17, high as a kite (or eagle) in Colombia

Welcome back to another edition of Steve and Jenjen wandering through faraway lands. This episode begins with some sadness, followed by sadness but it picks up to finish on more positive notes, so stick with it!

We begin towards a town called Gramalote which in 2010 was destroyed by severe rains followed by earthquakes causing the entire town to flow a little down the mountain destroying almost all the buildings in the process. Word has it what remains of the church is well worth the visit, despite the insanely long and slow road through the arse end of nowhere.

First sadness, we have to wait for a pig to be loaded into the back of a truck blocking our path. Screaming and fighting it is wrestled, rolled and kicked down the hillside until it barely has the strength to stand when it finally reaches the truck. A sombre reminder of what a sausage has to endure before it reaches the plate.

Well, straight into the second sadness. As we continued along this rural backroad we came across a dog walking the opposite way, his right eye was swollen to twice the size it should have been and completely opaque. As we pass, Steve notices the dog suddenly disappear in the rear view mirror. We stop and realise that this poor animal had fallen into a deep hole on the road as he was unable to see half of what lay ahead of him. His ruined eye wasn’t his only problem, he was covered in wounds the worst of which, an open puncture would on his back, had dozens and dozens of flies flying in and out. Wishing we knew what it took to humanely put an end to this dog’s suffering, we instead tried in vain to help him out the hole. Putting a chair in beside him as a stepping stone didn’t work, but a passing motorcyclist took a bungee cord from his bike and used it to successfully hoik the dog from the hole. The poor creature carried on along the track, not long for this world.

Alright well on to something more cheerful, a destroyed town. The church tower remains somehow standing when very little else does, the central park a good demonstration of how much the ground moved.

We fight fear to bring you the greatest pictures, like journalists in Syria we venture in dangers unknown to bring you the juiciest pictures. It lasted 8 years, we’re sure the tower can manage another ten minutes so we wander in.  Around one corner we find open crypts, complete with skulls and all the other bones. We don’t quite know why or how the bones are in these pigeon holes, they’re barely 3ft deep so it’s a mystery to us how the remains were wedged in… or why they’ve been opened up.

Curiosity satisfied, we headed off to a campsite down by the river. Unfortunately, the road was blocked so we headed through town to find the other end of the road. Unfortunately someone put a sign half in our way but we couldn’t quite understand it so we squeezed past.

Reaching the river spot we find yet another sign! Choosing yet again to not understand the sign we have a lovely undisturbed night with the sound of rushing water just metres away. A side effect of this sound is needing to pee just a little bit more often but it’s worth it.

An early alarm was set so we can skedaddle before the workers arrive to kick us out, and we begin what turns out to be the most entertaining and spectacular day of driving that we’ve done thus far. We began at 6am, before the sun had even risen on our side of the valley.

First stop is a small, beautiful and friendly town deep in the mountains. Stopping to admire the remarkably big church for such a small town, we enjoy some free WiFi and laugh at the juxtaposition of Christmas nativity scene and tall palm trees in the early morning sunshine.

Smooth sandy road flowing through the mountains, making “progress” required a little more fuel than anticipated so the spare container makes an appearance.

Snaking upwards, the views get more and more spectacular.

We can’t remember the exact elevation gain but it went from pretty high to really quite f’in high. The remoteness was amazing, and the buildings made from sticks and mud. We didn’t see the people, presumably they were busy fashioning loin cloths out of sheep hide and making axes out of flints.

After something like 5 hours of speedy gravel driving we hit smooth tarmac and took a break to grill up some lunch, boy do we love having everything with us at all times.

With still a crazy long way to go, we continue climbing past chilly villages where everyone is wearing a woolly hat (toque in Canadian) but also find hundreds and hundreds of Venezuelans making the walk from their desperate situation back home towards Bucaramanga (and beyond?) in Colombia. It’s a long walk, things must be bad. Sad face.

The last strech of road is a snaking climb up out of a canyon in the darkness, overtaking hesitant locals and trucks crawling along at walking pace. Eventually, after 12 hours but a pathetic 240km, we reach our campsite. The variesty of road types, scenery, villages, cities and light conditions made that one hell of a days drive.

Time for Westy Rick to get some long overdue lovin. Oil change, tyre rotation, discovery that a bushing is knackered and a realisation that we had virtually no brake pad left made it a worthwhile day in the sunshine. Notice Steve’s good use of safety flip flops.

Beers packed, we head up the hill to watch the sunset with a couple of the campsites canine residents joining us. We sip our beers with trepidation, for tomorrow morning we take to the skies to soar like eagles!!

A paragliding company operates just 30 seconds down from the campsite, and for just 160,000 pesos you can get strapped in and flown around for 20 minutes. What do we mean JUST 160,000? I know, I know, the currency is insane here. For example, at the port we had to pay a bill to release the vehicles for 1.7 MILLION PESOS (insert Dr. Evil face here). Well, paragliding cost 60 Canadian dorrars or 35 quid. Bargain.

Jenjen goes first, and after just a few seconds of running her and the instructor are soaring above the canyon, catching thermals and rising several thousand feet. Despite her nerves, Jenjen agrees to some acrobatics and descending happens a lot quicker than the ascending did. Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

Next is Steve’s turn, and with a different instructor he sets off to pretend he is a bird of prey looking for a delicious mouse to feast upon, he even spots Westy Rick enjoying some peace and quiet and fresh air in our absence. The offer of “acrobatics” is taken up, and suddenly nothing is up, everything is blurry and sense doesn’t exist anymore. Why is the parachute down there with the mountains?

