Enjoying Columbia - Gold'n'Guerillas - 25 June 2003
Colombia - land of coffee andÖ
The land inside
Out of the frying pan?
The land inside
Mudslide - not our problem for once.
Fog and inertia
Another capital city ( note, that's 32 countries so far, by the way)
Bogota wallowing
Colombia - land of coffee andÖ
The border was a border, the bike attracted more attention than we had had for a while, but they all seemed friendly interested folk and when asked about security the chorus of advice was to not travel at night. All the lorries and cars were being given a superficial search, as we waited in the queue I prayed to whatever God might listen that they did not insist that we unloaded everything off the bike. They did not and waved us through. I like Colombia better already! I'm easily pleased.
Just over the border is a ìmust seeî church. Generally churches are often much of a muchness, bigger or smaller, with altars and stuff, but this one is pretty unique being built on a bridge across a gorge. This is not a miniscule little thing - it is a full sized cathedrally type thing, full of pews and all sorts. We had been assured that our minor detour would be on pure asphalt. Asphalt - urr no I don't think so -let's just say Pat was not a happy chicken. No comment.
We caught a glimpse of it down the valley as we wound down to the village where we were then forced to park up and do the remainder following steep steps. This meant leaving the bike fully loaded under the watchful eyes of a stall keeper and a llama owner. Can the Columbians be trusted? In God we trust?! As the dear US dollar tells us.
The traipse down too many flights of stairs to count was one thing, but the thought of the walk back up to with a few kilos of bike gear on was not something I was looking forward to, but the church was certainly spectacular. They had built it in such a peculiar place because an image of the Virgin Mary appeared on a big rock on the side of the gorge so they decided to build a church around it and a bridge to support it - and why not eh.
Our bike was fine on return and I felt guilty that I had nothing in change to give as thanks, but to be fair they didn't seem to be expecting anything. Our first sign that people are great people here.
Andean driving continues to disconcert
It was a short trip up to Pasto, with some gorgeous countryside. The road followed a steep river valley, with verdant growth, fields of cultivation, with hedgerows! Hedgerows up till now I have considered quintessentially British, most countries use fences or just spaces to demark boundaries, but here we could almost be back in the UK. Well apart from the smell of eucalyptus from the trees lining the roads and the dramatic Andes supporting them that is. It certainly did not feel dangerous or threatening.
But......
There was someone ahead of us turning his car on a blind corner. Now who does a three point turn on such a corner, either they are using their car as an easy to manoeuvre blockade or this is just another mad motorist. The latter - a doddery old guy had decided that this was a sensible thing to do. You can start to get a little jumpy.
Now the buses seemed madder than normal here - there were 2 or 3 times we had to slow down because a bus was on an overtaking stunt and we were faced with slow down or collide with the oncoming bus. A memory flash hit me Ö back in Greece when we were worrying about entering the Islamic states after our illustrious leader had decided to take us to war with Afghanistan, a women in a hostel had correctly pointed out that we were far more likely to be killed by being knocked off our bike than by some Moslem seeking revenge. With the bus conduct here I think the risk of road accident death probably way outweighs likelihood of guerrilla attack. She had ended her comments with ìif you were the worried about taking risks you would never have left home on this tripî she has a point.
From my perspective on the front seat, the bus drivers did not seem any worse than in many other of the mad-bus-driver countries we've been to. It is just a different type of lunacy and a different level of acceptance from the local small vehicle drivers. It seems generally accepted (and not without reason) that being stuck behind a slow moving lorry on one of these long Andean climbs is just a bit too much to bear and so up hill traffic has to overtake where it can. The only real problem is that there is nowhere that a lowly powered local bus can safely overtake as there's no straight bits long enough to see down. Thus, as it is never really safe, it does not really matter at all where you go for it so just have a go anywhere. For the most part, the road is wide enough to take three vehicles and so with a little last minute adjustment of line, it is possible for everyone to squeeze by. Fortunately we have not witnessed up hill and down hill overtaking at the same time yetÖ Pat is mellowing in his old age!
First stop in Colombia was a town called Pasto. Not noted for anything much but quite a nice sensible little town all the same. Supposedly this first section of Colombia is reasonably terrorist free and our failure to spot a single dodgy looking bloke on the way bears this out. In town, though, there were pickups driving around with guards with very large looking guns perched on the back. Not a myth, then.
