Colombia
The border between Ecuador and Colombia is a short drive away. It was still raining. It took a couple of hours to get through.
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| (armed security man) Can I have a picture in your car? |
Unusually most of the delays were on the side for leaving Ecuador.
It was really laborious. The queue was round the block for the migracion check. This is because there were just 2 officers checking both incoming and outgoing travellers. So while Ping stood in that queue I went around the corner to deal with customs. We had to get our temporary import permit cancelled for the van. There were only three people in my queue but the officer kept sending the people off to do things while everyone else just had to wait. When that person was finally dealt with, we thought we were really moving on, that was when the officer went AWOL. After more than an hour the person in front of me was dealt with. It was my turn at last. I was feeling a bit battle weary and very fluey. I went in sat down. She stamped the form, said ‘sign here, here and here. That’s it all done’!
I returned to Ping as she was still in the migracion queue. Eventually we were done we bought our insurance, changed a bit of cash at a somewhat exaggerated rated. We learned later that a bank would give us about double. Ouch!
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| We got our all important temporary import permit and we were off into the rain. |
Although we were by this time both feeling pretty lousy and it was still raining, we had been strongly recommended to see something just inside Colombia which is well worthwhile.
This is a cathedral built in a deep valley or gorge spanning the river below. We were told that there is a brand new cable car to take us there.
Not only that but we will be welcome to camp in the car park of the cable car and use the facilities for free!
By the time we had finished at the border we were again ready to stop for the night, so we went to the cable car. The whole deal was shrouded in cloud and I think we were both pretty determined not to be making any effort. The cloud cover would be our excuse.
The staff of the cable car were so nice, once again nothing would be too much trouble.
The most important advice about getting flu is this; if you don’t have to have the virus then it is best avoided.
As the days have progressed the symptoms have evolved, starting with a vague sense of being slightly unwell followed by a bit of achy joints. Over the first week, it developed further and I became quite unwell, with a fever, an irritating cough and severe lethargy. Stage 2 was around the time we were in the Summer Winds camp, the cough developed to something that would keep us both awake all night. However, I had remembered to pack into our medical kit, a bottle of each type of full fat, sleep inducing Benylin, (Other cough remedies are available).
It was about this time that it became clear that Ping was starting to develop symptoms. For me, however the worst thing was the slightest change in temperature brought on unpleasant rigors. Uncontrollable shivering coupled with significant sense of self pity!
The day times were not so bad and with our time constraints I carried on driving. As someone who gets flu fairly often and quite badly I really resent the corny old mantra of, ‘Ooh it’s a bit of manflu’.
Well, on this occasion Ping was beginning to really suffer and so I took the opportunity to say something that may possibly have sounded a bit like,"see I told you".
Anyway back to the travels. I continued driving and we had one long stretch of winding mountain road around a huge valley. You could see across maybe 3 or 4 kms of valley and a drop of God knows how far directly down into the depths.
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Driving through the fog
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| Then suddenly out in a wide open space, made me dizzy. |
At some point I started having brief moments of dizziness which in themselves were a bit of a worry given that a moments lapse could take us over the edge, there were no barriers in some places, and into oblivion! It was pretty chilling as I have spoken much about my dislike of heights.
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| Truck coming round the bend |
During that morning though this deteriorated further into the really alarming discovery of what vertigo really is. Sometimes I would round a bend and emerge into a wide open space across nothing. I became fearful and light headed and with little room to manoeuvre with trucks and buses rounding bends in the middle of the road or overtaking in an insane fashion.
However stopping to recover was simply not an option. There were no places to pull in. I also did not want to alarm the boss about this problem. Anyway, we survived until eventually I was able to stop and rest, gather my wits, take some Ibuprofen to bring my temperature under control and then continue.
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We had no idea that at the bottom
of this scene a disaster was unfolding |
At this point it was surprisingly not raining. As I walked up and down the layby we were stopped in, I noticed that people were stopping to take picture or to point across the hill.
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| As we passed this spot we realised that houses on the side of the mountain had slid down into oblivion. a complex and daring rescue was underway |
I noticed that a stream had a path that ran from the very top of the hill getting wider and stronger all the way down deep into the valley and there were many points where the land had slipped.
Looking along the road I could see in the distance that the traffic was slowing right down to pass through a flood.It was not until we started off again that we drove a mile or so down this road when I saw that in a tiny group of houses on the side of the hill were gathered rescue services, they had search dogs, firemen and police with a drone all gathered at a place where it was pretty clear several houses had once been clinging to the side of the mountain and were now lo longer there. It was really quite shocking.
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| This is the banana crop under water, tragic! |
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Further down there was more flooding
As we continued though Colombia it got hotter and the countryside became more tropical in appearance.
