Columbia here we come.

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We bused to a little town close to the boarder of Ecuador and Colombia and caught a taxi to the boarder. We got the stamps on both sides and caught a taxi to Ipales. We immediately got a mini bus that was leaving for Pasto. We traveled through beautiful countryside, steep hills with huge gorges. We think the bus driver was trying to commit suicide, he was passing on blind corners but actually preferred double yellow lines on the top of blind hills. Sometimes we were left gasping, knowing that if we went over the edge, it would be the end. There was no way the bus could stop from going all the way to the bottom. The country side looked very familiar with us recognising places that it could be in NZ. For example the road was like the Manawatu gorge that went on for 4 hours, but was higher, deeper and steeper with farm plots all over the place.

We had been told that Pasto looked a nice town but we weren't to travel there at night, because of guerrilla activity. The trip lasted until it was dark and most service stations, bridges and small towns were guarded by the army. There were sand bagged guard posts on some bridges even.

We found a hostel called Koala Inn that was right in town and handy to everything. We spent the next day walking around town and went to Laguna de la Cocha on the next day. This is one of the most beautiful lakes in Columbia. We took a taxi to the lake, this took about an hour and it started raining and very foggy. The taxi was shared with a couple of other people. We arrived at the lake and it was pouring down, the wettest we have been in 4 months. We caught a motorised long boat out to the island in the centre where there is a Native reserve. We walked around for ten minutes in the pouring rain and caught the boat back and waited for another taxi. This would have been a most beautiful trip if there was no rain.

That night we decided to have Pizza for dinner. We were a bit hungry so got the second to largest one. It turned out to be the size of the table, the hugest pizza we've ever seen. We only managed to eat half of it and got the other half bagged to take with us. The bag weighed about 2 kg and we gave it to some people on the street.

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