The hostel we found in the centre of town is described as being the place where tourists stay if they are in Pasto. There were none. We began to feel that we are really out on a limb now. So what? The folk on the street were more than friendly. When I came back from sorting out a room, Hippy was surrounded by a crowd about 5 deep all asking questions about what on earth we were doing here. Even though a guy at the back muttered in my ear that we must look out for all of out stuff as there were thieves around, there was something about the vibe in the crowd that made it all seem incredibly safe and friendly. Better watch out for getting complacent, here. It's strange to think back to how nervous we were about being surrounded by crowds in places where we turned up a year ago. Then again, on reflection, not so strange. In Ethiopia everyone was crushing forward and asking for money and on one occasion there I had me specks nicked. Other places were not so bad but I still recall feeling very uncomfortable. For me the nicest bit was that it was a lady and her teenage daughter asking most of the questions, for a chance. Usually the bike attracts male interest but not female.
One of our missions, remember, was to post a parcel of souvenirs back to England. Having soon found the post office we set about negotiating the best way to send stuff home. The lass behind the counter did a bit of weighing and came back with a quote of 50 odd dollars. Gulp. This was the same price as over in Ecuador. Not to worry, she cheerfully told us there was another post office who would do it a lot cheaper, gave us the address and walked us to the door to explain how to get there. How nice is that? Sure enough, the other place was down in the high twenties and were not in the least bothered about custom searches or fancy wrapping procedures. They even registered the parcel to boot. Easiest bit of posting in a long time. Just a question of whether it gets there, now. It was not until after we had sent it that we wondered what customs in the UK would make of a large parcel arriving from Colombia. They may be sorely disappointed when they find that it is some cloth and a few rolls of film.
Setting off in the morning to brave the ìguerrilla corridorî from Pasto to Popayan, the same huge crowds surrounded us. Even the Karaoke singer from the clothes shop across the road (Strange kind of shop promotion, this. For it to really catch on a slightly better standard of singing is needed) came to cheer us off. No one seemed particularly worried by our route and they simply told us to travel by day. It's getting a bit boring this advice - can no one tell us to ìBeware the moonî or ìDon't go off the roadî or even ìBeware the moorsî
About 15 miles out of town and back into the quieter part of the countryside, the traffic in front of us had ground to a standstill and there was nothing coming the other way. It seemed as though we had finally come to one of these famous FARC roadblocks. I pulled up along side the car in front and asked of the driver whether it was safe or not. Up ahead in the road we could not see a bunch of blokes in fatigues. I was all for swooping around and haring off at full speed. The guy in the car seemed to have a bit of a smirk on his face as he turned back to me after addressing his passenger. He plainly stated that there was no problem at all, but his expression added, ìYou don't get hold ups in places like this, you pillockî. It was of course a rock fall on the road and the armed forces were there to make sure that terrorists could not take advantage of the stranded cars. It was cleared in a couple of minutes and we rode on feeling a bit embarrassed.
Still, there is no point in being too relaxed in these situations and Hippy was being highly analytical on the back of the bike. She timed gaps between on coming cars and mentally processed the gathered statistics so that she could tell me whether there was a terrorist attack going on ahead within a 95% confidence interval. Well, Ricardo had told us watch out for nothing coming the other way and it seemed that there had previously been no natural breaks of more than a minute so when we hadnít seen anything for 2.5 minutes it seemed reasonable to be cautious, but all attempts to ask Pat to stop were ignored. Statistics being as they I ignored her predictions and carried on saying ìProbably a slow lorry holding everyone upî. Rather defeats the object of being cautious. There were no blockades, thankfully and we arrived into the incredibly attractive city of Popayan unscathed. Even the lorries and buses missed us.
Popayan was seriously damaged by an earthquake in '83 but has painstakingly been rebuilt and renovated to its former glory. So much so, in fact that the guide books tell us that it is nicer now than before the earthquake. Very plausible. To my mind this is by far the beautiful city I've been to in Latin America. All of the streets consisted of whitewashed colonial buildings and there has clearly been a ban on putting modern shop fronts into them. Through pretty much every earthquake. Very plausible. Near to Popayan are a couple of ruinous type places. One with a load of statues seemed to be out of the question due to a lengthy round trip due to a bridge being out. The second, a bunch of tombs called, unsurprisingly, Tierradentro, were a little less inaccessible. The quoted bus time for 113km was 5 to 8 hours which implies a seriously bad road. So we decided to give little Bertha a rest and set off on a side trip by bus.
