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Hello!
Having browsed through the list of potential ´activity categories' I could select for this blog, I have concluded that 'Bus tour' is really the only one that fits the boat (bus). I do not mean that I have been drifting around on a Thompson coach tour complete with lady on microphone explaining where on earth we are and pointing out the local sights as we trundle by for the past two weeks but at the end of my last blog I think I said I would be 'on the road' for the next couple of weeks, and on roads of every shape and size I have been!
The first port of call was the closest I would find and only a three hour drive outside of Bogota. A good hour of this was taken up trying to escape the rest of this city that sprawls southward. On the edge of this urban spiderwen however, we came to a mountain (surprise surprise) with a very long tunnel through which we drove and came out on the other side to be greeted by the alien site of glistening countryside. A decent across mountains, around mountian, under mountains (ears pooping all the way) brought us to the destination of Villavicencio, where Bogotans (?!) flock to soak up the 30 degree heat and where all of a sudden the Andes just drop in to the ground and disappear and all you can see is the totally flat plains where the Colombian Cowboys play and which go on and on until you hit the jungle, the amazon, and beyond.
The next day I got on a bus heading southwards to Popayan- a twelve hour journey turned twenty hour accompanied by a very friendly (and hyper-active) nine year old boy off on holiday to the Ecuador border who after discovering the reason he could not understand the book he was trying to read over my shoulder was that the book was not in fact in Spanish but in English and that I, despite my appearance (!) was European and not Colombian kept me very entertained for the duration of the journey with a thousand questions about Britain, a thousand facts about Colombia and a good hour marvelling about how cool it would be to see real snow! After going to listen to a public forum for the south-east in Popayan I went exploring the 'white city'. I call it the white city as literally every building, church and monument I saw was painted white, it has the effect in the glaring sun of making you squint as you would in a ski resort (but as my new young friend explained a long way from any snow) to confirm what you are seeing and it is beautiful. It was bustling with locals and indigenous people from the surrounding villages, the men in their bright blue skirts and hat, the women bedecked in gold jewellery and awash with handmade colourful clothing. Not sure what to do for the following couple of days, after meeting a German guy and a Belgium girl, both currently resident in Ecuador/Colombia, I decided to hop on a bus with them early the next morning for the ruins and town of San Augustin. I say I hopped on the bus and I did, what I did not realise then was that I would continue to be hopping for the following six hour bus ride as the little bus tackled at an average of about 20 miles p/hr what I can safely say was the least comfortable busride of my life! I thought I would be able to continue sleeping on this early morning busride, I was very much mistaken. Despite the extremely rocky, unpaved road and plague of potholes, the scenery along the road (although I found my head being as often as not wacked against the window when I tried to look at it) and the end destination definetely made it worth it! We stopped for breakfast next to a couple of houses along the muddy track where I could see my breath and really wished I wasnt wearing flipflops in the 5 degree celcius first light, continued on, wading through thick dense tropical jungle for as far as the eye could see (where a Colombian Army tank on patrol appearing around the corner flighting for space, after a shared concerned glance with the German at my side, evoked thoughts of some old Vietnam war film) and eventually we arrived at the little town of San Augustin. Staying in a cabin on a little finca out of town, I explored what is considered Colombia's most imporant ruin site (this was not evident by the number of tourists, we almot had the main site to ourselves when we went), statues and funerial sites carved by a group of people thought to hve lived 5000 BC scattered across the hills. I befriended a combination of european travellers and local Colombians who I went off for the day finding more and more statues and the beautiful powerful waterfalls and rapids at the source of Colombia's most important river (which I crossed two days later ten hours north of Bogota where it was a wide as the Thames).
To get to Medellin in time for Monday, I got on an other overnight bus up to Medellin, Colombias second city, where the usual complexes of a second city exist, as the people tutted, shook their heads and listed all Bogota's many (apparently) faults (and the many advantages of Medellin) at my explaining I was living there! When I stepped out of the first metro station I encontered, I heard the sound of many guitars, curious as to what it was, I ventured in to the square, to find half a dozen different groups of men, women and children surrounded by chearing crowds as the cowboy hat clad entertainers sing in union as they strum on their guitars and stamp their feet. It made me think of a country and western in the midst of this huge city and I found similar scenes throughout it streets- two songs of similar country styles were even performed to voice concerned at the public forum I went to nearby!
I have been back in Bogota for only a couple of days but having thought I would be heading back to Medellin today to work for the next month, I had a phone call this morning telling me the dates had been muddled up and that I'm not actually going back there till next weekend so I will get a few days to sleep in my own bed and explore a few more things in Bogota before heading off again. It should also give my peeling nose a few more days to recover which can be no bad thing!
I hope all is well with you! x
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