Juliette, Alex and I all left for Popayan at 9am and arrived at the fire station just as the bus to Armenia showed up... with 3 seats left. We then arrived in Armenia just as the bus to Popayan was leaving. More excellent timing. The bus was a minibus and despite the ticket lady telling us it would stop every 20 minutes for the bathroom, over an hour into the ride I had to ask the bus driver to stop. It was a lucky move since we then got stuck in traffic for over...

From Medellin we took a 6.5 hour drive through mountains (of course) to Armenia - a city within the Zona Cafetera. This time they played GI Joe on the TV, which didn't seem to require subtitles. At Armenia we got a quick snack of bunuelos - a deep-fried, perfectly spherical ball of dough - and boarded a local bus to Salento. On arrival in the colonial square we met Juliette (France) and the three of us walked to the Plantation House hostel, which is a really cool...

On the way to Medellin we stopped at a really cool service station for a coffee and admired 50+ portaits of great men throughout history hung up on the wall. Some of our favourites were Karl Marx, Stephen Hawking and 2 x Balzacs. Arrived at Medellin north bus terminal at 10:30am after a terrible nights sleep (thanks Aussie girl). We sat on a bench in the station and tried to suss the situation out. Alex went to get a map and was gone so long I was actually starti...

We were dropped off at Getsemani - the Zona Rosa of Cartagena, traveller hub and red light district. We obtained two beds in a dorm of an enormous converted colonial mansion and went round the corner for a very cheap meal. Afterwards we spent a couple of hours wandering around the old town, not knowing what to think of the number of couples, men dressed all in white, women dressed in tiny, tight minidresses and just the sheer naffness of the place. It is beautifu...

We arrived at Santa Marta bus terminal at 5:50am and had a bus station breakfast consisting of coffee and my second bus station food revelation this holiday: a pastry-bread cheese tube. We caught a minibus to the entrance of Tayrona National Park and left us on the side of the road... we then waited at the ticket office for 20 minutes until it opened at 8am. We then caught another minibus to Cañaveral, which is a far as the road goes inside the park. According t...