Of course, no adventure activity would be complete without a selfie to prove it happened. Steve happened to take his at a time which later turned out to be good, or maybe bad timing (honestly, he wasn’t just taking selfies the whole time). You see, the instructor, the one whom is in charge of Steve’s life guiding him through the stratosphere utilising his professionalism and expertise as a pilot of this fabric magic, appears to be looking down. One hand on the steering lines, one hand…. holding his phone. Hmmm… I guess it’s pretty important to know what his ex had for dinner on facebook…

Our next destination is Barichara, a small mountain village with charm bleeding out of its ears. A couple from the Czech Republic, whom we met during the shipping process were here already having paraglided over us whilst we changed brake pads the day before. We joined them in the luxurious gravel carpark at the back of town and were met by a policeman who came to have a word. Uh oh… at least we have damn insurance this time. He gave us his phone number and told us to call him if we have any problems. Nice, thanks Bryan the copper.

Our new best friends in the whole wide world offered us a curry dinner, who could refuse. So we headed into town to try and find something to contribute, even the food shops had great architecture if you took the time to look upwards. Dinner was delicious, thanks again guys.

 

Morning came around and we had to head off. Back when this trip was just a sparkle in our eyes, a mere fantasy barely achievable whilst we sat at a computer in the office or ran around the ward trying to make sense of the chaos, we thought 8 months was a long time. It sounds like a long holiday doesn’t it? Well, it isn’t enough time. If you don’t have time (and why would you?) to hear us whinge about why our holiday isn’t long enough skip down a bit because we have some seriously unreasonable whinging to do.  

We have to average over 8 months approximately 160km a day. We started our trip and through America and Mexico we annihilated that easily, jumping from one destination to the next we were ahead of schedule by the time we hit Belize. Then we slowed down. Central American countries are small, there was lots to go and see and so we took our sweet time. By the time we landed in Colombia we were a little behind schedule so we’re trying to make up the miles. But that means every day we don’t go anywhere, we need to put in up to 10 hours of driving the next day to catch up.

So what? Well, let’s take our new bestest dinner cooking friends as an example. They were spending a few days in Barichara. The day we left they were walking to the next village on a historic trail and taking the bus back, then they were going to volunteer in a local restaurant and then wrapping up their day swimming in the pool right next to the camping car park. Then the next day? They didn’t know, whatever they felt like.

That’s lovely but who can afford to faff about their whole life? Well it gets cheaper the more you faff. At least half of our cost is fuel, so if you don’t drive anywhere then your day is already half as expensive. If you have taken the time to learn Spanish properly, and you’re not in a rush, you can wander to the local market and buy your fruit and vegetables at half the price. And you’re not paying for camping, so suddenly life becomes really cheap if you have the time to faff.

So why don’t we slow down? Well, if we slow down a bit, we’ll hit full blown winter in Patagonia making it off limits. And we can’t slow down a lot and wait for spring because of a deadline for Steve’s residency visa interview, hours to be made up at Jenjen’s work, probable shipping partner arrangements and plenty of already made plans back in Canada. So whinging over, we realise now we won’t see everything and we should have gone into this without deadlines, but it’s too late now.

We know what you’re thinking, “you ungrateful bastards”. Fair enough.

So we left and drove for hours and hours and camped out behind a nice restaurant. The next morning we headed to Rio Claro, a really nice jungle river carving its way through a canyon of marble. We could have spent days here, instead we spent a morning then drove on 4 hours to the city of Medellin.

Medellin was once the most dangerous city in the world, or maybe less dramatic than that we can’t remember. But it WAS the centre of the world’s cocaine industry with the notorious Pablo Escobar being the head honcho in this very city until he was killed in the early 90’s. Since then the town has calmed right down, and is a nice place to visit. We have one thing here we want to see, and that is….. THE CHRISTMAS LIGHTS. 27 million bulbs, how could we resist. Here are far too many photos of lights for you to enjoy, the theme this year was “Biodiversity in Colombia” hence all the animals.

Not sure how a t-rex snuck in…

So now it’s 10pm and we’re in a city needing to camp… so we make our way to the safest neighbourhood in which there is a hostel where overlanders regularly stay on the street in their vehicles. We close the curtains, lock the doors and leave the roof down and sleep incredibly soundly. Thinking we’ve been oh so stealthy, we leave the van in the morning to find our face washing and tooth brushing did leave a small indication of our presence to anyone passing by.

Long overdue some quiet time we yet again head to the hills. This time towards a camp spot in the wilderness at 9500ft. Using our experience of snow gained in Canada we deduce that the white stuff on top of a mountain must also be snow, and probably not a huge pile of cocaine? Nuts. Another insanely long day of driving means we see the sun set from behind the windscreen, again.

Ahh, cool temperatures and nobody around. Heaven, so peaceful, until a loud WOOOOOOOOO from the pitch black makes us jump out of our skin. Another WOOOOOOOOO, what the heck is that. Torch grabbed, turns out to be a huge ass owl just ten metres away! He hangs around long enough to grab a terrible out of focus photo, and then disappears without a sound during the half a second we’re not looking.

Tomorrow we’re not going anywhere, we need a catch up day with cleaning, tidying, sleeping and relaxing. We are on holiday after all!

Map that maybe doesn't ever work? Tell us!