Next stop - Colombia, a country we hadn't considered at the start of our trip planning due to the idea that it was unsafe, but having bumped into numerous people along our travels who sung Colombia's praises and after a bit more research into the country's safety, we couldn't resist taking a look for ourselves! Our entry into the country from Ecuador begun with a night in the town of 'Ipiales', where we shared an extremely basic room with Zach that came with flies buzzing around and beds thats sank into the floor in the run down border town. When morning came we had the traditional Colombian breakfast of scrambled eggs, an arepa, a hot chocolate and a large chunk of savoury cheese, which you should dip into the hot chocolate and drink...it tasted like cheese dipped in hot chocolate, left your hot chocolate with strange lumps in, and wasn't something any of us repeated again! Whilst in Ipiales we visited the neo-gothic church of 'El Santuario de las Lejas', which impressively spans a wide gorge! With nothing much further to see in the area we resigned ourselves to another 10 hour bus journey to the city of 'Cali', known as the salsa capital of South America! Before mastering the dance however, our first challenge was once again getting the taxi driver to find our hostel, despite saying he knew where it was when we got in his taxi at 2.30am! After driving around for an hour, stopping in the middle of crossroads to speak to other cab drivers, and asking the local drunk and a man sleeping whilst standing up, we were eventually dropped at the correct location and fell into bed for the night at the 'Casa Cafe' hostel.

The next couple of days we spent relaxing in the bohemian 'San Antonio' area of Cali with its quirky mix of colourful buildings, sampling the local craft beers, playing intense games of jenga, and Sophie attempting to teach the boys the basics of Salsa before heading off on a night out. After this wholly failing, the three of us decided to book in for a professional private 2 hour lesson one morning. With a rather scary lady and a much kinder man teaching us, we were taught 6 or so salsa moves, with the boys using all their concentration to master them and Zach breaking wildly into freestyle whenever he forgot the actual steps. It was good fun though, and the most exercise and sweating we'd done for a while, great for getting the alcohol out of your system...

Next we moved on to the town of Salento in the 'zona cafetera' or coffee region of Colombian; a country of course known for its coffee, although perhaps second to it's shady history as a cocaine producer, and the notorious drug baron Pablo Escobar! The town is surrounded by rolling hills carpeted in thick forest, while the streets are full of cute coloured buildings and shops selling local handicrafts, along with a main square where local teenagers would gallop around on horses at a scary speed on the weekend, while fireworks exploded overhead - the usual South American manic celebrations for one reason or other! Whilst here we visited 'El Ocaso' coffee farm, a 45 minute walk from town, and learnt about the whole coffee making process, whilst picking some coffee cherries ourselves and trying samples of the famously 'smooth and sweet' Colombian coffee; we're not sure they would think much of us putting milk in it back home!

Next day, after being awoken early by a loud cockerel who decided to stand right outside our room door each morning and which Trevor had to chase away on a couple of 4am occasions, we headed to the nearby 'Valle de Cocora', described as a 'lush version of Switzerland', home to a large green valley framed by rugged peaks. To get to the park we were crammed onto a jeep and the three of us ended up having to stand on the metal footstep at the back of the vehicle for the 20 minute journey, whilst holding on tightly! A walk took us through the Valle, across some rope bridges over shallow rivers, and up into the cloud forest. We stopped for a while at 'Acaime', a small farm full of about 6 different types of hummingbird (one of which hilariously pooed straight into Zach's eye whilst he was peering at it), along with a Kaoti; a strange little raccoon like animal. Afterwards we continued up to the ranger station at 3,000 metres for a better view of the valley below. The highlight of the walk was when we descended down into an area where 60m tall thin wax palm trees rose out of the green valley and surrounded us.

From a cool climate back to sweaty heat, we arrived 14 hours away in the port town of 'Turbo', on our way to a Caribbean beach on the north west coast of Colombia near Panama. On arrival in Turbo we checked into 'Residencia Florida', a basic hotel which lacked toilet seats and more than a curtain between the bathroom and the bedroom! However, Lonely Planet told us it was one of the few hotels that were definitely 'safe' in the area; we'd wondered about the two giant alsation dogs keeping guard in reception! This area of Colombia bordering Panama has only just properly opened up to tourists again, having once been a paramilitary stronghold. This did however mean that our destination of 'Capurganá' in the 'Golfo de Urabá' was still reasonably undiscovered and pristine. The change in the area is true of most of Colombia, which in recent years has dramatically cracked down on the drug industry of the country, and the government has also made tentative progress with F.A.R.C. guerrilla rebels. There is now a strong interest in drawing the rich industry of tourism into their country and transforming their reputation as a dangerous 'drugs country' as Sophie's mum put it. The locals are so welcoming and intent on making Colombia the next tourist destination that if anyone steals your stuff or tries to rob you, all the locals will chase them down and most likely give them a good beating! Meanwhile, although a little disconcerting a first, every one of your bus journeys will be boarded by police at least once to check everyone's ID and the luggage on board! Our day in Turbo was mainly spent observing the strange scene of children playing in the park right next to loud bars full of old men drinking beside them all day below our hotel balcony...

