On the 23rd in the evening I landed in Zurich. I was picked up by my sister because I had kept my visit a secret to surprise my parents on Christmas; and a surprise it was.
That concludes the Bittrail in South America for now and I’ll be heading for new territories in a while.

The trip back to Switzerland brought me first to Bogota with a 3 hours stay, then to Madrid with a 6 hours stay. Even in Madrid the temperatures were already freezing cold, how would it be in Switzerland?
I had problems in the transit because of some new EU security regulations that doesn’t allow you to take liquids on board, not even water. I had to argue a good while with the security person there to make him understand that I had to wait six hours in the terminal and I had no intention of throwing away my water. I insisted on keeping my water and after he asked his supervisor finally I was allowed to go.

I liked Playa Blanca so much that I spent my last day there again, relaxing and swimming with the fish.
If you ever get to Cartagena or Colombia look for one of the Juan Valdez coffee shops. I am not a big coffee drinker but what I’ve tasted there was certainly one of its kind, try the “Tinto campesino”.

My flight was from Cartagena in one week so I took another night bus (did I mention I hate night busses) to reach the place where almost 2 years ago I started this “vuelta”. I rented an apartment for the time. With a daytrip I catched up with two things I hadn’t seen the first time I was in Cartagena; Islas Rosario and Playa Blanca. It was a tour in a boat and in a lot of hurry. In the morning we went to a marine resort on one of the islands to see different animals and a show of dolphins. Although the reefs around the islands looked nice, I was a little bit disappointed of the islands itself, no dream beaches anywhere to be seen. Unhappy because there was no time for snorkeling on the islands we reached Playa Blanca. Fortunately there I was compensated, the beach is a real dream beach and there is even a small reef for snorkeling. Unfortunately many people step on the corals so I’m pretty sure it won’t last much longer. But I was still able to see many interesting fish. After a couple of hours we had to go back on the boat and head back to Cartagena.
On my way back I suddenly realized: Two years ago I started here leaving in one direction and after two year I found back from another. It was an amazing thought. Long ago I realized how big the world is and can’t really agree with people when they fly over the Atlantic in a few hours and because of that think that the world is small.

Over Pereira and Manizales I continued to Medellin. There it was the same story, because of rain I pretty much dropped all my plans and only went to walk some famous street at night. Around Christmas time they close down that street and put up lots of Christmas lights.
I had another problem. Where to go next? I thought of flying to the Dominican Republic or going back for a visit to Switzerland. I choose to do the second one. After the visit to the first travel agency I thought I would have to change my plans because they told me that there is no space on any flight leaving Colombia before January. In the second agency they told me that they had space but it was incredibly expensive. So I went on to a third, where to my surprise they made me a very good offer, even for non Christmas time it would have been.
A funny thing I noticed while walking the streets was a huge lineup of people, from the end of the line I couldn’t even see where the line started, so I walked along the line, making circles around phones and other “obstacles”. Then it made a 90 degree angle and went into another street, so I walked there as well until I finally reached some kind of financial office or bank where people probably got their paychecks cached in. The line was over 2 blocks long and it was really funny to watch, probably much more fun then standing at the end of this line, knowing that you had a whole day of waiting ahead of you.

I stayed in Hotel El Quijote, which although not as cheap as the one in Pasto was still a good deal. I wanted to do several things from here including visiting the Parque de los Nevados, but I came here exactly in rainy season and the clouds were hanging so low and it was raining a lot that I decided just to go visit Salento, a small town not far away from Armenia. Although it was quite rainy I still was able to walk a little bit, I climbed up to the viewpoint above the town and then started a little bit into the valley. It’s a beautiful area with a very nice climate, not too hot, not too cold. I turned around an went to buy some sweets made of caramel, peanuts and coffee before taking the small bus back to Armenia.

Another ride, again through beautiful landscape, brought me to Popayan, where I spent another night. The weather wasn’t very good and so I decided to continue the next day to Cali and then straight to Armenia.

In the morning I went to the bus station and found a bus to the border city of Tulcan right away. Unfortunately I didn’t find any international busses that would cross the border, so I would have to do so myself with taxies. It was a nice 5 or 6 hour ride with beautiful sights. Crossing the border was no problem at all, taking two taxies, one on each side. In Ipiales there was still time to take a bus to Pasto where I spent the night in Hotel Rey del Sur, which was a very good deal for Colombian standards, hotels and pretty much everything else here is more expensive as in Ecuador. The ride from Ipiales to Pasto is amazing, it’s a beautiful landscape and the road goes along a narrow and steep valley; just another route that would be perfect to do by bike. Unfortunately I don’t have any photos of this region because the windows of the bus were so dirty and dark. Sit on the right side of the bus to have the best view.

Originally I planned to travel north along the coast all the way to Esmeraldas, but somehow I had lost the hope to find a really nice beach around here and I took off towards Quito again. I didn’t want to go the same way that I came from over Guayaquil, so I chose to take a different route. It was definitely a mistake. I started at 8 in the morning and arrived in Quito at 1 o’clock in the night. I had to change buses 4 times and always got the slowest one, in addition I think some people blocked the street heading into Quito from the south so the last bus had to take a longer route just to get into Quito. That was definitely too much for a trip that could be done in maybe 9 or 10 hours so I took another day off just to recover from that.

The following day I headed a couple of hours north to a small fisher village called Montanita. It has now become kind of a hippy and surfer destination because waves are supposed to be quite good. I only wanted to stay one day but unfortunately the day before I ate something really bad (maybe it was the Seviche) and I got diarrhea. I didn’t want to travel in this condition so I stayed another night. The atmosphere in the village was quite nice and relaxing but I couldn’t get very exited about the beach. It was pretty small and dirty. Fortunately I started walking north to the village, just to see what else there was and I got to a little hill from where I had a spectacular view of another beach.

After spending a couple of months working in Santiago de Chile I found myself in Quito again. Before heading back to Colombia where I would complete the circle I wanted to check out the coast of Ecuador. I took the bus to Guayaquil where I spent a night. I had trouble finding a hotel because I got there just the night that Shakira was giving a concert. The next day after a short bus ride I reached Salinas. There weren’t many people around yet and it was easy to find a place to stay. It kind of reminded me of Punta del Este in Uruguay where, when I was there it was off season and it seemed to be a ghost town.
I spent my day walking along the beach.