We got the bus from Salento to Armenia and then from there we had to take an 8 hour bus ride to Popayan. We then had to take another long bus journey to get to Ecuador. So we decided to break up the long journey by taking an overnight stay. Popayan is suppose to be a really nice colonial city with loads of white buildings, however we wouldn't have any free time to explore the city unfortunately. 

The bus journey from Salento to Armenia took an hour, we then had to go into the bus station to order a bus to get to Popayan . On the trip, we didn't get a nice bus, we got some really small mini-bus type thing, so the journey was a long one with really small seats. We arrived after about 8 hours, but I think it was only suppose to take about 6. When we got dropped off at the bus station, we had to get a taxi to our hostel. 

We got there after about 5 minutes, it didn't look as if the hostel was in a safe area, and the road was completely dug up right outside the hostel. We arrived there quite late, but we hadn't eaten dinner yet, so we had to take a wander around to find somewhere to eat. We asked the guy on reception and he said not to come back after 10pm as it wasn't safe after 10pm. So we found a restaurant recommended in the lonely planet, which was suppose to be really nice. So we went inside, ordered the food, and I had a Hawaii chicken and John a steak, when the food came, it was wasn't too nice to be honest, and it was quite expensive for what it was. So we definitely won't be going back there again . We walked back to the hostel to get an early night, as we are going on another long bus journey tomorrow. 

We set our alarm for 6am ready to catch a bus for 7am. There were some protests going on in the streets, so this woke us up early anyway. We got a taxi to the bus terminal and had to catch a bus to Ipiales. For some reason, I wasn't feeling too well this morning, and after we got out of the taxi, I had to go off to be sick. I wasn't looking forward to another 8 hour bus journey not feeling too well. We got some food to take on the bus so hopefully I'd feel better after eating something. This time, luckily we ordered a big coach with toilets, and it had a personal DVD player right in the seat in front of you, so this was going to be a good journey hopefully. There was plenty of leg room for John so he was happy with that. We didn't get in the coach until 8am so knew today was going to be a long day. I tried to sleep for the first bit of the journey, after I slept, I ate something, and felt a bit better . The journey is suppose to only be taken during the day because of hijackings on the buses at night, so we wanted to leave early so that we were not travelling in the dark. The whole journey you are pretty much travelling through the mountains and completely in the middle of nowhere so that's probably why hijackings are common here, as there are not a lot of police patrolling the roads at all.

We eventually got to Ipiales and had to get a stamp out of Colombia. We had to get a collectivo from the bus terminal to the passport office. Once there, we got our stamp out of Colombia no problem. We then had to walk across a bridge which would take us into Ecuador, to go to their immigration office to get stamped into Ecuador. This was hassle and nearly took us 2 hours to get the stamp. By this time, it was 7pm and it was dark. We still had to get another 3 hour bus journey from Tulcan to Otavalo. I didn't want to be doing this in the dark, but had no choice . We had to take another taxi from the immigration office to Tulcan. Luckily when we got to Tulcan, there was a bus ready and waiting to go to Otavalo, so we hopped on that. We changed our last bit of Colombian pesos into US dollars so we had some local currency. It cost us about 3 dollars each for the bus journey. This was the bit where we realised it was going to be much cheaper travelling in Ecuador than in Colombia. Finally we made it to Otavalo at around 11pm, so tired from travelling on an 18 hour journey to get here. We had to come tonight (Friday) as in Otavalo on a Saturday is their biggest open air market, and I wanted to come there especially for that. We took another taxi from the bus terminal to the hostel. It was locked up when we got there, so the taxi driver had to call them. Luckily, they came and let us check in. We were shattered and went straight to bed. We hadn't even eaten any dinner tonight, but it was far too late to find anywhere now. At least we made it safely to Otavalo.