22nd October 2009 - 24th October 2009

After the many days of buses and travel we were pleasantly surprised by Pasto and desperately in need of a drink. Again we arrived in the late afternoon and after finding a nice hostel headed to the closest bar. We ordered a pizza, which turned out to be the largest pizza we've ever eaten, and some rum. When you order rum in Colombia you often end up with a bottle, glasses and coke served to you in quite a formal fashion. It was really enjoyable after our last couple of days in transit.

The next day we decided to walk around the city on a bit of a shopping spree. Sammy bought an awesome 'Wolverine' style jacket and I bought some nice dress jeans and a jumper. It was all designer gear and relatively cheap so we were pretty happy with ourselves. On one of the walks we noticed some graffiti on some city walls and it was also repeated on the park statue. We knew it was about us as it contained the word 'gringo' which is the Spanish word for tourist*. In one shop we asked the girl working there what it meant and she was quite embarrassed and wouldn't tell us. It obviously wasn't nice but we took it in our stride as it was about tourists in general and not about us. None the less we were happy to get on the bus the following day and cross the border into Ecuador.

* We later found out from our friend Daniel (Dan-i-elle) that it's actually derived from Mexico when the American Army used to patrol there. The army would wear green uniforms and the locals would yell 'Green go' to tell them to go away.