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Published: September 10th 2010
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When we were at home, and thinking about our trip to SOuth America, we had not really intended on spending too much time in Colombia. We didnt know whether it would be too dangerous (as the rumours back home imply). But Colombia turned out to be our favourite country in South America.
When we got to the Ecuador/Colombia frontera we crossed over, with only a couple of dramas. As we left the Ecuador office, a guy called out to ask us whether we were going to the colombia border, we said we were, but that we were fine and didnt need any help, gracias. One of the first things you learn through experience in SA is never to follow any locals, unless they seem truly genuine - otherwise they tend to want money for absolutely everything. Or they have an agenda and their reason for helping you is to get you into a situation where you need them for something. Any information, advice or guidance is going to cost you in some way, so we were by then very wary of anyone and tended to ignore, or walk away from any 'helpful' locals.
So we started walking towards the
colombian frontera with all our gear, unfortunately he stayed with us the whole way, despite us saying we were fine. He also stayed with us as we got our passports stamped, and seemed to encourage all the numerous money changing guys that crowd around you to try and take any opportunity to frisk your pockets, or nick your stuff, or give you a dodgy exchange rate on currency changing.
We did want to swap some currency so that we had a few colombian pesos to get to where we wanted to stay, so i pulled out my document folder to check the exchange rate. In the end it was too overwhelming, we were surrounded by 9 guys all yelling/selling their own product. Our 'friendly' guy from the ecuador border said he had a taxi. We knew he was suspicious, but he said he had a legitimate taxi and he would take us across to a hotel. We needed to stay the night at the border town because it was already 10pm and we had been warned by numerous people not to catch night buses in colombia. Fair enough.
So the guy goes to get his taxi, and comes
back - but its not his taxi, he sat in the passenger seat and someone else was driving. Immediately hayden and i insisted we were not getting in the car - we have heard this type of mugging story numerous times. But ALL the taxi drivers were all standing around and insisted 'no problema muy seguro, no es peligroso, es official taxi'. (dont worry, its very safe, not dangerous, its an official taxi). And the car had an official number, and papers. And it was supposed to be only a 4 minute drive. So, we hopped into the taxi, i slipped my pepper spray into my hand, and my ocket knife into my pocket, and hayden had his pocket knife ready and waiting.
We insisted on being dropped off at the main commercial plaza with lots of people. And only one of us got out, while the other stayed in the car, until our luggage had been unloaded (we've met people along the way who have stepped out of taxis only to have the driver take off with all their luggage). It took some firm insisting to get them to open the boot of the car first though. And
then our friendly guy decided to charge us $20US, for a 4 min drive. We said the most we would pay him was $10. He started getting very aggravated, but we were very insistent and ended up giving him $15, he was yelling at us, and causing a scene, luckily working in our advantage. They drove off tyres squealing, and some nice locals waking past expressed their sympathy with us getting ripped off. We have a feeling if we hadnt played the whole ordeal smartly though, it would have ended a lot worse. And a lot more expensive.
When we found a hotel and popped our stuff down I realised my document wallet was gone. I knew i had not left it behind, because I am always in the habit of doing a 'last check' before walking off anywhere. I figured it had been taken from me, probably by our friendly rip-off local, while my back was turned at the border trying to sort out the money change.
Unfortunately for us the document wallet held our most valuable thing - the copy of the police report from cusco where all haydens exensive valuables got stolen. I also had
my UK bank cards, a few hundred in pounds and euros and dive certification/dive books, etc, receipts for large purchases (some of which were stolen and we need the receipts for the insurance claim). Definitely annoying.
Sigh. Not quite smart enough yet.
Anyways, after that lovely frontera ordeal we hopped in a taxi and went back to the frontera, but it was closed. The next morning we went again to the frontera to check with security whether my document folder had been turned in or something, but no luck. So we legged it to the bus station in time to hop on the next bus heading to Cali.
We were told it was a 9 hour drive to Cali, except when we saw the bus we knew it was going to be a loooong 9 hours. The bus looked like one of those ancient yellow school buses used back in the 70's. Very uncomfy. No toilet. ARGH. Within 15 minutes it became very clear that we were with the scariest, craziest bus driver ever. Not only did he seem to want to play chicken with every oncoming vehicle, he also believed that the BEST time to overtake big trucks was right on the bend of blind corners. SCARIEST RIDE EVER. The scenery was amazing though. We were driving through a very mountainous range, with amazing views ... however this only added to the scariness of the ride - considering the extreme windiness of the road, and the plunging 500m drop off on our right side (being SA the driving is on the right side of the road, hence we were constantly seeing glimpses of steep drop offs), at some stages the wheels were skimming the edges. And of course, being SA, they lied about the drive time, and it ended up being 13 hours.
So we arrived in Cali quite late at night, rather exhausted from sitting on the tiny, cramped seats, having adrenaline pumped through our veins for 13 hours, with the fear of our imminent deaths (hahahaha, i sound like such a drama queen, but it is so true!!). We had the name of a hostel to check out, and luckily they had a room for us.
We had heard so much about Cali - that it is the plastic surgery capital of latin america, that the women are beautiful and that it is a crazy, steamy, salsa mecca. Unfortunately for us we arrived on the weekend of a public holiday - so nothing was open for 2 straight days. No bars, no salsa clubs, no anything. We took a fair walk around the place, but there was nothing at all open. So instead we decided to sit out the front of a small off-licence shop with a great english couple we met at our hostel. We drank rum and sangria and watched the world cup soccer, which had started a couple of days previously. While there we met a few of the locals, and made some new colombian friends 😊 We decided that aside from the border town, the people in Colombia already seemed a lot friendlier then other SA countries.
Anyways, we had 2 days in Cali and then flew to the north of Colombia. Buses in Colombia are expensive, old, scary and take a long time because of all the windy, steep roads. Luckily, they are also the only country in SA that have a budget airline, so flying is almost the same price as bussing. We were soooooo relieved to be flying for the first time in 4 months!
We flew into Cartagena, more on that in the next blog.
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