Ok... now last post!

Map of entire trip. Some destinations are missing due to lack of space.

The time has come

This is just a quick closing post. I should have written it over the holidays, but at the time I was limited by the unending yet limiting limits of dial-up internet.

Well, I guess the first thing I should say is SURPRISE! I have known since sometime in November that I would be coming home on my scheduled flight the 15th of December. However, I decided that instead of sharing the news via blogger, I would hold back, only tell a few select people, and surprise everyone else. It was fun. Actually, if you look you will notice that the last few posts I made were actually from Canada.

Anyway, let's rewind shall we. On monday the 11th of December, I left Quito on a marathon bus trip to Lima where I would catch my flight on the 15th. The days leading up to this, I received emails every day from Mum saying "don't miss your flight, check your flight, don't miss your flight"... haha, oh she of little faith.

So, as I was saying, I got a bus monday at 5pm that would take me south again to Loja, where I would again catch a bus across the border. I had the times planned perfectly. Unfortunately, for some reason unknown to myself and everyone else awake on the bus, the route took us all the way to the southwest coast below Guayaquil, then turned back straight east to Loja. This is insane!! To give you a visual, Loja is basically located directly south of Quito near the Peruvian border.... no one wants to go this route! To complicate things further, in some little town just before the turn back east our driver decided that this bus would not be strong enough to scale the mountains ahead and we were left waiting for nearly an hour for a replacement bus. Eventually I made it to Loja, though about two hours later (9am) than I had calculated. Because I missed the morning bus across the border, I had to wait maybe 3 hours for the afternoon bus. This was fine, I still had plenty of time. The bus across the border was about 7 or 8 hours. In Peru there are always buses leaving at all hours of the day and night so I figured if I was arriving around 10pm there would definately be a direct bus to Lima. And, sure enough I was right. There was a 10 pm bus to Lima. The unfortunate thing is that I wasn't on it. Nope, as my luck would have it, the time it took to get my bag and find a taxi and get myself to the next bus station was just long enough that I arrived 12 minutes late. That was it. I lost my marathon. Anyway, I found a dodgy (it wasn't that bad, Mum) place to stay for the night and (since there were no day buses oddly enough) I would get the night bus the following night, Wednesday the 13th.

Now this is something that had me a bit confused, and its a good thing I looked into it. On the ticket the travel agent had printed out for me the day I bought the ticket it said that my return flight would be from Lima Thursday the 14th at 10:40. But then, when I checked the e-ticket she had emailed me, it said that my flight was Thursday 14th at 10:40 arriving in Toronto some 23 hrs later. AND THEN, when I checked online it said that my flight was Thursday at 02:00, and nothing more. So, if you can see my problem I had three possible flights. Let me just break it down.

(1) Thursday 14th at 10:40 pm.
(2) Thursday 14th at 10:40 pm, with no stops, yet arriving almost a full day later.
(3) Thursday at 2 am but do they mean Thursday morning (ie Wednesday night) or the night of Thursday (thus friday morning and only a few hours later than the original time). Since the other flights had all been late Thursday night. Are you following?


Anyway, I eventually called Air Canada from where I was staying in Piura (in the North of Peru, a 16hr bus ride to Lima) to clarify the issue. And the issue was clarified! The nice man who took my call told me that if I was not at the Lima airport by 11pm that very same night I would miss my flight home (thus making my flight 2am wednesday night, aka thursday 14th at 02:00).

In the end this kinda turned out nicely. I was able to book a 6pm flight from Piura that would take me to the Lima airport where I simply waited a few hours until my flight. I avoided all complications and possible dangers getting around Lima.

Anyway, after almost 3 full days in transit I arrived again in freezing cold Toronto (its all relative!). My Uncle Fergus picked me up and a few days later where I returned to Meaford to surprise Emily and Mary who I had successfully (or so they have led me to believe) tricked into thinking I was gone indefinately. It was good fun. Emily you were the best!

Anyway, I'm happy to be home. A little worried about the lack of winter, but it will come around.

So this is it. This is the last blog. Thanks for reading.

Ok, so I lied, it wasn't "quick". But when have I ever kept to that promise? You should know better.

Ta-ta
Laura.

The infamous San Agustin to Popayan drive.

