The end of our Colombian adventure!

This blog is all about our final weeks in Colombia.  It started on a bit of a sour note with everything we had "fixed" breaking, but ended strong due to the kindness of the people of Colombia.  In this blog we explored small towns, picked our own coffee beans, went to the dessert then back to the mountains on the worst road of our trip thus far to find Colombia's Yellowstone National park.  We found another perfect campground before preparing to cross into Ecuador while exploring one of South America's most famous churches.

July 8^th – ...how ironic…

After some discussion we decided to have a “do nothing day”.  A day where we don’t travel we just relax, get caught up on some TV shows and do those small tasks around the van that we sometimes neglect i.e., cleaning or organizing. 

We had another reason to stay in one place; it has been our experience in the last month that as soon as we fix one problem we encounter another.  If something is fixed something else will break.  We thought if we relax around the campsite that we will have one day where nothing breaks.  We will have one day where we aren’t thinking about how to fix something.  Well today turned into a very ironic day as Paul broke his glasses when he was trying to tighten them against his face, then the camping stove once again broke…

 

July 9^th – Pueblito

Last night we had spoken to our hosts about our camp stove once again breaking and they, out of the kindness of their hearts, said they would try to fix it for us.  True to their word we spent the morning in the workshop taking apart the camp stove and cleaning each valve while blowing compressed air through the propane lines.  It was obvious based on the issue that there was some sort of restriction in the propane lines, maybe dust or old grease, and after blowing lots of air it appeared the restriction was gone and the camp stove was once again working again.  We can only hope it will continue to work for the next few months.

While Paul was working on the camp stove Kendra found the crazy glue and glued Paul’s glasses back together.  Maybe, just maybe, everything is fixed once again.

We had originally planned to leave the Armenia area, but it was Sunday, the day the Colombians typically take part in Pueblito.  Pueblito is the practice of leaving your community and going to smaller communities to take part in their local traditions, eat local foods or just see the sites.  We always knew that small towns and tourist locations were extremely busy every weekend, especially Sunday, but didn’t realize it was a cultural norm in Colombia to go to these sites on a specific day.  Our camp site hosts mentioned that they would be visiting a few small towns and invited us to go with them; well how could we say no. We also wouldn’t be driving, so hopefully nothing breaks today.

The kindness of the people in Colombia can not be overstated, they refused to let us use our gas or pay for anything as we traveled for coffee at a beautiful mirador overlooking the community of Buenavista.  After taking in the sites, we jumped back in their vehicle and traveled to the small community of Calarca known for Sancocho, a traditional food of the area.

Normally Sancocho is a soup with pork ribs, potatoes (and/or yuca), corn among many, many other ingredients.  The biggest difference between normal Sancocho and the one we got was its size and its taste.  We were informed that the restaurant we were in was famous for its Sancocho and that it was a local favourite.  We can see why; we ordered one meal between Kendra and I and barely finished it, but not for lack of trying.  It was delicious!!!

Even though we were stuffed the Pueblito tour had to continue so we traveled to the next small town called Cordoba which was famous for Kumis, a fermented dairy product.  Although that quick description does not sound appealing, it was delicious.   It tasked like a yogurt drink with the consistency of a milkshake.  It was also delicious, especially with some cinnamon on top and a molasses based cookie to accompany it.

By this point we were waddling back to the vehicle, but our hosts had one more stop.  They felt we had to try Forcha which is a water-based fermented foam that tasted a bit sweeter than beer foam but had a nice tang to it.  We liked it, but we were so full!  I think given the option between the two of the regional drinks we would choose Kumis but were so happy for the opportunity to try both.

It was a great day and we were so happy to have joined our new Colombian friends on their Pueblito.

 

July 10^th – Trying our hand at coffee picking

We decided to spend one last day in the Armenia area, mostly after more discussions with our campground hosts.  Armenia is the capital of the Café region (as well as the Quindio department) and we had learned that not only was there tons of great coffee plantations that offered tours in the area but that once we head south we would be out of the coffee belt for the remainder of our trip.  We had tried to go to coffee plantations in central America but it never worked out, so we felt like today was one of our last opportunities to tour one.