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| Sugar cane off to market by horse and cart |
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| A massive load of sugar |
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| Sugar coffee and Bananas are huge crops in Colombia |
What surprised us was that the population was changing dramatically to become mostly people of African origin and the scene changed to seeing fairly impoverished farmers using pony carts or mules to carry huge loads of sugar cane and other crops to market.
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| Homeward bound |
In my imagination this scene had hardly changed since the days that slaves were emancipated in this part of the world. We were to learn much later just how important Colombia was in the support of the slave trade. Having said all this, the experience of passing through this scene was exceptionally beautiful. As we continued I was beginning to feel rather better
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| Early morning milk for collection. Remember this? |
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| Do not be deceived, In this region dairy is a huge industry |
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Lovely avocados
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Ping inevitably was really feeling awful, and the empty Benylin bottles were starting to pile up, amid the overflowing tissues in and around the waste bin. This continued all the way we travelled
north.
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| I am H-a-p-p-y |
We arrived in the famous city of Medellin. We had been very keen to stop and learn more about it, but we were both feeling quite unwell, as we arrived, it continued to rain and in the end our experience was driving a straight rain soaked path in dense traffic and were just relieved to pass out the other side.
Shipping back home, why the change of mind?
We had originally planned to end our travels in South America by shipping the van to Panama, Costa Rica or to Nicaragua. However, these countries have a recently imposed law that forbids the import of right hand drive vehicles. They do this to protect their economies from an influx of secondhand cars from Japan. Unfortunately they also apply this strictly to the temporary import of overland vehicles. This means that much of central America is closed off to us. There would also have been significant storage costs. There have been a few things on the van that I have been commanded to change. So we have decided that we will send the van back home have a nice long rest, and do some modifications on the van then to ship back to finish the northern half of The Pan American highway. For all these reasons, this is now our goal in Cartagena.
Cartagena
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| The new city right alongside |
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| The old city |
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| The balconies are special feature of Cartagena |
After many days of driving we arrived in Cartagena the ancient port city. One of our concerns about our deadlines was, "would we have time to arrange shipping of the van back to England"? As it turned out we had a recommendation of a shipping agent and we had pretty much sorted it out, or so we thought, by the time we arrived in Cartagena.
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| A bit of relaxation |
We found a rather ‘unusual hotel which in many ways suited us We were able to park the van in their yard and rest up a bit as neither of us were 100%. We had good wifi so making our arrangements was rather easier.
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| Fishing on the shoreline |
However it was unspeakably hot and humid. When we arrived, the temperature was near to 40 degrees, it was a close muggy day with no trace of sun, but HOT!
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| The local bird population |
Our parking place was right across the road from the beach and the sunny blue Caribbean sea! Except that both the sea and the sky were grey. It didn't really matter too much as we just wanted to rest and arrange our shipping.
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| Hotel moggie, she will only drink from a tap. she waits till someone opens the tap and then pushes them out of the way |
The hotel was run by a really delightful, though quirky family and we were made very welcomed.
There were people working there who were making all kinds of strange things including boiler suits with sponges attached to them and huge foam rubber circular things.
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We saw filming of the race where the contestants
had to use the sponge suits to soak as much water as
possible, then run across the square and squeeze
the sponges into the clear plastic tank. |
They were quite secretive about what they were doing but eventually it emerged that they were working for a n Israeli TV company who were making a kind of ‘It’s a knockout’ competition, where the successful players get moved on to increasingly exotic locations around the world. What was going on around us was pretty mad, but they didn’t seem to be violent so we enjoyed the madness.
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| The Market trolleys arrive |
At some point a lorry arrived and delivered 8 really ancient and decrepit market trolleys!
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| Here they come |
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| Almost ready for the show. Unicycles have been added. They still need the means to make toasted sandwiches. Don't ask me I do not know any more! |
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| Back in the truck for the games to begin. |
We never fully understood their purpose, but it seems that the contestant had to push each other around making toasted sandwiches while generating, by hand the electricity for the operation. This explanation never really hung together but we had really stopped trying to understand.
While all this was going on two other things were developing one was that our shipping arrangements were turning out to be a bit of a saga. And the other was that we were becoming increasingly distressed in the extreme heat by being bitten by creatures that we never actually saw, so we never knew who or what they were, but they were capable of biting through our clothes and leaving a myriad of really itchy and long lasting bites. They nearly drove us mad!
The old city of Cartagena
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| Some of the old fortifications of Cartagena |
As we have now pretty much fully recovered we have been able to get around and visit the old citadel of Cartagena. This ancient fortified port is incredibly well preserved and has managed to ward off a number of foes.
