Colombia

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After a relaxing breakfast in the main square in Ibarra, we set off for the Ecuadorian border town of Tulcan, where we had planned to spend the night before heading to Colombia the next day. As we hadn't originally been intending to travel through Colombia, we knew little about where we wanted to go, so our plan was to spend the afternoon in Tulcan reading up on Colombia.

Unfortunately, we had also neglected to do any research about the town of Tulcan itself, so half an hour before our bus arrived, we opened the guidebook to read that 'it is a pretty grim place with little to recommend it'. Based on this and the distinct altiplano feel of the town (i.e. cold, barren and dusty), we changed our plans at the last minute and headed, completely unprepared, for the Colombian border.

After successfully stamping into Colombia, we made our way to Ipiales, the first town after the border. However, on arriving at the centre square, we realised that Ipiales was also not a town to hang around in. The fact that the taxi driver was surprised we wanted to be taken to the centre instead of the bus terminal to immediately leave, should have given us an inkling that Ipiales was not a tourist destination.

After half an hour of deliberation into whether we should stay or try moving on to one more town, we got in another taxi to the bus station and boarded a bus straight away to the city of Pasto, which fortunately turned out to be a much nicer place to stay (third time lucky). After at least eight hours travelling, two buses, four taxi rides, much confusion and a lot of help from the locals, we finally found a friendly hostel in the centre of Pasto that served a fantastic pancake and tropical fruit breakfast, accompanied by a Colombian coffee.

After our frenetic start to our Colombian adventure, we decided to spend the next day in Pasto researching where, and perhaps more importantly, where not to go in Colombia, as well as exploring Pasto itself.

Pasto is described in our guidebook as "a pleasant enough city with little to hold most traveler's attention for more than an overnight stop", which is a pretty accurate description. It seems very few backpackers spend more than one night here, as our hostel owner was very surprised and pleased when we asked to stay a second night. We also appeared to be a novelty in the tourist information and map office, as the staff were thoroughly pleased to see us and even took some action shots of us purchasing a map of Colombia.

Fuelled on cake and coffee and armed with our new map, we decided on a rough route to travel through Colombia. Our next stop would be the colonial town of Popayan, which we set off to the next day, feeling unusually well prepared.

We arrived at Popayan after an eight hour bus ride during which Ross had a rather large Colombian lady virtually lying on his lap, a broken seat and a chicken above his head. Liz meanwhile enjoyed the scenery.

Popayan is a small town with a beautiful historic centre full of white colonial buildings. We spent one day wandering around the small streets and enjoying a very tasty and typical meat, rice and bean based "menu del dia" for lunch, before heading off to the larger city of Cali the next day.

Cali is the capital of Colombian salsa dancing and, although we'd been warned that there wasn't much else to do or see in the city, we thought we'd stay one night before heading off to the coffee region. Well, having arrived at our hostel, we walked into the centre to have a look, had a quick iced coffee, politely bid good afternoon to the numerous armed soldiers hanging around the city and then swiftly retreated to the roof terrace of our very comfortable hostel. Only then did Liz read that Cali is considered one of the most dangerous cities in Colombia (it certainly felt a bit edgy).

The next day we were pleased to say goodbye to Cali and headed for Salento in the coffee region, a lovely small town in the countryside and a breath of fresh air after Cali. We spent a couple of days in Salento, during which we walked to a coffee finca to find out how coffee is grown, harvested and roasted. We also got to try the finished product, which after many months of South American Nescafé was wonderful. On our second day we visited the Valley of Cocora in an old Willys Jeep and marvelled at the huge wax palms, the tallest palms in the world and Colombia's national tree.

From small Salento we made our way to Colombia's second largest city, famous mainly for being run by Pablo Escobar and being the capital of the world's cocaine business in the 1980s. Fortunately, Pablo Escobar is no longer and Medellin is now a safe place to visit (although apparently you can pay to have coffee with Pablo's brother should you desire). We spent a day seeing the sights of Medellin, the best of which was a cable car ride up to a forest park way above the city.