The coffee plantation was only 20 kilometers from the campground but due to the roads it took forever.  This trip was made worse by our back tire; it was leaking air, audibly leaking air…sssshhhhhhh.  Again, it seems that as soon as one problem is solved (camp stove/ glasses, etc.) another one presents itself.  Our plan was to fix it, but because we had a reservation for our tour we could only fix the tire once the tour was done meaning our best option was to just pull off to road periodically and fill the tire.  Thank God we had an air compressor!! (And thank goodness it wasn’t as tucked away in our “garage” as it had been a few days ago).

The tour was great!  We started the tour with a small history of coffee production in Colombia (and to a lesser extent the world) before they handed us some traditional coffee picking baskets.  Once we were told what to look for and how we would know the coffee cherry was ready to be picked we were sent into the plantation to find a dozen or so coffee cherries. Did you know that coffee beans come from coffee cherries, which turn red when they are ripe. 

We did very well, mostly because we left the main path and within a few minutes had the requested amount of coffee cherries.  After that our guide inspected them and let us know which ones would be garbage, grade B or grade A (Paul won this competition with the guide pointing to a few in Paul’s basket claiming he did a good job, while looking at Kendra’s saying some were overripe or not ripe enough).   We then de-husked the cherries, tasted the sweetness of a fresh coffee bean, showing the coffee beans, and went through the drying, cleaning and roasting processes before getting some coffee for our hard work. Kendra even put her Bachelor of Arts degree to good use and got to be a barista, learning how to properly pour the hot water over the freshly ground coffee in a “grandmother’s sock”.  All in all, it was a great tour and we were happy to have finally got the coffee tour we had been trying to get since Mexico.

When we returned to the van the back tire was almost flat so we spent a few minutes putting air back into it before travelling to a tire repair place.  As we have learned, getting a hole in your tire in Latin America is not a big deal and a quick and cheap fix.  To repair our tire (and fix our rim which was bent from our initial crater hit in Alaska, somewhat in Edmonton, and then slowly flattening out from the many potholes between Canada and Colombia) it cost roughly $5 CAD!!

By the time we returned to the campsite we were exhausted from a full day of touring and the stress of having another issue to resolve. One thing we are learning about living in our van is like living in a house, there are always problems to be resolved and issues to be fixed, but when your house is your vehicle things can’t wait to be fixed.

 

July 11^th – Leaving our familiar area

We had become so familiar with our camping spot, our hosts Angela and Jorge at Mi Casita Camping Spot (they are on Instagram and Airbnb if you are nearby) and the Armenia area.  Even though we were only here for 6 days, it has been the longest we have been in one general area for some time.   It was actually a little hard to leave this familiar area.

It was a long day of driving from Armenia to our next destination, the Tatacoa desert. 

There weren’t too many things of interest on the drive expect for when we stopped for lunch at a roadside tienda. We had hoped to buy some sandwiches, but the owner was out, so we decided to purchase two “things” of grilled cheese.  We learned these “things” were blocks of cheese that were grilled.  They tasted great but the cheese was so rich we barely ate a third of one block as our “meal”.

The other neat thing we encountered enroute was a ferry, which we were told was “big” as it could hold 3 or 4 vehicles.  The quickest way from Armenia to the desert was to cross a river and to cross a bridge over the river would result in an extra 50 kilometres and an extra hour or so of driving, so we drove onto some rough roads to find a random old “sketchy” ferry that charged us $6 CAD to ferry us, and the vehicle across the river.  It was quite an experience. We had flashbacks to the Dawson City ferry with vehicles getting hung up, as our first attempt to load was un successful, but after a quick readjustment we were loaded and ready to sail. Paul left the vehicle and was introduced to the boss who gave him a lifejacket (Kendra and Rupert would have to swim without a floatation device if the ferry didn’t make it across). Luckily we made it across in just enough time for one of the employees to finish his beer (it was the last sailing across towards the desert so it was almost the end of his shift).

