26 hours on the move

18 hours on one bus. The sky was dark as we pulled out of the bus station and the air conditioning was on full blast. We payed 97,000 pesos for a trip through southern Colombia. (47 usd$) The bus drove through the city and I said a silent goodbye to Medellin. A place that had been good to me. Eventually we reached the tretcherously curved highway that led up and around the dark ominous mountains. The peaks around me pitch black and enormous, I sat as the bus swayed back and forth around the steep cliffs and tried to sleep while also holding onto my chair as to not wake up face down on the floor of the bus.
Hours past and morning arrived. I could now look outside and see hills reminiscent of central California. It appeared as though god had placed a hand on the flat earth and pinched the ground upward as if it were nothing more than clay.
As hours passed the altitude got higher and higher and we crossed from the dry side of the landscape into the green and lush scene of the far side of the mountains. The cliffs became more irregular and it no longer reminded me of California. We had passed into a new territory, a place among the clouds, closer to the heavens. After 18 long and pensive hours of watching a world I was beginning to know pass by we arrived in a small semi-city called Ipiales on the boarder. A hill that was stacked with small shack like houses and stores stood before us as we dismounted the bus. We jumped in a shuttle that took us the last ten minutes to the boarder. We stood online waiting for our farewell stamp from Colombia and the immigration police bid me safe travels and farewell. We stepped outside and looked at the imaginary line that my gringo ancestors had helped create. We decided to walk the quarter of a mile across the bridge and into the second country on our list. Ecuador! So at 8 pm, Katie and I stepped across the boarder and found that we really needn't fear the dark. We got our shiny new Ecuadorean stamps in our passports and found our way to the nearest bus station and started on the final leg of our 26 hour long journey. Not long after we left the bus station however, the bus was stopped by some national police. Katie and I wondered what was happening and a man told us that the police were looking for drugs. We were not only the only travelers on the bus but also the only gringos.  We watched as the police searched the bus and then the people. We got back on the bus and a man behind us told us that they had found drugs and other things. We watched as the police loaded what looked like 50-100 km of cocaine into a car. Then a girl who was crying was taken and put in the same car. 45 minutes after we had been pulled over the bus began to move and we were on our way to Quito. We arrived at the bus station around 2 am and found our way to a bed where we slept for longer than we've slept in the last 4 weeks.