Day 1 & 2 - Colombia

To start – you need Colombia Pesos before you enter (pick some on the ferry) everyone wants Pesos – hotels will accept dollars but you will get a crap exchange rate. Everywhere else including gas stations you need Pesos

There are toll roads in Colombia (not as expensive as Mexico though) and they only accept Pesos – I showed up at a couple without enough Pesos as ATMS/Cajeros are hard to find  - they took pity at the dumb-ass foreigner and waved me through!

The roads are good and people friendly – lots of waves and thumbs up once they noticed my number plate

Surprisingly not much of a police presence – only when driving in the mountains (there are a lot of mountains in Colombia) you see the army in all villages as its near FARC controlled territory (East and South of Colombia)

Had one stop at a check point – asked for my documents and waved me through once I produced them

Now for the dumb-ass move (once again) – Day 2 was not stop mountain driving – no place to pullover, one lane and no hotels worth the name

So I decided (as always) to keep going and then my GPS freaked out and started showing roads where no roads exist and roads between towns that again do not exist - As a result I got last lighted and LOST!!

No hotels and no place to safely pull over – as I was considering hara-kiri – saw a sign for a hotel – the approach was a little dodgy – but the end result was great!

It’s a small jungle resort run by the owners – wonderful people – named “Los Arrayanes” close to a small town called Andes – they called their son in the US to translate as a mix of their English and my pathetic Spanish was not getting the job done! They were full but rather then turn me away at that time of the night -

First, they wanted to call/ask their neighbors if they could put me up for the night - but when I suggested that sleeping in my car is a better option - they were very kind and generous to rig up a hammock in a covered area - good people!!!

Will be doing a more complete write up on the resort in another post

Colombia has been a very pleasant surprise (so far) - very different from what we perceive it to be - or have we been (once again) given a tarnished version by the worlds biggest propaganda machine - Hollywood and the US media