The Irish woke up and left around 6:15am to go to Colombia, just as I got up ready to head in the opposite direction. We took a taxi to the southern bus terminal, which is equally far out of town as the northern one was. On the way we saw Cotopaxi, which is an amazing snow-capped volcano near Quito. Obviously I needed breakfast before catching a bus, so at the terminal Alex and I enjoyed a meal of steak, two fried eggs, rice, chips and salad at 8am. It took only...

When we arrived at Quito we hardly knew it. There were absolutely no taxis in the taxi rank, so we walked to the road. The first taxi quoted us 8 dollars to the Old Town and refused to use the meter. The second quoted 7, agreed to use a meter, and was way cool, so we took him. We arrived at the Secret Garden hostel, where you have to climb 5 flights of stairs to find out if they even have a bed for you or not. The view of Quito from the bar is however, lovely. L...

Today was a long travelling day and our last day in Colombia. Woke up at 6am to get to the bus station and catch the 7am bus to Ipiales, on the Ecuardorian border. We even managed to have time for a bus station coffee and make friends with a dog. We sat at the front behind the driver, which not only aided prevention of travel sickness, but also gave us a clear perspective of the quality of driving through the very windy roads, as well as the antics of the driver...

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...