Bus Travels through Latin America - Backpacker in Colombia

. The amount of time I've spent travelling on never-ending bus journeys has allowed me to prepare myself for these mammoth tests of endurance both physically and, more importantly, mentally. What you don't want to be without, especially for a nightbus, is a hoody or jumper. Bus journies in South America are similar to travelling in a fridge, except without the luxuary of the light. Fine if you're a tomato but freezing if you're a warm-blooded piece of meat. I can never sleep on a bus. Not even when riding on the first class efforts of Argentina. The roads are often bumpy, jerking you out of an uncomfortable dream where you're sitting next to a loudly snoring fat man into a reality where you're sitting next to a loudly snoring fat man.

But it's in the mind where the biggest pot holes are to be found. A long distance bus journey is like being frozen in time, and not just from the overzealous use of air-conditioning. You can't effect the past, present or future. You move, but you stay rooted. This can breed anxiety and worry: "I should have reserved a hostel", "Why didn't I arrange to meet my friend at the station? What if I can't find him?", "What am I doing going HERE?!". It is a matter of experience and realising that you are in a vacuum, isolated from cause and effect, and nothing can be altered from this position. Easier said than done. Impossible really, and it's not always worries. Sometimes the fizzing excitement of where you are headed is bubbling out of you and this can be just as difficult, leading to a frustrated journey which is not a bottle of cola when it lasts for twelve hours. So I've plumped for some music, my distraction of choice because it's my first love and it goes well with the scenery that runs in the opposite direction all too fast; winding roads up steep mountains, dark, impenetrable jungle a green so dark it's navy blue, and small towns boasting a few small shops and restaurants that serve overpriced almuerzos .

Take it easy, nothing can be altered from this position. Easier said than done. The journey is stop-start, snaking and braking up these spiralling staircases to the summit, and rolling down again while I to and fro trying to anticipate every jolt and twist to prevent my head colliding with the guy next to me who's just going with the swaying flow. His head is arched back, mouth gaping where a snore eminates as if it's the den of some fierce, un-named animal. The music isn't working either. I'm worried about my trip to Cali, a decision taken on a whim which I hope, and often find, will work out. But that doesn't stop me feeling a little nervous on the way down, these thoughts slowing down and almost stopping the flow of my music to the point where I have to give it my full attention to propel the sounds onwards like a teacher who can't turn his back on his mischievous pupils. Finally it doesn't matter as the music is rendered completely obsolete by the introduction of "Big Momma's House 2" on the TV which wails out in Spanish in a fuzzy, high-pitched squeal throughout the bus. Suddenly I'm transported back to a sweet moment in my childhood as I hear the song from the Haribo advert squeeze out of the man next to me. He snaps awake and fishes out his mobile phone and answers with a gruff, weary "hola, como estas?" It is a perplexing ride.

I'm going to Cali to meet a Colombian friend I'd made in odd circumstances a few months before. The first time I'd been hit by the wall of heat I didn't have a hostel lined up so I went with the recommendation of a fellow traveller's outdated guide book. Arriving at the the house I was worried. If it was a hostel it was poorly signed. I rang the bell though, and was rewarded for my unsupported faith when my friend answered the door and explained: "No, this hasn't been a hostel for three years." Not the end of the world, he continued "You're welcome to stay the night." Shots went off in my brain like a sawn-off shotgun. Stay with a stranger? In Colombia? "Don't go to Colombia they all said, "it's dangerous, the people are terrorists!" Well foolishly I went with my gut feeling and accepted. And all was well.

So I'm going back for Christmas, and onwards. I don't have any plans beyond that. I dropped in on Bogota again because it's a wonderful grower of a city, sprawling with traffic and smog and that spreads out widely like a toddler's just tipped out his toybox, but it has charm and culture too. I've developed a real taste for the coffee here and bogota is peppered with cafes like the remaing granules of a cup of tinto throughout the area of La Candelaria. This is where the students and other trendies hang out in Bogota, full of cool looking, pasionate and free thinking young people who are excellent to chat to. I also have friends here who I'd met on my first visit to the city while trying to ascend Montserrate, which was not easy. An hour and a half of climbing steps not as simple as it sounds or is made to look by the hundreds of Colombians that undertake it, and made all the more difficult by the altitiude which turns the air thinner than my flimsy jacket which was no barrier to the early morning cool. My friend has invited me to her parents house for a meal with the family (Colombia? Don't go there it's dangerous. The people are terrorists!).

I try to be smart and travel by bus but I'm quickly lost on my way to the house, which sits on the outskirts of Bogota, far away from my hostel. After accepting I was lost, and also attracting attention by being not only so obviously a tourist, but also carrying a huge bunch of flowers for the mother, I decide to grab a taxi. Even then it's not so easy to identify the house. It took me a while to realise why this was but it suddenly occurs to me that all the houses are ringed by tall fences and the windows barred, like prisons turned inside-out to stop people getting in, not escaping. It's then that it dawns on me that there's no smoke without fire and it's not a good idea to get too blase about safety here.

I find the house and I'm buzzed in to a slightly over the top response of hugs and kisses. The family is important in Colombia, allied with religion. The two are the main inseperable bonds of the people of this country. To emphasise the point dinner is preceded by a succession of prayers from each person present (I narrowly avoid ruining the evening by chowing down my food before the blessing.) I'm eventually excused a prayer after lengthy protestations with my friend's small, skinny mother. It's not a question of faith, just langauge. My spanish is improving but I still have to pick out the important words, like a cannibal would pick out the meat from the mother's skinny bones. Finally, we eat. Ham, cheese, pineapple, beans, and, best of all, homemade tamales . Tamales are rice and potatoes with a flour coating and mixed with chicken or pork which are then wrapped in banana leaves and boiled. Bloated from the feast and weary from the salsa, I tire and leave a little after midnight but I know they'll drink beer and dance salsa until the darkest hours.