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 search of a snackette to kill some time. But to our horror, when we returned to get our bags at 6pm, the lady had disappeared, lights switched off and her office was locked. We peered through the glass and luckily spotted our bags still sitting on the floor under her desk where we had left them. Now what? Had she gone home for the day? We needed to grab our bags and go - we could see the bus to Cienaga getting ready to leave.

Frantically we searched the bus terminal for her, whilst trying to formulate how to ask someone else to get our bags out of the locked office in Spanish...our little Spanish phrasebook was safely locked away in those same bags. Relief - we spotted a chap from her bus company and asked him if he could open the office to retrieve our bags...Nada - he didn't have the keys, he just drives the bus, and he told us to come back tomorrow morning when the office would reopen!! WTF was all we could think! Still in a flat panic and considering smashing the glass door, we watched as he hopped into the bus and departed - without us - now what were we gonna do? Luckily Gary pays more attention to faces than I do, and with a huge grin on his face, he spotted her ambling towards us from wherever the hell she had just been. Phew, relief, but..but...our bus had just left - luckily she managed to flag down another bus from a different company that was just pulling out on its way to Cienaga and she paid him the small fare to take us there. Crisis averted. 25 minutes later, we were dropped on the pavement in the middle of a dark and dingy town, not knowing where the next bus was supposed to pick us up. Luckily after wandering back down the main strip, we located the bus company's office which consisted of four plastic chairs and a window with no one apparently manning it. We now had a rather nervous wait, suspiciously eyeing everyone who ambled past, until 9pm when the next bus was due to pick us up. Luckily the bus did pick us up at 9pm and then we were in for the ride of our lives - this was one night bus you couldn't sleep on, as it wound its way through the winding mountain roads to San Gil, careening around corners at God knows what speed - we were being thrown back and forth in our seats for the next 8 hours until we finally made it to the beautiful mountain side town of adrenaline sports - good introduction to adrenaline sports I'd say.

We spent the next four days partaking in the adrenaline fun filled sports of San Gil, all expertly suggested to us by our awesome hostel host, Shaun at Macondo Hostel, an Aussie who had been living in Colombia for 10 years. We went paragliding over the canyon, whitewater rafting on GrII-III rapids on the Rio Fonce, played indoor footie with the locals and dipped our toes into Colombia's explosive national sport - Tejo. The paragliding was exhilarating, but did leave me feeling a little queasy and happy to be back on terra firma. Gary wanted to glide around like a bird all day. The whitewater rafting was awesome, and left me wanting more...I think we'll have to try some bigger category rapids the next chance we get. We even flipped the boat on purpose and bobbed down the river forming a human chain with our crew - freezing cold, but a great way to spend a Monday afternoon. Tejo Tuesday was the highlight of the trip - picture 24 backpackers throwing metal pucks at explosives on a clay board more than 10 metres away - and payment to participate was the cost of the beers...what a combination! Please note, the expert Tejo players throw from about 20 metres back - and man, they are accurate. I was the first in our team, and the group, to actually make one of the little dynamite packages explode when my puck found the target - Get in! By the end of the evening and many beers under our belts, it had degraded into us placing as many explosives on the clay board as possible and all throwing our pucks simultaneously - cracking good fun! Trust the Colombians to have a national sport that involves explosives! Wonder if it'll ever make it to the Olympics?