Since the last blog we have travelled quite a long way indeed! Our original intentions were to try and get onboard a boat sailing from Colon in Panama, to Cartagena in Columbia. However, when we arrived in Panama City our hostel was awful, overpriced and had none of the information we needed so when we kept hitting dead ends for the boat trip we decided to try elsewhere and found a flight for a third of the price. 10 hours later we were in the air in a tiny little plane. Crossing our fingers the entire way we did arrive in one piece, but being quite so close to the propellers isnt something we wish to repeat!

As our original travel plan didnt feature Colombia and we arrived just a few hours after deciding we definetely wanted to go there, we really didnt know what to expect. It turns out our spontaneity paid off bigtime, as we arrived a few hours before the biggest event of the year in Cartagena; their independance day carnival. We were sharing a room with a cool Israeli guy we met on the plane, Sagiv, so the three of us all went to watch the parade together. The hostel owner, although only looking out for us, insisted that none of us took our cameras as it could get pretty dangerous. Whislt we were grateful for the heads up it was pretty annoying to not get any pictures as some of the people were very crazy and only pictures would really do them justice!

First - am emourmous, entirely naked woman walked on her own down the centre of the street. For some reason she was blacked up. We have literally no idea what she was supposed to be, but for some reason she was given primary importance in the parade. Next up, another pride and joy of Cartagena, was ´Shakira #2´- another large woman, this time painted in gold and dressed in 12 year olds clothing, with an ill fitting blonde wig and bright red lipstick, continuously doing the shakira shakira dance. She was accompanied by Shakira El Burro - a donkey also wearing a blonde wig, shakira style clothing and red lipstick. For the next three hours we were entertained by Samba Dancers, Fancy dress parades, beauty queens, and lots of bands, dance troupes, and drunk people. Sagiv and I were given a shot of the local rum by the people next to us. it was horrific. We ended the evening covered in flour, red dye and fake snow; all of which is thrown over everybody by participants in the parade, and by general crazies - of which there were many in Cartagena.

The following day we explored the Old city, apparently the jewel of Columbia due to its old colonial buildings. Unfortunately these were ruined slightly by the hordes of american cruise ship passengers clogging up the city for the whole day. It took a while but eventually we both admitted to each other that we didnt particularly enjoy colonial cities all that much, aside from the mass tourism there isnt all that much to do after a couple of hours of aimless wanderings, so we have agreed that not too many will feature on our itinerary from now on. This leaves only small selections of Colombia available to visit as the majority of the National Parks are apparently too dangerous to go to at the moment, and an enourmous proportion of the towns come with the description ´quaint colonial buildings´.

Owing to last minute decision making on what to do next we mistakenly went to a town called Tolu (NOTHING to see or do here), and swiftly left on the night bus to Medellin.

Medellin used to be the stronghold of the Coca mafia boss Pablo Escobar, and so is still listed as dangerous on some government travel advice websites, but this is utter rubbish. The people we have met here have been some of the nicest and friendliest so far in latin America, and aside from in the busy metro terminals we havent really felt unsafe at all. We spent yesterday checking out all the Botero sculptures of oddly proportioned bodies and animals dotted around the city, and then rode the cable car extension of the metro system all the way to the top of the hill overlooking the city. This was really fun (and cheap - you can ride the metro all day for one ticket, and the city have yet to cash in on the amount of colombians simply riding the cable car for fun) and a cool way to get to see some of the parts of the city it would otherwise be too dangerous to check out.

Today we explored some more, went on a wild goose chase all over the city for various sites; it seems that Colombians are so happy to help that they will give you entirely false directions instead of telling you they simply dont know the way. Whilst this is nice and all, it has meant we must have walked at least three times the necessary distance today! Tomorrow we think we will move on to Bogota, the capital, hopefully spending a few days there checking out the city itself and the surrounding areas.