During the journey to Colombia’s Caribbean coast, I pondered the topic of this next blog. By the time the air-conditioned bus stopped at our destination, I knew what it would be: Why do travelers choose Santa Marta or Taganga or El Rodadero to stay? When I stepped into Santa Marta’s mid-afternoon heat, I felt like I had slammed into a humid wall.

But one Sunday afternoon, my quest for an answer meets a familiar specter: a blockade.

Our buseta’s journey is stopped cold. Orange cones form a loose chain across the road heading to Taganga. Word passes: There is no electricity. A man carries a guanábana-sized rock, to lay it in the street. A fist fight almost breaks out between police officers and the neighbors.

Our driver’s insistence in getting through the blockade doesn’t get us very far. Around the bend, local people are piling more branches across the road. Traffic on the other side extends up beyond the brow of the hill. These neighbors are frustrated with the electric company. It still had not come out to restore service.

A group of foreigners, bowed beneath knapsacks, climb over the blockade. What is the draw of Taganga, that they are ready to walk four kilometers (2.5 mi) in this day’s 36°C (97°F) heat?

Legend says that in the early 1990s, two backpackers “discovered” Taganga, a sleepy fishing village just over the hill north of Santa Marta. Through the mochilero grapevine, word spread about a cheap, laid-back, authentic Colombian pueblo with great beaches.

And word still spreads. Sitting together on Taganga’s beach watching the sun set, Lauren (from Canada), Steve (UK) and Cassie (New Zealand) tell me they came here because other travelers recommended it. Taganga has better beaches than Santa Marta, which is a boring, dirty port town. Also, it is the stepping stone to Tayrona National Park. Pat (UK) said, “Taganga … is much nicer for travelers than Santa Marta. It has more nice restaurants, more of a back packer feel, on the beach.”

But it was just that atmosphere that turned Chris and Emma, also from England, off from staying there. We met in our Santa Marta hotel. They explained Taganga is too hectic, with too many foreign backpackers – too much like a European resort town. They came to know Colombia, not hang out with a bunch of foreigners. And too many people are constantly trying to sell stuff. Santa Marta is definitely more chilled.

A surprise was to find foreigners at El Rodadero, a traditional Colombian-family resort just south of Santa Marta. Anja and Nikki, both of Norway, are staying at a hostel on the outskirts of the port city; the location attracted to them. Anja says, “We’re trying out different areas on day trips.” On their agenda are the beaches at Taganga and El Rodadero and Tayrona.

In truth, each of the three towns appeals to a different type of traveler. V!VA Colombia can help you to decide which would be best for you. In part II of On the Road – Colombia: Choosing Colombia’s Best Beach, we’ll take a look at what each town as to offer to vacationers and wandering backpackers.

In the meantime, drop us a line and tell the V!VA community which you chose: Taganga, Santa Marta or El Rodadero.

Editor’s note: Lorraine Caputo is one of V!VA’s longest-tenured writers. These days, she’s back on the road in Colombia, updating our 2011 edition of the book. Check the blog for more of her updates from the road.

Want a free VIVA eBook of your choice? We’re giving one away to the winner of this week’s VIVA Trivia Contest. The first person to answer these 10 questions correctly is our winner.

1) What is the highest (de facto) capital city in the world?

2) The equator passes through which South American countries?

3) The setting of the novel Love in the Time of Cholera, by Gabriel García Marquez, is widely considered to be based on which city?

4) In which country was this photo taken?

5. Whose famous landing on the Paracas peninsula is marked with a monument?

6. The condor is the national bird of which four countries?

7. The northernmost road crossing of the Argentina-Chile border is at which pass?

8. Changa, often made with chicken, is a popular dish originating in which country?

9. Which South American country inaugurated a former guerrilla as its president in 2011?

10. In which country was this photo taken?

Send your responses in to nick@vivatravelguides.com before 9 am EDT on Monday, April 4th. The first person to send in all the correct answers will be our winner. If no one gets all of them right, I will cry a little bit and then declare the person with the most correct answers the winner. VIVA employees, as well as their family members and pets, are ineligible.

