Since I had no guidebook for Colombia, I asked other travelers in my hostel and gathered some information from those who had already been there. Besides this, I also got some excellent suggestions from the website mygola.com. I met an Aussie called Thom at the hostel who was also headed to Colombia, and we planned to cross the border together. A lot of people had suggested to leave from Quito really early in the morning if crossing over into Colombia by road. Accordingly, we decided to leave at 5 am the next day. Everything was decided and agreed upon and then I realized that my clothes were still at the hostel laundry. I ran to the laundry room, but it was already closed :(

It would open only at 8 am the next day. So I asked Thom to carry on without me. Thom seemed like a really nice travel companion and I was disappointed that I hadn’t remembered to collect my clothes earlier in the day.

At 8 am the next day, I collected my laundered clothes and caught a bus to the border town of Rumichaca. At the bus-stand, I found a backpacker who clearly seemed headed in the same direction as I was, and asked him if he’d like to share a taxi to the border. He was of course happy to split the costs. I guess Ecuadorians and Colombians can happily go from one country to the other, because the taxi driver just kept driving into Colombia. Thankfully we realised this just moments before becoming illegal immigrants and asked the driver to stop.

There was a long line of people waiting outside the Ecuadorian immigrations office and I joined the line. Asking around, I learnt that some sort of computer problem had surfaced just some time ago, and we were in for a long wait until they could fix their systems. I took this opportunity to curse myself once again for forgetting about my laundry.

After more than 2 hours (by which time the queue had more than doubled in length), there was finally some forward movement. In the meanwhile, I had struck up a conversation with some nice people. They were Pierre-Louis from Canada, Jade from the UK and Thomas from the US. Pierre-Louis and Thomas were crossing into Ecuador while Jade, like me, was crossing into Colombia. Also like me, Jade was on her way to Cali so we thought we could take a bus together.

Once the computer problems were sorted, the queue moved rather quickly and soon I was walking across the bridge that separates Ecuador and Colombia. I had been told that we weren’t allowed to take pictures on the bridge, but since I didn’t see any signs that said so explicitly, I risked a quick picture.

Walking from Ecuador to Colombia

At the Colombian side, there was a similar immigrations office, and after quickly verifying that my visa was genuine, the officer was happy to let me into his country. My initial plan was to check out the Sanctuario de Las Lajas close to the border town of Ipiales and go on to Pasto the same day. But because of the delay at immigrations, it was already too late to go to the Sanctuario. Jade wanted to go to Cali right away, but I didn’t want to rush so I decided to stay back in Ipiales and check out the big church the next day. So I said goodbye to Jade and got myself a taxi to take me to a cheap hostel. At the hostel, I met two other travelers from the US, and we went to have dinner together. They had also just entered Colombia and had been permitted into the country by the same immigration officer that I had had. How did we know this? Because the immigration officer was having his dinner at the table adjacent to ours. He also recognized me, and we exchanged a quick nod.