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| The lovely narrow streets of the Old town |
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| Lovely ladies!!! |
Cartagena is protected on two sides by the sea and some very impressive fortifications.
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| A famous Jesuit who led the emancipation of slaves |
It had been a very important port supplying this quarter of South America which was at one time known as Grande Colombia. This included Panama, Ecuador and Peru. I am sorry to say that one of the commodities that this port brought is to supply the region with slaves from Africa! Here they were brought and sorted into their different qualities to supply the various needs of the surrounding countries.
It was a pretty ugly business.
On our previous journey in Africa we visited the port in Ghana where thousands of slave were transported from. At that time I was surprised to learn that although many went to what is now the United States, the vast majority of slaves, many, many more than went to north America went to South America. In huge numbers.
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| Nice people along the way |
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| Another lovely lady |
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One of many large lizards, He is about a metre long
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Just outside the walled city is Los Pegaso. There are statues of no less than 3 Flying horses. They are modern statues, there is a plaque telling who the artist is and who commissioned them but nothing about the mythology. Nor is there any explanation of why there are three. As far as I am aware, in mythology, there was only one. Anyhow, notwithstanding, we had to have our photo taken with them but not with the van in the background as that has just been take to the docks.
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Shipping the van
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| Entering the docks |
We had been under the impression that arranging shipping of the van could be very time consuming and that was a main pressure on us getting to Caragena. However before we arrived there we had found an agent who could ship the van at a pretty decent price.
So we started getting into gear to ship.
We had been given several choices of dates we had chosen a date in June which fitted with our booked flight home. In view of the arrangement we had the option to move the shipping forward by three weeks. We presented ourselves at the shipping line office and found that there were some obstacles to overcome not least that the shipping line seemed unable to tell the agent what ship we would be going on.
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Everything out of the van!
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We had also been told that The van has to be searched for narcotics immediately before the ship sails. This posed us some real problems. We cannot book the search appointment until we know the ship is due in. We cannot find that out until we get a straight answer from the shipping company we will have to change our flight booking which may cost a lot, but we do not know when to change to. After a bit of to-ing and fro-ing we eventually got a call saying that I had to be at the docks at 8 am the next morning. So we are finally on the move.
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| The mobile cranes were 'thoroughly' inspected by our cop. |
The next day I attended the docks and I am instructed to take everything out of the van by the searching cop. It is blistering hot! He goes off and searches, very thoroughly, two mobile cranes!
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| Our cop, actually he was really nice, but what a job. |
About an hour and a half he comes back to me, gives me some ice cold water and sets about searching our stuff. At the very moment that he told me that I could put every thing back into the van, it started to rain very hard. I had to stuff everything back in the van to save it from being soaked. I then had to stow everything as best I could.
When I finally emerged from the van to find it was still raining. The ship had docked behind me without my being aware. However I had inexplicably been left on the dockside entirely alone. Every one had packed up and gone. The policeman had taken all my documents and I had no idea where to.
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the dockside before the search
It was a genuinely alarming thing to happen. There is a further alarming factor which I learned later. I was standing on a dock that is so new that when you look on the map for tracking ships it does not appear there.
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| This is what I found as I emerged from the van |
Our ship was docked in the middle of the sea. but I also was standing in the middle of the sea. All on my own!!!
The only thing I could think of doing was to get in the van and drive it back to where I had picked it up. As I drove down the jetty, people started coming out of the woodwork to stop me. A man got quite snotty with me but after he made me put the van back, he actually got a truck and gave me a lift to where the cops office was and all was well.
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| Ready to sail home |
The ship left the next morning with the van on board...I hope!
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Heading Home.
As soon as the search was done we were at last in a position to book a flight. Ping got right on it and with the help of our friend, Mel, got us on a flight home two days later.
I guess that after 7 months and 25,000 hard kilometres what remains now is for me to write the final blog which will be an overall review of the whole journey. i will write this once we have returned home
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| Leaving South America |
It was unbelievably beautiful. While we took this in, the staff took up their stations, one to give us advice as we bought our tickets, one to sell us our tickets and one to sell us warm snacks as we went through. Oh yes, the advice giver then went in through a door and when we passed into the station he was there to check the tickets he had just seen us buy! 
Had this church been in a normal location it would have been stunning but given that it was built in a gorge over a fast moving river really seemed to add something to the remarkable nature of the place. We spent a good couple of hours there before gliding back up the hill to our van and the waiting staff. As we waved them a fond farewell we set off into Colombia proper.
Had this church been in a normal location it would have been stunning but given that it was built in a gorge over a fast moving river really seemed to add something to the remarkable nature of the place. We spent a good couple of hours there before gliding back up the hill to our van and the waiting staff. As we waved them a fond farewell we set off into Colombia proper.
