On the last leg of our trip we ended up in Bogota, Colombia. When we started this trip four months ago we had planned on exploring only Uruguay and Argentina. The plan was not to go backpacking through all of South America with 5 huge luggage, 5 carry-ons, a stroller and a baby cot. The plan was to stay put a month at a time and then fly out of Montevideo in November. Well, plans changed and we did end up dragging all of our luggage and stuff through 6 countries and who knows how many cities on who knows how many buses and taxis!!!!!!!!! Because we are very thrifty and have a budget, we discovered a really great deal on airfare out of Columbia. The price for a one way round trip ticket was $150.00. When we got to Peru and realized that we would like to go further north to see Ecuador, we started thinking about how much it would cost us to travel all the way back to Montevideo to catch our flight. We were thinking about all the long bus rides we would have to take as well all the hotels we would have to pay for. When we weighed it out we thought that it would be cheaper to work our way up to Colombia, and purchased the $150 tickets through Spirit airlines.
Now you know I love a great deal because this blog is all about the great deals! But we all know that when you think of Colombia the first thing that comes to mind is ...... the drug cartel, kidnappings, bombings,cocaine etc... I did not feel very comfortable with having to travel through Colombia.Of course my husband the adventurer said "Oh c'mon, it'll be fun!!" So I got coerced into saving money by going to Colombia. When I started researching things I realized that crossing the border from Ecuador into Colombia has been known to be somewhat dangerous. After reading my Lonely Planet book about how to cross over, I was dreading having to do it. I kept reading travel websites with posts from travelers who had done it before. The one warning was not to take an overnight bus because of bandits robbing buses. To avoid taking an overnight bus we would have to stay in the border town and get to immigration really early in the morning, walk across the border with all of our luggage and stuff , go to the Colombian immigration office and then take a taxi to the bus station. I was really nervous about having to do all this , I thought for sure we would get kidnapped.
Needless to say, we made it safely. God watched over us and sent us a helper. On the bus to the border town on Ecuador's side I sat next to this young woman in her 20's. We didn't say much to each other for most of the ride. As we were getting close, in my broken Spanish I asked her if she was Ecuadorean or Colombian. She said she was from Columbia. We continued to make small talk and I asked if her if it was safe in Pasto the town we were trying to get to before dark. I found out from our conversation that she worked in Ecuador during the week and went home to Pasto for the weekends. This border crossing was something she did every week. I asked how to get over the border and on to Pasto. She told me how she did it and I asked her if we could follow her. So at that moment she became our border crossing buddy and translator.We got off the bus, loaded our luggage into this big pickup truck with a tarp covering the sides. It was the only way we could go without separating into two taxis. We hopped into the back and sat on our luggage and off we went on a 10 minute bumpy ride to immigration. We got our passports stamped and our friend was kind enough to wait a half hour for us. We then dragged our luggage across a bridge and crossed a busy street into Columbia's Immigration to get our stamp in. We then loaded onto a minivan called a collectivo,which is a cheap way to travel and got dropped off at the bus station. We bought tickets for Pasto which would be a two hour bus ride and made it to our hotel by 10p.m. safely.
Two days prior to us arriving in Columbia, there was a suitcase bombing in a park two hours away from Bogota. This added to my anxiety. We stayed in 3 cities in Colombia and felt relatively safe but were on guard as we normally are. In Bogota we watched a protest with about 300 people and it was very peaceful.
Overall , Columbia was a great experience and I would probably go back.
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