San Agustín was our last real destination in Colombia before we headed for Ecuador and the Otavalo Saturday market. We left San Agustín on Thursday and caught a bus to Popayán for an overnight stop. We went with a new bus company that our hostel owner had set up, which was billed as a better travel experience - it even had seat belts; what a treat. The company was so new that we were its only customers that day and the driver stopped for us to take pictures on...

Travelling from the sunny, sweltering desert, we got out of the last bus/ large car into rain and a cooler climate once again. Fortunately the rain soon stopped and the sun came out for our afternoon jaunt. From the town we got a taxi (actually the same vehicle that had taken us the last 40km or so) up to the place we wanted to stay. We'd taken a gamble by not booking as the place was out of town and up a steep hill but luckily they had rooms available. All the ...

We left Salento after our free breakfast and got the 8am bus out of town to the Armenia bus station. Katy was uncharacteristically decisive and chose to take an earlier but non direct bus towards Neiva. A few hours later this bus unceremoniously dropped us in the dust out of the town we were meant to change at but the bus driver paid for a taxi to take us into town (we're not sure if this was part of the service or he was just kind). Anyway we made it to Neiva an...

After perhaps setting off a little late from Bogotá (with hindsight) we eventually ended up on a very windy road through the mountains where we had a stunning view. However, as beautiful as it was, it was pretty annoying to be stuck in roadworks for a while and then consequently behind the world's slowest lorries. After about nine and a half hours on the first bus (meant to be seven), we had another hour bus ride then a short jeep ride to our hostel outside the ...

We caught a direct bus from Villa de Leyva to Bogotá with Tijs and Jacqueline but weren't allowed to all squeeze into a single taxi so had to split at the Bogotá bus station. On hindsight we can see that our taxi driver took us the long way round so we paid much more than we should have. Bogotá (at 2,600m) was the coldest place we had visited so far; so as planned we spent one of our two days there shopping in one of the capital's large shopping malls for warm...