Our camp site for the night was at a viewpoint of the Tatacoa desert.  It was the perfect spot to cook dinner and enjoy the area.  It was something out of a “inspirational van life reel” on Instagram.  We were quite the novelty to the local kids who had tons of questions for us about Canada, our trip, our van and of course Rupert.  Thankfully Paul and the kids could communicate with each other pretty easily. 

Unbeknownst to us the area was also known for its night sky.  It was beautiful with many stars.  We ended up spending a couple hours enjoying the stars and trying our best to capture their beauty. It is moments like this where we sit and ponder about how we ended up here and we realize how lucky we are to experience these places. It’s also nights like these where we reflect on other places that have given us similar views back home and we start talking about all the people reading this and hoping these posts are finding them happy and healthy and appreciating the little things in life, like looking at the stars.

 July 12^th – Back in the Heat

Our original plan was to start hiking around the Tatacoa desert before 8am, as it was set to get to 39 degrees Celsius today.  Well, we got lazy and didn’t get on the trail until 9am, meaning we spent 2 hours in the desert in temperatures within the mid 30s.  It was hot but we had lots of water and it was beautiful.  It reminded us a lot of our hikes in Utah where the biggest issue (other than the heat) was deciding what we didn’t want to take pictures of.  The whole area was so photographic!

However, by the time our walk was just about done we were out of water and ready for air conditioning.  We jumped in the van, cranked the A/C and drove to another viewpoint a little further down the road.  It was fine, but nothing like the red rock formations of the Tatacoa desert.

We thought an appropriate way to celebrate our adventure in the desert with some craft beer in Neiva the capital city of the department we were in.  We looked for 2 hours, driving around the city to different addresses and locations that Facebook, Google and Waze (another navigation app) had, but in the end we never found any breweries.  We did get a sticker from a random motorcyclist who passed us the sticker while we were both driving.  It was quite the experience that we wish we had a video documenting it.

Our plan is to drive to the community of Popayan in western Colombia but it is a couple days drive from Tatacoa desert so we drove until we were sick of driving and stopped for the night at an eco campground known for its waterfall; however, we decided to relax instead of hiking to the waterfall tonight.

 

July 13^th – A choice we would never have to make in Canada

The area where we camped was known for various waterfalls, each requiring separate payment to see and swim in.  Because a couple waterfalls were on the property of the campground we had stayed at we could access them for free.  Unfortunately, they were nothing special compared to other waterfalls we have seen, but offered a nice morning walk before driving towards Popayan.

We had an odd decision to make, as there are two “main” roads between our campground and Popayan, the better more northerly road has issues with the FARC, or those saying they represent them, robbing international travellers.  The road to the south is in horrible condition.  Now obviously not everyone who takes the northern road gets robbed, but in general the police recommend people do not take it at this time and two months ago other travellers had asked the police if the road was safe and the police said no, that two days prior travellers had been robbed, YIKES!  We had a choice to make, take a terrible road that will take a couple days to drive or risk our safety and take the good road and possibly encounter some robbers in the north.  Obviously, we decided to take the road in bad condition.  This road did have one additional benefit, it would bring us through the northern section of Purace National Park, known for its dynamic landscapes and Colombia’s version of Yellowstone National Park.

After grabbing some groceries, we started the drive.  The road went from good to bad to worse pretty quickly and before we knew it we were tempting fate by going any more than 15 km/h.  We couldn’t see how high clearance or 4x4 would allow people to go faster, the road was narrow and full of massive potholes, but it was beautiful. It felt like an uphill climb the whole drive, but the views of the valley were breathtaking.

After what felt like an eternity, we finally arrived at the National Park and we’re excited to stretch our legs and camp in the parking lot of the mini Yellowstone (as previous overlanders had done).  Unfortunately, because it took us so long to drive to the National Park we were told the trails were closed for the night (at 3 pm) and that we would have to come back tomorrow.  Our day was made worse as we were also told we were not allowed to camp in the parking lot, but they did recommend a spot at a hot spring 15 kms up the road.  It took us an hour to reach these hot springs due to the road conditions…

The hot springs were a nice way to relax after a long day of driving, it almost made up for the long drive and could have changed our opinion on the day as a whole, except dinner was disgusting.  We had picked up some mystery meat in the market.  It looked like marinated and we were told it was pork.  It may have been pork, but I don’t know what part of the pig it was.  Kendra hardly ate it; Paul chewed it as best he could while Rupert lost his mind wanting to try it for himself.  It must have smelt way better to him than it tasted for us.

