Our 3 weeks in Colombia are at an end, we've travelled overland from one end of the country to the other - Ipiales on the Ecuadorian border to Maicao on the Venezuelan Caribbean coast border - and stopped off lots on the way. What they say Colombia is known for terrorist guerrillas, cocaine and for once being the kidnap capital of the world (Iraq now holds that title), and Bogota as the most dangerous city in the world. Various governments travel advisories still don't make for pretty reading... Current NZ travel advisory for Colombia: There is a high risk to your security in the city of Bogota. You should avoid all government buildings and areas such as shopping centres and malls as well as places of entertainment. Government buildings, public transport and commercial and entertainment centres ... read more

We were determined to get a bus out to Cartagena bus terminal even if it was a mission because taking a cab was way too expensive. As it turns out it was pretty easy, we got up really early to get as much of the travelling done as we could before it got too hot, walked to where we were told buses go past, asked a man on a street stall there and he flagged us one (which because it was early on a Sunday morning was pretty dead). It was a proper local bus with caribbean music blaring full blast and people getting on with all manner of things, like a basket of fish and boxes of advocados. It was way more fun than a proper terminal bus. As a local bus it went by ... read more

The bus station in San Gil was dead when we arrived but we sussed out that buses passing through tout for business on the main road just below the park. We also found a bus company office opposite who go to Bucaramanga every half hour, so on the morning we came to leave we dragged our heels walking down the road and when nothing passed (it was a bit early for buses from Bogota to have got that far) went to the bus office. The 2 1/2 hour journey took us through the Chicamocha National Park and some cool high Andean/big mountain scenery. Despite having a population of over half a million Bucaramanaga bus station was almost as dead as San Gil´s, and we weren't sure how we were going to find a bus to the ... read more

Leaving Bogota we were up reasonably early and squeezed ourselves onto a micro to the bus terminal. Once again we got straight onto a bus about to depart to Tunja and since no one else had taken them we took the 2 seats up front with the driver, which was quite exciting but also somewhat scary to have such a good view of Colombian driving. After 4 hours we were dumped off outside the bus terminal in Tunja where we walked past the collectivos and were soon touted for one about to leave to Villa de Leyva. Villa de Leyva is quite a small town in the Colombian highlands that was declared a national monument in 1954, with its white buildings and cobbled streets. It also boasts the biggest main square in the country at 120m ... read more

We need to keep moving as we've still got some distance to cover yet and lots of things we want to see, so to get to Bogota we decided to hop there seeing as many places on the way as we could. First up was a 3 hour bus from Popayan to Cali (Colombia's third largest city). We would have liked to have had time to explore Cali but there are other places that we want to go more so we headed straight out to Armenia a further 4 hours away. Armenia's setting is its biggest attraction as it sits between a valley and some of the highest mountains of the Cordillera Central mountain range. The town itself was pretty ugly (aka it was a shit hole) but we didn't arrive until late afternoon so didn't ... read more