilst attempting to turn over or trying to sleep on my stomach. Also with the lack of mosquito nets I was at the mercy of the possibly dengue fever plagued mozzies. Apparently dengue fever is at an all time high (highest in 100 years) on the Caribbean Coast - which we found out AFTER we left the park. But was all worth it to spend our days laying about on the beach and swimming in crystal clear waters. And no dengue fever to report so far.

After a day trip to Taganga - a small village with a narrow stretch of beach - to go swimming and take full advantage of the cheap and delicious fruit juice, we went to Tolu - another small beach town that gets very few foreigners and isn't in the guidebooks, but is popular with Colombian vacationers during local holidays. The town was very charming probably due to the fact that we were quite possibly the only gringos there, plus the streets are filled with horse drawn carriages and taxi bikes with huge subwoofers attached blasting Latino music.

From Tolu we decided to do a day trip to Arboletes to visit the huge mud volcano. Our "day trip" ended up being a 12 hour day (10 hours return by bus) ... all to sit in 10,000 square metres of mud! The volcano spews out mud (instead of ash and lava) which is caused by gases emitting from decaying organic matter. The mud supposedly contains minerals acclaimed for their therapeutic properties - which you just have to believe otherwise you are just sitting in a decaying and smelly pool of mud! It was a lot of fun though (especially trying to swim through the mud), and we ended up covered head to toe in mud!

Off the beaten track we travelled via bus, van, riverboat, and taxi to Mompox - a little colonial town bordered on one side by vast swamps and on the other by the Magdalena River. The river and the people spending their days in rocking chairs gives the town a very Mississippi feel to it. On the bus back to Cartagena from Mompox we watched the movie Collateral Damage - which is about a man (Schwarzenegger) who avenges his son's and wife's deaths by a Colombian guerrilla commando. Quite ironically Schwarzenegger actually travels to Mompox (which is an area which used to be a known guerrilla zone) to find the guerrillas! Ironic indeed!

Overall we found Colombia to be quite safe and easy to travel around. There did seem to be an increase in male attention - men calling out to us that they love us or the worse being "come on baby light my fire" - but they were harmless. I do think when I come home to New Zealand I will find the lack of men calling out strange and will have me wondering what's wrong with me! Colombia is a changing country and I think with time it will be a hot tourist destination. This will in someways will be good, but also bad - as part of the charm of Colombia is that it is not really touristy.

Melanie Russell, a 27 year-old New Zealander, took a career break and backpacked for 11 months around South America. She is now moving to the UK to work and travel as much as possible around Europe, Northern Africa, and the Middle East.