Risky, terrifying, lawless, bandit country, drugs haven - all perfectly reasonable ways to describe Colombia from the comfort of the UK following years of negative news reports.
But things change and in the same way that it would be ridiculous for anyone to boycott London for fear of falling victim to the bubonic plague, Jack the Ripper or a real pea-souper (guv'nor) then so Colombia is no longer the no-go zone it was in the 1980s and early 1990s.
Certainly Cartagena, our first port of call on this vast continent, felt as safe as can be, teeming as it was with gringos and Colombian tourists.
After man hugs and embraces all round Loic saw us off from the dock in a taxi and we made for an area of town called Getsemani, on the edge of the pricier 'old town'.
Getsemani is backpacker central though after a week on a plastic mattress we forwent the numerous hostels in favour of a swanky joint with air-con and a blissfully comfortable bed.
It was pricey but worth every penny as we passed out and slept solidly until 0900 next morning.
On waking I sprang into action to get to the bottom of my fiscal strife. If you recall, prior to setting sail from Panama I'd been unable to withdraw cash from the ATM and then discovered my account was frozen.
I checked my travel account first: frozen.
Then I checked my current account: £x000 light.
Such situations call for calm, there will be a rational explanation and in these days of electronic transactions it would be very unlikely for two such behemoths as Barclays and MasterCard to conspire to lose several thousand pounds.
"@&£#%^+ hell, where the £&@>]{}%# hell is my money? What have those £&@€$¥ €$%#£& done with it?"
Leaving Kerry in bed I went out in search of a telephone so that I could speak to customer services and find out what was occurring.
I walked up our street, declining a couple of offers from prostitutes and found a place offering international telephone calls.
The office was ridiculously small, about eight feet square containing a desk behind which the clerk sat and there were four other people in there babbling into phones.
It wasn't terribly conducive to resolving a sensitive and personal financial predicament.
The upshot of my conversation with the India-based representative was that he could not 'see' my account because it was frozen (you don't say) and that the only way to resolve my situation was to email a PDF of my bank statement showing the payment I was alleging I'd made where it would be forwarded to another department, scrutinised and a decision made as to what the next steps would be.
I felt this was bureaucratic tosh in the extreme and told him so in no uncertain terms. I have no doubt that he quaked in his boots on learning that his superiors would be receiving a letter of complaint in the strongest possible terms and also that my outburst put me in the "Pompous Twats Who Shall Be Dealt With Last" pile.
Fully 48 nail-biting and frustrating hours ensued before I received the wondrous news that my deposit was acknowledged and my account had been reactivated.
Apparently, a simple miscalculation on my part had seen me violate the conditions of the account by going above a certain balance.
Ironic really when you consider that if you have nothing you can continue to spend via an overdraft facility; had I been travelling alone my faux pas would have seen me utterly brassic in a foreign land.
For that reason MasterCard, you are an arse.
Whilst this charade was played out Kerry and I had a city to see. I'd never heard of Cartagena before this trip but it is a fabulous place and should be high up on anyones list of places they want to visit.
Founded in 1533, its natural harbour soon established it of great import to the Spanish and it was the principal port in all of South America during colonial times.
This of course made it an attractive proposition to pirates and Sir Francis Drake took the city in 1586 despite the presence of the (still intact) fort and the impressive city walls, only handing it back when a ransom equivalent to £130m was paid.
Within these city walls remain the UNESCO recognised buildings of yore and it was a true delight to wander around drinking it all in.
Kerry also got to indulge her passion for a city sightseeing bus tour which took us around the newer parts of the city where beautiful art-deco sky scrapers reign and there's a picture postcard beach as well as good shopping too.
Working for the Cartagena Tourist Board must be a doddle, it has everything anyone could ever want.
We bumped into our shipmates a couple of times but with them all heading east and us aiming for Medellin in the south we expect that's the last we'll see of them on this trip.
So, after gorging on the delights of this great city we bade a sorrowful farewell to the Caribbean and made for the main bus terminal, some 10km out of town, for the 2130 night bus.
After turning down an innumerate number of taxis since we set out we were now amazed that we couldn't secure a ride for love nor money.
Most taxis were packed to the gunwales and the two that did stop refused to take us to the bus terminal as traffic would be too heavy and they could make more by picking up a succession of fares around town.
We did eventually source a ride though, with the help of our hotel chappie, weaving through traffic in the less appealing suburbs at Mach 2 before being demanded to pay a tip.
I fumbled in my wallet and handed him a note with a value equivalent to 60 pence, expecting him to baulk whereas instead he beamed as though handed the keys to a harem and a crate of Viagra.
Whilst waiting for our bus a kindly gent introduced himself to us and once he'd established we weren't from London or Manchester United he proudly informed us that he was a composer. He scrawled down some YouTube pages for us to enjoy later which, I must admit I did, though not perhaps in the way señor German Luna might have best appreciated.
Our bus was a modern, air-conditioned vehicle with reclining seats and we slept reasonably well. We were due into Medellin at 0800 so were surprised when 0900, then 1000 came and went. In fact, it would be almost 1300 when we were finally released from our incarceration by which time we were doing our collective nut.
We took the metro downtown to an up and coming suburb so for once weren't in mortal danger each time we stepped out of our hotel.
Frazzled from our 15 hour journey, Kerry stayed in the room and preened whilst I went out to explore the El Poblado suburb.
It all looked very nice and there was obviously money about round here, though I soon got distracted by Seville v Barcelona which was being shown in a bar.
Medellin used to be a no-go area for tourists as it was home to Pablo Escobar and the drug cartels. Through the 1980s Escobar was incredibly powerful but was eventually jailed in the early 90s. He escaped though and was on the run for a year before being shot and killed in Medellin.
Another Escobar, Andres, was a defender for the Colombian national football team who were expected to do very well at USA '94.
That they bombed and Andres scored an own-goal to seal their elimination resulted in him being shot dead in Medellin soon after.
In equal measures of hilarity and reprehension Alan Hansen said the very next day on World Cup Match of the Day: "the Argentine defender wants shooting after a mistake like that".
But that was then and this is now. Medellin now has ultra-friendly inhabitants, a fabulous metro system including cable cars serving the suburbs on the hillsides where trains can't reach and hoteliers completely fascinated with anyone with blue eyes.
After wandering around the city for a while we decided to take one of the cable cars up to the top of the hill to get a great overview of the whole place.
It was incredible. Line K of the metro took us up over the slums for a fascinating insight into an area we wouldn't have otherwise seen and then connected with Line L which took us further up, over and continuing for miles into the countryside to a country park.
All by cable car.
We were up at about 8000 ft here so the tiddly little 2km walk we took was almost enough to finish us off. Altitude is incredibly debilitating so gawd knows how we'll cope in La Paz in Bolivia which sits at 12000 ft.
In the country park we got talking to a couple who had lived in England for a year while they learned the language. We travelled down with them and then on the train back to our suburb whereupon they invited us for a night out with them.
To our eternal shame and possible regret we felt the need to politely decline on the grounds that we were both absolutely knackered and had to be up early to catch a bus.
It was a real shame it didn't quite work for us.
And so the odyssey continues apace. Next stop Bogota, capital of Colombia and home of possibly the most inept taxi driver in Christendom.
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