Wednesday 9th December Guillaume took us to the bus terminal & we took the 10.40 bus to Barbosa, on the way to Bogota. The bus was quite spacious & the ride was sensational. After following the gorge & crossing the Sogomoso River we climbed, twisted & turned for about 50km through the Andes, sometimes with drops of 100+m on one side & the vegetation kept changing as we went. In some parts the vegetation was tropical & lush whist in othe...

Sunday 6th December After a terrible night in the hotel from hell, we had biscuits & some of last night's chicken before walking down town & found a cafe for coffee. We then bid farewell & took a friendly taxi to Giron a small old town about 20k west of the centre of Bucaramanga. What a contrast to yesterday. The hotel is on the corner of the main square & is a converted house with a large courtyard surrounded by rooms on one side & with more...

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...