Time for the next step, after more than 2 months in Ecuador, I'm going to Colombia.
I had booked a flight ticket Quito to Bogota some time ago because many people told me that it's very dangerous to cross the border by bus, especially for a white girl alone.. But 2 days before flying I discovered that my reservation had been cancelled due to some credit card issue. What to do? Doing another booking would cost me a hell amount of money... No choice but going by bus!
Then I went to the bus terminal and baught a ticket to the Ecuadorian border for the next day. The bus leave at 5am. Good.
The next day at 4:20am, I reach the bus terminal. It's a bit early it seems, nobody is there and everything is closed... Hope I'm at the good place.. 4:35am, a woman arrive with her 3 kids. Cool, I'm not the only one...
We wait. 4:45am, 5am, nothing, 5:15am, nothing,...6am, nothing and nobody...6:30am, still nothing... We just wait, what else can we do. At 6:35am, the woman, who sold me the ticket, arrive. She tells us that the bus will come at 7am... We are furious.
Indeed, it comes. It's full, dirty, smelly but anyway it's only 5 hours to Tulcan, the city nearest to the border.
After 2 hours, we get stopped for our first police check. They want to see our ID. They catch 2 colombian guys who seem not to have immigration papers. The police officer ask them to get down and an active discussion starts outside. From my seat I watch the scene. Suddenly one of the colombian guy get a 50US$ bill from his pocket and hand it discretly to the officer.. the discussion continues a bit and they get back in the bus...
We continue our way through beautiful green mountains, the landscape is breath taking. I'm getting sleepy. I take a short nap... When a big explosion wakes me up! The passengers yell: "Stop! Stop!". The driver hasn't heard anything in his cabin, probably having the salsa playing too loud... He finally stops after 3 minutes.
One of the tire had exploded.
Calmly he get down and change the tire with the co-pilot, the passengers watch the scene and laugh. We stay there, in the middle of nowhere, for 2 hours.
We finally reach Tulcan at 1:30pm.
From there, we have to take a taxi to the immigration checkpoint, get our stamp, then walk to Colombian checkpoint, get another stamp and take another taxi to the nearest Colombian city, Ipiales. In Ipiales, we can catch a bus to any city in Colombia.
But...it's bad luck...the road to the border is closed, because of a demonstration, until middle of the afternoon. When is "middle of the afternoon"? Nobody knows. We are many to want to cross. I meet 2 peruvian guys and we decide to have lunch together while waiting for "the middle of the afternoon". They are doing business with Colombia and one of them is going to Cali, like me. We will do the journey together.
We take lunch and wait, wait and wait. It's 4pm when a taxi driver gets out of his car and yell: "It's open!". We jump and go. Everybody is rushing and we find hugh queues at both immigration checks, it takes us almost 2 hours to get both stamps.
Then my new peruvian friend and me take a taxi to Ipiales. There he goes to look for a bus and bargain while I watch the bags. As gringa I've no chance to get a good price. He finds us a very good deal in a small van.
We leave at 6:30pm.
The bus drives at 90km/h through small, bumpy and curvy mountain roads playing a bad quality Indiana Jones DVD on its tiny TV. Impossible to sleep. I'm dead tired.
It's midnight. The old woman who was sitting on the trash bin in the corridor had probably enough of the curves and vomit all her dinner on other passengers. Now it smells deep fried pork in the bus.
2am. I manage to take micro naps between 2 bumps. When the colombian army stop us. They seem to be looking for weapons or drug. They point their lamp at us and ask all men to get down for a thorough body check. One soldier seem to be intrigued by me. He keeps his lamp at my face: "Are you from Colombia?". No, I answer a bit scared. "Your passport please." "Where are you from" he says seriously. "Francia". "Ahh, Bonjour! Bienevenue en Colombie! Je parle francese"... "Ahh, Merci", I answer relieved...
We continue our way to Cali. We reach the city of Salsa at 4am. I take a taxi to the hotel and go to sleep.
I'm in Colombia!!!!!