Women, men who ride horses, and kids

Day 38
We woke up early after dancing into the wee hours of the night to bumping techno beats with flashing green lasers, only to get on the coldest bus ride ever to Bogota. In Bogota, we stayed at a quaint homely hostel where not only did we get hot showers, free breakfast, and free internet, but we were also  taken care of by the cleaning women, who was the closest resemblance to a mother figured we´d had since we left home.

Day 39
Today was a Sunday and we´d heard about a nearby flea market so we went on a mission to go find it. We never made it to the actual flea market we were looking for, but there were numerous other ones that we ran into to compensate. So we spent the day walking around, trying different foods, and denying merchants left and right, who were trying to sell us everything from used cell phone chargers, remote controls, tattered wigs, blenders, all the way to typewriters. After a day of walking, the cold Kristin had been fighting began to creep up on her, so we headed back towards the hostel to relax. Her cold was likely due to a disgusting hoodlum we were trapped with on the gondola in Medellin, who was hacking with his mouth open while trying to sell us a ring that he´d obviously stolen and polluted with germs. Needless to say, we took it easy for the rest of the day.

Day 40
Monday turned into quite the scavenger hunt for Massive Attack tickets. Our English friends from the Darien Gapster informed us of their arrival so we fetched them from their hostel in the morning and the rest of the day turned into a wild goose chase around Bogota. What we thought would be an hour and half round trip to a mall where we cold buy our tickets turned into an hour and a half one way trip across the city. Then on the way back, we learned a very important lesson. We were staying in the La Candaleria district, so without thinking the 5 of us jumped on a bus that said Candaleria and assumed that we´d be arriving safely back at our hostels in about 1.5 hours. However, after being on the bus for a good 2 hours and not recognizing anything around us, we decided to ask a fellow passenger if we were near our destination. We learned that we most definitely were not when the entire bus erupted in laughter and told us that we should get off immediately. After this experience we gave up on public transportation and hopped in a taxi that got us safely to our hostel in roughly 30 minutes. We spent that night gathered around a table telling our new friends what life is like in America.

Day 41
We woke up to the rainiest day we have ever experienced. We needed to take a quick trip to the store, when just to our luck, the sky opened up to torrential downpour and hail. In the 20 minutes we were outside, we managed to get more soaked then we´d ever been. Needless to say, that was our only trip out for the day. We did however get to know some of the people we were trapped in the hostel with.

Day 42

We decided to take a day trip to Zipaquira where we visited Colombia´s most impressive man-made wonder, an underground salt cathedral. It took about 2 hours by bus to get there and we stopped for a quick meal before entering the cathedral. During brunch, we were greeted by about 15 school children who thought that we were the bee’s knees and excitedly practiced their English with us.
We took a 2 hour tour of the underground salt mines where we learned there are 16,000 things you can do with the salt they extract, except eat it. Some highlights were mining salt, blowing dynamite, and most importantly wearing hard hats. SAFETY FIRST! At the Englishmen´s hostel that evening there was a free salsa class so they came and fetched us when it began. Obviously we were at the top of class, aside from our teacher who was probably the best dancer we´d ever seen in our entire lives. He honestly had the ability to shake his booty and move his hips faster than Shakira.

Day 43
We both weren´t feeling well and we had Massive Attack the next day so we took day relatively easy, though we can proudly say that we conquered the bus system! Our main event for the day was to go to the mall so that Kristin could find an outfit to wear for Massive Attack. The mission was a success, but other then that it was a pretty uneventful day.

Day 44

Anxiously awaiting the show to start!

We awoke on Friday ecstatic that the day had finally come for us to see Massive Attack in Bogota. During the afternoon we went to the Museo del Oro, a gold museum, that is known to have the largest collection of gold in South America. After touring it thoroughly, we went back to the hostel to get dressed and prepare ourselves for the night ahead of us. Once dressed, we hopped in a taxi, sat through a traffic jam worse then any one we´ve been in ever in LA, and after an emergency bathroom stop we made the taxi driver take, we eventually made it to the show and met up with our friends. The show was absolutely AMAZING and shockingly uncrowded!
Afterwards we recappedand wound down with our friends and then headed back to our hostel toget ready for a day of travel to day to San Agustin, a small little hippie village.

Day 45 through 47

San Agustin was beautiful though our hostel was rather unwelcoming. Here we took a ¨jeep¨ tour of the Parque Arqeologico, where we saw hundreds of tombs and statues and ate a delicious meal. After the tour
we prepared to depart the next day to Popayan



Day 48

Ewwwww.

We arrived in Popayan early in the afternoon to a very accomadating hostel in the historic district, aka ¨la ciudad blanca,¨ that provided us with a map of all the sites we could see within walking distance.On our walking tour we saw beautiful churches, viewpoints, and wound up at a museum with stuffed animals of every imaginable species. The most disturbing being beetles with horns as big as your face. As we left the museum we ran into a friend from Seattle that we´d met at a previous hostel and made plans to reunite in Quito. Popayan quickly became our favorite small town, though we weren´t sad to leave because one day was sufficient to see all and we were excited to be moving onto Ecuador.

Day 49

¡¡¡ECUADOR!!!

We left Popayan early to ensure that we´d be crossing the border with plenty of daylight hours remaining, because we´d been worried that this border would be troublesome. It turned out to be a breeze. Our only complication was when we couldn´t find the window where they would stamp us out of Colombia, but it turned out that it was because our taxi driver had already driven us across the border into Ecuador, so we just had to walk back across the bridge, and all was solved. We then hopped onto a 5 hour bus to Quito and arrived in the early evening with plans of going out that night. However, altitude sickness quickly became a problem, being that we were in the second highest capital in the world, and we wound up playing cards and going to bed early instead.

Day 50
Our first day in Quito we spent exploring the La Mariscal neighborhood, the neighborhood we´re staying in, and wondered down to an artesian market. We were pleased to find that not only did Ecuador have awesome things, they were also affordable. We kept spending to a minimum here though because we had plans to go to the biggest artesian market in South America the following day, in a city about 2 hours away called Otavalo.
Later that day we met up with some of Ned´s friends for coffee, and we found out they were taking off that night for a beach town called Canoa so we wouldn´t get a chance to hang out with them. But since they were heading towards the sunshine, so we made plans to meet them there. After weeks of rain we are ready for summer sunshine again!

Day 51
Today was a fabulous day! We went out to Otavalo early in the morning, although we were feeling under the weather and it took a lot of motivation to get out of bed, but it was absolutely 100% worth it. Not only was the market cheap, it had some of the coolest things we´d ever seen. We allowed ourselves to splurge a bit, but we ended up with some very very cool memorabilia, the most exciting being the most amazing
pair of overalls ever made.

Day 52
Rain struck Quito with a vengeance once again. Our plans of wandering around Old Town were shot so we spent the day huddled inside a coffee shop trying to stay warm and reading our books. We plan to leave Quito for Canoa tonight where we´re hoping for sunshine.