Sometimes blockades are caused by landslides, earth and rock loosened by torrential La Niña rains. Other blockades are created by trucks pulled across highways, in protest to new laws. A third blockade is comes in the form of holidays.

There are three sacred times in Colombia: lunch, Sundays – and holidays. Don’t expect to find anyone in offices or shop. All is locked up tight.

Colombians are very business-oriented. So when these times come, all is put aside to concentrate on life’s other important facets: family and friends. They seem to emphasize taking time out of busy schedules and hard work, in order to enjoy good food and good times. Or, as Louisianes say, “Laissez Les Bon Temps Rouler!”

A three-day holiday weekend (called a puente in Colombia) is upon us. Nobody seems to know what it is celebrating, but they are definitely ready to let the good times roll. (For those who are dying to know, it’s San José day, when Latin cultures have traditionally observed Fathers’ Day.  But like many countries in the Americas, Colombia has followed the lead of US culture, and now celebrates it in June.)

What is important is to plan for this pure R&R. Tickets and rooms must be booked far in advance. For holidays, travelers are advised to avoid super-popular Colombian vacation destinations close to the capital, like Villa de Leyva. Everyone, though, who can afford it heads for the fine-sand beaches and warm sea of the Caribbean coast that Cartagena and Santa Marta have to offer.

International travelers – unless you’re ready to get fully immersed in Colombians’ hard party-down and battle for a hotel room, you’re advised to go elsewhere. You can always go there another time, when things are, well, less mad and cheaper. Colombia is a big country (officially, Latin America’s fifth largest). There are plenty of places that have yet to make the vacationers’ radar screen. Near the coast are Valledupar, with incredible swimming holes and indigenous villages to visit. Not too far away is Aracataca, famed author Gabriel García Márquez’ home town. Both villages now have affordable hostels.

Colombians spend Monday rushing back to their hometowns. They all will have to report to their jobs bright and early Tuesday morning. They’ll get down to serious work, until the next holiday. You have about a month to prepare to be someplace else. The next big one is Semana Santa, this year slated to begin April 17^th. The most famed celebrations are in Popayán and Mompós. Valledupar also has some noteworthy processions, which this year will be followed close behind by the Vallenato music festival, Festival de la Leyenda Vallenata. For all of these, hotel rooms have been booked since December, but you might have some luck. The beaches, of course, will be insanely crowded and prices inflated.

But someplace in this great expansive country, you’ll find the perfect place for you to be. Relax with a copy of V!VA Colombia on your iPad, and browse to see where the wind might take you for Colombia’s next holiday.

Editor’s note: Lorraine Caputo is one of V!VA’s longest-tenured writers. These days, she’s back on the road in Colombia, updating our 2011 edition of the book. Check the blog for more of her updates from the road.

Editor’s note: Chris Hughes is one of V!VA’s longest-tenured writers. These days, he’s in Guatemala to volunteer and provide the latest information for the upcoming 2011 edition of the Guatemala guidebook. Writing for V!VA during a stint in the country late in 2009, he met a little girl named Lisa while volunteering at a nutritional rehabilitation clinic in San Felipe, Guatemala. Lisa, unable to walk, needs surgery, leg braces and physical therapy to correct the problem.

V!VA Travel Guides and Chris have teamed up with Transitions Foundation, a non-profit organization in Antigua, Guatemala, to raise money for her medical costs. Below is her story, and be sure to check back for regular updates about Lisa from Guatemala.

Lisa Gabriela’s life began ominously on May 3rd, 2007.

Not only did she have the hard luck of being born into one of the countless impoverished families in Guatemala’s poverty-stricken rural countryside, but at birth she weighed in at only one pound and 14 ounces – a near-certain death sentence for a child without first-world medical care.

Somehow, she survived. After months in the hospital, Lisa was sent to a village in Tecpán to live at her grandparents’ one-room home, which more closely resembles a glorified cardboard box, that, along with Lisa and her grandparents, houses her parents and two older siblings.

