Our first full day in Capaurganá was spent mostly doing nothing, well mostly me doing nothing - Simon managed to fit in a dive. After sleepless hammock nights and not so much sleep the previous night with a party going on in the hostel garden, I needed some recovery time! The small town was a great starting point to Colombia: relaxed, beautiful, no cars and friendly people. Also a lot of loud music, blaring all throughout the day.

Simon was keen to do some more diving before we entered the Andes mountains, where there is a distinct lack of diving. I wasn't so keen as I feel my diving experience was completed in Honduras. Capaurganá turned out to be a great place for Simon's first qualified dive, although he was happy he went out with two complete beginners as he couldn't quite remember everything he had to do (luckily someone on the boat noticed his air cyclinder valve wasn't open before he jumped into the water!) He saw loads of beautiful, tropical fish and some amazing coral in his (nearly) 56 minutes down under, his longest dive. Only nearly 56 minutes as he couldn't get his buoyancy right to start with and twice floated up to the surface uncontrollably! I met him for lunch where we went to a small hole in the wall, local place where we were served by a lovely local lady. We sampled a new version of a tortilla meal: Arepas (adding to tacos, burritos, baleadas and pupusas that we've had along the way). It seemed to be some sort of corn tortilla and piled high with meat and salad and was very yummy. We washed these down with some juice from local fruits (Guanábana and Guava). Our final highlight of the day also involved food as we went to a small seafood shack on the beach for dinner with our new friends from the trip and had a delicious seafood meal.

Fully recovered from our adventures by our second day in Capurganá, and having spent four days getting to Colombia from Panama, we thought we'd pop back over into Panama for the day. Simon, Tijs (one of our new Dutch friends) and I set off bright and early, in the rain, and trekked along a jungle path back to Sapzurro, where our San Blas boat had originally arrived. Arriving in a sweaty mess, we walked through the small, very chilled out town and eventually found the path that took us over the next hill, past a border-check point (the army man had possibly one of the best jobs in the world: two beautiful views of bays to his right and left, only a few tourists to write into his book every so often and his little radio playing) and back into the tiny Panamanian town of La Miel where the sun finally made an appearance. Finding the gorgeous beach and floating in the lovely clean waters was amazing after the fairly strenuous 2.5 hours it had taken to get there. We were met there after a bit by Kate and Mike from the San Blas trip, who had inadvertently brought a dog with them all the way from Capurganá. After enough sun and heat, we walked back to Sapzurro and caught a boat back. We tried to get the dog in the boat to take her back to Capurganá with us as a lady had said it was important they take her back otherwise- the lady implied- she would be killed! She wouldn't get in though, even when Simon got back out of the boat to try to coax her in, watched by some fairly unamused locals, including the boat captain. You'll be pleased to know we saw the dog safely back in Capurganá the next day, very much alive.

Our last experience of note in Capurganá, other than the journey out, was the laundry service. Normally an un-noteworthy, mundane experience, this was far from it. Having given our clothes over to a lively, chatty woman in her tiny house on the day we arrived, we were to make many visits back, knocking on the door to get her attention over the loud music coming from a few houses away (this laundry service had no official opening hours) to attempt to retrieve our laundry. For some reason our clothes were taking a ridiculous amount of time to dry and were never ready, even though she had a small drying machine, but we managed to get it back- nearly all of it- two days later, after countless trips, just in time to leave. Unfortunately I noticed in the last evening that my leggings and some pants were missing, but despite walking all over town to find the woman, we couldn't find her and the items are now long gone. We heard that other people also had things missing too and got their clothes back wet. The moral of this story is don't get your washing done by someone who enjoys a bit too much of the local produce (cocaine).

In order to leave Capurganá, you have to take a boat or fly. Due to budget restraints, we were on the boat that everybody dreads: it is famed for its bumpy ride. At nearly $30, I would have expected something more than a fairly small boat with no cover, however this is what we got. We got to the dock nice and early at 6.45, hoping we could secure a seat near the back for the 7.30 boat (the only boat in fact). At 7.30, a man finally turned up to weigh everyone's bags before the police made everyone get behind a table barrier where people's names were called out one by one and we were allowed to board. As we had bought the last two seats, we were the last to get in and I got wedged in the middle of a Colombian family and next to a man who kept getting up and down. It had been raining on and off the whole morning and by the time we finally departed at 8.15, the rain had become harder and we were soaked. We spent the two+ hour journey alternating between getting a pummelling by the rain and drying out in the wind before getting absolutely drenched again in the five minutes before we arrived in the horrible town of Turbo, but at least the ride wasn't too bumpy. This has to have been our most crazy arrival anywhere; we were greeted by hoards of locals laughing and jeering at 54 drowned rats in a boat. The exit from the boat was onto a narrow boardwalk into what looked like wooden animals stalls. There was barely room to breathe, let alone move as we tried to shelter from the rain and collect our bags from the identical pile of bin-bag wrapped luggage. As soon as we were off the boat, we were launched upon by the locals, fighting over us to get us on their bus. It was absolutely mad. We eventually got onto a minivan with Tijs and Jacqueline who we'd travelled with, and another Dutch couple, still soaking wet but happy to be getting out of the awful town that the UK foreign office advises all but essential travel to (but it was the only way to go).

Our direct bus turned out not to be so direct and we were herded onto another bus halfway, where we were blasted with icy air- conditioning before we realised we could turn it down. Eight and a half long hours later, made better by the most amazing orange-filled sky sunset we've ever seen, we arrived at the bus terminal in Cartagena. The four of us jumped in a taxi and were greeted by the noise and traffic of a big city. We hadn't managed to book any accommodation as it was all quite expensive online so fortunately it was fairly straightforward to find somewhere when we arrived. We walked into the third hostel we tried (where we decided to stay) and were greeted by three people from our San Blas trip who had arrived a day earlier. We swapped travel stories over dinner with them and the whole day seemed much more amusing once we had arrived and were fed and watered. We slept very well that night.

Katy