We managed to find our way to Taganga, a small fishing viallage that is taken over by holidaymakers and tourists. Rather like when we lived in Taupo, you left home during the holiday season because it went crazy. Our transport included a taxi to the bus station, the taxi driver had no idea what our Spanish meant and he finally figured out our hand gestures and the odd word in the dictionary. We then managed to find a bus to Santa Marta, we passed alot of low lying homes with water everywhere - possibly from the down pour we had the [View Full Entry]

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We have done some sightseeing around Cartagena by boat and Chiva and bus. Every trip was enjoyable and showed another facet of this really lovely place. Our first trip was by boat to an aquarium and beach. There were dolphins sharks, many types of large fish, sea turtles and tropical fish. The aquarium had walkways around the ocean that was fenced off for the creatures. I believe the dolphins could have jumped out if they wanted to. The guides threw fish to show us how they snapped them up and swam for food. The dolphins did a bit of a show. [View Full Entry]

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Our overnight bus arrived about 9.30 am and we caught a taxi through a frenzy of traffic, donkey carts and people. Along the way some people banged on the taxi and were yelling, we didn't know what was happening, but the driver just sped off and then Paul said someone had been run over. It we had stopped we could have taken the person to hospital but we were well passed before we realised what was happening. It made me very sad to think the driver ignored those people. This place is really hot, we sweat like anything. It is very [View Full Entry]

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We bused to Medellin, Paul was only frisked once this trip. There were checkpoints everywhere and you need to carry your passport with you. We had quite a slow trip through to Medellin, the bus stopped at every small town along the way. We arrived at the Palm Tree Hostel and settled in. Patty phoned a friend who came over to talk to us and it was organised for him to take us around the city the next afternoon. Medellin is a great big city of 4 million - our country in one city. In the morning we went to Museo [View Full Entry]

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Salento is a quaint little town with a central plaza and really nicly done up roads. All the buildings are kept in the old style and we stayed at a hostel that Patty had stayed at 2 years previously. There we met up with Daryl who we had met in San Agustin and Patty bargained for us all to have a room together at a much cheaper rate than they wanted. Salento has a lookout with lots of stairs to climb. The others had a climb up their that afternoon, but I was looking at the shops and resting. We caught [View Full Entry]

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From San Agustin there is a loop road that leads to Tierradentro, another place with archealogical sites, the only known underground tombs in South America. This trip was another experience, thank goodness for Patty who could speak spanish and barttered our way there. Sometimes we were in and out of buses, not knowing whether we were in or not as she was busy bartering away, if it didn´t suit her or the price was not to her liking she yelled for us to all get out, it was quite hilarious. We left from San Agustin to Pitalito in a ford king [View Full Entry]

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We caught a taxi to the bus station just on the outskirts of Popayan to go to San Agustin. We had no trouble getting a ticket for the 11 am bus. However when the bus arrived, it was full and with no language we did not know what was going on. I asked the conductor twice and there was alot of hand waving a words and still we did not know what was going on. Lots of other people were trying to get on as well. Eventually another bus came along and promptly filled that up. The bus trip was 120 [View Full Entry]

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We had another crazy, 6 and a half hour bus ride to Popayan, through gorges, steep hills, winding road and bush, very nice scenery. The bus driver appeared to need to pass on blind corners as fast as he could, tooting to tell everyone else to get off the road. Once again lots of check points, with the soldiers with automatic FN´s, with huge magazines sticking out of them. Popayan is known as the White City, because most of the city centre is painted white. It looks very pretty. We booked into a flash hotel that was supposed to be cheap [View Full Entry]

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We bused to a little town close to the boarder of Ecuador and Colombia and caught a taxi to the boarder. We got the stamps on both sides and caught a taxi to Ipales. We immediately got a mini bus that was leaving for Pasto. We traveled through beautiful countryside, steep hills with huge gorges. We think the bus driver was trying to commit suicide, he was passing on blind corners but actually preferred double yellow lines on the top of blind hills. Sometimes we were left gasping, knowing that if we went over the edge, it would be the end. [View Full Entry]

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We took a bus that cost about $1 each to go on a long bus trip to Otavalo. This town holds a very large market on Saturdays, including an animal market at 6am, so we arrived the day before so that we could have an early start. The road to Otavalo passes acres of glasshouses, growing roses and flowers. The bus was to Otavalo, so we were waiting for it to arrive at the station - it never did. People on the bus were talking to us about Otavalo, and we could not understand them. It happened that we had passed [View Full Entry]

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