Life remained a struggle. She did not respond to sound and could barely move at four months old. Her father, a cook earning several dollars a day, could not afford to adequately feed the family – meaning Lisa received only breast milk even while she aged.

At two years old, Lisa was back in the hospital when a severe case of pneumonia threatened to steal her life. Again, she survived, though barely as her body weight dwindled to 14 pounds during her bout with the illness.

After being discharged from the hospital in 2009, Lisa received the proper nourishment and put on weight during her recovery process at a nutritional rehabilitation clinic in San Felipe, Guatemala. However, as a result of oxygen deprivation due to being a premature baby, her legs were not fully functional and even now at 3 years and 11 months old her legs remain too weak to stand.

It is difficult for most children to escape the hardships and deep poverty of rural Guatemala. It is impossible without the capability to walk – only an immobile life in her grandparents’ small home where Lisa will eventually be regarded as a burden awaits.

Fortunately, her condition is treatable. According to the orthopedic, with surgery, braces for her legs and 18 months of physical therapy, Lisa will be able to one day walk again.

But the reality is without aid her condition will remain untreated because her family’s bigger problem is figuring out where to find their next meal. Walking is considered a luxury with the threat of starvation constantly looming overhead.

Medical expenses in Guatemala, while daunting to Lisa’s family, pale in comparison to those same expenses in the United States and other first-world nations. Surgery, leg braces and 18 months of physical therapy will cost approximately $3,500.

Please click the below donate button to give via PayPal (or credit card) to help cover these expenses, whether it’s $10, $25, $50 or more.

No donation is too small and every dollar goes a long way toward changing Lisa’s life for the better. It might seem like a drop in the ocean, but the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.

All donations are tax deductible. A receipt from Transitions Foundation, a U.S. registered 501 (c) (3), can be provided upon request.

Some days the news from travelers coming down from the North isn’t good. Apparently the rains that have been soaking Bogotá have also been affecting other parts of the country. Trips are taking several hours longer than normal. Indeed, the continued possibility of roadblocks — in this case, landslides on the highways between the Cordillera Central and the Cordillera Oriental.

But travel on I must. Rocinante (my knapsack) and I await buses heading North and further North, in search of dry, warm weather. We do have luck, encountering only remnants of the destruction. Sometimes road shoulders no longer exist, having caved into the depths far below. Only a guardrail protects us from the abyss. Sometimes the highways have stretches of rough wash board. Broad earthen ripples vibrate beneath the bus’ tires. Dregs of a landslide recently cleared.

II.

Some of those travelers coming down from the North have other tales to tell, of an adventure they undertook that proved to be the highlight of their stay in Colombia. They had never heard of it before. The most commonly used guide makes no mention of it. Not until they checked out V!VA Colombia or talked with Shaun of Macondo Hostel in San Gil, did they know of the possibility of taking this historic highway. No, this thorughfare is not paved, nor in danger of being blocked by landslides. It was the road the Muisca nation, and later the Spaniards and Simón Bolívar, used to the coast: the Río Magdalena.

I know their excitement. For years, I also dreamed of slicing the muddy river. But when I came to Colombia in May 1999, there already had been over 200 kidnappings on the river meandering through the country’s then-Red Zone. I would have to delay my dreams until mid-2004.

Investigating, asking every town-step along the way — in Cartegena, Mangangue, in Mompós and finally El Banco — I felt I could do it. Every one (including the Policia Nacional) assured me it was safe. In El Banco, I hopped a launch heading upstream to Barrancabermeja. For 7.5 hours, we stopped at every port village along the way. Cattlelands and savannahs stretched along both banks. Over the years, I passed the word. Even still, not many foreigners carve a wake into the earthen waters of one of South America’s greatest rivers.

III.

