After another bumpy ride through the mountains we arrived to Medellin, the capital of the Antioquia departemento. Nowadays Medellin is peaceful, but it used to be the most dangerous city in the world 20 years ago, when the gangster king Pablo Escobar terrorized it. Today most of Pablo Escobars heritage has been wiped out; instead the presence of the other famous son of Medellin, Fernando Botero, is much more visible with statues in several places around the city. We had our hostel within walking distance from the city center, so our first morning we decided to stroll there. Our initial positive impression changed once we got to the smelly river separating our peaceful neighborhood from the city center, after that we entered a shady looking part of the city that apparently acts as an open door ... read more

Our first real destination in Colombia was the cute city of Popayan. It is called the "white city" because of its 2 stories high white painted buildings and supposed to be really pretty, so we went there even though we didn't really have anything special we wanted to see there except the city itself. Arriving at the bus station the city didn't look that special, but it changed once we got to the old town. Every house was painted white, all signs were small and discreet, and the city got especially pretty once it got dark and lights illuminating the buildings were turned on. As mentioned we didn't really have any plans for Popayan, so we spent one day walking around the city, enjoying the beautiful buildings and relaxing. We also looked through our plans for ... read more

Cotopaxi One of the highest (5897 meters) active volcano in the world, Cotopaxi, is also a picture perfect conical volcano. It is also the second highest volcano in Ecuador. As we wanted to see it more closely we booked a combined two day tour from Quito to Cotopaxi and Quilotoa, a crater lake nearby. We did our bookings from Cuenca where we traveled lightly, and as we only had our Kindles to explore our options with we went according to tripadvisors recommendations and booked the tour with a company named Gulliver travels. The tour started early morning with a rendezvous at a café in central Quito. There our bus driver picked us up, and drove to a hotel near Cotopaxi where we left our big backpacks, tried out our bikes and got a few more people ... read more

After the jungle we were longing for civilization, and luckily for us our next stop was Quito, the capital of Ecuador. It was a 5 h bus ride from Tena to Quito, the funny part is that the bus ride cost us only half of what we paid for the taxis from Misahualli to Tena and from Quito bus station to our Airbnb apartment. Quito is on high altitude, almost 3000 meters, so it was considerably cooler than in the jungle, especially in the apartment as there is no heating and no sun shining in through the windows. In Quito we mainly spent out time in the old and the new town. The old town is one of the most beautiful colonial districts in all of Ecuador. It is quite touristic, with a lot of small ... read more

Our next destination, Baños, was supposed to be one of the most beautiful towns in Ecuador. It is also on the slope of Tungurahua, an active volcano, which currently is having small eruptions several times a day. As we had never visited a volcano we googled for hours on volcano safety, on how the current eruption cycle was progressing and generally on whether or not we would put ourselves in danger by going to Baños. Our hosts in Guayaquil thought we were overreacting, "The volcano has been erupting for 14 years and the town is still there", and as everything we found on the net told the same story we decided to take our chances with the wrath of Tungurahua. When we got to Baños it was like arriving to another country after our days in ... read more