San Augustin

I've been in Colombia for almost three weeks now and so far so good. Infact i'd go further than that to say its been GREAT.

The border crossing was very smooth and remarkably relaxed. I'd expected a strong military presence at the border but found almost none. It would have been quite easy to wander through into Colombia without completing the border/visa stamp formalities - although probably not advisable. Anyway with a 60 day visa stamped in the passport I continued on into the Guerrilla heartland :-)

I didn't particularly want to travel on the bus after dark as bus hold-ups and robberies have been known - although much less frequent these days. So, I made it as far as the town of Pasto before settling for the night. Actually, I quite liked Pasto. Nothing of particular note for the tourist, but the place had a nice feel and so I stayed for three nights before heading on to Popayan (where I am currently.)

From Popayan I spent a week traveling around a large loop to San Augustin and Tierra Dentro. Taking in some of the finest archaeological sites that Colombia has to offer and generally enjoying the beautiful countryside. On the way to San Augustin we were stopped by several very young military personnel. Not a checkpoint as such, we were just flagged down in the middle of nowhere. I'm still not sure which 'side' stopped us - The Guerrillas or The Army? Still, things didn´t go too badly and after a rather half hearted bag search we were on our way again.

So now I find myself back in Popayan and i´m Hostel Sitting for a week. When I arrived in Popayan I had a recommendation for a good hostel and so went to check it out. What I hadn't realised at the time was that the hostel belonged to a Scottish couple that i'd met just over a year and a half ago in Venezuela. It is indeed 1smallworld.

For anyone heading through this way you should definitely check out the new hostel in Popayan - easily the best in town and the Hostel Trail website is great for anyone travelling in this part of the world.

Anyway, they asked if Chika and I would like to help out for a week while they went off to Ecuador to renew their visas. So, for almost the last week we've been settled here in Popayan... 'working' ;-)

It has at least given me plenty of opportunity to catch up on the website and post up all those missing photo galleries. I'm very pleased to say that this posting finally brings me totally up to date.

I realise its a bit of a photo marathon but here are the galleries from:

COMPLETE 'USA: BIKE TRIP' PHOTO GALLERY (74 Photos)

COMPLETE 'USA: WEST COAST' PHOTO GALLERY (48 Photos)

COMPLETE 'USA: LAS VEGAS/GRAND CANYON' PHOTO GALLERY (21 Photos)

COMPLETE 'USA: MIDWEST' PHOTO GALLERY (10 Photos)

COMPLETE 'ECUADOR: RAFTING' PHOTO GALLERY (11 Photos)

I've just enabled 'comments' for all my photo galleries, so if you've something to say about any of my photos please send me a comment and i'll publish it.

Just as a quick technical note. You might find that the layout of the photo pages is a bit mis-aligned if you are using Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) which is a bit odd as they work just fine under IE6 and the new beta release of IE8. Basically IE7 seems to do some strange, non standard things. Don´t you just love Microsoft! Better still just use Firefox :-)