La Floresta Finca Hotel Armenia

... in Armenia and that there was no hope of getting to Solento tonight so I phoned our hostel to cancel our reservation for tonight.

The bus from Bogota to Armenia goes through a scenic pass, called the Quindio Pass on its way to Ibague, it snakes its way between two mountains following a nice looking river, which exposed boulders and shingle because it was out of the wet season but still revealed some rapids in some places. If ever taking this journey be ...

... at the hotel. His shoulders were about the size of me in height, or so it seemed, anyway it seems we got to see the main attraction after all.

After swimming we made a bee line for the Santa Domingo square, one of our favourite haunts by now, where we collected empanadas, papas, and who knows what, along with a super yummy smoothie.

We decided we would leave tomorrow and returned to the hostel to pack, pay the bill and prepare for the 5am getup call, the coach leaves at 6.

... birds, trees and the backdrop of the giant Andes mountains. We also had a toilet stop en-route which was helpful.

We arrived in El Banco about 11am. By the way, for anyone reading this regarding the bridge at El Banco, where the bus from Bucaramanga arrives, it looks like it’s finished. As soon as we got off the boat we were offered a collective to Mompos. After it was offered to for $25mil pesos each we got it for $15mil pesos citing that our guide book stated ...

... colours. I bet it'll look fabulous tomorrow. We ate the regional dish of trout, which they sell almost exclusively in every restaurant...fried trout, grilled trout, trout with garlic...you get the idea, I'm going to be eating a lot of trout this week.
Tomorrow we're planning to go hiking in the famed "Valle de Cocora" to take in the fresh country air and eat - you guessed it- trout!
Photos coming soon I promise!

... seats are 2/3 normal bus width. Good legroom, but that's about all. I had been told it was about 4 hours on the bus and then you take a 20 minute boat ride and 40 minute collectivo into Mompox. I figured with connections it might be 6 hours. Ha! It was not to be. The bus stopped every 50 feet for the first mile out of the station to pick up more people. Did I mention we were full when we left ...

ARMENIA QUINDIO COFFEE ZONE in Colombia Between Rio Verde and Cordoba is The National Center of Study of Bamboo - Guadua We decided to travel at night in a plush Mercedes Benz, (travel bus) from Bogotá to Armenia, the cost of a one way ticket was $35,000 Colombian pesos (US$15.00); a 7 hour ride allowing us only to sleep when the highly skilled bus driver wasn't braking, passing, or swerving so as not to tumble down the side of the mountain ...

... one hour ride again Through another road in bad shape you wait for the ferry to Magangue and from here is about 6 more hours to Cartagena . Bring your Ipod or ear plugs because you will be listening local music for the whole trip guaranteed....It is a real shame if the people of the area would take care of Mompos it could be a great destination since the architecture is very interesting and authentic, and it is at the edge of a nice river, but not worth it in my opinion at the present time.

... from a fellow travell** we met in Cali who had stayed th**e the night before... 'yeah it's awesome, great location, cable TV private bathroom' etc etc Well we should have known something wasn't right when the cab driv** kept checking that we really did want to go to this place and he and his mate kept s******ing. Anyhow, off we went and within seconds w**e bundled into the nearest Matrimonial Room with the ...

... out, it put a damper on our experience because we had not paid that much for a room in our entire trip! In fact, had we known that was the cost, we would have gone straight to Bogota and spent more time there. Well, regardless of that, Armenia was a nice place. We visited the Parque de Cafe which was like the Disneyland for coffee. It was really interesting to see how the coffee was grown and processed and how it came to be the coffee that we drink. The people at ...

... boots and ended up doing the walk in flip flops (Jo did it in bare feet...but she hadn't cut her foot, she was just nuts). We finally made it to the bottom and by the time we were back at Plantation House we were all knackered. Graham and I went up to the supermarket to get some dinner. We wanted noodles but that was a tall order for Salento so we settled for spaghetti, only after spending over an hour cooking it we sat down to eat and ...