Tuesday…woke up early to catch our 6am taxi for the 30min drive to the bus station and was amazed by the traffic on this beautiful morning. Arrive in time to buy our tickets to find out there no longer was a 7am bus and we would have to take the 8am bus and of course the tickets were 30% more than we had been quoted. What to do? Have a coffee and wait and just pay the difference…not much else except to be patient like the ColOmbians seem to be. So we had a great coffee and at ten to eight we went to check in and were told to just wait and they would call us when they were ready to board the bus to Armenia. Another chance to practice patience! 8:10 no movement; 8:20 no movement; 8:30….still nothing; 8:40 and we were called to board the bus and of course we realized that we really had no idea how long this seven hour journey would really be. What we’ve realized for sure is that we have to shed our North American ways.
What a treat it was when we got on the bus as it was very comfortable with large seats and lots of room. In addition it had a bathroom in the back and free wifi which is why I’m typing now. The bus trip, although long, has been magnificent as we climbed up the hills in a switchback manner and there were times when I just said a prayer as we were so high up with nothing to keep us from toppling over the side except for the young bus driver in control at the wheel. There are a couple of pictures below which, once again, don’t do it justice because when we stopped for a short break we were halfway down the mountain and you just couldn’t see the switchback roads hidden in the hills. Suffice it to say it was a fabulous, albeit very slow, journey from Bogota to Salento. Although we left 40 mins late we only added another 20 mins to the driving time arriving in Armenia at 4pm. This was quite remarkable because the road was full of buses and transport trucks as that is the only way to move goods across the country. The distance was 300km and we averaged between 30-50kms per hour due to the traffic, the switchbacks, and the road construction……easy to see why it takes 7-8hours to do the trip. What was most remarkable, however, was the Maersk transport truck that was in front of us for the second half of the trip. Hanging off the back, unbeknownst to the driver of the truck(I think), but very visible to us and the bus driver, was a teenage boy who seemed to be hitching a ride towards Armenia. It reminded us all of how when we were younger we would, or someone we knew would, hang off the back of a car in the snow/ice to hitch a ride……we all admitted, however, it paled in comparison.