Holy week in Colombia

Only a month or two behind schedule, here are some highlights of our “Spring Break” (what does that mean on the equator?) trip to Cartagena and Bogota, Colombia in March, 2008. Cartagena is a beautiful colonial city — the old town is completely walled in from back in the day when Sir Francis Drake was trying to attack the city (you can bet the residents of Cartagena weren’t calling him “Sir”!). Everywhere you looked it was gorgeous, and the weather was thankfully hot, just what the doctor ordered after months of cold and wet in Quito!

Bogota was cooler (but not as cold as Quito!) and cosmopolitan, with vibrant street life and some great museums and restaurants. Here are some images from our visit.

Cartagena Pictures

Here is a video of the shark feeding frenzy (a still photo is in the Cartagena slides above): we took a boat from Cartagena to some nearby islands for a day of Caribbean sand and sun. Part of the deal was to go to this aquarium, which featured a guy feeding “pens” of different kinds of sea creatures. The craziest event was the one featuring these really fat sharks.

Here are our Bogota pictures, including the amazing Botero museum. Botero is Colombia’s most famous artist, and perhaps the world’s most famous living painter. Our favorite restaurant in San Antonio, Texas (Rosario’s) features huge replicas of some of Botero’s sympathetic yet critical paintings of big, fat people.

Here are pictures from my rock climbing adventures at Suesca, near Bogota. I got to go two different days, with two different Colombian climbers that I had met a month before when they were visiting my favorite climbing area near Quito. Suesca has over 400 routes of varying length, both bolted routes and trad climbs (where you place your own gear as you go). The Columbians who showed me around, Gonzalo and Ivan, were extremely generous and justifiably proud of this great climbing area.

The World Junior Climbing Championships

Meet "Microwave."

Last month we had the honor to host at our house here in Quito the American speed climbing competitor Michael Perry, 16 years old, from Austin, Texas, who currently reigns as the 21st fastest climber in the world in his age group.

Weekend before last Joy and I traveled to Ibarra, 2.5 hours north of Quito, to catch the speed climbing part of the World Junior Climbing Championships.

(above) A captured moment of the part of the competition referred to as “difficulty” (for good reason). By the way, this wall is a lot like the one I climb on in Quito. Very tall, and completely outdoors.

(above) Microwave hits the buzzer, 60 feet up, with an all-points-off

leap the last 5 or 6 feet.  Total time: 16 seconds or so.

To see the general competition results, try here to find out that the Austrian and Japanese men kicked butt, but the American women did great in Difficulty! The Ecuadorians climbed really well in speed also. Here are the links to Michael’s area, Speed Male Youth A.

I didn’t get any video of Michael climbing, but here’s an amazing speed climbing clip from the competition: The audio track (otherwise annoying) provides the helpful info that the slower climber got to the top in 13.88 seconds.

Ecuador Climbing

Note: this piece was written in airports en route to Quito on August 2nd.

One thing most people know about me, I love to climb. Mostly rocks, but also trees, buildings, mountains. So when we knew we were moving to Quito, Ecuador, I looked into climbing there.

With a capital city surrounded by volcanoes and mountains, you’d think Ecuador would be loaded with rock climbing. You’d’ve thought that about La Paz, Bolivia too, where I lived in the 80s, encircled as it is by 20,000 foot peaks, but you’d’ve been wrong: there was just one tiny 30-foot crag and no one climbing it until I showed up. I have been counting on Quito to be different, particularly after the explosion of rock climbing as a mass-appeal sport in the 1990s.

I already knew of the volcanoes “Chimborazo, Cotopaxi, you have stolen my heart away,” from a poem my Dad likes to excerpt from his youth. Our friend Andrea has also mentioned other, lesser-known volcanoes to climb – Pichincha, Antisana. Sounds like a climber’s paradise, eh?

But my biggest love (next to Joy) is rock climbing, not mountaineering (I’ve actually sworn off mountaineering a couple of times in the past – too much work!) My climbing fantasy involves big walls, possibly granite, several hundred feet tall, easy access from public transportation featuring innumerable routes of all difficulties, easily protected with faces, cracks, roofs, arêtes, dihedrals, nice ledges for belays, maybe the occasional chimney. If the place has untapped potential (i.e., I get to establish new routes), so much the better.

From the looks of what I found on rockclimbing.com, this fantasy climbing destination remains to be found.