Travel day! Filandia to Buga, Colombia.

We paid our bill at Bidea Hostel in Filandia. 186,000 pesos ($88.35 CAD) for three nights. A little overpriced compared to some of the other hostels we've stayed at in Colombia. Two things that typically have bothered us about these hostels...the kitchen facilities available to the guests have been substandard in our opinion, and they seem to have a massive shortage of hooks and hangers in Colombia, because none of the hostels that we have stayed at have enough of them!

Seriously, for something so simple...buy some hooks for the walls and put up some shelving in the rooms! And yes, we did mention this to the young owner before we left.

The bus to Armenia stops right outside the front door of the hostel, so that was convenient. It was 4,200 pesos ($2.00 CAD) each for the 31 km (19 mile) bus ride from Filandia to Armenia.

At the Armenia bus terminal, you look along the rows of ticket booths for one advertising the city of Buga. We picked one, and paid 15,300 pesos ($7.25 CAD) each for the 114 km (71 mile) bus ride from Armenia to Buga (pop 98,000). The lady told us the bus would be leaving in 20 or 30 minutes.

We were lucky...our bus was quite new!

Nice seats with lots of leg room!

It was raining on and off, so it was a good day to sit on a bus. 

Not that far, but it still took two hours. The bus we were on was not a direct bus to Buga, it was actually heading for the nearby big city of Cali. So, we had to get off the bus on the highway itself rather than the Buga terminal. That was fine as this is a normal stop for the many buses that go by towards Cali, and there are taxis waiting right there.

I told the driver the intersection we wanted to go to, and he seemed to know where I meant, so off we went. Sure enough, we arrived at the Buga Hostel ten minutes later.

Got checked in and just relaxed for the rest of the day. Nice enough room, and the cheapest we have paid so far at 40,000 pesos ($19.00 CAD) per night. It will be a little noisy because the rooms are actually located in a restaurant/bar! And so that didn't settle down until almost midnight last night, but it was quiet after that and we slept well until 7:00am or so.

Our room has a nice little balcony overlooking the street.

This bird built a nest on a pole across the way.

This coming Friday (only two days away) marks the half way point of our six week Colombia adventure. Hard to believe, isn't it? We feel like we haven't got very far, but our intention was always just to play it by ear and enjoy our time without feeling the need to rush from place to place in order to "see it all".

This has been our route so far.

Now to put it in perspective, Colombia is a fairly large country. It is twice the size of France! So we knew that it would be pretty tough to see everything we wanted to.

We have seen very little of the whole country!

So we're coming to the realization that we're not going to make it up to the north coast and the cities of Cartagena and Santa Marta, nor the Lost City hike. That's okay though because from talking to other travelers, Cartagena is the most expensive city in Colombia, and at this time of year that whole area is very hot and humid. We're happy with the fact that there is a lot to see and do in the area surrounding the city of Bogota, and we'll be able to keep our costs down by not traveling so far.

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