Baños to Columbia, The Drug Route

Well the adventure side of our travels in Ecuador began with a mountain biking trip around the local waterfalls.  Many days of rain had them at full glory.  The highlight of the trip was our trekking behind a massive waterfall and our scoring of a ride home in a locals utility.  The whole trip had me feeling like I was back in Cairns moutain biking again. 

The A team

Samuel and the crew at the largest waterfall. 

 View from behind the waterfall.  The power was amazing!

A waterfall double-up

Two Aussie blokes ignoring better advice to get to the otherside of a waterfall

 Otherside celebrations

 Ute ride home

Seeking a bit more adventure the next day, we teed up a half day of white water rafting.  It didn´t turn out to be the extreme adventure we had hoped, so we made our own fun wrestling each other in the boat.  We might have also paddled the boat into the more dangerous areas of the river against our guides express wishes…..  This is what you get with a boat full of Aussie lads.  A little later in the day we talked to our guide about doing a more extreme rafting adventure, but he advised against it cause that week alone it had claimed two lives.  It was back in the bag with that idea!

For the later half of the day six of us hired a jeep and drove up to a local tree house look out.  From the tree house you had amazing views of Baños´s active volcano which Smart traveller had been advising us to keep as far away as possible from.  Apparently is is going to blow or something….  Not on my watch.

The tree house

For our third day Sam and I woke up and looked at the one mountain near town we hadn´t climbed.  “It was your turn now buddy”.  Gathering up two others we set out in some rainy weather to hit the top of this mountain.  Midway along our trek we stumbled across a rasberry patch (you could have said it was a farm) and proceeded with an impromptue gourging.  Mmmm!  Karma came around though because soon enough we found our path blocked with a friggin massive bullock which we had to negotiate.  Not to mention being chased down the mountain by a few crazy dogs. 

Our final day commenced with yet an other shot gun decision to leave.  After a quick feed at the ol greasy chicken stand (the local market place) we bought our tickets and our plans were in motion.  Having a little time on our hands until the bus left, Sam decided to get a cut throught shave.  The lady perfroming the job was very particular about her work and after 25 minutes (!!!) she was happy that the job was complete.  Basically throwing the necessary amount of money at her we dashed out the door only to perform a flying leap to make our bus.  And hence we fulfilled Sams boyhood dream of jumping onto a moving bus.  Box checked.
After a five our bus ride to Quito we settled in a cheap and nasty hostel.  Obviously the hostel was recommended in the lonely planet.  I HATE that book!  Quito seemed pretty cool, it had cheap beers and food although it did take a little chasing.  It was also a fair bit of fun……Sam locked me out of our room leading me to break in (knock the door down).  Dodgeying up a half baked solution we proped up the door and lef Quito for Medellin Columbia.

Crusing around Quitos northern bus station, we met up with a friendly Columbian couple.  The girl spoke excellent English and was a big help to us.  Good ol Sam was a little smitten with her and had to be led around by his tonge haha! 

It was five hours to the boarder on the bus which was a bit of a driving carnival.  There were people/vendors and so forth jumping on and off everywhere creating a fair bit of confusion.  The food they were dealing was excellent though, especially when you are starving! Aside from the fun of the chaos, there was one point where the conductor was hurriedly yelling at us because he thought one of the guys who had just jumped off the bus had stolen one of our bags.  Pretty awesome.   
  
Luckily we crossed the border without incident.  We try to keep away from the drugs police though following our incident at the Peru/Ecuador boarder. 

On the other side of the boarder, we haggled a taxi driver for a lift to the Columbian border town of Ipiales.  To pay him we had to change our American dollars over to Columbian Pesos.  The guy doing the changing tried a sneaky short change which we quickly were on to.  I love this place, they are so rediculously blatant and when they get caught out they simply smile and admit to playing the Gringo game. 

It was a 19 hour bus ride direct to Medallin from the border.  Along the way we watched a few good movies on the laptop and giggled ourselves stupid (to the delight of the rest of the bus). Near the end of the trip, we exchanged details with the Columbian couple who offered any help they could “bar money”.  Bugger! 

I am now writing this blog on the bus just before we hop off.  I am contemplating my life as our bus driver tries to kill us all and Sam is being hit on by a 50 year old Columbian lady.  Haha!  The ladies like the ol Sammy J.  Seriously though, what is the ettiquite in a country like Columbia for knocking your bus driver the cuss out!