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I have to admit I was slightly nervous about getting to Colombia alone, as this was my first lone border crossing, and involved a night bus through Southern Colombia, guerrilla territory, and where we'd been specifically told NOT to take night buses, as there had been cases of buses being held up and robbed at gunpoint by guerrillas. Still, my first two buses and taxi to the border went pretty smoothly, and the border crossing wasn't too bad, apart from the absence of the ATM promised in the lonely planet (fool I am for trusting it!) and the absence of people working on the Colombian side, for no apparent reason, meaing a wait of 40 minutes and it getting dark before I'd crossed, exactly what I'd been trying to avoid!
What I then thought was a taxi I was catching to Ipiales bus terminal which was actually a pimped out car with an 18 year old Colombian driver, slightly concerned me, as my backpack was already locked in the boot, that he may be about to drive me somewhere and rob me... and my fears weren't relieved at all when he told me in Spanish that if the police stopped us he WASN'T a taxi and I WASN'T paying him any money! But I did make it there safely, although I also applied the safety measure of 'make your kidnapper your friend and they're less likely to hurt you' by making small talk with him!
The night bus was pretty uneventful, although we had about ten thousand police checks, and the fact that I'd put all my valuables under the bus in my big backpack in case the bus was robbed DID NOT amise the policeman the first time I was asked for my passport and had to get the driver to open the luggage hold and search for my backpack and passport! However, the fact that the night bus to Cali was renound for being dangerous also meant there were only about 8 passengers, so there was noone next to, behind or in front of me, and I had my comfiest bus ride in South America so far! Not so amusing was the taxi driver who charged me ten times what the fare should have been from the bus station to my hostel, and in my half asleep state with this confusing new currency I didn't really realise, and couldn't really do anything about it anyway as it was 6am and my stuff was all locked in his boot, so I gave him all the money I had, but then also figured out I'd just spent te same amount on a 20 minute taxi ride as I had on a ten hour bus journey!
Cali, the current cocaine capital of Colombia, was a fairly nice city in the parts we were allowed in, although the majority of it was too dangerous to venture into even during the daytime! It was also mega hot and humid, and the heat hit me like a wave the second I stepped off the bus, as did the sandflies, which started biting the first half hour I arrived (I counted 11 bites!) and are an annoying common feature across the whole of Colombia!
I met many friends from my travels in my hostel; Jeffrey and Jay who I'd travelled with, and another English girl called Sophie who we'd met in Mancora, who I went to the zoo and explored the old town and market with, and went to a free open air jazz festival one night which was very pleasant and chilled out. We also discovered a wierd square called 'parque de los poetas' where there were a load of men sat at tables with typewriters! We did try and ask them what was going on, and got a vague answer that people could pay them to type something for them, which I thought was slightly confusing as you can pay to go to an internet cafe and type something on a computer and get it printed out... but it was a pretty interesting sight anyway!
Charlie and Kelly, an aussie couple I'd made friends with in Montanita, also arrived at my hostel, which was cool, and I ended up leaving Cali for Salento with Neil, an English guy, and Judith, a dutch girl, who I'd also met in various places along the way.
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