To the Caribbean Coast - flight from Cali to Cartagena

Another day of transport. We start with a 3hours minibus to Cali, the nearby big city with affordable flights.

We had a look at Brazil flights this week and got a massive scare. They were exceptionally expensive, even for domestic, and then we looked at Colombia. Whoever told me that they were super cheap, is dead wrong.  We had to do a lot of itinerary amendments to do what we wanted and stay within a reasonable transport budget for the next two months. Luckily, we are flexible, but in Brazil, we will be taking a lot of stupid-o-clock flights.

Back to Colombia, we experimented the buses here which are by far the least comfortable we have travelled with. The roads are in pretty bad conditions. Yet, they are so many of them, it has been exceptionally smooth to make all the changes and connections in each town. It's a relief because you can't really book in advance and information online were not very accurate. Alexis has found this website that is the most up to date found so far. It's not perfect.

In Cali, we arrive exactly at lunch and just eat at a cafeteria right in front of where we offloaded the bus. We have plenty of time until our flight which is a little before 7pm. Then, we walk into the terminal in search of the buses to the airport.

On the 1st floor there is a big sign for them, it cost COP12,000/pax and takes 30min. They leave every 10min or so. We just get into the next one.

At the airport, we have a good 4 hours to kill. We take a coffee and I work a little on the blog.

This is our first Colombian flight, let's see how people behave here. And the first thing that strikes me is that they are slow. They are very relaxed boarding in and out of the plane. It is very slow. Most of the congestion is due to the hand luggage and people just genuinely not putting any pressure. Not a bad thing - we departed just on time.

We have only 1h to transit in Bogota before our flight to Cartagena. I am a little worried. I shouldn't have been, the new gate in Bogota is a few steps away as we leave our first aircraft and we arrive just as the next boarding starts.

In Cartagena we are welcome with heat. My glasses fog. It's a very similar feeling as in Malaysia and it makes me very happy. We had nice and cool weather with fairly chilly nights for the past months, I missed my tropical heat and moist environment. Plus, it means I can finally wear slippers!

At the airport there is an official taxi stand, and some sort of station that let you fill in the arrival location to estimate the fare before you get into the taxi. We arrived well into the night and it was COP 22,000 to get into the historical district. Overall, easy and fast.