Here are some videos from my torturous drive between San Agustin and Popayan. The filming was intended to capture the stunning scenery, but I think it may have resulted more in the downward spiraling health of my poor camera. The second one gives you a better idea of the violent thrashing back and forth as the bus moved over the bumpy road. I think my head hit the window on more than one occasion.

Enjoy! Get some popcorn, the first is unnecessarily long, with a lot of trees, but pretty.

Ecuador update

I am back in Ecuador now, and the weather is much nicer than it has been.

Anyway, I know I promised (and i know you've been DYING to hear) an update on the Ecuadorian elections. In the end, the left leaning Correa won out over the the filthy rich Noboa. Correa is now the new King of Ecuador, here is his castle:

In other news, Lucio (the former president who was removed from the position and banned from participating in this years elections, thus his brother faithfully stepped in) is showing himself as the good Latin American politician that he is through his already posted presidential candidate posters for 2010.

Don't you love Latin American politics?!

As far as my construction update goes (Brendan, i am truely less than impressed with your coverage), this is what I found when returning to my pretty pink building. Apparently the owners of my building intend to build a TALLER building beside ours (on the left)... my flatmates are not happy about this.

And last but not least, here is an intersting video from my return from Colombia. I thought I wrote about this before, but I don't see it posted anywhere. On my way back from Colombia there was a landslide that prevented our bus from leaving on time. I left my hostel at 5am and arrived in Quito at 12am... it was a long day. Anyway, the landslide was really interesting because, I guess due to the other few landslides I have seen here, I had expected it to be a rocky, dusty, and more or less dry landslide. However, when I arrived to the site I found that it was rather a huge mudslide. The road was covered in mud and water and tree branches and debris. There was no one killed but unfortunately a truck was driving past at the exact moment of the slide and was swept or bulldozed off the road and half buried in mud. You'll see that for ages before we actually reach the truck the road is still covered in mud, I guess from other mini mudslides. Here's my video as we drive through what was about an hour before a huge pile of mud.

Note: take note of the music the busdrivers take pleasure torturing us with. There is no choice either, the music is so loud you can't even drown it out with your own music, you just have to enjoy it.

I love it!

This video is way too cute. Really has no relevance to my travels, but nice for the holiday season! Merry Christmas.

New Post 2 below.

I´m working hard to get these bloody posts up for your entertainment, so you better enjoy them!!!!

love laura

Bye Bye Locombia

Well, my wonderful time in Colombia has come to an end. Gotta keep moving. I believe my last actual post left off at my arrival to Bogota.... pronounced Bo-go-ta, not B-goat-ah. No, no, no, no.

Bogota, Bogota, Bogota... I didn't like you that much. Nope, not really! I think this might have been for a couple reasons. First of all, a few people had told me how much they enjoyed Bogota. I can't remember exactly what there reasons were, but I guess they felt pretty comfortable there. So I think my high expectations made the actual thing a little less than great. The other reason I didn't enjoy Bogota was the weather. It is bloody cold in Bogota, COLD! The hot showers were amazing, but the days were cold and grey, cloudy and often rainy too. A combination like that can bring a person down. One thing I did enjoy about Bogota were the Colombians I met. Fabio's friends in Bucamaranga had introduced me to some friends of theirs from Bogota and these friends were nice enough to take me in and show me around. So, I stayed in Bogota long enough to see the sights then I went on my merry way.

Bogota, what is there to see. Well, I think I actually started my stay in Bogota with a day trip out of the city! I went with an Israeli friend of mine to visit the Salt Cathedral in Zipaquira. Wow, this was more spectacular than I had imagined. It just went on and on and on, deeper and farther into the earth. Its hard to describe, I will definately have to post pictures. Basically, you walk for a while through this dark tunel lit by black lights stopping every once in a while to appreciate the displays set up for each Station of the Cross (this one represents Jesus, his mother, and Mary Magdalene). Each display was a beautiful combination of crosses carved from stone, pews to kneel in, and dramatic lighting. Eventually, after continuing down farther you reach what is The Cathedral. Equipt with an alter, pews, and all, this Cathedral holds a mass every Sunday. It was really stunning.

Bogota has lots of little things one can do to keep themselves occupied. For example, museusms. While I was there I visited the Botero Museum, Colombia's most famous artist (he likes to draw things fat), where I saw his paintings and several other paitings from Picasso, Monet, Matisse. It was nice. I also visited the famous Gold Museum. And that is exactly what it was, a museum filled with gold artifacts found around Colombia and some dating back to before the Inca. Hey Mum, you don't like my nose ring? What do you think about this one?

