It was time to leave Bogota and head for Santiago. We only have 8 days before we fly out to New Zealand for a short stop over and then on to Jakarta, Indonesia. It was an early start. Don't you just hate a 5.15am alarm? I should have got used to it in the job. We took a taxi to the airport. It was like being driven by Jensen Button with his eyes shut. Warp 9 Mr Sulu. I was cringing in the back. Our driver on the other hand clearly enjoyed it. When we got out h...

After another big brekkie we set off to the bus station to head to our next stop Villa de Leyva. There is no direct bus so we had to go to Tuncja and change. It's a four hour ride to Tuncja then one hour to Villa de Leyva. For the first time since we arrived in South America we had a lady driver. She had brought her daughter along for the day. What a difference. It was a calm drive. No mad speeds, no death defying overtakes, no excess speeds then heavy braking...

As we had wandered around Cartagena we had noticed a hostel offering door to door tourist buses to Santa Marta, our next destination. In we went and booked two seats for the next morning. We had breakfast and got a taxi to the other hostel for the bus. Somehow they got everyone's luggage in and we settled down for the trip. It was remarkably ok and we arrived at the door of our hostel as described. We were shown to our room. It was a good size but wow was it h...

Time to move on. While in Popyan we decided to fly to Cartagena. The easiest way was to go to Cali and fly from there. We looked at the main airlines LAN and AVIANCA. Both were charging about £120 per person. Kieran at the hostel said 'Have you tried Vive Colombia?'. Apparently they are a new budget airline and have only been operating since May. Ok. Generally a sentence I wouldn't hear myself saying is 'I'm flying on a Colombian budget airline'. Having said t...

Hello blog hounds. We have some catching up to do I think. Ok so it was time to leave Otovalo and Ecuador. We had warmed to the country and its people and were now off to Colombia. Land of the Escobar's, drug cartels etc. We kitted up and went down to the bus stop on the Pan American highway. Every 20 minutes they run so no problems. It was about 9.30am and the first bus was packed to the gunnels. We were now a little nervous but fortunately the next bus had ro...