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...

We caught a taxi from the hostel in Bogota to the terminal des transportes passing through graffiti alley - the main thoroughfare into the city from the west that is lined with incredible graffiti... none of which I was able to take a photo of. The taxi driver was the nicest ever and waved us off as he drove away. The terminal is huge and took a bit of time to determine where we could get tickets to Villa de Leyva. Most companies said they had buses leaving in th...

The flight from Leticia to Bogota was about 1h 45 mins - after 24 hour bus journeys and 2 weeks on a boat it seemed like a cinch; we'd hardly settled in by the time we came into land. On taking off we saw a mass expanse of jungle, and coming in to Bogota was very different with mountain ridges and small towns dotted among them. We arrived in Bogota really excited but at 2600 metres above sea level I could already feel the altitude. Took a taxi to our hostel (Mas...