Saturday 5th December Packed, had breakfast & left Ocaña by minibus at 10am for the drive to Bucaramanga. d*** got the front seat, as we retraced our route to Aquachica, on the plains below, so he took many photos but most will probably have to be discarded. The driver was an older & wiser man than our 2 previous ones, so he didn't practise too many suicidal overtaking moves but he still had the Colombian music playing at max volume for most of th...

Thursday 3rd December Up at 4.am to be ready for the move on to Ocaña at 5am. We piled into another twin cab ute & drove along near the river on the usual mix of roads to El Banco, further upstream. Here we were met by a man with an old Hyundai people carrier, which filled up fast with our luggage piled on the roof & at 7am we set off again for Ocaña. All went well until we left the main road south & started the climb into the foothills of ...

Tuesday 1st December Had an early start today as we were picked up in a dual cab ute for the next stage to Mompos or Mompox, as the Colombians call it, at 4.30 am. We all crammed in the back seat with our luggage & a heap of other stuff in the tray behind & off we went, mostly at a good speed, passing trucks & motor bikes at regular intervals in the most interesting places. After 2.5 hours we stopped for a coffee break before turning off the main hig...

Saturday 28th November d*** took a taxi to the airport, driven by an extremely aggressive matron but he didn't get there early enough at 8.20 & he found Jenny wandering away from the meeting point having flown in from London via Bogota. We returned to the hotel & Jenny rested for a few hours while we went to see St Nicholas’s square, in the old part of the city but unfortunately the church was closed. The surrounding streets were lined with market ...

Thursday 26th November (Thanksgiving in the US) Tidied up the place a bit & drove through the Everglades to Miami to return the car at the Airport. The extent of the everglades is amazing & we were very amused to see parking & camping places in an area with warnings about Panthers. I think I would rather our camping sites than theirs with such friendly creatures roaming about. All went well until we overshot the return spot & ended up in a car...