Blogs from Bogota, Colombia, South America - page 53

We landed at El Dorado International airport in Bogota at 8:30pm We are finally here! After months of waiting I am in Colombia! Me and my friends, Sam, AJ and Yune were all excited! Our friends in Bogota, Daniel and Alejandra picked us up. We checked in at the Casablanca Hotel Casablanca Hotel which is near the Zona Rosa area. its a very nice hotel, in a very nice area. The staff was very friendly. Its about $35 USD per night. I highly recommend this place. Its walking distance from restaurants, banks, and shops. We unpack and got ready for the night while Daniel and Alejandra waited for us in the lobby. We took a taxi to Zona Rosa. Wow, this place is amazing! There were so many trendy restaurants, bars, clubs. It reminded me of ... read more

Firstly I just realised that their was a major crash down of the site. Unfortunately my last 5 entries were lost, as well as some of my pictures. All apologies for those who have missed reading them but it will be too much work to write it all down again. -------------------------------------- Colombia is nothing like what foreigners imagine. You need to visit the country and see it with your own eyes that guerrillas and narco-trafficants only represent a small percentage and are very much isolated from the main tourist areas. Even though they have severely tarnished the country’s image and history, the situation has surprisingly improved in the last decade thanks to drastic actions from the actual president. For many backpackers it has become the hidden gem of the continent. I wouldn’t go as far but ... read more

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 ... read more

well not much to write about galapagos continued to be awesome more snorkelling etc... and after 8 days on a boat it was time for us to get off and stagger towards the plane on our sealegs... we flew into quito and quickly went to the bus station and were off to tulcan which is in northern ecuador near the colombian boarder... we spent a night there in a super cheep but fairly sketchy hostel and the next day cabbed to the boarder... on the ecuador side we waited for about 2 hours to get our exit stamps as the computers were down and they didn´t feel like processing by hand so when we eventually got them done we walked over the bridge to colombia which was a breeze... form the boarder town of ipiales we ... read more

Getting to Bogota This was the 4th leg of our Dragoman trip. We started in Quito and went to Otavalo where we had already been. It was a little more interesting this time because we caught the Saturday market. Didn't buy much but it was lovely to experience the full market with streets and streets of stalls. We left Otavalo very early in the morning. The hotel provided us with a packed breakfast. It was a couple of hours drive to the Colombian border. We were stamped out of Ecuador and into Colombia without incident. A guy called Russ met us at the border to help us get to the airport and take Cameron off our hands. There was a cycle race going on so the main road was closed. We were initially directed into ... read more