Day 239 - Tuesday 16th May 2006

I woke feeling groggy, packed my stuff, woke Aaron and we left Quito. I didn’t see anything there but I wasn’t overly concerned as at this time the only thing I wanted to do was get to Colombia.

We took another slow bus (once I arrived in Pasto later that evening I worked out I had travelled about 44 hours on buses from the previous 100 travelling from Lima, Peru to Pasto, Colombia) to the Colombian border. The formalities were surprisingly easy, and we took a taxi to the bus station in the border town of which I forget the name.

We took another bus of 2 hours to Pasto where we checked into a hostel. As we did so and left the building to go get some food, Oscar Jens and Robin pulled up in a taxi having travelled the same as us that day. Talk about co-incidence. We all went out for dinner and they told us about their Galapagos trip and showed the photos, which looked amazing but at $1000 each for the week long trip it was out of my budget. Maybe when I am older!

We then went in search of a bar to catch up over a beer, and who did we bump into, but Jon. Therefore the six were back together. Very strange and very co-incidental.

Jon had been held up in Pasto due to a farmer’s strike which was blocking the road an hour north of town. No-one could pass and hence we were stuck until it broke up or we got a flight out of town.

Leaving the worries about that until morning we had a beer and a chat but it wasn’t a party night so we called time.