No journey is ever really complete without some sort of random animal appearance and our journey from Santa Marta to San Gil certainly delivered on this front. We arrived at the bus station (and stray animal sanctuary) bright and early at 6.30am. As we waited for Tijs and Jacqueline to arrive, we watched as a cat repeatedly took one of her five tiny kittens into a cafe and left it on the floor from where a cafe employee swept it into a long-handled dustpan and dumped it unceremoniously back into a cardboard rubbish box next to a bin with the other kittens. Once we'd settled into the first bus ride of 10.5 hours and put on some extra clothes to cope with the ferocious air conditioning that was approximately 20 degrees lower than outside (I'm not exaggerating), a man got onto the bus with a large, live turkey that appeared to be bundled into a bag. This might have been almost normal in Central America but was not in this situation: we were on quite a nice bus with reclining seats and footrests, air-con and movies playing, that we'd paid about £20 for. Unfortunately for the turkey he was bundled on the floor so didn't get to enjoy some quality films such as "Anacondas: Trail of Blood". Although maybe he understood the dubbed Spanish better than us.

We had to change buses after the first and did this at a large bus station where we struggled to find the ticket offices until a nice policeman helped us find the right one. There are two things in the last sentence that are quite different from most of Central America: first is that a policeman was helpful as in Central there was a lot of corruption so they were best avoided; secondly that we had to search for a bus and ticket office whereas we'd got used to people spotting us a mile off and efficiently putting us on their bus. After another couple of hours we arrived in San Gil and were only a short taxi ride away from our hostel. We arrived quite tired at 9.15pm.

We were going to visit another nearby town on our first full day but I wasn't feeling too good, I think from the previous long day of travel and the preceding two days of extreme heat. So we had a quiet day in San Gil. The town is not that picturesque but we liked it anyway as it had a nice feel to it, had some good places to eat and a nice market. Although there are lots of tourist activities on offer, it wasn't a touristy place at all.

We managed to make it to the nearby small town of Barichara the next day where we wandered around the pretty streets of white buildings all with painted doors and shutters. The town is situated in the hills so from the edge of town we had some great views across the hills.

A speciality of the region is eating ants and we were hoping to go to a restaurant for lunch that is recommended in Lonely Planet because it did steak with ant sauce. Unfortunately it no longer exists so we just went to a Colombian restaurant with a nice courtyard for a large meal. The shops that sold ants were also closed as I think the town only really gets busy when Colombians visit at the weekend. On our return from Barichara we bought ingredients for dinner very cheaply from some green grocers and spent the rest of the day at the hostel.

On our final day in San Gil, we booked onto one of the many extreme activities offered from the town: white water rafting. Simon bravely went even with the start of a bout of man flu. The four of us (Simon and I, Tijs and Jacqueline) were picked up from the hostel and were taken to get our kit before we headed to the Río Suárez, European dance music blaring in the van. It was just the four of us and the guide in the raft and another man going down before us in a safety kayak. Neither of them spoke much English apart from the commands the guide used in the boat. Fortunately by the guide speaking slowly and because, apart from Jacqueline, we'd all done it before, we were able to understand most of the safety briefing. Like in Honduras, we were surrounded by beautiful scenery the whole way down which we couldn't always appreciate due to the amount of water pounding us in the rapids. Both of us agree that some of the rapids were the most extreme we've been through with massive waves engulfing the boat at times. We managed not to flip the raft at all but I did fall out in one rapid. Fortunately I also managed to hold onto the boat and was quite quickly pulled back in. Jacqueline managed to fall out in two of the bigger rapids and went through them on her own, which she found quite terrifying (unsurprisingly!) But we all made it to the end and I only have one bruise on my elbow to show for it. It was good fun but quite scary and hard work as the guide made us paddle harder than on any other trip I've been on.

Even though we were both shattered when we got back, we still managed to visit a really pretty park just down the road from the hostel. It looked nice in the light of the setting sun and with a small river running through it. We all went out for large, tasty vegetarian burgers for dinner to replace the many calories lost to the Río Suárez.

Katy