In Medellin we decided that an overnight bus ride to the north coast of Colombia, inevitably with chickens on board and some very questionable overtaking, was not something we wished to experience, so we payed just a little bit more and flew. We arrived in the incredibly hot and humid city of Cartagena within a few hours.

Cartagena, on the Caribbean coast, was once an important Spanish port, where gold and other treasures were stored before being shipped back to Spain. Today a very well preserved and beautiful historic centre remains, along with around 13 kilometres of stone walls, built to protect the city and its treasures from pirates (seemingly mainly the British). Today the city is a complete assault on all senses. The buildings painted brilliant bright colours, loud music pounding out of most doorways and the oppressive heat and humidity combined with some rather pungent streets, make Cartagena feel like a different country to the Andean Colombia we had seen so far.

We spent two days wandering around the old town of Cartagena, watching the sunset over the Caribbean whilst sitting on the old walls and enjoying the evening atmosphere in a pretty little square where both tourists and locals would congregate for a beer or rum based cocktail.

After Cartagena we set off east to the town of Santa Marta in a small minibus with a salsa singing and finger clicking driver. We spent the next few days exploring the coast on local buses, trying to find the idyllic Caribbean coast we had been told about by other travellers. After a number of attempts, we eventually found clean, isolated and beautiful beaches at the Tayrona National Park and Palomino, where we both enjoyed a lovely swim in the Caribbean (the water was even warm enough for Ross to get into with only a minimum amount of huffing and puffing). We did, however, have to put up with a badly behaved iguana, who stole and ate Liz's sandwich in a premeditated attack.

With time pushing on and needing to escape the heat and humidity of the north, we headed down to Bogota for a few days to connect with our final destination in Colombia, Leticia in the Amazon jungle.

Leticia is located on the tri-state border between Colombia, Brazil and Peru on the Amazon River. The only way in and out of the town from the rest of Colombia is by plane or maybe a very long and complicated boat ride. We arrived at the tiny airport, where a member of staff had to keep kicking the baggage belt to keep it moving, and made our way to a slightly dubious looking and smelling hostel. Fortunately, we hit Leticia in the dry season, but apparently it rains constantly in the wet season and things never quite dry out (which is what we attributed the musty, damp smell of our hostel to).

We had planned to spend our first day in Leticia buying a ticket for the boat to Manaus in Brazil, but unfortunately the day turned out to be a bank holiday, so we just had to enjoy the sights of Leticia instead (which are relatively few and far between). The highlight of the day was seeing and hearing thousands of green parakeets return to the city park from the jungle in the early evening and also finding a cafe/bakery that made amazing tropical fruit milkshakes).

The following day we were able to purchase our ticket (but unfortunately only at midday), so another day enjoying the milkshakes of Leticia was spent. We were finally able to get out into the jungle on day three, with local guide Juan, who lived and breathed the jungle, which he described as his pharmacy. Our day included a walk through the jungle to see the huge trees (each with their own medicinal properties), making friends with parrots, piranha fishing followed by a very tasty piranha lunch in a floating house. The day was rounded off by watching an Amazonian sunset whilst listening to the amazing sounds of the jungle. A pretty good way to celebrate a successful nine months of South American travel.

Our last day in Leticia was spent sorting out the border formalities (not as easy it sounds!) in order to head into Brazil and down the Amazon river the next morning. During our time in Colombia, we have learnt:

- Apparently it is illegal to overload a Colombian public bus beyond seating capacity. However, the driver has a cunning way around this, standing passengers simply duck down and hide from the police when passing police checkpoints.

- Music is always at full volume on the Caribbean coast, everywhere, even outside supermarkets.

- Colombian coffee is very good, smooth and cheap. The locals drink it black and call it "tinto".

- The people of Colombia are so friendly that we had to stop asking for directions from people on the street or in shops as describing the route was not sufficient, they had to walk us to our destination, which made us feel bad for taking up their time.

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