Thank you Colombia, we had a great time and we loved your people 🙂

From Popayan, we moved down to Ipiales, near the border with Ecuador, for one last night in the country. The route in the mountains was beautiful and I tried to capture some of it through the dirty bus window! We arrived right during the « feria de blanco y negro » -a carnaval where people throw flour and spray shaving cream at each other- but we barely had time to witness it, we had further plans already.

Back in Guatape, we had met with Sam, an English tourist who gave us the contact of a guide in Ecuador to take us deep into the amazon forest. We had an appointment with him in Coca in two days.

(Mary is afraid of everything! She won’t jump in water or ride a bicycle. But tell her to go meet giant anacondas in the deepest parts of the amazon jungle and she signs in right away!)

From the center of Ipiales, a city bus takes us near the border, we get off and walk the rest of the way.

Here also, the stamping of passports is a mere formality and goes smoothly. Only the wait on the Ecuador side is a bit longer.

From there a taxi took us to Tulcan, where we could find a bus to Lago Agrio, from where we could take a bus to Coca!

We reached Coca around midnight, about 14 hours after we reached the border. Again, the route to Lago Agrio, along the Andes, was splendid, but most of it was a painfully slow and bumpy dirt path. (The route to Coca was probably nice as well but it was too dark to tell!)

Time to catch some sleep, tomorrow we’re meeting our guide.