We ended up leaving Colombia as we arrived, by boat, though of a rather different type! This time our transport was a ferry which would chug down the Amazon river for four days to end up in Manaus, the capital of the Brazilian Amazon state. What was rather unique about this boat though was that it consisted of two large empty decks (and just a few cabins) which once everyone had boarded were converted into a mass hammock camp - and that was your accommodation fo...

From Cali we flew to Leticia, a city which lies in a tiny strip of land sticking out from the southern tip of Colombia in the middle of Amazonia (the Amazon Basin - just seeing it on the map made us want to go there). Leticia is the capital of the Amazonas province, the largest city for hundreds of kilometres and very remote: 800km from the nearest highway! Flying in was very exciting: just miles and miles of rainforest and then suddenly out of nowhere, a tiny l...

In Bogota we were once again welcomed with open arms by friends - something which has been so lovely on this part of the trip, we didn't have nearly the same number of family or friends to bump into in Asia! We had met our new Colombian friends Sara and her fiancé Carlos, through my step-sister Paulina, when they come over to Guatemala for her wedding, and Sara's parents are also good friends of my dad and step mum, so we had a whole host of people looking afte...

I don't know if it was the relief of being on dry land or the excitement about being in Colombia - somewhere we had both really wanted to visit - but we were buzzing with happiness about being in Cartagena, and fell pretty quickly under its magic spell. It took a couple of days to get rid of our sealegs and to stop walking as if drunk (apart from when we had had too much rum), but that didn't stop us soaking up all that Cartagena had to offer. During colonia...

WARNING: the following blog post and pictures may make you sick… Our cushy time in Panama City came to an end with David dropping us off at the bus terminal, where we said goodbye and then stocked up on some onward travel essentials (money, anti-seasickness pills and snacks) in preparation for our sailing trip to Colombia. Our next stop was Puerto Lindo, a sleepy little fishing village on the Caribbean coast and where we would spend a couple of nights be...