Northward we travel, Rocinante and I. The weather is such a relief after weeks of Bogotá’s chill rain. Even though the sun sets at the same time as in the capital, the days seem longer. By noon, the heat swells, driving people inside for a post-lunch siesta on a hammock in interior courtyards. Walking around the cities and pueblos updating V!VA Colombia, I must take care against sunstroke. It isn’t all about hotels and restaurants, banks and internet cafés, however. I also search out the cool river balnearios for a dip, searching tree tops for howler monkeys and colorful macaws. The calm, warm waters of the Caribbean, though, are yet kilometers away.

Editor’s note: Lorraine Caputo is one of V!VA’s longest-tenured writers. These days, she’s back on the road in Colombia, updating our 2011 edition of the book. Check the blog for more of her updates from the road.

In this occasional series, VIVA writers will help travelers stick to their budgets, save money and avoid getting ripped off while traveling in Latin America.

Peru is surprisingly big. Travelers arriving in Lima find themselves hours and hours away from anywhere else they might want to go. Although bus companies like Cruz del Sur carry thousands of tourists every year, many travelers opt to fly. And they get gouged when they do.

The two largest airlines in Peru, LAN and TACA, have a little twist in their pricing: there are cheap airfares aplenty, but they’re only for Peruvians. Although they are both foreign-owned, they subsidize fares for Peruvian travelers by charging foreign travelers double the going rate or more. For example, a search on LAN’s website for a flight from Lima to Iquitos in April yields a $45 fare for Peruvians, and a $195 fare for foreigners. Short of marrying a Peruvian to gain citizenship, what can you do?

How to Save

Two airlines offering much cheaper alternatives are Star Peru and Peruvian Airlines. Ironically, the two Peruvian-owned airlines charge the same fares regardless of a passenger’s nationality. Star Peru serves most of Peru’s most important destinations and airports, usually for about 50%-60% less than what LAN is charging. The catch is that flights are somewhat less frequent than LAN’s offerings, and often involve connections. Also, the planes are smaller, and a bit less comfortable, than the major airlines’.

Peruvian Airlines also offers good rates; most one-way tickets are in the $60-70 range. Peruvian connects Lima with Tacna, Arequipa, Cusco, Iquitos, Piura and Tumbes, which should serve most travelers well. To get the absolute best online fares, however, travelers will have to make their reservations from a computer in Peru; foreign ISP addresses are charged significantly more.

One other option is to book your tickets with a travel agency. To get the best savings, it’s best to do so in-country. You will find travel agencies in all of the major cities, usually around the main plaza (Miraflores is also a good neighborhood to check in Lima.) Ask at the municipal tourist information office for recommendations of agencies. If booking from abroad, Exito Travel is a good site to check out.

Although the tsunami caused by the Japanese earthquake mostly spared Latin America severe damage, it did affect certain locations along Central America and South America’s coasts.

GALAPAGOS

Although initial reports claimed that there was minimal damage to the islands, they appear to have been one of the hardest-hit areas in Latin America. A tip sent in to Lorraine Caputo reports that many businesses in Puerto Ayora were flooded, including the artisan market, though most have reopened. More distressingly, a number of homes in the Barrio Punta Estrada neighborhood were damaged.  The Ecuadorian government is sending assistance to those impacted by the waves.

COSTA RICA

In Osa harbor, on the southern Pacific coast, several boats were damaged or destroyed by the surging tide.

PERU

At least one person in Peru died as a result of the tsunami. A man trying to watch the tsunamis from the beach resort of San Bartolo, near Lima, fell on the rocks and died. Meanwhile, on the northern coast, a small boat carrying 10 fishermen has been missing since Friday. Finally, the towns of Pisco, Paracas and San Andrés, all devastated by an earthquake and tsunami in 2007, received rather significant flooding on Friday night as a result of the tsunami waves. Video here.

CHILE

215 houses were damaged in Chile early on Saturday morning, the vast majority of them in the settlement of Puerto Viejo, in the northern region of Atacama.

