We´re back in the city of Santa Marta pondering our next move. You´ll find 4 blog entries under the Colombia heading (Taganga, Riohacha, Uribia and Cabo de la Vela) that we´ve uploaded as we´ve not had Internet access for a week or so. If you will indulge us I´ll tell you about our trip this morning which will hopefully provide an insight into travelling in Colombia.

We were awoken this morning at 3.40am by the jeep (20 minutes early) for the journey back to Uribia. Having worried that we´d be packed in we were pleased to see only one guy in the back where we climbed up and our rucksacks came in with us rather than going up on the roof where they´d been on the way. This lulled us into thinking we´d have plenty of space on the way back - how wrong we were. It almost felt like we were a couple of fugitives escaping in the dead of night across the desert, this illusion was only broken by the periodic blasts on the horn (no noise nuisance legislation in Colombia). I can only assume that the horn blasts were a habit, in Colombia you don´t give way, stop, or slow down for that matter, at junctions you just sound your horn. Thankfully we´ve not yet experienced what happens if you hear a horn at the same time.

As the sun came up we made our way through the cacti slowly picking up people and all manner of luggage as we went along. Up went our rucksacks along with the boxes, sacks and plastic patio chairs on the roof. By the time we reached the highway (gravel road) we were pretty full with three guys standing up on the door at the back. As we picked up speed another jeep had the temerity to overtake us, this was not on and our driver floored it as we raced to regain his pride, at one point there were three jeeps hairing along side by side at what felt like approaching 100mph, I don´t mind admitting I was almost as scared as the goats. What´s that? Oh, we´d stopped on the road to pick up two more people and three goats who were tied up and bleating their heads off. There were now 15 Wayuu´s, two toursts and three goats crammed into the back, I was holding a box I´d been passed, Alison looked on enviously as the guy next to us was passed a toddler to hold. It was extraordinary, well for us two anyway, everyone else seemed fairly non-plussed, not sure what the guy who´d sat on the roof the whole way thought.

Arriving in Uribia we then got into a car, it´d be a private taxi back home. There we sat, windows down, as the driver showed off his wares. You see taxis don´t work like they do back home, you basically wait until the cars full before you go so the driver wanted to let everyone who might be going to Riohacha know that he already had two in so we´d be going soon. Returning from Manuare earlier in the week we´d sat around for approaching an hour waiting for customers but this morning three circuits of the town sufficed and we were off. There were no further interupptions to our journey, on the way from Riohacha the car had been very thoroughly searched and we´d been asked what we were doing by the Colombian army - I let Alison do the talking in case I told him I was in the country looking to eat sofas (ref last Buenos Aires blog).

Arriving in Riohacha we were descended upon by about 6 guys screaming at us in Spanish that there coach company was the best way for us to get to Santa Marta. Having just woken up from a nap I just stood there laughing at them all until Alison reprimanded me telling me I wasn´t being fair on them by not deciding. Thankfully, unlike two previous occassions, Alison hadn´t let one of them run off with my rucksack which would have meant our fate was sealed. You see it has to be carefully considered which guy to go with as all the buses in the whole of Colombia leave in 20 minutes and if you´re not careful you´ll be sat waiting for it to fill up in the same way the taxi´s do. After a little haggling we got them down to a bargain 4 pounds each for a 200 km journey and off we went, the last two passengers to climb aboard. I say passengers as if you´re ever in Colombia don´t bother to buy supplies for the journey, it´s like travelling on a mobile market. At regular intervals the bus will stop and somebody will hop on with empanadas, bread, jewellery, crsips, water, avocados and lots of other things I don´t know the names off. In fact on the way to Riohacha we´d had about a 45 minute lecture, question and answer session and all, on health, diet etc by a guy who claimed to be a Govt official and then proceeded to sell Ginseng tea - it was a pretty effective sales pitch.

And that was it, we´d arrived in Santa Marta, well actually we were turfed out at a petrol station despite asking for the terminal (not a failing of our Spanish as we´d caught it at a petrol station), at 11.30am. Travelling in Colombia is great, it´s pretty scary at times given the way they drive, I tend tostare out of the side windows but Alison can´t help but stare straight ahead as we swerve in between vehicles of attempt overtaking manuevres that Ayrton Senna would baulk at, but the journey today was a chance to see life going on around us and is more interesting than all the colonial architecture etc put together.

Hope you all enjoyed that little insight into our day. Not sure where we´re off next but we´ll keep you posted.