 

July 14^th – Not passing the vibe check

Where we had camped was a staggering 3450 meters above sea level.  We had never camped this high before, nor had we spent over 24 hours at this height previously in our lives.  Unfortunately, this was the morning Paul learned he suffers from Altitude Sickness.  He looked white, was nauseas and could hardly eat anything.  We did discuss skipping Termales de San Juan (Colombia’s version of Yellowstone National Park), but Paul persevered.

We are very happy with our decision as the indigenous people who run the park were so welcoming and happy to talk about this unique area in Colombia.  Exploring and hiking this area made the long drive yesterday worth it!!

Sadly, all good things come to an end and it was time to drive the remaining 1/3 of Ruta 24 to Popayan.  The road was a bit better than the preceding 2/3rds but not by much. 

Since it was only 2pm when we arrived in Popayan we decided to get a carwash (our van was filthy since we hadn’t gotten it cleaned since Panama) while we explored the city.  We believed that this would give us an opportunity to determine if we wanted to spend any significant time in the area. 

Popayan is known for is white buildings throughout the central area, but most of these buildings were full of graffiti and in general the community didn’t feel “right”.  Its hard to truly explain but it didn’t pass our vibe check.  It did photograph well though!

Since we had decided not to stay in Popayan we had to quickly determine where we would camp, which became stressful when we couldn’t find the campground we wanted to stay in, and all other campground in the area had been transformed into Glamping areas that couldn’t accommodate a vehicle.  To make matters worse, we couldn’t find the gas money we had left out and believe the people at the carwash had stolen it (roughly $60 CAD).

It was approaching sunset and we didn’t have a plan, but thankfully the original campground we couldn’t find did have a phone number so, we bit our tongue and messaged them, hoping we would get a response.  We did and they sent us a video of how to reach their place.

We arrived just after sunset after what felt like a very stressful day of Paul being sick, feeling uncomfortable in a community, feeling frustrated by disappearance of out gas money and exhausted from decisions not working out.  Although the day started strong, we couldn’t wait until the day ended.

 

July 15^th – Taking a break

By some stroke of luck, the campground near Popayan was amazing with another incredibly welcoming Colombian couple and other overlanders from Argentina who would could socialize with.  It was hard to even think about leaving the next day, so we didn’t.

We spent the day hanging around, swapping stories (and practicing our Spanish since the Argentinians didn’t speak much English while they wanted to practice their English) and getting some answers to questions we had about future borders and future locations, since they are also travelling with a dog.

The campground (which doubles as a hostel) started to fill up by the evening meaning meaning then owner asked if we, along with the other visitors, wanted to go on a farm tour.  Well of course we did!

After the tour many people seemed interested in playing board games namely Settlers of Catan.  It was such a nice way to end the day playing Catan while drinking a few beers!!

 

July 16^th – Agreeing to the offer

If there is one thing we have learned on this trip it is, if someone offers to take you somewhere, take them up on it.  Obviously this is not something you should do at all time, but when it is a fellow traveler or a campground host, we have gotten in the habit of saying YES!

Our campground host had mentioned that if we wanted to stay today that he and the others staying at the hostel would be doing a hike to a waterfall near by.  It didn’t take much to convince us.

The hike itself was through a pine forest managed by a local pulp mill in Cali.  We could not believe how much it felt like hiking back in Canada except the trees are planted in perfect rows. The waterfall was better then the other waterfalls we had seen in the last few days.  Paul even braved the cold water for a quick dip.

The evening seamed to slip by similar to the previous night and before we knew it the day was over, but we were feeling far more rested and ready to get back on the road and ready for entering a new country.

