Bogota to the Border

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Friday 2nd March - Tunja to Bogota

Having procured some foil bowls and granola from the local 'Exito' (Tescoesque) we continued our theme of cheap eating for breakfast. Our 3 hour bus ride to Bogota was the 1st we've had to date that hasn't been held up by an accident. On arrving in the capital I then further incurred the wrath of Stacie after squeezing us in to a tiny public bus to take us 10km into the centre of the city rather than take a taxi for 10 extra bucks. For me, making these decisions is partly the money saving but also partly the adventure and challenge of doing something that most tourists don't bother with and who take the easy option of jumping in the 1st taxi that comes along. Taxis generally aren't even too expensive but I think if you keep taking them you aren't really experiencing the place you're in properly and will instead end up with a trip like the faceless businessmen who go airport, taxi, hotel, taxi, office and never get the faintest inclination of what somewhere is really like and will yet go home professing to be a world traveller plus. Well at least that's what I tell Stacie 😊 Anyhow, after jumping off the bus and throwing some money at the driver who tried to rip us off for taking up so much room with our bags, we were on the mean streets of Bogota. Bogota is grimey, grey and very easily missable. I'd been told by a faceless businessman of the company I used to work for, what a cool place it was but it looks like he was the one trying to sound cool with his boadroom buddies when he said this. It indeed felt a lot safer than you might imagine as is the whole of Colombia not too far off the main roads but other than that and a few impressive public colonial buildings there's not a lot to miss here. We splashed out by spending over twice as much as normal and stayed in the Ibis Hotel with all the poor faceless businessmen and it turned out to be well worth the money as it was both very good and avoided all the other potential flee pits in the more rustic part of town.

Saturday 3rd March - Bogota

We again headed down into the heart of the city in the Candelaria district as we'd done the afternoon before. The older part of town is where most hostels and cheap hotels are located and is the most picturesque area we found here, although still on the grimey side. It gave us an opportunity to partake in one of the local customs in a very nice little cafe, which is to have a cup of very strong hot chocolate and then dip the bread and cheese into it that you've been provided with. I don't think dipping cheese into a hot drink is something we Brits would typically do but it's actually pretty good, although I'll still probably stick to putting it on my crackers in future. We had a quick rest and dry off back at the hotel after one of the many cold rain storms that typically pass through the city and then headed out into the night in search of some more street food. This was surprisingly harder to find than you might expect, as the place is littered with fast food outlets but eventually we got lucky and found some more arepas and juices to wash them down. After that it was a hasty retreat back to the hotel through the dark streets at about 9pm, trying to avoid all the nutters who seem to take this time as their calling a bit like nocturnal animals. We saw a couple of women in their 30s crying their eyes out in the street relaying their story to some police officers so I guess we may have been a little fortunate not to get into any of own scrapes.

Sunday 4th March - Bogota to Popayan

Having decided to have a crack at a night bus for the 1st time to make our exit from Bogota, we were left with nearly a full day to chill out. Making the most of our plush and for us expensive dwellings, we had a nice long lay in and checked out on the dot at 1pm. A quick walk around town and some food and we were ready to watch "El Artista" at the local cinema. Stacie was a little concerned at first after we'd bought the tickets and it said with spanish subtitles but they turned out to be unfounded worries for obvious reasons and we really enjoyed what was a great film. 7.15pm and we boarded our night bus with I guess what was inevitable scrutiny of every other passenger who we sized up for their hijacking potential. Given that there must be hundreds of night buses travelling across Colombia each day of which I'm sure nearly all complete their journeys with no trouble, the chances of having a problem must be pretty slim but still the mind can't help playing tricks on you. We needn't have been worried as 14 hours later we arrived safe and sound and a little tired in Popayan.

Monday 5th March - Popayan

A spot of eggs, rice and plantain for breakfast and we were ready to head into town to find a hotel. We jump into the 1st taxi we see (Stacie was very happy) and low and behold but our taxi driver knows the location of the town's hotels about as well as I know how to speak Japanese. On about our 4th lap of the town he decides to ask a street seller where the hotel in our guide is and it turns out it's about 50 yards from where he's been driving the last 30 minutes. Of course it's our fault for not giving him the right address and not his for not knowing where anything is in the town he's probably been living in for the last 60 years. Needless to say he didn't get a tip, other than maybe he's in the wrong line of business but I don't think he understood that either. Popayan is a lovely city, with nearly every building white washed and the place has a great atmosphere in its bustling streets. It also has an ideal climate averaging 19 degrees with little variation year round. It's reknowned for it's high number of churches and accordingly being a religious place but you wouldn't have thought it judging by how many of the locals like to walk around letting it all hang out as they often seem to do in Latin America or so Stacie tells me she's observed anyhow.

Tuesday 6th March - Popayan

It was an eventful nights sleep for the wrong reasons unfortunately. After a restroom break at about 4 in the morning, I was just about to jump back into bed when Stacie spotted something dark and ominous crawling across the mattress where I was about to lay. I switched on the light and there it was, a medium sized cockroachwho'd decided to crawl into bed with usfor some company. Needless to say he got the full treatment with the bottom of my sandal. As you might imagine it was a little hard to get back to sleep after that but we sort of managed it. For one of the first days in a very long time we managed to go the whole day without eating any bread. Breakfast was grainola and lunch stroke dinner consisted of strawberries, bananas and lovely avocado. The owner and receptionist smiled in a relaxed fashion when we told her we'd slept with a cockroach the night before and promised to clean our room. We though we'd risk it and booked another night in the place which actually seemed quite clean. On returning in the afternoon, our room still hadn't been cleaned and the older lady in the place showed a little more concerned by getting it cleaned hasta pronto.

Wednesday 7th March - Popayan to Otavalo, Ecuador

Up at 6am and we were on the first bus to Ecuador we got offered at the bus terminal at 7am which turned out to be a bad call after we were squeezed onto the back of a minibus for a windy 8 hour journey through the mountains rather than cruising on one of the many delux larger buses with TVs and toilets. It was especially bad for me as Stacie decided to chew my ear off about it for the rest of the day as it was clearly my fault. The scenery through the south of Colombia was dramatic, with huge drops on the side of roads as we weaved up and down the Andes towards Ecuador. Once in Ipiales, the Colombian border town, it was another short minibus to the border from where we walked across the bridge over a ravine, separating the 2 countries. A spot of breakfast at 3pm and then a short taxi ride with our 1 armed driver into Tulcan, the Ecuadorian border town. One of the joys of bus travelling is that you rarely know where you are as you go from town to town and people seem to randomly jump on and off and this is especially so in the dark where you can barely see a thing. 4 hours into this bus ride and we thought we heard a faint noise from the driver saying Otavalo. We started to get together our belongings as it stopped and I went up to check it was our stop. It was and before I'd even got back to our seats to collect our bags, the bus was off again. We hurridly headed back to the door and asked them to stop immediately, which he did albeit in a grumpy manner given that he couldn't believe we'd missed our stop after a 4 hour ride in the dark during which time he'd stopped at about 50 different places. Out on the side of the busy duel carriageway it was hard to even see a town nearby and for a short while it felt like we'd been dropped in the middle of nowhere. As it turned out we'd got off on the town's bypass rather than being taken to the central bus station I had marked on my little map. Another nice 30 minute yomp through dark streets and we were at the hostal in our guide and managed to secure the last room.

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