Day 121 - Back in the air

Pasto to Bogotá

We had decided to treat ourselves and fly to Bogotá as it is a very long bus trip, and has also been known as a dangerous stretch of road with many bus robberies etc. We had a bit time to fill in until the flight so we spent the morning wandering around the city of Pasto which isn't really much of a tourist town, but we did manage to use our time productively getting a data sim card sorted, which ended up taking quite a while.

The shoe shiners in Pasto are sponsored?

Our homestay accommodation had booked us a taxi to take us to the airport. We knew it was about 45 minutes to an hour from the city but what we hadn't expected was that it was way out in the countryside. We very quickly left the city and we were once again driving through rolling green hills and farmland, could this really be the way to the airport? We saw lots more police checks of vehicles heading south (searching for cocaine smugglers) including one busy area where there were lots of food stalls set up, so drivers can get something to eat while the police are searching.

At the airport we endured the slow antiquated check in to get our boarding pass, and were then told we had to go to the police counter. There all our passport details were handwritten into a log book (containing foreigners' names only) and our boarding passes were stamped with a police stamp.

Walking across the tarmac felt quite strange after so many bus trips, it felt like we had gone up in the world to be getting on a plane. The flight was uneventful (though the nun seated next to K crossing herself as we took off was a little worrying), and the taxi ride to our nice airbnb apartment in downtown Bogota was a breeze.