After perhaps setting off a little late from Bogotá (with hindsight) we eventually ended up on a very windy road through the mountains where we had a stunning view. However, as beautiful as it was, it was pretty annoying to be stuck in roadworks for a while and then consequently behind the world's slowest lorries. After about nine and a half hours on the first bus (meant to be seven), we had another hour bus ride then a short jeep ride to our hostel outside the ...

We caught a direct bus from Villa de Leyva to Bogotá with Tijs and Jacqueline but weren't allowed to all squeeze into a single taxi so had to split at the Bogotá bus station. On hindsight we can see that our taxi driver took us the long way round so we paid much more than we should have. Bogotá (at 2,600m) was the coldest place we had visited so far; so as planned we spent one of our two days there shopping in one of the capital's large shopping malls for warm...

When you only speak a little of the language and are travelling in a foreign place you have to put a large amount of trust in the people around you. Thankfully this has not failed us yet (due to the amazingly helpful people of Colombia and Central America) although this time our journey from San Gil to Villa de Leyva did not quite pan out as planned. When we arrived at the San Gil bus station two bus company reps started fighting over us each saying that their bu...

No journey is ever really complete without some sort of random animal appearance and our journey from Santa Marta to San Gil certainly delivered on this front. We arrived at the bus station (and stray animal sanctuary) bright and early at 6.30am. As we waited for Tijs and Jacqueline to arrive, we watched as a cat repeatedly took one of her five tiny kittens into a cafe and left it on the floor from where a cafe employee swept it into a long-handled dustpan and du...

We caught a 5 hour shuttle bus from Cartagena to Santa Marta as it was only a little more than the public one. We travelled with Mike and Kate and Tijs and Jacqueline, but unfortunately all stayed in different places as we had all booked separately. If we had been lucky with the heat in Cartagena our luck ran out in Santa Marta. We felt like ants under a magnifying glass and after 3 nights we decided to run for the hills (the Andes) earlier than planned. Santa M...