What else did I do? Like Quito, Bogota also has a Teleferico (cable car) going up the side of the mountain with a great view of the city. So, I did that. I did a lot of wandering around. I found a really nice university, wandered around it and even tried to sit in on one of their classes to evaluate my own spanish abilities. The class was something about Conflict and Peace in Colombia, interesting. Unfortunately, the classes were over and the students were into exams.

Ooh, the craziest thing. I met a kinda hippy artisan girl staying at the hostel next to mine and got talking to her about travelling around selling jewellry. Then, I thought I'd ask her where she was from. She said Canada and I said, "oh, me too." Then she asked me what part. I gave my standard response, "Near Toronto". To which she replied, "Hey, me too! Actually, I grew up in Toronto, but I've spent the last 8 years living in Collingwood". Weird. Anyone know a gal named Dev MacDonald? She's only about late 20s. Anyway, it was such a funny coincidence I had to buy something from the Collingwood girl in Bogota (a good way of rationalizing, I think). I also ran into about 7 other people in Bogota whom I had met previously in other parts of Colombia.

Friday morning, I got a 7am bus and headed to the Colombian "desert". A 9 hr bus ride got me down to the city of Neiva. Holy Moses! Was it EVER hot there, I think hotter maybe than Cartagena, at least drier. From Neiva I was crammed into a little van with my huge pack on my lap and driven 45 minutes to the little town of Villavieja. The desert is really just a small area on the outskirts of this town where the earth is a deep red and has been seriously eroded. Oh, and there are cactuses (or cacti), the official sign of desertness and thus the qualifying factor. I hired a really weird guide (we don't need to get into that) and got up at 5am to beat the heat and began my hours walk out to the desert. It was a long day, about 6 hrs of walking in all. We were nearly finished the tour at 9am when we went to his cousin's house (she lives in the desert) to have breakfast: fatty, chewy goat meat, rice, plantain, and beans.. oh, and hot chocolate. Mmmmm. Ew, I hate goat meat. Goat should never be consumed in any way at all.

That afternoon,I got a bus to San Agustin. As usual, the drive was gorgeous and San Agustin was quite nice too. I stayed in a hostel about 1km outside of the town, situated at the top of a canyon looking down (way down) to the Magdalena river. It was really beautiful. Anyway, San Agustin is an archeological town known for the mysterious statues found around the area. There really isn't very much known about the civilization who carved these stones, but they have been well preserved and there are tons of them. I spent a day wandering around having a look at them.

After a couple days in San Agustin, I hopped on another bus that would (eventually) take me back to my beginning point, the lovely city of Popayan. Man, was this ever a bus ride I could do without. This road is notorious for being rough, but I had never imagined the extent. The distance between the two towns is really not that far, but the primativeness of the route makes the trip 6hrs. Ok, so this was the worst part, I had to go pee. I'm sorry if you don't want to hear about it, but it was torturous so I have to tell someone. There were honestly several points were I said to myself, "ok, go and ask the driver to pull over so you can just go on the side of the road....now! Go now!!". Of course I couldn't do it. I had gone a couple times before leaving, but the bumping, up and down, seriously almost being thrown from my seat, vertibrae-fracturing kind of bumping, was too much. I felt like a pregnant woman riding a horse. Then, THEN, it started to rain and little streams of rain water painted my window, making the problem that much unbearable. And then of course we had to pass this huge waterfall. It was ridiculous. Anyway, this story ended happily, the end.
In conclusion, Colombia was fantastic and I can't wait to get back to do it all over again and more.

Here is a wee map of my Colombian circuit. Click on the map to enlarge it so you can actually read the names of places.

The blue and red shaded area is the "demilitarized zone", which basically means that there is not Colombian military or police presence there, purely guerrilla, purely off limits.

The little red and yellow *bam* above Medellin is a bit of news that I neglected to report at the time. You can read about it here. I was in Medellin when it happend. Another incident happened in Bogota while I was in Cali. I guess 23 people were injured when a car was exploded in the parking lot of a military base. Other than that, it was a pretty quiet time while I was there.

Popayan, Cali, Salento, Chinchina, and Manizales

Medellin and Medellin pictures

Parque Tayrona

Cartagena

Mud Volcano and Playa Blanca