Vern: On the day that US forces found Osama Bin Laden, Vern and Andrea went into hiding. On a plantation outside of the idyllic town of Salento, in the heart of Colombia's lush coffee region, we laid down our backpacks in a rustic bamboo shack and collapsed into a hammock. The farm admistrator brewed a pot of own-grown 'suave' beans and served us mugs of sweet tinto (black coffee). And on the stilted terrace we sipped the product his labour, silenced by the magni...

Vern: From Pasto, we took a six-hour minibus to Popayan. The road wound round the steep peaks of 'Volcano Alley' and around every other corner there was another surprise; from fallen rocks to potholes to heavily-armed policemen hiding in trees, but our driver threw the bus expertly round the bends and we concentrated on the spectacular vistas to ward off motion sickness. Popayan is dubbed 'the white city' (a name which would never be allowed in South Africa) bec...

Vern: Off to Colombia! Quito (Equador) has five or six major bus stations, and no one in the tourism industry knew from which one the bus to Tulcan, the closest town to the Ecuador/Colombia border, left. Luckily, the law of averages worked - we corroborated all of their stories, and the taxi dropped us correctly at Terminal Carcelan. An excited conductor ushered us from the taxi door straight onto a bus about to depart. A sinister "farewell friend" (a bag-thief ...