On the 14th July we got to the port in Turbo at 8.30am ready to get our boat to Capurganá. An hour and a half later, after waiting in what felt like some kind of cattle market with absolutely no order to anything and no idea whether our boat had already gone, was the one departing as we stood on the dock, or was even going that day, we waited as the numbers finally dwindled around us. Eventually the couple of other tourists at the dock got called onto a boat and we pushed forwards and left on a high speed motor boat, a little nervous after reading in the Lonely Planet 'It can be a horrifically bumpy journey...you'll laugh about this journey one day - if you don't bite your tongue off and smash all your teeth en-route'...brilliant! Anyway, 5 minutes into the journey we got to a police checkpoint and were immediately sent back to the Turbo dock because there were no fire extinguishers on our boat...are you joking?! Back to the port, 2 fire extinguishers loaded on board, half an hour more wait in the sun for no apparent reason, bit more of a wait as someone got off the boat and never returned (not sure we blamed them at this point), and then finally off on our way for indeed a bumpy 2.5 hour journey across the ocean, bums banging into the benches and the wind blowing fiercely in our faces, where it felt like that old saying 'if the wind changes your face will stay like that' might just become a reality! Luckily on arrival in Capurganá we realised it had all been worth it, surrounded by beautifully clear blue water, white sand, and relaxed daily activities going on, including fishing from the pier, and a line of about 6 men throwing crates of empty beer bottles to one another along the pier to be loaded onto an old wooden boat, while small boys waited eagerly to dive in and retrieve any that fell into the sea! After Sophie slipping down a step with all her bags on her back and managing to cut her knee open just to finish off the trauma of the journey here, we eventually checked into a beach bungalow for the three of us at 'Dive & Green' scuba resort, complete with hammocks overlooking the sea! After a lunch on the beach of a Colombian dish, 'Patacones' (fried plantain) topped with various meats, cheese, guacamole and sauces, the boys went off to the dive centre for Trevor to begin his Padi Open Water qualification to catch up with Sophie, and for Zach to refresh his skills, while Sophie finally relaxed in the hammocks with small red crabs and lizards running around the patio and listening to the sound of the crashing waves; that's the life! The boys spent the day going through basic equipment and dive skills in a training pool which was only 1.5m deep, with their instructor 'Guillermo' who kept making puns about the length of his 'hose'...

Next day we were all making use of the wifi at the dive centre, Trevor skyping his mum on her birthday about 100 metres from our room... On our return we opened the door and our belongings were everywhere, bags completely emptied and our things strewn across the room; after a few seconds it dawned on us that our room had been ramshackled by thieves! Desperately searching through our stuff we realised that nothing but a battery charger had been stolen; luckily we had locked all our money and passports in the safe in the room, and the thieves hadn't seemed to be interested in our iPods or foreign currency, presumably because of the small population and distance from proper facilities meaning they would be hard to sell on/exchange. Unfortunately a little clay model of Jesus that Zach had been carrying for months as a gift for his brother had also been smashed, and Trevor's small backpack lining had been slashed by the thieves searching for objects behind it! After finding the locks on the window broken and realising this was how they had got in, we returned to the dive shop to report it and went off to the police station with the dive master translating the event for us. The police, probably pretty corrupt and notoriously lazy in the town, listened with disinterest while cleaning their guns. After a bit of persuasion they came back and looked at the room and agreed to produce a police report for us the next day... We didn't get that report until 3 days later, and actually had to write it ourselves before the police stamped it.

