Hotel Armenia Estelar

We rolled into Bogota at around 8am, Surprisingly we all seemed to sleep rather well. I was eager for us to continue on our journey. I wanted to be in Solento tonight which was another 6 hours away. We had a reservation at the Plantation house hostel there. But first we had to pick up our two bags we had left at the Platypus Hostel in Bogota two weeks ago. We grabbed a taxi and went straight to the hostel. We had arrived in peak hour traffic, the roads we almost ...

... played before, but it was clear that they were having fun and the feeling of fun was becoming contagious. The circus was probably an exaggeration too, the leaflet showed a man that was 2.4 metres tall, and he apparently was the main attraction, there were also nude women on the leaflet, so I think the circus was more of a freak show. If we caught site of the tall man in town we will have seen the main exhibit, in any case it was not our sort of circus. I picked up a pair of shorts, I ...

... spoilt by a large variety of birds that I have long forgotten the name of. We swam in the warm waters of the wetlands for a while and we visited a small village isolated by the waters but which has another beautiful church. Inside the church was a small piece of wood that is proclaimed to have had the image of the virgin mary mysteriously embedded on it, after a fisherman had used it and had been rewarded with generous ...

... We were frequently overtaken by mopeds, or motorcycles which obviously coped better, and hence the popularity of the two wheel mode of transport. Why on earth would you want a car. <br><br>We eventually arrived into Mompos about 3pm. The guidebook says that this place could be a page right out of Huckleberry Fin, and I can see why. <br><br>Well the first thing that struck us was that Mompos just has a character of its own. Like El Banco there are few if no cars at all ...

So my long awaited tour of the coffee region of Colombia has finally begun! I arrived here on Monday after an 8 hour bus ride through the mountains from Bogota, which was actually very pleasant and passed quickly. Spectacular scenery. Busing it is definitely the way to get around here, you can't see any of this stuff from a plane - well you can but it's not as nice. Andrea's niece very kindly put me up for the night while I was ...

... locals yelling and complaining...not fun. We finally arrived in Magangue at 4:30 and I was again escorted by a tip requesting local to the boat dock. I was told it was the last boat to Bodega and from there I could get a collectivo to Mompox. It might have been the last boat, but they were in no hurry to go. One girl had been sitting there since 3:30! Once again, the locals got vocal and ...

... despite a fair bit more beer and rum) and managed to get up at 6.30 in the morning with the two other guys in my dorm and took a jeep to Corcora then went hiking all morning. Have also toured the coffee farm run by the owner of this hostel, so think I have caught up on the activity front after yesterday. Salento is a really beautiful spot, about 2000m up so it has a very temperate climate and is very green and ...

... little farming town that happened to have a religious festival that began the next day at 3 am with drums and music.....yeah...in front of the main hotel there was a party and no rooms but the gracious people took us to another place were we spent the night for only 18000 cop with air tv and private bathroom, only thing you would only fit sideways on the toillet but much better than next to the horse. Next day the ...

Armenia, i didn´t like it at all. First it is expensive, second there are no laundromat in town, third no banks accepted my credit card. The cherry on the cake was when we went to do what we were supposed to do in Armenia, ie visit a coffee plantation; it turned out to be a waste of time. The park offered no museums, no guided visits, no explanation. So we got our money back and left disappointed.

... going to Armenia about two hours after we arrived. Actually, it was going Calarcá, a city right next to Armenia. We called the family that we were going to meet and said that we would be there the following morning about 8:30am. The bus out of Tulcán gave way to some spectacular views and some extremely steep canyon roads that we flew up and down and around other cars that the bus driver felt were going to slow. It was no help that on one of these scary corners ...