The South American Odyssey

After the zoo, we decide to go back to Hristo and Maria's hotel to decide what to do next. We had 8 more days before I would need to reach Quito in Ecuador for my return flight back to Europe. With the limited time we had, we had 2 options - either continue further North along the coast to Santa Marta and from there do the 5 day trek to Ciudad Perdida (The Lost City) and then use the next 3 days to reach Quito (still some 2000 kms and a tricky border crossing away) OR start moving towards Bogota and visit the other planned towns and cities on the way over the next 8 days and then I catch a flight from there to Quito directly.
We came back and debated on it for quite some time since the Ciudad Perdida was very tempting option while the other one was a safer (to reach Quito) and more varied option. Finally, we decided to go for the latter option. We decided to go to Bogota with stops at Mompox and San Gil on the way.
Now, the next issue was how to reach Mompox. We figured that there were quite a few bus stops in Barranquilla and all of them were quite far from the area we were staying in. We checked with the person at the reception of the hotel and found that the buses to Mompox leave from the satellite town of Soledad some 20 kms away. When asked how we reach there, he said that we could take a taxi. There was a taxi driver waiting at the reception and he tried to hard sell his services to Soledad but we wanted to check other local options to reach there so we politely refused. Just outside the hotel was a bus station, Hristo went there to find out how to reach Soledad while I went to a shop nearby to recharge my prepaid SIM. After asking around from the locals, Hristo figured out that the bus tickets were 2000 COP per person irrespective of the length of the journey. There were 2 kind of buses, the municipality run ones needed a card with ample tickets charged on it. These didn't accept cash or any other form of payment and the card could be bought at certain locations in the town. The other option were the private mini buses that accepted only cash. We decided to go for the latter option but didn't really know if the buses from this stop would go to Soledad and if so, what number? The locals also didn't seem to have a clear idea about it. Each told a different number. A young guy was standing at the stop and overheard our conversation and mentioned that the bus to Soledad would go from Carrera 54 a few blocks away. A few others around also agreed, so we decided to walk there.
We found the bus stop and took the bus to Soledad. Its a pretty broken down mini bus fully packed. One by one we managed to find places to sit along the route. It took almost an hour to reach the bus terminal at Soledad. The bus dropped us about 700 mts from the terminal and we walked the rest.
The bus terminal was like all the other bus terminals we had seen in South America. For once, it was not a private one with only one bus operator like in Carthagena or the bus terminal where we had got off in Barranquilla. There were many operators with buses going all over the country and even to Venezuela. There were 3 operators selling tickets to Mompox, all had their buses at around 8 am in the morning. The price of 50000 COP per person, was the same for all of them so we booked ours via Berlinas, the same one we had used to come from Carthagena to Barranquilla.
After booking the tickets we went back to the main road nearby where we had been dropped on our way here. We found a bus going back towards Barranquilla and took it. This one unfortunately went only till Barrio Abajo, so we had to walk the last 5 kms back to our hostels. At the hostel, it was time to pack up after having it as a home for almost 8 days :)Leia mais