I woke up rested, but Alyssa hadn't slept well since she is not used to sleeping with an eye mask and our room was very bright. We spent the morning packing and trying to avoid the other people staying at our hostel. Apparently one of the guys who worked there followed Alyssa into the bathroom- wtf?!? We checked out but asked them to hold our bags because we thought we might take a night bus and spend the day touring Cali. As we started to walk around the town, we quickly decided this would not be the plan. It was Sunday and once again NOTHING was open. I. Addition to that, it still felt really unsafe during the day and after hearing a story about a guy who got robbed at 9am, we weren't excited to tempt fate. We finally found a little market where we could buy yogurt and waited for the Juan Valdez (basically a Colombian Starbucks chain) to open at 12:00. We grabbed some coffee and banana bread and decided we would head to the bus station and catch the first bus out of town so that we didn't waste a whole day- might as well be traveling if you're going to be bored out of your mind. We wanted to get to Pasto which was about 8 hours away and half way to the Ecuador border but would have also been fine going to Popayan which was 2 hours away but was supposed to be a nice, quaint town. When we got to the bus terminal, we questioned all of the bus companies about the bus schedules they had available. Finally we found one leaving at 1:15pm, (it was 1:00 at the time) headed to Pasto and only cost $35,000. We quickly purchased ticketsand made sure to board in enough time that they didn't leave us this time.
The bus was comfortable enough for a day trip and they didn't have a/c which was actually a relief since we could control the temperature with our own window. They played the movie "White House Down" in English with Spanish subtitles which made me really happy and fully entertained me for two hours (even though it was a Channing Tatum movie- probably better that I couldn't hear the acting very well and just focused on the explosions).
Luckily we didn't make too many stops along the way and made decent time. We stopped at some restaurant on the side of the road for the drivers to eat dinner and of course, we didn't eat. We couldn't even figure out what the place served- it looked like the only options were soup or steak (there was no menu and we couldn't understand the waitress). We did talk to another traveller while we were stopped who was traveling in the opposite direction and gave us some thoughts on Equador, Peru and the Amazon. Then we boarded the bus and continued the journey. Watching the bus driver drive through these narrow mountain passes in the dark with dogs and motorcyclists constantly pulling in front of him was nuts. At one point, we noticed that the remaining drive was only 240km but was going to take 6 more hours which shows how slowly you have to drive in the area- some parts were dirt road! They then played the movie "The Call" with Halle Berry. It was in Spanish but I could follow most of it in context with the movie.
We finally arrived in Pasto at 10:00pm. We got a cab easily but there was a guy who had been trying to persuade us to stay at a certain hotel that tried to tell the cab where to take us. The cab driver said he didn't know where the hostel we wanted to go to was so we demanded to get out so that we could find a cab driver who did know. Suddenly he did know what we were talking about and drove us straight there...jerk. We went to "Koala Inn" since every review and blog I had read about Pasto said it was the place to go. It was a lot like a hotel with three stories of big rooms. The only problem is that Pasto was freezing and this place had no heat with an open roof.
We made sure to take warm showers before we went to bed and sleep in pants, socks and long sleeves. We had three beds in our room so we stripped the third bed and bundled up in one of the beds together- for warmth and also because only one of the beds had a real mattress...the other two had wooden planks with a piece of foam on it. It actually ended up being really comfortable and warm and I was asleep instantly.
Posted with Blogsy
No comments:
Post a Comment