Twelve Days in Colombia

Angie, Jess’s sister had been angling to go to Colombia for a while but couldn’t convince anyone to go with her. Since we were planning to go there anyway, we offered to meet up with her at the end of our trip and explore together. We flew to Bogotá from Quito because we had heard the Ecuador-Colombia border was a bit rough, and we wanted to get to Colombia more quickly. We were scheduled to meet Angie and Kevin in Guatapé, a small weekend getaway town two hours from Medellín, on May 8th.

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Adiós South America!

Phase 1 (South America) of our grand adventure is coming to an end. We are returning to the US in the middle of May for a whirlwind family-and-friend tour up the East Coast before setting off on Phase 2 (Biking Maine to Minnesota). Phase 1 has been an amazing, eye-opening experience, and we have thoroughly enjoyed spending so much time in so many different countries and meeting so many awesome people. Despite moving every few days to somewhere new, we have fallen into a routine and are looking forward to shaking things up again.

We hope to see you on our path through the USA!

Ecuador Redeems Itself in Our Eyes

Two night buses in a row sounds a bit crazy, and if you’d asked us four months ago we would have said that wasn’t a good plan. However, we suddenly found ourselves on a tight schedule despite having had four months to travel and we needed to make some quick progress. Jess’s sister is meeting us in Colombia on May 8th which means we need to get to Quito in time for our flight to Bogotá on May 6th. Since we have friends in Quito we want to spend some time with them, so we’re shooting to be there by May 3rd, and Quito is three night buses from Chachapoyas which we left on April 28th. In addition, we really wanted to visit Cuenca on our way to Quito so we could see something new in Ecuador. Since Eric really doesn’t like only spending one night in a hostel (moving every day), we needed to be in Cuenca by April 30th. That meant two night buses; one from Chachapoyas to Chiclayo arriving at 5:30am and one that evening from Chiclayo to Cuenca departing at 5:30pm.

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