We sorted out tickets the day before and took the opportunity to stop in for a cup of coffee at the bus station while the rain eased off. In Colombia at the mo there is some sort of world footy competition involving France, Turkey, Japan, Colombia, USA and Cameroon. The caff at the bus station was thus filled with all and sundry watching the dayís match. There was even a policeman who kept being called out to answer his mobile phone. Probably HQ checking on where heíd got to and the sounds of the footy would be a bit too much of a giveaway.
The bus journey commenced at 5:00 a.m. Refer to earlier musings on the effectiveness of Helen at such times. This time I, too, was a bit pathetic and we ended up firstly being totally ripped off for bottle of water and then taking seats on the wrong bus. Fortunately I asked the driver whether we were on the right one as he was setting off 15 minutes early. There was good reason for the length of the journey although it was only a short distance. Suffice to say I was glad we had given Bertha the day off. Mud and the rest made it very unappealing altogether.
This is one of the three major ruins in Colombia and signing in to the visitors book in the museum it was clear that the day before only one tourist had been there and there was a least 6 staff manning the different sets of tombs and the museum. These tombs predate Incas by about 8 or 9 centuries but hardly anything about their creators is known. The tombs were in little groups on the hillside, so it meant a good walking day ahead of us. Although, the tombs were pretty similar, the colours were so vivid that it was impressive that so many of them had survived.
We drifted back to the village and decided to take a chill option the local kids practicing their footy. One poor little lad who could not have been more than 6 years old has trying to shoot goals up hill to the net, he was not doing well. Mind you the goalie was not doing any better who has not taller and his reach meant that if his opponent managed to get the ball up the slope in the right direction, the goalie wouldn't be able to stop it.
A block arrived carrying a couple of cockerels and he proceeded to peg their leashes down on the footy pitch. Chickens not normally known for their footballing talent, my first thought was that the family had got fed up of the cockerels crowing and had decided to move them away from his house. But then a bizarre process began. The chap held one and another, unrestrained, cockerel was at his feet. He then proceeded to run back and forth winding up the free cock on the ground. Swiftly he would swap the cocks round and the one that had been run on the ground was now held up in the air and he ran back and forth again. It became clear that he was a cock trainer. I had always imagined cock training to be cruel, but this just seemed to be honing up natural instincts. We watched fascinated as he teased as he ran by lowering his held cock just within beak reach of the other and then whisked it away. The ìCarry Onî team could have made much of that description, Hippy. Or Finbar Saunders, perhaps.
After a day walking around the hillside we were looking forward to a hot shower. The boiler on, all was looking good. Then the rain came in true tropical style and the lights went out and the boiler stopped. The power was down - looked like there would be no shower tonight.
Mudslide - not our problem for once.
The alarm was set again for some unearthly hour, to get the bus back. Which of course was running late, so I could have had another half hour in bed. Not that I am bitter at all. We had watched the school bus pass both ways - the college bus pass both ways and then eventually our bus passed to go into town. Everything was fine when eventually the bus came trundling back done the hill.
The route over the mountain was, of course, a reverse of the previous day. We expected the bumps and slides as we ascended the mucky roads, but it was obvious that the torrential rain of the previous evening had made matters a little worse. There had been a bit of a mud slide in fact and he pulled up to a halt behind a long row of vehicles. For some reason that I don't know I was not in the least concerned that this was a guerrilla blockade as we took our place in line with the other traffic. All I can think is that registering the people milling about about their vehicles just gave an all round unthreatening picture. Ever on the search for a photo op. I legged it up the road to see the extent of the carnage. At the front of the queue was a truck that was stuck up to its axles in the mud. Clearly there were some large rocks in the debris that were hidden and prevented the truck from proceeding or regressing. The driver and all his mates were wallowing trying to locate the large lumps and pull them out. This was clearly going to be a long stay. Weíd only packed a couple of cup-cakes and an orange or two and my tummy was already beginning to grumble. Back at our bus and the one in front of it, word had obviously filtered back that we were due a protracted stay and folk were disembarking to take in the air.
