Running out of continent

Early in the morning we arrived in Quito and took a taxi to our hostel, luckily they were up already but we couldn't get in our room so we waited around the hostel. In the afternoon we went to the northern part of Quito, the modern area with loads of glass and steel buildings, banks and big companies. It's supposed to be the tourist hotspot and we were looking for book exchange shops as we had several books we didn't feel like carrying around anymore, inclusive our bible, Lonely Planet's South America on a Shoestring (which is pretty average by the way, we wouldn't buy it anymore). We found 2 book exchange shops, one owned by a southern state American, the other by a really friendly and helpful englishman (they didn't seem to like each other...). A bit disappointed by the low value of our old books but with new literature we walked back to the historic centre where our hostel was located.

The next day we strolled around this historic centre which is partly closed for traffic on sundays, looking for a tourist information office to ask about buses and the crossing of the Ecuadorian-Colombian border as this seemed to be more complicated than usual according to Lonely Planet and internet comments. We wanted a bus that goes straight from Quito to Medellín or at least Pasto or Popayán so we wouldn't have to cross the border by foot and taxis. In South America, when looking for something, we learned that it's the easiest to walk up to the first uniformed person and ask for advice. That's what we did, just to be sent to other uniformed people the so called tourist police. After not finding them we asked a police lady who escorted us to the tourist security office. Great. There they told us we were wrong and escorted us to the tourist office. Finally! There they told us to go to north Quito and ask in the different bus company offices... Next day, that's what we did but there were only 3 companies that actually go straight over the border and those were far away from each other or closed. After this whole day and the next half we found out that the next suitable bus for us left in 3 days, that was a bit too late for us and because Anni was feeling really sick by now and we just wanted to leave we decided to do it the "hard" way and booked a bus to Tulcan in Ecuador, around 2 kms away from the border.

From there we took a cab to the Ecuadorian immigration, got our stamps and walked over a bridge to the Colombian immigration, got more stamps, bought tickets from a company around there. They gave us a lift to Ipiales, the first town in Colombia and from there on another bus for around 2 hrs to Pasto where we spent the night. Everything went so smooth and easy, we couldn't figure out why so many people were complaining about that part, after all it was one of the easier border crossings we've ever done in South America.

Pasto was just an overnight stop for us and at noon the next day we already sat in another bus, this time straight to Medellín, an 18 hrs ride past Popayan and Calí, we just wanted to hit the Caribbean coast as soon as possible! Medellín was probably the nicest big city we've ever visited in this continent. The centre is not particularly pretty or beautiful, it's modern with loads of high rise buildings but there is so much green everywhere! Almost every street is lined by trees, every patch not covered by concrete has flowers and bushes, birds everywhere, it was such a contrast to the last cities we've been like Lima or Quito. As we only had one full day in Medellín we didn't see much of it, but what we saw we liked.

The next stretch to Cartagena we did by plane, it's almost as expensive as by bus (we were really surprised how expensive Colombia is compared to its neighbours!). Around 2 hrs before the departure we stopped a taxi and asked the driver to take us to the airport, which we saw lying next to the bus terminal, we didn't know that there's a second one for international flights and that's exactly where our flight was leaving from, who could've known that? The problem with "our" airport was that it's a 1 hour drive to Rio Negro, all uphill in one of these tiny Daewoo taxis with tiny engines that exist everywhere in Colombia and the driver did everything possible to climb as fast as possible. We made it in time, the only bad thing was Anni's ice cream that had to be thrown away, the security lady wouldn't let her go through the security control...

At 20:00 we landed in Cartagena and the hot and humid air almost took our breath away when we left the plane! 28 degrees at this time! Great! In front of the airport we got stopped by taxi drivers and we asked where the buses leave for the city. One of the drivers, with a police guy next to him answered that there are no buses. So I asked the policeman and he didn't know what to say, of course there's a bus but he didn't want to offend his friend so he said that there are buses but not at this time anymore... That much about Colombian police. The taxis were around 10'000 pesos but we got one for 8'000, the one with the driver we asked for busses. After circling around Cartagena for a while, the driver asking several people for directions, we arrived at our hostel. There I paid him the 8'000 pesos but he refused and said it's 8 dollars. I was pretty confused and told him that we agreed on pesos but he denied and accused me of saying 8, and this meant dollars... Us and him got angrier, we all knew what he was up to so I asked the receptionist of the hostel and he said it's maximum 12'000 pesos. This wasn't enough for the greedy prick, he wanted 15'000 which I gave him finally to avoid further troubles, we didn't want to run into him again, somewhere in the dark maybe him with his friends....

First we thought we didn't plan enough time in Cartagena, it's absolutely beautiful! The next day we found out that one day was enough for us, the heat and the humidity are just way too high! We still spent all day walking around the old town with its colonial houses, everyone with balconies, nice colours and flowers everywhere, we also walked over to the Castillo, the biggest fortress ever built by spaniards in one of their colonies. The whole thing is full of tunnels that connect different parts with each other and we spent quite a lot of time exploring those and wondering about the smart way they're built.

After Cartagena we planned to travel a bit more eastwards towards the Tayrona national park. There's a city called Santa Marta but we wanted to leave south america with good last impressions so we just drove through and stayed in Taganga, a small fishing village which got famous for backpackers. It's not as quiet as it probably once was, there are bars along the beach where fishermen and dive companies have their boats and those bars blast music in the evenings, throughout the day we thought it's still a nice little place. Sadly we couldn't fully enjoy our stay there, first we both had a bad cough that kept us away from diving and later i caught a food poisoning from a hotdog the dive company served on one of our snorkelling trips. I was on the toilet a whole night and pretty flat the whole next day so we had to cancel our already booked trip for snorkelling in the Tayrona NP with staying overnight in a little house in hammocks which should've been our last nice adventure on this continent. Feeling better the day after, we still went snorkelling there just without staying overnight, i was still very weak and the "easy 20 minute walk" to another beach turned out to be a real bitch and we barely made it back in time to catch the boat to Taganga. It still was a nice finish to our South America trip which we started exactly 5 months ago! Now we have to start packing, tomorrow leaves our plane to Bogota and then a killer-over-30-hrs-flight to Hong Kong! New adventures!