more stamps in the good ol' pasaporte

I finished classes and all of my exams and final projects for university last week on Wednesday, which is super, because exam week actually starts this week! My friends Ryan, Josh, and I decided to go to Colombia for the weekend! (despite people saying how stupid we were and how dangerous it was and how we shouldn't) We left on Thursday at about 530 or so to go to Tulcan, which is about 3.5 miles from the border and stayed there that night. Actually when we got to the bus station, we took a taxi to what we thought was supposed to be a hostal, but apparently the guy didnt hear ryan include the world hotel, so he took us the the district of the town that had the same name. He couldn't find the hotel after that, so we gave him another name of a hotel in our travel book and he couldn't find that either, so we rode around in the taxi for about 20 minutes and all along he was saying this one is good and this one is good but a little expensive until we finally decided on one since he didnt know the other 2. He only made us pay $4 for the 30 minutes he was driving us around and then even got the price down on the hotel we were going to stay in. The room only had 2 beds in it so we pushed them together and I slept close to the crack while hogging a little bit of Ryan's covers.

We woke up whenever we wanted to on Friday (and Saturday and Sunday) and took a taxi to the border, where we were supposed to get our exit stamp and Andean card from Ecuador and our entrance stamp from Colombia, and our taxi driver drove us past the Ecuador border and right before we crossed over, he was like oh crap i forgot! haha So we got all the stuff we needed to, walked across the river (no man's land) and got our entrada in Colombia. We also got us a picture with the sign saying welcome to Colombia! Then we had to take a taxi from the border to Ipiales, which we were planning on stopping in on the way back, so we took a bus from there to Pasto. It took about 5.5 hours to get to Pasto, where we arrived and stayed in this cool inn called Koala. The people that owned it were very nice and the place was super cool and our room was HUGE! AND we each had a bed to ourselves!

We got our money exchanged at the border because they use their own pesos in Colombia and its 1700 pesos/$1 conversion which is kind of confusing and a little hard to get used to. We had a lovely lunch and walked around Pasto a bit, then when we returned to our hotel, we had some visitors knocking at our door, which so happened to be 2 girls from USFQ! how random but so cool, so we all walked around together to see the churches and centers and parks and stuff around Pasto then had a lovely dinner, in which we tried these things called Arepas, which were sooo good! Then we hung out the rest of the night in the hotel room drinking just a bit, cause you gotta try beer and alcohol from colombia! The next morning Ryan, Josh, and I woke up and went to this place called Laguna de la Cocha, which was this huge lake with an island in the middle that we boated to and hiked into just a bit for 1000 pesos. The town that is on the edge of the lake is the cutest town and the people are so nice and is known for their trout so we decided to eat some. We didn't have so many pesos left, so we were just hoping to be able to get back. The trout was delicious, but still had the head and the tail on it when we ate it!

We didnt have enough to get back, but we told them we'd pay the rest when we got to the Inn so we split the taxi with an older man. Then we had to try this other thing called something I don't remember and were very very good, but I'd had them before in Ecuador and already loved them. We watched Rumor Has It on tv and passed out that night and headed to Ipiales the next morning. There, the only thing we wanted to do was to see this huge famous church that sits on top of a river! (actually doesnt "sit" persay.. it has huge columns and an archway that are under it) It was so neat to see and so hard to walk up the steps to get to certain points and to get back up to catch the taxi, because it was down in a valley and so steep! My calves still are sore today. Then we took a taxi back to Ipiales, back to the border, got our exit stamps from Colombia, our entrance stamps and andean cards, took a taxi to Tulcan, had a yummy dinner, and headed back earlier than planned to Quito. (we almost didnt have enough money to do anything (pesos wise) so luckily josh and ryan had a little bit left, and I gave the money man a dollar to exchange for 1700 pesos just so i could keep them!)