The Border and the Bus

Update: 10

The guide book recommends against crossing into Colombia overland from Ecuador. It also strenuously advises against travelling at night.

So we woke up early and caught the 5 am bus from Quito to Tulcan (the last town on the Ecuadorean side). From there we walked across the bridge - not without a due sense of fear - and into the Lonely Planet's no go area. After being helped by two nuns to fill out the immigration form, we caught a taxi into town to the airport. No way were we going to bus it. The cabbie was a jovial, toothless maniac who chatted in Spanish the whole way. His cab felt a bit like mobile chapel: there was a rosary around the gear stick; two crucifixes on the dash board and what looked like playing cards with pictures of Jesus, the disciples and the Virgin Mary stuck into the part where the windscreen meets the side of the car. Jesus was definitely with us. In His omnipresence, He must have been with the cyclist we nearly hit too. This near catastrophe was as a result of us chatting in pidgin Spanish about Colombia's world famous Juan Pablo Montoya. The discussion itself was pretty harmless, just the demonstration was possibly a little extreme.

Anyway, he eventually convinced us that we'd be fools to pay for flights when we could bus it for a tenth of the cost and, after checking the prices of tickets at the airport, we turned around and raced back to the bus terminal in Ipiales, treating potholes like chicanes and straights like, well, straights.

33,000 pesos each (about 15 USD) for the 12 hour bus trip seemed like a deal. Arriving in Cali at 2 am did not. For want of a better plan, we bit the bullet, ignored the guide book and got on the bus.

The trip started out very comfortably and for the first ten minutes, as we were gunning out of town with some other normal looking Colombians, we both felt at ease with the idea. It was just the last 11 hours and 50 minutes that were hell.  Just outside Ipiales is a gorge that drops from what must be close on 3,000 meters to what looks like sea level where a river rages below. The driver didn't slow down and for the remaining daylight hours we counted flower tributes and crosses at every bend in the road. This is something we're going to have to get used to as the next day's trip wasn't much better. Anyway, after the sun set which, unlike Europe doesn't mean a long evening of fading light but rather like you'd expect in the tropics, lights out, our fears shifted from falling to our deaths in a gorge, to being massacred by angry guerrillas. As it turned out, the only concern really, was leg room.

So, at 2.30 am we arrived in a Cali, a large city famed for its salsatecas (discothèques with salsa music) and the "most beautiful women in all of Colombia" - and trust me, there's some pretty stiff competition. We weren't going to hang around a bus stop, so we quickly found a taxi, but not before we'd been helped by about 5 different people, and headed to the nearest hotel. The Royal Plaza would be a great set for a film about a travelling crockery salesman. It had about as much soul as a local government administrative building, but at nigh on 4 am we weren't going to move and finally, twenty four hours later and after the porter had explained how the TV, bar fridge and air conditioner worked, we crashed, exhausted.

The next morning, the sunlight revealed a bustling, clean city with lush parks and modern high-rise offices. As we're a bit tight on schedule to fly to Lima on the 26th, we had to head to the bus station, but from what I saw, I wouldn't have minded spending a few days there.

As we could do with another bus trip, we caught another cab, again friendly but this time without the Jesus playing cards, back to the bus station and bought our tickets to Manizales, deep in the heart of coffee country.

This second bus trip cleared up something that was evident on the previous journey, but I hadn't consciously noted: on a Colombian bus, the driver is the alpha male. When he wants to listen to annoying La Cucaracha banjo music, he does. When he wants to stop for a coffee, he does; and when he decides that the air conditioner should be set to three degrees to keep him awake, he sets it at 3 degrees. Your frostbite is not his problem.

All buses show videos, but as the driver can't watch them (obviously) he can, if he feels like it, listen to music instead and at the volume he chooses. Ain't no-one gonna argue. This arrangement puts us in a rather elite group. We are two of the very few people who have watched The Da Vinci Code with a salsa soundtrack.

After only two days here, we are both amazed. We have yet to meet an unfriendly or unhelpful person, the countryside is unbelievably dramatic and colourful and the cities are positively first world compared to Ecuador - the area we're staying in could be anywhere in Europe. It's clean, the cafes are smart, the restaurants are good and the supermarkets sell normal stuff (although the fruit section looks like science fiction).

Guanabana is a fruit that makes by far the nicest batido (milkshake) or juice I've ever tasted (we had one nearly every day in Ecuador) and today we saw one for the first time. There sitting alongside the red (!) pineapples which themselves are significantly larger than the lightweight yellow ones we're used to, were the guanabanas - luminous green, the size of rugby balls with small rubber-like thorns. I can't really describe them, but I'd like to shake hand of the person who first thought it would be a good idea to eat one. He's a braver man than me. The name is worth saying out loud, it's a treat for the mouth:

GWA NUH BUH NUH. Now say it fast.

We've yet to meet another Gringo (Anglophone) here but feel safe and haven't been pestered to buy any traditional curios, haven't come across any beggars and haven't seen packs of stray dogs eating out of rubbish bins. Immediately, we both prefer it to Ecuador. (But don't tell the guide book, we don't want them sending every backpacker here!) I think the fundamental difference - bearing in mind we've only been here two days - is that in Ecuador, you're very much aware that you have more than everyone else. It doesn't feel like that here.

Tomorrow we're going to stay on a coffee plantation. Can't wait. I'll keep you posted.

Take it easy.