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Yo yo yo,
Long time no blog. Today we arrived (accidentally) in Quito, capital of Ecuador after a second spell in Colombia.
The day after the last post we found that the Teleférico in Mérida (the longest and highest cable car in the world) was closed indefinitely for maintenance and the record breaking ice-cream shop was closed for October. b*****. That left us pretty much nowt to do there except to go to what is apparently the best bar in Venezuela. It was alright, nice to have beer on tap. We bought some souvenirs, some of which I instantly dropped and broke.
Next was onto San Antonio to cross back into Colombia. We lost about $50 at the border due to the discrepancy between the local and official exchange rates. On the Colombian side we were shown to a bus by a couple of men who then asked politely for $5 for the privilege (I think they'd intended to con us but it had gone a bit wrong). They had a bit of trouble trying to justify it and we quite happily ignored them.
After a night in Bucaramanga we continued onto Bogotá, a journey which included our second bus crash (not a proper one, the bus went into the back of a stationary van at about 5mph, but it held us up for over an hour). The first thing we noticed about Bogotá was the temperature - about 8 degrees on arrival.
Next day we mooched around the city and went up a big tower in the centre. Later I was enticed into buying a Colombian charango (a ten-stringed Andean guitar, sounds a bit like a uke). We went on a bit of a binge in the evening, which turned out to be a bit of a mistake on our first day at that altitude. We lost the next day to hangovers and altitude sickness.
Next day we got a bit of shopping done (Bogotá's great for that), and had crepes for dinner. Lovely. Next day we popped up Cerro Monseratte on the Funícular (the cable car was broken). The mountain is unfortunately topped by a cathedral, which spoils the view a bit, but you get that a lot over here. We hopped on the Transmileno bendy-bus tram style thingy and up to the Zona Rosa, the trendy, expensive part of the capital. After buying some bits and laughing at the prices of others we went to a Bogotá Beer Company pub. Much more authentically British than anything that's claimed to be a "British Pub", it had some great ales on tap. Next day we tried to get to some cultural stuff. We went to an alright art museum and saw some pictures of fat people on fat horses.
Overall, Bogotá was probably the best place we've stayed so far, full of bars, shops, cafés, students, and all that jazz, and most importantly... no Americans!
We got up at 4am the next day to move onto Cali from where we were to fly onto Tulcán in Ecuador before spending a night there and busing onto Quito. At Cali airport we were taken aside by the Colombian Immigration Police and were questioned and x-rayed for drugs. The officials were lovely people, and they seemed to enjoy checking my charango for drugs.
The flight itself took about 20 minutes longer than expected, and included an announcement (in Spanish) that mentioned something about conditions in Tulcán not being suitable for landing. We assumed we'd just been circling the airport for a while until we landed and saw "Welcome to Quito". We were worried at first that our luggage would be sent onto Tulcán and that we'd have to follow it, but then found it by the baggage carousel. We were then told that we could either take a taxi the company were providing for free to Tulcán (4 hour journey), or pay the cost of a flight from Tulcán to Quito. Basically, they'd rather let us lose a day (in going to and from Tulcán needlessly) than allow us to stay in Quito without paying for it. We got in the taxi and asked him to stop after about 5 minutes and let us out. He found the whole situation as ridiculous as we did.
And that's the last week or so. We've got an extra day in Quito now to acclimatise (i.e. bum around), which is nice.
Love,
Nick and Vic
Ps. The photo has nothing to do with what we've been doing, but my camera's being a bit dodge.
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