Sunday 11 August - Thursday 15 August San Gil, Colombia I'm surprised we made it to San Gil alive - that bus ordeal was frightening to say the least. We booked our two part bus trip to San Gil with a bus change in Cienaga, just 25 minutes outside of Santa Marta. The lady in the bus terminal said we could leave our bags in her office as the bus would not leave until 6.30pm and it was only 4pm at the time, so we deposited our bags in her office and went in se...

Thursday 8 August - Saturday 10 August Minca, Colombia Since Santa Marta itself is nothing to write home about and is predominantly used by travelers as a mere stop off point between Cartagena and Tayrona PNN, we decided to get out into the mountains that overlook the town rather than be in it. But first we had to find the 'collection point' to catch the ride up to Minca. The map we had led us into a rather unsavoury part of town which kept our senses heigh...

Tuesday 6 August - Wednesday 7 August Santa Marta and PNN Tayrona, Colombia The $20 shuttle we'd booked from Mamallena's Hostel to Santa Marta was bang on 1 hour late, which left us with time to sample some Colombian fried breakfast goodies - arepas - corn pancakes filled with cheese or a fried egg...we managed to buy the dud and had one with no filling - just good old plain fried corn - eugh - Gary managed to finish his and the rest of mine and I will not ...

Saturday 3 August - Tuesday 6 August Cartagena, Colombia With the boat anchored in Cartagena harbour, we alighted passportless at around 2pm. Our passports, the Captain assured us, would be returned to us by 8pm at a pre-arranged meeting point. First rule of traveling: NEVER let your passport leave your possession. There was no way around this and apparently this was the norm. Actually we were told some people don't get their passports back until the next d...