Much to our delight, the bus in front contained a bunch of guys who obviously knew each other quite well. They had started building some kind of device out of an 8 foot length of 6 inch thick bamboo. I had absolutely no idea what they were up to until another ìHereís one I prepared earlierî similar object turned up. It was a musical instrument of a very primitive kind. This was a sign that people were not expected to be moving on in a hurry. There is one thing bringing out an instrument to entertain the troops it is quite another starting to make one from scratch. While the guys worked, a young man wandered around playing tunes on his recorder. More stranger and stranger instruments turned up and the band began to join in. It was one of those fantastic moments that happen only in situations like this. We ended up with our own personal little concert - it turns out the band were on their way to a festival. In true tradition of folk music festivals they had a gourd full of odd home made hooch that they insisted we sampled. Not that bad, really. To me it was a bit like strong scrumpy, rather nice. It taxes my writing ability to do justice to their instrument, but the point was that they were all made from the produce of the forest of their locality and reflected their life styles. So, there was a Euphonium made from gourds, all manner of pipes and drums made from reeds, but our particular favourite was a barrel shaped object fashioned into the shape of a pig with particularly vicious teeth. This was played by a chap who had his hand up its bottom. I donít know what he was doing inside the poor wooden pig but it made a very realistic grunting noise.
While we enjoyed the music, we failed to notice the fact that all the passengers from our bus had disappeared. Then the driver strolled up and told us that we were transferring to a bus that was stuck on the other side of the slide and turning back. Itís the first time that weíve come across such a simple practical solution to this problem and weíd been caught unawares. By the time we had all our gear gathered up and waddled through the mud, the other bus had filled completely and we were faced with a 4 and a half hour journey standing up on a nasty bumpy road. I was a bit narked when half of the passengers were paying for their seats. I donít know where they had materialised from, but Iíd assumed that as weíd already paid up we would have got preference. I regret a little that I donít really show my age as if Iíd got a bit more grey and wrinkly when I hit 40 someone might have offered me a seat. I scowled and muttered as all these young things settled down to nap. Hippy pointed out to me the stupidity of Western culture that we feel obliged to offer our seats to the old/infirm/pregnant/child holding - pretty much anyone, whereas in Africa and other places, people accept their blessing of a seat and do not give it up easily. Pat was scowling, he's good at scowling. I also pointed out a couple with a small baby that were standing in the aisle and an elderly gentlemen with a stick that had all had seats on our original bus, so it was hardly fair for us to complain.
Half way back to Popayan a teenage lad did donate his seat to me. This was very kind but created stress for me. As more and more people got on the bus we had moved back down the bus and now seated I could no longer keep an eye on our rucksack at the front of the bus. Having already lost one rucksack in Chile, our bag being out of sight was more than a little distressing. I was in a dilemma if I gave up the seat to move back to he front of the bus, the kindly lad who had given up his seat would both be confused and probably offended, but I could not relax and enjoy my position. In the end I whinged at Pat who was still standing until he took the opportunity of people exiting the bus to shuffle through the now packed aisle to retrieve our bag into a safe distance.
Back at the hotel, the mad beast from Hell was waiting for us with its tail wagging. No, really, it was a bit of a beast and had the scariest growl of a dog Iíve ever known. It was just his way and he was quite a friendly Cerberus. We packed and slept and readied ourselves for the next bike ride through bandit territory.
Itís a bit of a long way to Bogota and on our chosen route there was little of interest and so we spent a day getting numb bums mostly. The scenery was grand but it was a bit of a blur from where I was sitting. From Popayan we followed a valley bottom for ages and it was a really strange feeling. Most if not all of the people living in the area were black. Not a problem just a real change from further south where there had been the odd village in Ecuador that seemed to be inhabited by a majority of blacks but nothing like this.
As we rose up hill we took a little break for a coffee, and this was a little shrine that we had not noticed until we sat down. The shrine had the usual statue of Virgin Mary and Jesus in it but surrounding it was all manner of broken headlights. Two bikers stopped while we sipped our coffee and bought candles for "Our Lady of the Foglights" and muttered a little prayer. The next half an hour of riding explained the shrine. As we drove through the cloud layer, our visibility dropped to a few metres in parts. Thankfully our lights survived without offerings to the lady!
As we passed over the last main Cordillera before the Bogota valley, there were absolutely loads of police and other folk in uniforms bearing guns. There did not seem to be much action in the way of aggro and they were more likely out for fun and games as they raced up and down he road on motorbikes and in pickups. They had very serious faces though so maybe there was something going to kick off. Being away from the tourist towns meant that we were looking for random accommodation rather than previewed options. We ended up in a pretty basic gaff. Less than one and a half quid a night for the two of us. Enough said. It wasn't that bad! Ensuite with cold water, but it was pretty hot and humid so that was no bad thing. I could had done without the fiesta going on in the streets though most of the night and the person the room next door apparently trying to boot the door in at 4 in the morning.
