The last of Colombia *updated*

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I've just got back from another little trip around Colombia for the past two weeks that took me to a few places that I wanted to see. I took a night bus from Bogota to a city called Manizales that I had previously spent six days in and realy enjoyed. I was having some problems with one of my ears which happens every so often after diving, not a problem though I just take decongestants for a few days and it goes away. So I was on the nightbus from Bogota for eight hours and I was taking these pills but didn't sleep at all because the road is so curvy. Then when I arrived in the morning and found a hostel I started getting really sleepy. I went to bed and it never occured to me that the bunch of pills I had taken were the drowsy ones and I literally slept for twenty four hours, haha. So that was one day wasted and the next day I was doing some paperwork and stuff to extend my visa and then just saw some friends that I had made a few weeks before.

Then the next day I took off to find these hotsprings that I had seen in a magazine and they were a few hours away on two different busses. On the first bus I sat in the front seet with the driver because he was realy interested in what I did for work back home and why the heck I was travelling by myself. After explaining everything to him he dropped me off in the town of Santa Rosa de Cabal, which is mentioned in the movie Maria full of Grace if you have ever seen it. From here it was a 45 minute jeep ride to get to the entrance for the hotsprings. At the entrance it started pouring rain and I hadn't brought my raincoat so I just got into my swimshorts and walked through the rain. The hotsprings were spectacular, a nice pool built at the foot of spectacular seventy metre waterfalls.

I spent about four hours in the springs until I was all wrinkled up then walked back down to the entrance where a group of soldiers was standing around, I gave one of them the rest of my pepsi and started walking down the road and they asked where I was going. To find a room I said, and they sent one soldier to show me where a place with cheap cabanas was because the official hotel at the hotsprings is about a hundred bucks a night. So we got to the place and I had a really nice room for twenty bucks a night and the soldiers actualy had a small base and checkpoint right there to, so it was pretty safe. There was two other people staying at the motel also, they were from spain but had retired here a couple years ago. He seemed pretty wealthy and liked to talk alot.

Also at this motel place they rented horses, and not the fifteen dollar a day scragly ones I've seen elsewhere in my travels. These were big strong well fed ones but they were a bit more expensive at ten bucks an hour, but in one hour this thing took me to the top of a huge mountain that would have taken a day on foot. And it was realy well trained because the first time we were running and I pulled on the reins abit to stop he stopped so fast that I flew off the front of the thing. Of course it was in front of these two kids who were riding around without a saddle and they got a good laugh, but after that me and the horse got along pretty well and had a bit of an agreement I think. When I got back to the hotel the Spanish guy had invited all the soldiers in for a coffee and he was showing them how to aim their machine guns better as if he knew it all.

The next day was a series of bus conections in the Zona Cafetera, the region of green mountains and volcanoes where the coffee is grown. At the end of the day I was in a tiny town called Salento where I don't think too much of anything ever happens. I found a nice hotel with the nicest owner and we went out with some people around the town that evening and hung out with three old farmers celebrating a birthday on a street corner. Everyone went home at about eight thirty though which is quite a late night for Salento I think. The next day was a jeep ride to the Valley de Cacora, where these huge palm trees stick staight up seventy metres into the air, it realy was a sight to see them.

After that it was off to the city of Cali, which is the third biggest in Colombia and famous for Salsa and beautiful people, so I didn't find it that hard to blend in even though my salsa isn't the best. I spent two days there checking out some sights and enjoying the hot climate. At the hostel I met this British guy and Australian guy and we decided to head towards the coast in a bus to a place called Cordoba where we could get a motorbike powered train to another little place called San Cipriano. When we were on the bus and it was going through Cordoba the English guy says to me:

EG - ''I think this is Cordoba''
Me - ''Yah it looks like it, we should get off eh''
EG - ''Yah I guess we should, we should tell the driver''
Me - ''Yah we should probably tell the driver if we want off eh''

And I don't know why we didn't feel like getting off but we just kind of kept talking like this as the bus left Cordoba and continued on and the English guy said:

EG - ''Well I guess we're going to the coast''
Me - ''Yah I guess we are eh''

We had talked about going to the coast before and figured we might but it is kind of off the beaten track and we din't know to much about it. So we got to the big port of Buenaventura, which is famous for their six metres of rainfal per year, and headed to the docks so we could get a boat to some beaches north that somebody had told us about. It was realy hot and sunny out and in an hour we arrived at some beautiful beaches with little places to stay and good seafood. The beaches are only accesible when the tide is down a bit because they come up to huge cliffs and you need to be realy careful when you go walking that you don't get caught by the tide coming in otherwise you're finished. Luckily the locals warned us though and we walked a few hours up the beach as the tide was going down and made it back with lots of time to spare.

Then this local native guy offered to take us canoeing up a river and we agreed to go and were a bit suprised to find the river was still and stagnant an enveloped in thick jungle. But the little dugout canoe was pretty cool and we cruised up the river for about an hour and a half and made it to a crystal clear pool with a small water fall and rocks to jump off. The whole time up the river my imagination kept seeing guys with blowdarts hiding in the trees but we were ok. Me and the english guy kind of laughed at how far off the beaten track we were now. The next day it was the start of a twenty four hour trip back to Bogota that included boats, crammed busses, two landslides and a breakdown.

So I'm back in Bogota now, here for the weekend to take care of a few things(including my birthday) and to say goodbye to to the people I have been living with before I fly out on monday. I'm going to a steamy hot little town called Leticia in the very south of Colombia which is perched on the banks of the mighty Amazon River. The place is so isolated that there are no busses or highways and I'll be forced to take my first flight of this trip to get down there. I won't say exactly what my plans are for onwards travel but theres only two ways back out of there, by plane or by boat, and I ain't gona fly!

*Update* - Sept. 2

It's 9 pm and I'm in Leticia. it's seriously hot, people are running around the streets, there's borders here with Brazil and Peru that you are free to cross during the day. I've bought my hamock and food and there's a boat leaving tomorrow down the Amazon and I'll be on it.

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