Looked forward to the trip to Bogota as a bit of a reunion with Sonny, Tom and Daniel! Not seen Tom in years, and Sonny and Daniel since the Asia leg of the trip last summer! Spent the weekend basically eating, drinking and catching up! A good old English curry rustled up on the Friday night and visited a few of Tom's local places the rest of the weekend. Apparently one of the popular things to do is literally set up tables and some music outside of a convenienc...

Salento is the coffee growing region of Colombia and the 3rd biggest coffee producer in the world! A tiny town, with a population of maybe 4000 or 5000 people, it looked and felt a bit like a South America version of Pai in Thailand. We found a really cool hostel, a mix of camping and hostel rooms, also home to a few tiny kittens, a cat and a dog! Went on a few excursions during the day, up to the town viewpoint, on a big trek around the mountains and valley an...

Working our way up to Bogota to meet up with everyone, our first stop after the boarder town was Cali. It wasn't a particularly picturesque city but famous for its salsa dancing and clubs... Not too much use though when none of us can salsa, or dance really at all!! First night we arrived quite late, checked into our hostel and headed straight out to a salsa bar/ club with some of the local guys who worked in the hostel and a few other backpackers. Salsa was at...

So... The much anticipated boarder crossing from Ecuador to Colombia, but not for fun reasons! The first day we took an early morning bus back into Quito, a short taxi and then coach to the Colombian boarder. The journey was relatively smooth considering! After the 'stamp out', 'stamp in', we took another taxi into the Colombian boarder town of Ipiales. Normally boarder towns are tiny and very strange but this was a normal town. A population of over 120,000 and ...

So we decided to take the slow boat from Iquitos to Santa Rosa before heading onto Rio by plane. The boat was a combination of a huge cargo delivery vessel with 2 top decks available for passengers wanting to sleep in a hammock for the trip! At £16 for 3 days hammock space including all meals, and a passenger capacity of 200-300 people it was going to be an experience... We read advice to set up the hammocks on the 2nd deck and away from the toilets and light...