Las Americas Beach Resort Cartagena

... bus.

The buses set off with a live Vallenato band on board, and fill up with people who are ready to party. The bus drives around the new & old town with the band playing at full volume, whilst the organizers supply the customers with as much rum and coke as they can handle.(we liked this).

We then stopped off at the old town where some tourists dance on the ...

... our limited time, had to brave these less than agreeable conditions and explore the streets of this colonial city. It wasn't abandonded this since there were plenty of street vendors (my favorite was the guy just selling t-shirts that had a picture of Pablo Escobar on the front with the words "El Patron"). Colombia reminds me a lot of Mexico. There I said it. Perhaps its the intense heat or the plethora of fruit drinks but I am reminded of Mexico on the Colombian coast. To all the ...

... a tree-house style accommodation which Jacque was keen on. It was an incredibly rustic affair, and I tried hard to put aside my doubt s about whether the structure would even last the night. Like most things in South America it completely snubbed its nose at anything resembling a safety precaution and had a narrow walk-way leading to the opening of our cubby-house on one side, and a twelve foot drop on the other side. Hugo, the proprietor of the place, was a sleazy guy ...

... had our first encounters with Fritz, our captain elect for our five day sojourn, in which we were given a little taste of his characterful, stubborn, opinionated nature. I won't go into detail now, but he's certainly an interesting chap!

Thats about all I can think of right now, possibly because I'm quite tired and my brain is feeling lazy today, or possibly because nothing really of particular interest happened in our final port of ...

... to start taking cabs and eating in nicer establishments other wises it truly is fried chicken and fresh juices as the only real option. We are looking forward to heading home now too being that its so close we find that all we do is talk about it and think about it. Unfortunately. Anyway Pizza was still OK although not our favorite place and the following day planned to visit a town north of Cartagena which has a volcano which is live and only 15 meters above of ...

... tourist tours which does give the tour a nice flavor! The first stop on our tour was the Convento de la Popa which sits on the highest point in the city about 2 km form the center. The hill that this Sanctuary sits on had long been used by natives as a religious site. According to legend, in 1606 the Fathers had stumbled across a mixed group of natives chanting, with arms and ...

... I didn´t want to take my camera out there) the bus driver stopped and told us all to get off and get onto another bus. I got onto the bus first and the bus driver started to take off without Justine, despite me yelling ¨espera¨ multiple times. She got on the bus though and we got off in a small rural town to cross the river in a rickety old boat. Once we got across, we rode on the back of dirt bikes for about 20 min. through ...

... are opened on the straights with that big lumpy single piston providing engine braking on approach to the sharper bends.


Once out of the valley the morning is a climb seeing us rarely dip below 2500 metres. Ecuador being the Noahs Arc of landscapes, we cross everything from mountains to volcanoes to jungle to plains to forest all in the space of 200 kilometres. Somewhere en route we cross the equator, but with no signpost to signal it the golden photo opportunity is lost ...

Today we flew from Panama City to Colombia (Cartegena). The aeroplane was ridiculously small and Emily was very nervous, it only held 37 passengers and was a propeller plane ahhhhhhhh!! Ok we reached Colombia safely and it really wasn´t a bad ride at all, the little plane did us ...

We say farewell to Thierry and take the shuttle bus (30 passengers, air con) to Barranquilla. There was a little hoohaa when they realised we were going further to Cartegena but we got there and got in a taxi. The driver hadn't heard of the Centro Hotel and I was hoping the book wasnt THAT out of date! After a long drive to the city in traffic that can only be drscribed as crazy we were dropped off near the hotel ...