We decided not to go down to south Columbia due to cost and time. We are starting our long journey back to Caracas via Cartagena for Xmas.

We are breaking up the journey by going to the La Cafetaria region where most of Columbian coffee is grown. In addition to getting a nice coffee the main reason to come here is for the scenery and nice walks.

Again we just turned up at the bus station and got a bus going straight away, in fact Liz had to grab some breakfast (crisps) whilst I payed for the tickets.

The journey involves a dramatic drop out of the Andes and an equally dramatic rise up onto the other Andes 'fork'. Unlike Venezuela the A/C is set to a sensible temperature and we have a couple of films to watch (that is what Liz is looking at in the blog picture).

The guide book says these are always violent action films, the two films played certainly fits this description. The first was 'Machetti' which lived up to it's name and the second film 'Undestructables' is likely to be similar.

It should be a 6 hour journey before catching another bus for another hour to Salento. Again we have been delayed probally due to another landslide (the fourth if this is the case). It is now 8pm so we are unsure whether we will have to put off getting to Salento for tomorrow.

The bus station was quiet when we got in so we decided to find somewhere here to stay. Armenia sounds like a war zone and it did look a bit like that from the terminal. There was a neon Hotel sign across the road, we just wanted somewhere clean to stay before getting a bus to Salento tomorrow.

As we headed to the sign the building began to appear and looked grim. We got intercepted by a local who sent us over to another equally grim place. Inside things didn't improve it smelt of toilets and the sagging bed and probally crawling sheets didn't look appealing either.

We decided to look at another across the street. We were ushered into a minute room with two beds one on the floor and being currently used by a local guy that seemed to have given up on life. Incredibly this was far worse both in smell and looks.

We got in a taxi and asked to be taken to an inexpensive nice hotel.