My last stop in Colombia: Cartagena de Indias - a beautiful place with lots of colonial architecture, wooden balconies, horsecarriages roaming the streets (chased by taxis) , the old town is partly surrounded by an old city wall, creole woman in colourful dresses selling fruits ( and pictures with them),a lot of bars on the plazas, steet performers at night....and loads of things to see and do: some fortresses nearby, you can go to ¨playa blanca¨ and enjoy some days in a hammock right next to the beach, paddle through some mangrove forest in a canoe or get all muddy in the volcano Totumo.

 

I headed straight up to the caribean coast, to the town of Santa Marta, to join a 5 day-hiking-trip to the ¨Lost City¨. We left on a jeep, passing several police officers on the way: one was checking our documents and joking how we plan to find the city when it is lost, another one accepted a handshake with some nicely folded-up money from our driver. That afternoon we started hiking for about 4 hours, mostly uphill through beautiful colombian landscape, we were pretty tired when we reached the hammock-camp that evening. The next day was very easy though, only 3 hours of hiking and crossing some rivers now and then, and we got spoiled with food. On the third day we finally reached the lost city/ Teyuna - which I found quite spread out and impressive. And as the hiking turned out to be quite easy, one of the chinese girls decided to make it a bit more challenging by twisting her ankle on the next day on the way back - this was supposed to be a day with 3,5 hours of hiking in the morning and 3 hours of walking in the afternoon - and while we could kind of keep up with the others of the group in the morning, as some guides carried her for a bit of the way, chasing down a hill with neckbreaking speed while I could just try to run after them to catch up with them later, the afternoon hike turned out to be a torture - me, her and our guide needed 6 hours, making it to the camp just after sunset, the guide staying behind often to rest as he was carrying 2 backpacks, leaving us to cross the small rivers by ourselves. Well, at least I got to see a lot of animals: a group of tucans that sounded like pigs  up in trees, poisonous snakes, a tarantula, a crab, moths and butterflies... and I had plenty of time to enjoy the scenery. The last day the chinese girl got a mule, which we were all chasing, so we were very fast that day. After resting for a day in Santa Marta I had a look at the fishing village of Taganga and then headed on to Tayrona National Park - where we were greeted by a crocodile and a bunch of crabs, beautiful beaches in front of palm trees and lush vegetation and some monkeys that were chasing each other next to a mango tree.

I crossed the border to Colombia, went to the city of Popayan and then on to a village called San Augustin, which is surrounded by beautiful landscape with lush green vegetation. There are many tombs with statues in the surrounding, which you can visit on horseback. I went on to a village called Villa de Leyva, once more cobblestoned streets and white buildings, they were filming a historic telenovela on the main square when we were there - quite interesting to watch, as many people in town were dressed up in custumes and added to the colonial flair of the town, you really felt like 300 years back in time when the spanish were buzzing around, conquering places.... We did a bicycle-tour, bumping through the town first and exploring the countryside later on. We also did some hikes to see some waterfalls, rivers and cascades.

 

I took a bus along the beautiful costline of brazil to Paraty, a picturesque little town with laterns and cobblestone-streets that naturally make you slow down if you don't intent to break you ankles - a perfect place for couples and old people : horse-carriages, nice beaches nearby, loads of restaurants and artgaleries- you get the picture....haha! Actually, that was the last place where I took pictures - I headed to Sao Paulo afterwards to catch a flight to LaPaz/Bolivia - the last 2 weeks were a bit of revival and first goodbye to southamerica in one. Returning to colourful, lively bolivia, where loads of people were roaming the nightly streets of LaPaz when I arrived, all those typical bolivian faces. I hurried on to Cuzco / Peru for easter / semana santa. I had most of my meals in the market, sitting at one of those foodstalls between peruvians while I could see "gringos" in the alleyways walking by, carefully holding on to their belongings, trying not to touch anything or be touched by anything while snatching pictures. And all those yummy fruits you could buy there, how I missed that! For easter, there were many processions all around town, there was one procession passing the place were I was staying, and as the family of that place had put up something like a little altar ( like many more along the streets), the procession stopped in front of the house, the "Christ" they were carrying around in a coffin was turned towards the altar and many prayers followed. I also saw lots of parades and lively dances that would have been great photo-opportunities. I left tuesday after easter for a 5 day- bus-odyssey through the whole of Peru and Ecuador again...passing through Lima on the way to catch up with friends, heading on to the dusty north, changing busses for a last time in Peru in the town of Piura, whose busy and chaotic main street made me head right on to the next place the first time I passed there- now it just made me grin, while I tried to cross the street to race to another busterminal. And then, as we turned slowly toward the mountains of Ecuador, the landscape turned green again - and you certainly will never starve on a bus in ecuador, with all those vendors hopping on and off, selling potatochips, fruits, drinks, chococate and all kind of local food- also the people were very friendly and in a good mood, reminding me why ecuador was one of my favorite countries right from the start - I passed through Loja, on to Cuenca and saw many more familiar places on the way to Quito, where I got yesterday evening just in time to have a look over the nightly city from that rooftop-terrace, just as I had on my first evening in southamerica.