On Monday morning we left early for Pasto. There was nothing in particular to see in this town but it was a useful overnight stop off to break up the journey across the Colombian border, and avoid crossing this supposedly shady border at night. We were of course late arriving into Pasto. The 'direct' bus from Cali actually involved us having to wait 2hrs and changing at Popayan (luckily out driver was nice and showed us where to go and where we could leave our b...

On Wednesday morning we were joined by Thomas, a German guy who had been in our hostel in Medellin and who it turns out was also staying in the same hostel in Armenia. Danillo, the hostel owner very kindly gave us a lift to the terminal and we jumped on the first bus we could find, paying $10 for the 6-hour journey. Cali is known to be the capital of the world for two things: salsa and plastic surgery. The salsatecas in Cali are legendary in Colombia. It was cer...

Easter week (Semana Santa as it's called here) is a big holiday period for the locals. This meant that everything in Salento got booked up very quickly, so I booked into a hostel in a nearby city called Armenia. We left Medellin in the morning, around 10ish, reaching Armenia around 6pm. The journey there was absolutely stunning, through countryside and mountains. We checked into Los Juanes hostel, around 10 minutes from the centre on a bus, having bought some fo...

I landed in Medellin and took a bus towards the city centre. The ride was about 45-50 minutes and cost $4 rather than the $30 a taxi would have cost. Medellin is a large-ish city (c. 2.5m people) set within surrounding mountains. The drive in was stunning. As we appeared out of the clouds and descended a mountainside, the city came into view, sprawled across the valley. I'd met an American couple who were heading to the same neighbourhood and so we decided to sh...

When I got to the check-in desk at Panama, they asked me to show an onward ticket from Colombia. Unfortunately I didn't have one and I was informed that I would have to buy a flight to Lima to show the Colombian authorities. I reluctantly took my cards out but as luck would have it, their machine wouldn't accept cards with a chip. The guy at the desk felt sorry for me and gave me some flight details, which he said I should use when asked by Colombian immigratio...