Our 12 hour overnight bus ride from Bogotá to San Agustin was easy peasy. They showed Sleepless in Seattle in Spanish - good practice and relaxing too. I slept for a while until we all had to get off the bus around 3am - no explanation given - only to get back on 5 minutes later. Our time in San Agustin was wonderful. The cabaña at Finca El Maco, a farm owned and run by a Swiss ex-pat and his Colombian wife was "buggy" but charming, and more than made up for by delicious homemade bread, jam, and even Thai food!

After much discussion Josh convinced me to try horseback riding; I hadn't been since I fell off a horse at camp at age 10. When the time came to "get back on the horse" I was pretty nervous, even though I had complete faith in our wonderful guide Pacho. He gave me a little brown horse and reassured me that she was muy tranquilo. It turned out that she actually really liked to be in the lead, and didn't like it too much when Josh's horse took over, and would let him know by pushing and shoving her way ahead. And she liked to go fast. So of course I could not relate to this horse at all... We started off pretty slow but ended up galloping several times - scary but an amazing rush! Even though we could barely walk after the 4 hour trip we both said we'd try riding again, but maybe next time I'd take my grandma's advice and stick a gel pillow in my pants!

From San Agustin we headed to Popayan, yet another charming colonial town in southern Colombia. It's only a 140 km trip so for the first time in a while we took a day bus. We headed out with our new Swiss friend Mario (does that sound like a Swiss name to you??) and caught a jeep ride from the bus company office to the intersection where we were told the bus would pass by at 11:30am. After 20 minutes or so alone on the side of the highway we started to get a little worried. And after 30 minutes or so I got Josh to play "pushy" - a very fun game in my opinion that my brother and I used to play where you basically try to push each other over - but apparently not so fun for my companion :) After an hour the bus finally pulled up. The driver explained that since it was raining (drizzling really) they hadn't sent the earlier bus. Hmm. Then we proceeded to bounce along at a pace of about 15 km/hr on the bounciest, bumpiest highway I've ever seen.

5 hours later we arrived with headaches in Popayan, one of the few small towns we've been in that's not particularly touristy, which we found has its pros and cons. On the pro side you get stopped in the street by people asking where you're from and what you think about the election and how do you like Colombia, and the con side is basically a lack of tourist amenities, namely any sort of food variety. Essentially it's soup, chicken or meat, and rice for every meal. And eggs for breakfast. There is one Italian place serving salads and sandwiches; we ate there 3 nights in a row. Tracking down vegetables is always hard but this is the first time we've been in a place where fruit isn't readily available either. So in that sense this has been a good transition before we head to Ecuador, where we've heard the food is a bit more flavorful.

At the suggestion of the Lonely Planet book we took a bus about an hour outside the city to visit National Park Puracé. We hiked up to the cabañas from the highway - a good 30 min hike up at around 9,000 ft altitude. That afternoon we went on a short hike to Condor Rock to acclimate with our charming 8-year old guide John (who played 10 second clips of Shakira songs - 2 songs in particular - on his cell phone the entire time). Besides the Condor sighting the best part was playing rock-soccer with John along the highway.

Later we went back to the cabin and had a wonderful night making a fire in the fireplace and eating leftover peanut M&Ms Josh found in his pocket. Sweet. The next day we had planned to hike the nearby volcano but were thwarted by bad weather, which was actually fine with me after a fitful night sleep in the cold cabin. Tonight we're celebrating our last day in Colombia with a nice dinner before hopping on a night bus to Quito. Ecuador pronto nos vemos!