We’re here, we made it – overland from Buenos Aires to Caracas in 4 months, more or less on or following the world’s largest mountain range. When we’ve been sat waiting for hours at bus terminals we devised a way to amuse ourselves and here are the results… We have: Visited 8 countries Been to … More 116 days later…
We said goodbye to the Andes via a 2 hour true winding mountain road through spectacular scenery – huge steep mountains dropping down into a deep gorge. With every metre we descended the temperature rose until eventually we were in hot, dry Barinas. We did the rounds of bus companies for the last time, looking … More Last stop – Caracas
Think Venezuela and you don’t normally think of the Andes, but the last 400km of the Andes does indeed reside here. We’re not talking little mountains either, these puppies are up to 5,000m high. From Maracaibo we took what should have been an 8 hour night bus to Merida. It was by far and away … More Exploring the Venezuelan Andes
Having flagged a bus just outside Tayrona National Park, which incidentally was the worst shed of a bus we have seen in Colombia, we arrived at the border town of Maicao into chaos. There were several men greeting us off the bus shouting “Maricaibo, Maricaibo, Por Puesto, Por Puesto”, traffic all over the place and … More Crossing the border – Maicao, Colombia to Maracaibo, Venezuela
Our 3 weeks in Colombia are at an end, we’ve travelled overland from one end of the country to the other – Ipiales on the Ecuadorian border to Maicao on the Venezuelan Caribbean coast border – and stopped off lots on the way. What they say Colombia is known for terrorist guerrillas, cocaine and for … More Adios Colombia – what they say and what we found
After asking around in Taganga we found a boat to take us 1 hour round the coast to Cabo San Juan de la Guia in the Tayrona National Park. The first couple of people we asked wanted a lot of money 50,000 and 40,000 each but then we met John hanging out on the beach … More Tayrona National Park – paradise in a hammock
We were determined to get a bus out to Cartagena bus terminal even if it was a mission because taking a cab was way too expensive. As it turns out it was pretty easy, we got up really early to get as much of the travelling done as we could before it got too hot, … More Taganga – now we’re in the Caribbean
The night bus to Cartagena took 13 1/2 hours, getting us in at 7:30am. It had the most leg room of any bus we’ve been on and even had a boys and a girls toilet which we thought was bliss (we all know that men struggle to pee in a stationary toilet, never mind on … More Hot in Cartagena
We caught a collectivo back to Tunja and had our strangest bus experience yet – we found a tout for San Gil buses who went and found his mate, who made a call and got in a cab with us and took us to meet the bus that was stopped on the outskirts of town. … More Still in the Colombian Highlands – San Gil & Barichara
Leaving Bogota we were up reasonably early and squeezed ourselves onto a micro to the bus terminal. Once again we got straight onto a bus about to depart to Tunja and since no one else had taken them we took the 2 seats up front with the driver, which was quite exciting but also somewhat … More Walking in the Colombian Countryside – Villa de Leyva
Marie & Emma's Travel Journal 