Day 253 – Tuesday 30th May 2006

It is amazing how a little dip in the sea can clear your head after a night on the rum! For that reason the sea was my first port of call after rolling out of bed mid morning. Then it was fruit smoothie time and more reading and generally doing nothing. The Swedes and I were in surprisingly good form after a few too many the night before, but that was mainly due to our location and the fact that we had absolutely nothing to do for the whole day except sit on the beach and throw the little kids who kept pestering us into the sea.

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Day 252 – Monday 29th May 2006

Aaron and Jon had to get to Bogota for their flight to Rio via Santiago before heading back to England, and they wanted to see a few places in Colombia along the way, so in order to have sufficient time to make it worth stopping and seeing they had to be off. So mid morning the six of us separated for the last time on this trip. We had travelled together off and on since Salta, Argentina in late March, and here we were in the north of Colombia in late May, a huge distance over two months and some great experiences.

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Day 251 – Sunday 28th May 2006

Not a day of much action, it was mainly sitting around & reading, interspersed with a dash of swimming and football on the beach. I went out for the obligatory fruit smoothie breakfast and of course the fish lunch, just to break up the hardship of sitting on the beach and relaxing.

I wasn’t planning on going to the cinema but come the time the boys were about to set off I was hankering for a bit of air conditioning, so I went along to the mall in Santa Marta. We watched Clive Owen and Denzel Washington in Inside Man, one of the best films I have seen for a long time. For me about ten times cooler than Oceans Eleven, it is the story of a bank robbery in New York. If you haven’t already seen it, hire it today!

Day 250 – Saturday 27th May 2006

Waking up with enforced freshness (due to no alcohol sales) I made my way to the beach. That took me all of ten seconds as I walked out of my hotel, down 5 steps and there I was. Then it was straight into the water to cool off.

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Days 247 to 249 – Wednesday 24th to Friday 26th May 2006

In reality after getting to bed at 5am, an 8am start was never going to happen. I thought we all did well to get up at 9am and start preparations for our trip to Parque Nacional Tayrona, the pristine Caribbean beach where we would be kicking back and relaxing for the next few days whilst the elections were going on.

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Day 246 – Tuesday 23rd May 2006

I woke up about 8am and we were still moving. Apparently we had suffered no more hold ups and we were progressing nicely. The bad news was that we had been held up for about 3 hours, which meant that instead of 22 hours it would take 25 hours. But what is 3 hours between friends!

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Day 245 – Monday 22nd May 2006

Aaron & I woke up early as planned, packed our things up and checked out of our hostel. Our plan was to head to the Pacific coast of Colombia for the week before heading back to Cali for the weekend to hit the town.

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Day 244 – Sunday 21st May 2006

When we were in Quito we had been told that everyone heads to the shopping mall on Sunday. Being in the place where the hottest Colombians live, we thought what better way to spend a Sunday than taking in some scenery of a different nature.

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Day 243 – Saturday 20th May 2006

We waited until lunchtime to go to the airport to take our flight to Cali. We said see goodbye to the Swedes and Jon and took a taxi. The airport was the most security conscious airport I have seen. A check in the taxi on the way into the airport, a check once in the airport, a check to go into departures lounge, a check leaving the departures lounge to walk out to our plane and a final check before boarding.

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Days 240 to 242 – Wednesday 17th to Friday 19th May 2006

Waking up for my first full day in Colombia was a decent feeling as Colombia was probably one of the countries I had most looked forward to visiting since starting to think about travelling in this part of the world.

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