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South America » Colombia » Bogota
July 9th 2007
Published: July 9th 2007
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After a really brief time in Venezuela we returned to Colombia. From the bus station we caught a bus to San Christobel, arriving in the rain and having trouble finding a car to take us over the boarder, no one wanted to take us over because we had to stop for passport stamps. Eventually a young chap said he would take us for 60,000, (about $20) probably the price of a full car load. He was very good and took us through to San Antonio, another confusing city with the boarder control in a street that is way away from the boarder and you would never find it on your own. Here we had to pay 40,000 each to leave the country. We had to pay this across the road from the passport office, we had no idea what was going on but the taxi driver helped us through it all. Then we drove through San Antonio's confused streets, bumper to bumper traffic jams everywhere. At one stage the driver had his windows down and was talking to a driver on his left and one on his right at the same time. A three way conversation over 4 lanes of traffic. It was total chaos.

We eventually drove over a bridge and he said that was the boarder and got the Colombian stamp a bit more down the road. It was straight forward and then onto Cucuta. This is a busy city and bus station. We got done like a dinner again. Scammed by scammers so slick. We were approached by an old man asking us where we were off to and he took us to an office. We thought it was a bus ticket office, but it was a money exchange place and we changed our money and then they organised out ticket and said it would be 150 mil, I gave him 160 and off he went to get the tickets and to our surprise the tickets had a price of 109 mil on them and I said he was a thief and a robber and he said he had a family to feed and hugged me. However we got on the next bus out of town and after a very long night, 16 hours, we arrived at Bogota. We had traveled for 22 hours that day and night.

10th Bogota is a large city and we spent most of the day resting in the Platypus Hostel and then going for a walk around town and visiting the Gold Museum. Lots of gold jewelery that the Spanish did not find and melt down. Back to the hostel for a large meal of steak and vegetables that Paul cooked.

11th today we went to the Botero art gallery and walked up town to pay for our tickets to Leticia. We are off to the Amazon tomorrow so will be out of touch for awhile.


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