Well we made it to famous Cartagena, our last stop in Colombia before heading over into Central America. Our first impressions of Caragena weren't great but then we did arrive at the bus station in the middle of a storm! Once we got to the old centre though we were very impressed. The walled central area of the city is full of old mansions, little plazas and stacks of outdoor restaurants. The majority of our time was simply spent wandering around the streets and declining to buy knockoff Boteros, Colombian football shirts and maracas. We did manage to go into the Gold museum, the torture museum, and a church with a dead body in a glass coffin. Slightly morbid we know but we were curious! Strangely, in the torture museum we bumped into the same reporter we saw throwing a hissy fit in Villa de Leyva. We like to think of ourselves as mingling with the cream of Colombian celebrity. We also ate out in some of the plazas at night which was fun, with lots of local muscians wandering around and again lots of knockoff Boteros, football shirts and maracas!

We also took a trip to the nearby Volcan del Totumo. This was essentially a big mound of mud. It was actually quite a weird experience being suspended in the lukewarm mud, which may go down as deep as 500m, and trying to stay the right way up. As soon as your legs lift up a little you end up horizontal and can't move - it's not very graceful! Unfortunately, as we went with an organized tour thinking it would be quicker (it wasn't the pick up was 90 mins late and then got stopped on the way by a policeman because the driver was on his phone), we were crammed into the pit with about 40 other people. Anyone planning to do this should definately go on their own and also refuse the "massage and cleaning service". With the massage you are grabbed as soon as you get in, dunked under the mud, rubbed on your arms a couple of times and then thrust across the pit into the mass of people crammed in the other corner. The cleaning service involves being dunked in the river by a local woman, stripped of your swimming costume, and again rubbed a couple of times. Actually I suppose that might appeal to some people...

Cartagena was a really nice place but pretty expensive with lots of tourists. As such we decided that it was now time to get over to Panama and start our trip up through Central America. There are essentially only two ways of getting to Panama: air and sea. It's not easy to get there overland as you have to go through the guerilla filled jungle and we didn't really fancy getting kidnapped! We ruled out the sea option, five days of sea sickness didn't sound too appealing, and instead booked a flight. Leaving the airport is one of the most difficult experiences you could imagine - within a distance of 10 metres your bag is x-rayed and manually searched and you are put througha metal detector only to be manually searched twice anyway! You also have to go through the struggle of explaing where you've been and where you are going next to a customs official in Spanish. Still we managed it all in the end!

Colombia has definately been our favourite of the South American countries we visited and we would recommend it to anyone who's interested.