Loved Columbia, now in Ecuador

Here it is, the popular, un-edited version of Chris´s adventures! He pretty much sums up what I would have said in the last day or two, I will just add a bit at the bottom.

well landed in colombia, checked into my hostel, 8.00 per night and u get a free beer when u check in. gotta luv it. lots of police everywhere and where they´res no police theyare army guys with assault rifles so i totally felt safe. when i checked in there was a group of people sittin round drinking and an aussie guy playing guitar........so i had a few then the aussie couple i was sharin a room with invited me out to bar with them. we went out walked around and i had not much colombian pesos so i went back early, but grabbed a god egg n ham sandwich on a corn tortilla bun kinda thing was good and at .80 can´t go wrong. next morning got up walked around to 4 different banks to finally exchange amer money into pesos each bank directed me to another and i stumbled across a stret with 1/2 NAKED LADIES SITTING ON CHAIRS IN FRONT OF BUILDING frieendly as some were blowin me kisses motioning me over......................i think it musta been brothels surprising in middle of day right in the open like that! finaly got money changed and was going to go to a bowling alley from 1941 that actualy had a guy that manually reset the pins up and rolled u back the balls after u bowled...........................how cool is that but sadly my freinds from the hostal were hung over so they didn´t want to go. colombia is poor saw many homeless people actually eating food from out of the piles of garbage. my 3´rd day there i walked around and then went to meet laura at the airport..............was sad to leave me hostal i loved it but knew laura would hate it but found decent place spotless clean for 20.00/night and i knew she´d be hapy next day laura/i walked around all day and went to an awesome art musuem of the painter ´botero´al his painting were of rounded fat figures interesting plus saw a bank musuem and some beautiful chucrches and a good gold musuem plus saw this funny beting game were guinea pigs were lined up and there were 13 or so upside down bowls with entrances cut in them and u put money on the container u thought the guinea pig would run into....................was neat also had some delisious mangoe and pineapple from street vendors then walked around enjoying the culture and poeple of colombia then just relaxed in room early that night. next day killed the morning then boarded bus for 22 hour overnight bus journey. it was looooooooooooooooooooong beautiful scenery but a.c. was ful blast in bus and everyone on bus, including us, were freezing huddling under blankets the whole ride..............................why wouldn´t they just turn a.c. off?????????????????????????????? would be too logical for a poor country i guess! this morning we passed near colombian/equador border area and scenery of mountains was absolutely breathtaking....................................funny our travel bok said this was a guerilla/kidnaping area that should be avioded but i didn´t tell laura that til we were basicaly through. colombia in last few years has done lots to improve safety so it can get tourists dolars by improving their image to the world. from talking to many travellers at that hostal in Bogota i totaly fel safe in the country as they said they al were cautiuos at beginning then took night busses everywhere and even ventures óff the beaten path´ were few tourists go................................i like that colombia has hardly any tourists i think guess everyone is still scared to go....................but i totasly felt safe as any other poor ass country we travel in so i look forward to going back there............................as there are totaly no tourists there compared to india/asia/ect...............that i like and locals were very helpful freindly when i asked for directions on the street..........................never mind those 1/ naked woman on that one street boy they were sure very freindly haha well laura/i finally arived in equador border about 21 hours after leaving bogota then took another 3 hr bus ride to this lil tourisdty market town...................we had the best chinese food for 2.50 and 3.20 for combo plates i had shrimp was great and some local was quite amazed and staring at a white guy using chop sticks to eat with!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! what is even better is a normal sized beer is .75 and a double sized beer at 650 ml is only .10 more huh wonder which beer i bought???????????????????? .85 for a double sized beer and u can walk around on the streets drinking it........................think i´m gonna luv Equador as well i do! got bothered by amilion beggersin colombia but been here 4 hrs and not pestered yet here not yet! in this fancy high end internet cafe but 1 hr is only .75 and bob marley blarin in background so that isn´t so bad...........plus i gota let my shrimp combo plate abd big ass beer settle in my bely so i´l listen to more bob and type on tomorro othere is a market here then we have 6-7 hr bus ride to another town where they have a big ´thursday´market we read in our bok so back to bussing it. i´m startin to lok like a greasebal a bit so gonna have a hot water shower and good rest and my greaseballin partner laura will as well............................long bus ride with hardly any slep but at least we are here now..........................as usualy border crossing was pain in the neck and as we were in line to get our passports stamped all the workers decided to go for lunch so we al had to wait til they got back.....................then of course it started to rain but we managed to get a cab for 2.00 to next town in equador .................then the guy wanted 1.00 extra to drive us to bus station so i barked at him 2.50 in my broken spanish and he meagerly agreed which was prob a 20 min cab ride so even 3.0 wasn´t that bad but this is por country and if locals only pày 2.50 then why should we pay more! anytime there is business transaction between a local n a tourist fear not the tourist always gets screwed on it so i knew he was stil makin good money on it well gona walk round some more then hit the shower/sack prob write in afew more dayshope al is wel there sawka

Yes, it was a brutal, long cold bus ride, but we made it, safe and sound. No kidnappings, which I knew about, and wasn´t scared either......Chris really is rubbing off on me! We really haven´t slept in a while, so I can not wait to have a hot shower and hit the sack in a bit. Oh Chris forgot to mention that in the line up at the border crossing to Equador, not only did it start to rain, the border guys (all 4 of them) decided to all go for lunch at the same time so we had to wait even longer. Plus he also noticed that exiting Colombia all the border guys there were drinking beer. At work. Nice! Sow now we are in this neat little town Otavalto, not sure about the spelling, but we are going to definately have to make it back here before I go home, there are things I need to buy but don´t want to carry for 2 1/2 more weeks. Well, off to bed! Talk to you later!