The Bumpy Ride Toward the Border

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I will rush through the next few days rather quickly in the interest of catching up a little (I am still over 3 weeks behind). I was intending to get to Otavalo by the weekend (it was a Wednesday at this point), as Eryn was leaving the following Tuesday. I will be going though this region again when I come back from the north coast anyway, so I decided I could leave a lot of the side activities until then. I did briefly check out some of the cities along the way though.


From the previous entry, the central church of Manizales. I have become rather churched out at this point, as every single town has several rather impressive ones. Still cool though. The condor represents some major saint.

From Manizales I headed to the Salsa capital of the world, Cali. The route to Cali took be very close of the small town of Salento, which was recommended very strongly by a guy from Canada I had talked to in Bogota. There is also significant coffee plantation around there, but what draws most people is this valley called “Valle de Cocora”. I decided to check it out for an hour or so.


El Valle de Cocora





The valley is primarily famous for the large presence of Colombia's national tree; some freakishly tall palm tree called “palma de Cera”. It was a pretty valley, and the trees were cool, but it didn't quite live up to the enthusiasm the Canadian had for it. He had admitted however that he had tried some schrooms before visiting, which self-admittedly may have altered his appreciation for the valley. It was pretty though, and a nice detour before heading on to Cali.


These are the famous palm trees. Kind of cool looking, but in the end just a really tall palm tree. If you see on the mountain behind this there are a lot of these sticking above the other trees.


Cow Jam! I decided to turn around at this point, as there was no way I was getting through that.

Heading to Cali:




You can't see it too well in this picture, but this truck had 4 (4!) trailers attached to it! I've seen two, even three before, but four? At what point does it stop being a truck and qualify as a train?


Cali is lcoated in a large central valley of colombia, along with several other cities. Pretty scenery.



The city of Cali has a slightly rough edge to it (There was a section of the map I got from my hostel labeled “DON'T WALK HERE”), but supposedly as long as you stay north of the river, most undesirables should be avoided... or something. I rather liked the brief impression I had of the city though (I was only there one night), and am intending to spend some time there when I come back through. I did briefly try the colombian version of Salsa, which turns out to be much more difficult and involved than other versions (there are toe points and stuff involved). I will have to take some lessons.

The next day I decided to try and make it the whole way to Otavalo in one day. Yeah right. If I had no problems whatsoever, I might have made it. That turned out to not be my fate though...

I checked the gas dial on my bike before heading out, which still read half a tank. Perfect I thought, I will get gas when I get to Popayan. Literally 10 minutes later my engine died, informing me rather abruptly that my gas dial was broken. Great.

Fortunately, I had stalled about a kilometer from a gas station. A very nice passing motorcyclist gave be a push (he literally propped his foot against my seat and pushed me the whole way there. Worked pretty well actually!). I have been keeping a close eye on my gas tank ever since then.

Heading toward the border:


Rio Cacha, one of the two major rivers (he rio Magdalana is the other) that flow north through Colombia to the Caribbean. These form the two major valleys that define the central Colombian landscape.






The land became increasingly rugged as I got closer to the border.











From there I made it almost to the border (stopping briefly to check out the hot springs of Santa Rosa) without incident, until the rather uninteresting town of Pasto when a gas station attendant noticed that my tire was running a bit flat. Lovely. I was about 3 hours short of Otavalo, but fixing the tire delayed me enough that I didn't think I could even make it to the next town (on the border with Ecuador, another hour away). I found a place to sleep for the night right on the edge of town so I could leave early the next morning.


First flat of the trip! Decided to get a better tire after that.


This is where I spent the night, which was less like a hotel and more like one of those extra storage facilities. Or a prison. The room was quite nice (they even gave me coffee the next morning), but it was rather disconcerting to have to call the front desk in order to be let out... Even the coffee the next morning was delivered through a locked service door! As soon as she closed the door and it locked from the outside, I couldn't help but be reminded of classic horror movie plots. I was on the very edge on town, with no one else in this rather extensive complex except for me and a rather loony old lady who had absolute control over my future freedom. My only communication with the outside was through a telephone on the wall, with which I could only call the front desk. I kind of expected to wake up in the middle of the night chained in a dungeon somewhere to the sound of evil laughter...

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