Completing full circle of South America

The first place in Colombia, on this second part of our stay there, was Cúcuta, the border city where we entered from Venezuela.  We stayed a couple of nights just to sleep and recover a bit from the stress of the border crossing.  We did a city walk on our own, and enjoyed the scenery and the fact that in Colombia you get vegetables for breakfast.  Good ones!  From Cúcuta we booked the car shipment from Cartagena to Panama, and we now had about a week to make our way and be there in time for the loading.

Our next stop was Bucaramanga, the 6^th biggest city in Colombia.  Google took us to the most unlikely entry when we arrived from driving through the mountains, but at least it was paved, although unbelievably steep and narrow in the first part.  The city was different from Cúcuta with a lot of high-rise apartment blocks, and our city tour guide explained that there had been a lot of construction of apartments and demolition of houses.  The population like it like this, he said.  We visited several areas of the city, and it was a very nice experience. 

We had a plan to carry on to Cartagena, and to take a few days and two stops along the way.  This didn’t work out well, and we arrived at the first stop mid-morning which is way too early to end a day’s driving.  We decided to carry on to the next place, and this was fine until we realised that rocking up at a hotel in a popular holiday place, in Easter week, will never have a chance to be successful.  In the end we returned to Manga in Cartagena, to the same hotel where we spent time waiting for the car around a year ago.  We even had the same view over the container port.  The South America trip was completed full circle, and we could now stay quietly in one place waiting for the loading of the car.

Reflecting on the South America tour, all we can say right now when we are still not back home is that if you have a chance give it a go.  What an experience it has been!  And also that we have had air conditioning fixed in just about every hotel where we have stayed, changing rooms at least once, so in the end we learned that it is no point carrying any bags to the room until that process has been completed.