The Vagrant Gypsy Life

243 Sun 1/5 Otavalo/ Ipiales/ Pasto

Certain days go well. Be it in normal life or as a wanderer. This was one of them. Roberto’s kind and thoughtful gesture of making sure I managed to get on the proper bus made a great impression on me. Everything went smoothly – the bus to Tulcan (on the border with Colombia) took 3 hours as anticipated and I was able to get a taxi to the border without problems. The border officials were friendly and the Colombian official kindly gave me 90 days instead of the usual 60 days that tourists normally get. It was easy to get to the terminal in Ipiales on the other side of the border in Colombia.

The highlight of the day was the visit to El Sanctuario de las Lajas. It is a gothic church that seems to rise out of the side of a cliff. Spectacular! Welcome to Colombia! The bus trip to Pasto took about 4 hours and was well worht the effort I took to stay wide awake.

I had complained about the seeming lack of friendliness of most of the folks in Ecuador. I had no such complaints my first day in Colombia. The lady at the bus station were I dropped my bags off before heading to the sanctuary, the taxi driver who drove me to the hotel in Pasto were friendly and welcoming, especially the taxi driver.

I was extremely excited to make it to Colombia as most tourists I have run into the course of the last 8 months or so had raved about it.

Tags: Travel

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 17th, 2011 at 13:28 and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.