We decided to split up this journey a little bit (it was still long but more bearable than being on a bus for 24 hours or more.)

For the first leg we got a bus from Popayan to the border town Ipiales. The bus was very small and squashing the surfboard in the back along with the rest of the luggage from all the passengers was a struggle. The bus stopped at Pasto, and we switched to another bus which was again very small so we got to sit upfront with the driver, although this was no hardship as the views on this journey were amazing. In total this took about 8 hours or so and we arrived at Ipiales in the evening.

That evening we stayed at a hotel just off the central square called Hotel Las Vegas, which was 50,000 COP for the night. I’m sure you can find cheaper but this was still pretty good. The following morning we woke up really early to go and see the only thing worth seeing in Ipiales – Las Lajas Sanctuary. It is definitely worth going to Ipiales just to see this church (it’s not your typical South American church by any means and by far the most impressive we have seen to date.)

The church was built in this location after a few miracles occurred here. The first of which was in 1754, when a woman and her deaf mute daughter were hiding from a storm in this area. They saw the image of the Virgin Mary above them and immediately the daughter was cured. Another occurred when a blind man was cured of his inability to see when he visited Las Lajas. Consequently, it was decided that Las Lajas Sanctuary would be constructed here (built between 1916-1949.)

After this impressive (use another word here) pit stop it was time to tackle the border. We caught a taxi for 8,000 COP and ridiculously quickly were stamped out of Colombia (there was absolutely no queue) and we were tricked into believing this would be a fast and simple border crossing.

However, On the other side of the border we queued for about 2 hours to get stamped into Ecuador. The queue didn’t move most of the time so maybe the staff were just taking breaks in between stamping each person?

Eventually we were through and got into another taxi to get to Tulcan (about 10 minutes away.) I thought they said 5,000 COP but turns out it was 15,000 (which was confusing as I’d thought I now understood 1-10 in Spanish fairly well but turns out it still needs some work.)

At the bus terminal there was a mad frenzy as a bus driver simply took our luggage before we had even got out of the taxi and sprinted towards the bus. With little choice we ran after them and boarded the bus to Quito (but didn’t have time to explain that we still only had pesos not US dollars – Ecuador doesn’t have their own currency.) Fortunately in the end they accepted 50,000 COP (I mean they had little other choice) and 5 hours later we reached Quito.

Another thing to note is that the centre of Quito is really far away from both bus stations (there are two) and so it costs at least $10 to get there. A taxi driver tried to charge us $15 (gringo problems) but you can definitely get a taxi for $10.