Santa Marta, Colombia After a fairly easy door to door shuttle bus journey, we arrived at our hotel in Santa Marta. A unanimous vote decided that a hostel would not suffice, with none of us wanting to spend all our time standing under a cold shower again. Air conditioning was a must-have! The tropical, laid back vibe hit us as soon as we stepped off the bus. Music was blaring from the bars near our hotel and we found this everywhere we went. One shoe shop we pas...

Cartagena, Colombia To everyone's delight we discovered in Medellin that domestic flights in Colombia are the same price as taking a bus! This meant that we could kiss goodbye to another long bus journey and fly to Cartagena. At 38 degrees and 90% humidity we were melting the instant we stepped off the plane. It was by far the most uncomfortable heat we have experienced on the whole trip. It's certainly a heat that hinders productivity! Every time we made an en...

Medellin, Colombia Our bus journey from Bogota to Medellin started surprisingly well! The tropical countryside was beautiful and it allowed us to see some of the local communities at work or play. Too good to be true of course! We soon came to a grinding halt for several hours thanks to a landslide that had literally happened moments before we were due to pass. We made sure to stay awake and alert as all the locals began to gather around our bus. They were, in f...

Bogota, Colombia After finishing the tour of the Galápagos Islands it was time to move on from Ecuador into Colombia, the final country of our trip. Everything we'd read and heard about the land border crossing into Colombia was very bad. Stories of kidnappings and armed robberies didn't exactly get us up for it. So we unanimously decided to fork out for flights from Quito direct to Bogota. Due to a delay to our flight leaving the Galápagos, we missed our pre-...

Galápagos Islands, Ecuador Having booked our 8 day, first class cruise of the Galapagos Islands about 4 months prior, you can imagine how excited the three of us were when we finally landed at Baltra airport. We were met by our guide, Geoff, who whisked us off to Santa Cruz Island for a lovely lunch at a local restaurant. The nature action started immediately after, as we strolled through a spot favoured by Galapagos Giant Tortoises who migrate to the lagoon wh...