TSUNAMI UPDATE

While the destruction in Japan appears catastrophic, it appears that Latin America might be spared major damage from the tsunami. While tsunami waves have reached the Mexican coast, they were not large enough to cause serious damage. Countries in Central and South America are bracing for the arrival of the tsunami waves on their Pacific coastlines this evening.

Thanks to Lorraine Caputo for compiling these other stories.

BOLIVIA

Bolivia’s controversial president, Evo Morales, has decided to keep the US Drug Enforcement Agency out of his country.

BRAZIL

A Brazilian judge has reversed a lower court ruling, and it appears work will begin on the enormous Monte Belo dam after all.

COSTA RICA and NICARAGUA

The International Court of Justice has ordered both sides out of a disputed border region.

CUBA

The US government has given permission to airlines to fly charter flights between Cuba and eight additional US cities.

MEXICO

Attempts to ban the screening of a documentary about the corrupt and inefficient Mexican justice system have backfired, as the film has become a major hit in the country.

As a result of the devastating earthquake that struck Japan, most of Latin America’s Pacific coast has been put under a tsunami advisory. This includes the coasts of Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. Although it now appears that the risk of major tsunami waves is slight, it is worth paying attention to sirens and news updates if you are near the beach. The tsunami arrival times can very from 9 am for the far northern reaches of the Mexican coast until 9 pm in southern Peru. Remember that a “tsunami” is usually composed of many waves, not just one, and the initial wave may be much smaller than subsequent waves.

The truckers had also surrounded Bogotá. For a week or so, roads radiating from Colombia’s capital were blocked by semi-rigs and tarp-covered straight trucks. Nothing and no one could get in or out — including me.

Finally I did make it, arriving early in the morning.

The ride to the Candelaria neighborhood took longer than usual.Calle 19, Avenida Jiménez and other major thoroughfares are torn up with the renovation of the Transmilenio (Bogotá’s answer to an above-ground metro).

Anato, Colombia’s annual tourism fair, is being held all week at Corferias. I get my pass on the last day, wandering through the massive convention hall. This is an insiders’ only event, where hotel and hostel owners, tour operators and tourism offices have

come from every corner of the country.

I walk up to the Islas Providencia and Santa Catalina booth. Upon seeing V!VA Colombia in my hand, the woman behind the counter yells out, “But that’s the guide all the French sail boaters show up with!” She calls to her co-workers. Their responses are like an echo, confirming what this Islander has told me.

As I approach the Guajira stand, a voice calls out to me. It’s Andrés Delgado, co-owner of Kaishi, a tour agency in that magical peninsula. From region to region I wend through this fair. More and more people greet me, including Oscar and Ivonne Gilède of Colombia Highlands in Villa de Leyva. I am shuttled  around, old friends introducing me to new ones who have joined the V!VA community, like Cristina of Provincia Hostel in Valledupar and Tim of the Gypsy Residence in Aracataca.

It seems everyone wants to check out this relative new-comer to the bookshelves. Many are amazed to see V!VA has gone to deep recesses of Colombia, where other guides have feared to tread. A common refrain I hear is, “¡Es muy completo! — It’s very complete!”

My visit to Bogotá, though, isn’t about fairs and visiting old friends. With my V!VA Colombia in hand, I have much to update.

But every day it rains in this city. Clear skies greet the dawn, rising hopes this day will be dry.  Within a few hours, the clouds build to the East. By early afternoon, commuters pop their umbrellas open against the showers. I must plan everything around the drizzles and downpours. I have many blocks to walk. Nothing is worse than a drenched map and a cold soaking to the skin. I enviously watch as the other guests of Platypus grab a taxi to the bus terminal or the airport, boarding for the great Carnaval party in Barranquilla.

Ah, but Rocinante and I have much ground to cover before we arrive at the Caribbean’s white-sand beaches and clear sea. I take another look at the sky, hoping to hoof much more pavement before today’s rain.

Editor’s note: Lorraine Caputo is one of V!VA’s longest-tenured writers. These days, she’s back on the road in Colombia, updating our 2011 edition of the book. Check the blog for more of her updates from the road.