Well that was intresting if nothing else, I caught a bus from merida to maracaibo in the north of Venezuala which was no problem.I then caught a bus from the 1950s complete with broken windscreen for 10 people to the border with Columbia.However this is when the fun started. We set off at 5 in the morning and at 5.15 we had been impounded by the venezualan police and taken to the port where we were orded to unload the bus while they searched evey inch of luggage and this was local columbians luggage who were carring everything from counterfit tshirts to new tvs. This took a total of 5 hours before we could restart our journey but on the good side it meant I made 5 or 6 new best friends by getting stuck in and helping unload and load the bus.

Now many people would be supprised by this but the border was a delight once you got there after maybe 10 roadblocks by venezualan police and the same number of bribes to pass and all this time my new friends were giving me food and drink with one lady actually walking me through immigration to make sure I was ok.Remember these were all columbians not venezualans. After we passed through immigration into columbia there were only a couple of roadblocks all with signs saying thankyou for your cooperation and one of my new friends proudly told me there would be no bribes exchanging hand now we were in columbia(and of course he was right). I arrived in Santa Marta last night at around 9pm with handshakes all round and even a phone number given incase I travel to medellion later. Got a taxi to a hotel in the centre and went to bed. Today I got up and had a quick look round the town which was very nice indeed and got a bus round the coast for 50p. i am now staying in the tourist town of Taraganga and I plan to do a 6 day jungle trek so i may not now write for 1 week but if the people and places are as nice and kind as my first 2 days I think I may want to stay in Columbia.