That morning we seemed to be there on national day of lethargy. Asking for coffee at the hotel, the young girl shuffled zombie-like around. Trying to get keys to get our bike out of the lock up did not spur her into action either. One would think and filling up the bike would be something not beyond the wit of a pump attendant. Wrong! The girl just switched on the pump and left it to overflow. Seeing petrol saturating our cloth panniers on the tank did not stimulate her motion beyond go slow. She just watched gormlessly as we explained in Spanish that the bags contained clothes and could she go and get a cloth. Pat lost his rag with her as she shuffle off, with no sense of urgency to get a cloth. At least she had the decency not to charge us for the petrol that had covered the tank bags and run onto the floor.
Another capital city ( note, that's 32 countries so far, by the way)
It was not an auspicious start to the day but at least things did not deteriorate. The ride to Bogota was reasonably painless fraught with the usual navigation problems when we got into the city, though. The buses were pretty frantic and there were some pretty major league bits of flooding on the dual carriageway. Unusually, the traffic did not hoon past while we were negotiating wet bits. Must be at least some respect for the myriad little bikes here.
The Platypus hostel is run by a guy called Herman who speaks German. One would assume that this implies a Teutonic background but he was quick to deny any such thing. What a nice guy he is, though. He handed over the keys to his yard around the corner and welcomes us like long lost rellies. He was unfazed by Hippy scowling around complaining about the price of the beds. Scowling is a gene that would undoubtedly be passed on to any children that we would have. Possibly a very good reason for not propagating. Poor bugger would have a hard life.
Already ensconced in the hostel were a charming couple of Ozzies, Martin and Jo, who are on their way south from Alaska to Tierra Del Fuego as the first leg of their round the world trip. It's odd, but sometimes we get to thinking that our trip is fairly commonplace as there are plenty of round the world trips going on if you look on the web. In fact, even though there are a lot of stretches that are pretty much guaranteed to be on RTW routes and so you're likely to bump into other munderos, this is the first couple that we've happened across. Sensibly, they are on two identical bikes. Just to show that there is no defining bike for trips like this, they have chosen a couple of little 200cc trail bikes that are seemingly omnipresent on outback farms. No problems for them so far.
There is a rather fine gold museum in Bogota. Displayed are artifacts from PreIncan and Incan cultures in Colombia. The craftsmanship was really quite varied from extremely simple every day tools to extremely fine ceremonial and decorative pieces. There is no arguing that these guys had the gold thing pretty much sorted. It was all a bit clinically displayed and with quite poor labelling though and for me the display of the artefacts from the intact tombs at Sipan in Peru were a lot more interesting - and rivalled the quality of workmanship in a lot of cases, too.
We had our first media interview in Boggy. We'd been emailing a lass called Diana in Colombia for a while to find out about safety and she gave us a shout at the hostel to say she was coming around with her man and that there would be the Editor/General Manager of the local motorbike magazine as well. Hippy rushed off to exchange glasses for contact lenses and I struggled with whether to shave or look like a real rough and ready overlander for the photo shoot. Plan B. For some reason being pillion does not warrant an interview. I was a little grateful, as I was worried that my limited Spanish and the 'r' thing would mean that anything I said would be misinterpreted anyway. But could not help feeling a bit of a spare part.
Marty and Jo also were interviewed (somewhat more successfully I think as their Spanish is somewhat superior to ours) and then we all got invited to dinner. All of this networking has had pros and cons. Poor Marty has got embroiled in an embarrassing situation because he is being tapped for information on touring Australia and unwittingly mentioned that his brother (with whom he is at loggerheads - it's a family thing) speaks Spanish, is interested in bikes and is in Australia. Now he is being persuaded to break silence with his bro to help out a Colombian who he has hardly met. All very embarrassing and awkward. We on the other hand have been given a lead on where to get the bike straightened by a BMW trained mechanic in Medellin. Sorry, Marty, looks like you got the short straw.
We spent hours swapping biking stories in loud voices at the hostel. My theory is that we're all going a bit deaf from the biking thing. The other backpackers were probably very bored by it all, overhearing every last detail of our trips. But it was great for us to find out what is facing us in the rest of the Americas. Seems like the corruption and petty bureaurocracy moves up a gear when we cross into Central America. Oh joy.
Looking round the hostel at the baby faces, I think we are beginning to feel our age. With university out for summer in the UK the students are stretching their loans for jaunts to South America. I am not sure that this is for a cultural exchange as many of them spend their time sniffy, coldlessly, in the background. I sincerely hope we don't bump into my niece being so naughty!