As I've touched on in posts before, there's an inherent masochism to travel. Heavy food, uncertain showers, bad night's sleep — who knows what we might encounter when we leave the familiar comforts of home? And then, if you're like me, there's the willingness to do things you know you won't find comfortable in part because you want to get to the final destination and also because you're curious to see the space in between the destinations, where the land changes from flat to mountainous, who travels the same route as you, what it looks like along the way. 

I didn't do a ton of research before coming to Colombia, but the small amount I did pointed me to a walk you could do between the towns of Barichara and Guanes, in a region called Santander, on an old road built hundreds of years ago that was still maintained. Rad! But when a week ago I started plotting out how to get to Barichara from the north of Colombia, I saw that it wasn't going to be an easy feat. I did look into flying (being traumatized from some particularly long bus and train rides in SE Asia), but when I calculated the numbers of hours I'd spend changing planes and still riding a bus, it didn't seem worth it. So a bus it was, and a foray into my familiar masochistic travel mode it was going to have to be.