From Venezuela to Ecuador

After a great little trip to Mérida, we decided to make the long haul back through Columbia to get ourselves to Bógata. Long it indeed was, as it turned out to be a marathon 24 hour trip involving 2 large buses, 3 busetas, 3 cabs, and a little cross border walking and a couple of little adventures.

Getting to the Venezuela-Columbia border was fairly uneventful. However, as per usual, we had to suffer the standard wait to get through the border due to my dodgy passport (which I put through the washing machine about 2 months before we started our trip). It still looks okay, but it NEVER scans the first time in the scanners at each border. Usually most officers just give up after 3 tries and just type in the number. Not this time though. After 25 minutes, 3 different officers and at least 20 different scan attempts, the Colombian boarder officers finally put their hands up in defeat and just let me through...

From the Border, we took a spectacular 6 hour Buseta (seats about 15 people) from the town of Cúcuta to Bucaramanga. The scenery on the trip was absolutely incredible as we drove through the Colombian section of the Andes at heights around 4000m above sea level. Despite the spectacular surrounds, the journey was tainted by our driver who proceeded to torture us (on his shiny new TV/DVD player) with 6 solid hours of Columbia´s greatest Accordion music videos from the late 70s and early 80s. At first it was hilarious..as video after video seemed to feature a balding, moustached, fat hairy man declaring his love for a slim, beautiful young model. The girls were cleary either shocking actors or just not paid enough in these low class videos as the ´affection´ they showed these ´studs´ was pretty well non-existent and extremely comical. They were hilarious for a while but....6 hours later and not being able to nap because of the loud volume AND the bus driver singing along to each song was more than we can handle !!

Finally arriving in Bucaramanga we hopped a a night bus to Bógata and slept VERY peacefully.

Bógata is certainly a modern, exciting, and clean city. Nothing at all like what we expecting. Indeed, to date Columbia has proven to be arguably the best country we´ve visited. We spent a relaxing 3 days taking in the town and stayed at a great little backpakers hostel (the Platypus). It was in the University district, so there were lots of great bars and cheap eats near the hostel, which we made the most of. I am thoroughly addicted to Empanadas (meat, eggs and other good stuff, encased in a fried pastry), and usually indulged in at least one or two of these artery clogging treats each day. We were also close to the historical downtown core so we took quite a few strolls through the area and even trekked up the nearby Téleferico which gave some awesome views of the whole city.

Here´s some pics of our time in Bogata...

If you can´t see them properly than click on the link here - Bogata

Another nightbus and we found ourselves in Pópayan, on the road to Ecuador. Founded in the early 16th century by the Spanish, the town is known as the "white city" because of its beautiful colonial houses which are....yep WHITE. The town was really pretty but WOW, could it use a splash of colour. As the pics below show, pretty well every building was...well, white. Still, a great little stopover to break up our long trip to Quito, Ecuador. Again we stayed in a great place (Our Hostel in Popayan...Hostel Trail, with Colin, the Scottish guy running the place, proving to be a great host and full of great information for us.

Here´s some pics of our time in Pópayan...

If you can´t see them properly than click on the link here - Pópayan

Finally our Colombian trek came to an end as we headed off the next day for a long (and once again spectacular) bus ride through the Andes and onto Ecuador. After almost 3 weeks in Columbia we can´t recommend it enough to anyone interested in coming here !!