 

July 17^th – Another long day of driving

We had plans to drive from the Popayan area to the northern section of the community of Pasto, a roughly 200 kilometer drive. We had been warned that due to road construction the drive could take anywhere from 6 to 8 hours so we thought it best to get an early start.  We packed up the van said goodbye to our new Argentinean friends and started our drive.

We were not lucky this time and we waited for an hour or more in multiple construction zones meaning it took us the full 8 hours to go 200 kilometers.  We did however purchase some absolutely delicious road snacks from some road vendors and some not so delicious snacks (cheese filled with tres leche is disgusting [unless you are Rupert then the first chance you get alone in the van you will devour them])

Our camping spot for the night was a plant nursery where we met two other overlander groups from Europe heading north to Cartagena for the completion of their trip.  We talked a bit about our experience in Colombia and theirs in the rest of South America, but in the end they went to bed relatively early as they had crossed the Ecuador/Colombia border that day and had plans to drive to Popayan the next day and were worried they’d be stuck in traffic for 8 hours just like us.

 

July 18^th – Border Preparations

We had a small list of tasks to complete in the last big city before the Ecuador border, the city of Pasto. We weren’t sure how long these tasks would take to complete but we knew we could always spend a night in the area if we had to.

Our first task was to get our exhaust fixed.  After so many speed bumps and potholes we had convinced ourself that we had a cracked exhaust, mostly due to the fact we smelt exhaust every once and a while and there were sounds coming from the passenger side of the vehicle when we drove with the windows down.  We found an exhaust mechanic who inspected everything and let us know that our exhaust was in perfect condition, just a few things near the exhaust (namely a protection board) were loose.  They fixed everything and asked if they could add their sticker to our van for payment.  How could we say no to that.  We were worried this task would take all day and were quite stressed about the cost of this fix, so to have the green light that everything is okay for future travel made us quite happy.

The second task was getting Rupert a health certificate for Ecuador.  We had heard from other travelers that Ecuador land borders do not care about dogs and won’t request any paperwork, but we always feel it is better to have something and not need it than to need something and not have it.  30 minutes and $15 CAD later we had a health certificate.

The third, forth and fifth task all consisted of things we needed for future countries that we heard are cheapest in Colombia.  We needed new wiper blades, ours were terrible; a reflective vest, a requirement for driving in Peru; and a jerrycan which is highly recommended for Bolivia due to foreigners having difficulties getting their vehicle gas tanks filled for 2,3 or 4 times the posted price.  The getting wiper blades and a reflective vest were easy and relatively cheap, but the jerry can turned out to be a fool’s errands.  We went into countless stores and after a few hours eventually gave up.  We are almost convinced there are no jerry cans in Colombia, at least not in the automotive area of Pasto.

As it was still the early afternoon we decided to drive to our final thing we wanted to see in Colombia, the Basilica of our Lady of Las Lajas. 

This church is famous within Colombia as the site of many miracles, the first being in 1754 when Rosita, a deaf-mute girl, announced “Mommy…the mestiza calls me!” which led to a cave with the Virgin Mary painted on the stone that became a pilgrimage site for people from the nearby town of Ipiales. The church now built in this looks like it is straight out of a storybook. 

We decided to take the more expensive way down to see the church via a “the slowest gondola in the world” at least according to some reviews.  But we were happy not having to drive far down the mountain just to find and pay for parking and drive back up.  We were definitely happy with the decision as the gondola ride was quite relaxing, dog friendly, and dropped us off right at the church. 20 minutes well spent!

The church was everything we thought it would be and our timing couldn’t have been better with very few people at the church and a rainbow in the background.  We were surprised how long we spent going from viewpoint to viewpoint looking at this church, but the views were quite spectacular.

We got one of the last gondolas back to where we parked and decided to camping the parking lot of the gondola as the security guard had no problems with overlanders camping there.    

We went to bed feeling quite conflicted on one hand we were so happy about our experience in Colombia and glad we got to experience this country the way we did, but were still sad to go.  We have enjoyed the places and people we experienced in Colombia and are sad we weren’t able to see the entire country and had to leave some things off of our must see list. On the other hand, we were so excited to see what Ecuador would be like and that tomorrow we would be crossing the border.