Across Colombia and haven't said a word until now...

Santa Marta, Colombia
02 Nov 2008 - 06 Nov 2008
Watched the election and met a new friend, Ben from Atlanta, Georgia. Finally found out how to order the comida corriente (meal of the day) which is going to save us tons of money compared to whatwe've been doing. We drank a little too much Tuesday watching Obama cruise to victory and stayed up until 4am celebrating! Next day that hungover feeling crept up and we didn't get us on the road to Cartagena until Thursday which was fine because the city's celebration didn't start until Saturday...

Cartagena, Colombia
06 Nov 2008 - 14 Nov 2008
Ben is working on a sail boat in January shuttling travellers from Panama to Colombia and vice versa and we kinda hope'd/planned on going sailing with him on the nice boat but the timing was all wrong so we joined the festival instead! The city's Independence Day is a week long! Could you imagine a weeks worth of the Fourth of July... Yeah it'd be kind of like that but everybody still works then goes out dancing and drinking and wiping white, green, blue, red gross paint stuff on each others faces all wekk. In our case it was wipe it on the gringos in wigs. We cooked a big breakfast and drank a little before the parade and then got shot with waterguns full of red liquid and our faces wiped with that paint-that's-not-paint-and-is-really-hard-to-get-off-if-you-don't-wash-it-before-you-go-to-sleep...

Medellín, Colombia
15 Nov 2008 - 17 Nov 2008
Overnight bus to Medellin... After Cartagena, we planned a few days off from the fiesta lifestyle but it didn't turn out that way. OUr hostal was crazy, full of party animals . . .but we did get to eat some Thai food (or something like it). Medellin had some cool musuems and Botero statues, but mainly the rain, and rain, and rain. Thank god for their subway system!

Bogotá, Colombia
18 Nov 2008 - 25 Nov 2008
Overnight bus to Bogota... and plenty of True Blood episodes thanks to Ben's laptop and the rain. Saw some cool museums and ate a LOT of pizza. The highlight was probably trying to figure out how to say the word Fununcular (or whatever that is, a train that runs up one of the mountains to a church) but the view from the top of the mountain was cool too. And then we got to take the teleferico back down!

San Agustín, Colombia
26 Nov 2008 - 30 Nov 2008
We arrived and walked about 100 miles to the challet but it might have been only a few kilometers, that hill at the end really took the breath out of us... One day-night detox in the challet and duct tape foot remedy got us cleaned up for the early jeep tour through the mountains and over the rivers and through the woods. The Next day we decided to rough it and took horses! We saw a lot of rad statues and picked some hongos magicos! We also got to see how they make cocaine . . . kinda gross. Now we are suffering the sun burn . . . But we did celebrate Thanksgiving. Thanks to suzy homemaker, we were able to pull together quite the feast using only potatoes, bread, chicken boullion, and butter . . . nicely done.

Pasto, Colombia
30 Nov 2008 - 01 Dec 2008
After a full day of bus riding delight (and by delight I mean not-delight. Crammed legs, bruised knees, elbows flying around on bumpy unpaved road, bad music and the speaker directly above our heads kind of delightful) we jumped ship at Pasto, two hours from our final destination, Ipenas, we found a hostel and ate fried chicken and fries. Awoke fresh and early, ate breakfast and bolted to the border...

Ipiales, Colombia (Border Crossing)
01 Dec 2008
One quick stop in Ipiales for some border crossing business. No problems on the Colombian side but the computer system apparently crashed and needed restarting which caused a huge line and us with a delema: wait in the cold rain for hours or cut the line by waiting inside and getting a form from the customs officer as he let more people into the building. Don't think ill of us until you're in the same situation, we decided to cut the line and were out of there in less than an hour and on our way to the bus station via Colectivo (shared mini-bus) to the bus station and onto Otavalo...

Otavalo, Ecuador
01 Dec 2008 to 03 Dec 2008
We plan to stay awhile here so Pete (me) can learn Spanish (finally) and stay with an indigenous family, maybe even learn to tango or salsa dance...