I travelled from Salento to Medellin with an Israeli guy Nir who was also staying in my hostel in Salento, and we arrived in the evening, with just enough time to shower before happy hour hit the bar! There I first experienced the delights of cold showers and showers without shower head, which are basically just a stream of cold water, pretty much present everywhere in North Colombia! I also discovered the joys of aguardiente, a pretty strong and not particular...

Salento is beautiful! Located up in the coffee region, about 1900m about sea level, so not too hot and humid, and the town centre is really cute! Its an old slave trading town so all the buildings have multiple doors, but the buildings are all painted white, and each of the buildings has its doors, window frames and underneaths of rooves painted different patterns; green and yellow, orange and blue, so it all looks really bright and colourful and pretty! We stay...

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 absen...