The following day, Sophie decided to do her advanced dive course, rather than sit on her own at the bungalow all day! We all went on two dives in water so warm that you didn't even need to wear a wetsuit, and over some of the best preserved coral reefs in the Caribbean, where Trevor performed some dive skills and Sophie had to identify various fish under water. The coral was massive and varied, with giant 'brain' shaped coral being home to tiny fish, lobsters, trumpet fish, and other tropical species. Our second dive consisted of us all performing various buoyancy control activities involving swimming through squares and triangle shapes, and inches off the bottom of the ocean floor. Swimming down a sandy corridor surrounded by coral reef on either side, we soon reached a large rocky pinnacle, home to a small octopus, spiky lion fish, and pretty black and white drummer fish. Slightly weirdly after seeing the abundance of sea life that day, we then proceeded to go out and eat lobster and octopus at a small restaurant on the sand that evening. The lobster was delicious, and while Sophie ate the main flesh, the boys left not a scrap of meat, sucking the flesh out of the claws, legs and head much to Sophie's horror!

We took the next day off from our dive course and hiked for 1.5 hours through the jungle from Capurgana to Sapzurro beach...in flip flops...in the mud = a lot of swearing from Zach who's flip flops kept breaking on the slippery slopes, although we were lucky enough to see a monkey, some tropical bright flowers, lizards, birds and a tiny frog. The tiny town of Sapzurro, like Capurgana, is car-free and, unlike some Caribbean beach areas that have been built up and cleaned to be pristine resorts, has instead got the locals living their lives around you. There was a group of men sitting in the shade of a tree by the pier when we arrived, blasting Latin music out of a speaker and passing bottles of rum around whilst playing cards...we never said their daily life actually involved work! After cooling off in the sea we grabbed some lunch and a coconut ice cream from a small old lady with a cooler box in the street before heading straight back to the water! We spent the afternoon adopting a dog on the beach and playing games in the water with it, although losing it every time someone walked past our bags on the beach at which point it would bolt out of the sea and stand by our stuff protectively and bark loudly; no more thefts for us! Avoiding the walk through the jungle on the way back we waited for a boat around the coast instead, during which time we watched the same group of men under the tree who had now been joined by numerous women also joining in the rum drinking and dancing enthusiastically to the music; in one instance a woman needed to make her way to the other side of the road, pick up a plastic chair and take it back to the group, amazingly this was all done whilst dancing!

The final day of our dive course consisted of three further dives. During the first, Sophie had to do a deep dive to 25m, where she was required to do some sums and puzzles under the water to see if there were any effects on her response times from the increased nitrogen intake at that depth, although the dive master was so distracted with another rather large girl on the dive having so many buoyancy issues he could hardly monitor Sophie! The second dive consisted of Trevor's final skill tests and Sophie and her buddy having to navigate a square and triangle under the water using a compass, and then navigate the whole group back to the boat under water using natural references, which was miraculously successful! That afternoon Trevor completed his Padi exam with a geeky 98% and gained his qualification. Finally Trevor and Zach joined Sophie for the last aspect of her advanced course; a night dive that evening. At 6.30pm we all headed out into the sea and threw ourselves off the boat with torches in hand. Swimming under the ocean with just the light of our torches illuminating the way we spotted nocturnal crabs and lobsters coming out to hunt, the crabs looking like they were using chopsticks as they picked at food with their claws! Other fish were sleeping on rocks, well until we accidentally shined our lights in their faces anyway, and we were surrounded by tiny bronze eyes of shrimp between the coral when we illuminated them. We also saw a 'slipper lobster' disguising itself amongst some rocks on the sea bed. However, the highlight of the dive was the bioluminescent plankton! In the middle of the dive we all switched our torches off and held onto each other to avoid floating off into the depths, and waited...after a few seconds bright white and blue dots of light started appearing before our eyes, and before long the whole of the dark water around us was illuminated with the glowing plankton; individual stars of white and long vertical lines of bright blue dots right in front of us, it was like a starry night sky but 12 metres under the ocean! Intermittent flashes of lighting penetrated the water as a storm passed overhead making it one of the most surreal and stunning experiences we have had. On return to the dive centre Sophie had now completed her advanced Padi course.

On the 19th July it was time to leave the other world of Capurganá and return to reality, having enjoyed the Caribbean lifestyle and underwater adventures for a few days! After finally receiving our police report and saying goodbye to Guillermo, we battled the rain to board a slightly bigger, yet equally windy boat, this time for a 1.5 hour journey to the town of 'Nococli', where we immediately piled onto a tiny uncomfortable bus full of chickens and turkeys to the city of 'Monteria'. The transport around these areas was certainly not up to the standards we'd previously been experiencing in South America! One more 5 hour mini bus took us to the city of Cartagena for midnight...our usual convenient hostel check in time!