It is hard to believe that we are nearing the end of our trip. The past six weeks have flown by... We are, however, looking forward to drinking copious amounts of clean, beautiful, canadian tap water! We met a Nova Scotian a few days ago who is currently living in Argentina and discussed this phenomenon at length. I hope we don´t take this for granted when we get home. The last few days have been fantastic. In Salento, we splurged a bit on a really nice hotel (a whopping 35.00). It had three lovable dogs: Figo, Josh (Yosh), and Yoko, a [View Full Entry]

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We are currently in Armenia and will be taking a short trip today to a little town called Salento. We have been busy the last few days travelling from San Agustin to Popayan, where we stayed for two nights, then from Popayan to Cali, where we stayed only one night, then from Cali to Armenia, where we stayed two nights and are heading out today. The trip from San Agustin to Popayan was nothing short of awful. The bus ride took 9 hours, and covered a very short distance. We were stranded on the road for 2 and a half hours [View Full Entry]

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We have entered the Huila region of Colombia and have spent the last few days in Pitalito and San Agustin. We ended up in Pitalito because we would have had to wait for 9 hours to take a bus to San Agustin, and arrived in Pitalito at 1 o´clock in the morning on a bus full of the most sketchy people I have ever seen. We woke a cab driver waiting at the bus terminal who was sleeping in a cab with his wife. They took us to a bright, clean, wonderful hotel in Pitalito. Our plan was to leave the [View Full Entry]

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So we sat down to discuss the rest of our trip and have decided that we will be staying in Colombia for the duration of our stay. The rest of South America is going to have to wait until next time, and perhaps I can start recruiting people for the second leg of the journey now?? any takers?? Colombia is just too big and too captivating to leave now and we don´t want to waste the rest of our precious days stuck on a bus for days on end. We saw the Andy Warhol exhibit, finally, yesterday. Pretty cool. [View Full Entry]

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Hey Everybody, WE MADE IT!!! The last six days have been incredibly challenging mentally, physically, and emotionally. There are perhaps no words to encapsulate what we just went through, but the most important thing is that we made it through! The trek was the most difficult journey I have every experienced in my life. The terrain was extremely difficult, in many different ways. We encountered just about everything including sludging through mud for hours on end uphill (mountain), scaling the side of slippery wet rocks, trekking across huge open valleys where the sun beats down on you a [View Full Entry]

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Hello Again, Tomorrow morning we will be disappearing into the Jungle to find the lost city!! Hopefully we won´t be eaten alive by mosquitoes. We booked our tour today and will be gone for the next 6 days, so please don´t worry about us! We had quite the adventure today in Santa Marta involving (who Dani refers to as) the evil nurse and yellow fever vaccinations. We will have to elaborate on that one later. It might involve elaborate actions and yelling. [View Full Entry]

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Hey Everyone, We are now in Santa Marta and staying at a fantastic hostel called Galeria de Colombia. The hostel itself is quite basic, but it is the hostel owner that makes it quite spectacular. He is a very knowledgeable Colombian mechanical engineer who used to teach cabinet making. Dani and Juan have a ridiculous number of things in common, including their passion for fine woodworking, boxers (the dogs), and, surprisingly, they both have their second-degree blackbelt in Tae Kwon Do. On Tuesday, he is going to take her to some of the local woodworking shops in Santa Marta. I think [View Full Entry]

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We have arrived safe and sound in Cartagena. We flew here for a great price and were thrilled to avoid the 21 hour bus ride. Today we spent the day on the beach at Bocagrande where we were treated like royalty. There were vendors everywhere trying to make a few pesos selling fresh crab, mangoes, beer, fruit baskets, towels, jewelery, t-shirts, and manicures, pedicures and massages right on the beach. It was fun, but definitely an eye-opening experience. We met a very kind man named Jhonny who made us souvenires from colombia, a few "real precious" stones from the area. Despite [View Full Entry]

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Hey Everyone, We just got back to Bogota from an amazing trip to Villa de Leyva. It is a beautiful little village about 3 hours from Bogota where we rode horses, drank wine in the cobblestone plaza, and fell in love with all of the surprisingly robust homeless dogs. The highlight was, however, the tomato fight in Sutamarchan, a tiny village 20 minutes away from Villa de Leyva. It was a full-blown, no-mercy tomato war in the middle of a football field. The tomatoes were soft, smelly, and surprisingly warm. Everyone involved in the tomato massacre ended up completely covered from [View Full Entry]

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Hey everyone! We arrived in Bogota safe and sound, yesterday afternoon. It was pouring rain when we arrived, but we managed to drag our big, soggy packs from the airport, onto the (surprisingly) right bus, and to our hostel. My spanish is far worse than I remember it being, which always makes things interesting. Today we went to the Gold Museum and watched a protest in the plaza. Hope you are all at ease now that you know we have arrived safely!! [View Full Entry]

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