BIENVENIDOS A COLOMBIA!

  Ipiales, Colombia
Sunday, January 18, 2009

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After a lovely candlelit night with our Quito family telling stories (due to power cut), we started out on our adventure to Colombia. To do this we went to various bus places and eventually found a bus going to Tulcan which is on the Ecuadorian side of the border. This was $4.50 and took 5 hours which turned into 6 (of course because we are in Ecuadorian time!). From Tulcan we were expecting a very long and complicated crossing of the border involving at least 8 hours of questioning and searching and us not being able to understand....what actually happened however was that we got a taxi to the border, a very quick line to get our exit stamp from Ecuador then crossed the bridge by foot until we were in Colombia, then no line at all to get an entry stamp into Colombia and we were through! No questioning, no searches, we didnīt even have to show our passports when crossing over the border! Easy peasy!

We then got a taxi to Ipiales with a New Zealand guy that we met crossing the border, us foreigners stick together during stressful times! Ipiales is a bit odd, felt much more developed and slightly European compared with everywhere we have been in Ecuador. We found a hostel and went dinner and a celebratory Colombian beer. 

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In the morning we did some good barganing with a taxi man and went to the sanctuary of Las Lajas. The taxi driver was brilliant, he asked us if we knew David Beckham and how much Levis jeans cost in the UK....random! Las Lajas is a church built into the side of a massive gorge, it was apparently built there as someone saw the face of the virgin Mary in a rock there....so of course, they built a massively impressive gothic church. It really was "divine" to use the words of our taxi man. Stunning views and just mind boggling how they actually did it!

Las Lajas

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We then got a 8 hour bus (30,000 pesos- money here is hard to get your head around!) to Popayan. The Colombian buses are quite a lot more luxurious then Ecuadorian buses! The scenery on this journey was incredible. For about 4 hours we were driving through the most dramatic mountains and beautiful countryside, and we were only stopped once by the police who only wanted to search the men anyway so we were happy! At first it seemed that Colombia was much much more developed and had less poverty than Ecuador, but on this journey we saw more basic living conditions and a less developped side of Colombia. It is cool here though, everyone is always outside, everywhere, all the time!

Oh and we saw our first roasting CUY

CUY!!

And our first llamas!

Hev and Llama

Jill and Llama

Colombia, so far so good! :-)