The South of Colombia !

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Before going to the south of Colombia, I spent few days in Villa de Leyva. The perfect place to take some rest and to do absolutely nothing ! A very beautiful and small town, nevertheless with good facilities. Good shops, hostels and restaurants !

Three weeks for the South of Colombia seemed a long time at first, but ended up to be barely enough. I started in Cali, the city of the salsa and nightlife. Because of bad timing, I found myself in the city in the beginning of the week and on a legal holiday. Everything was closed and the city was dead. Beautiful but nothing special compared to the other cities I had seen so far in Ecuador.

Next, I went to Bogota to pick up a friend, who will be me travel companion for the coming months. Together we went from Bogotá to San Cipriano, a little town at few hours drive from Cali. Many inhabitants from Cali go to San Cipriano for the weekend. San Cipriano offers nice views over the rain forest, hot weather and a river well suited for "tubing". In order to get there, we needed to take a bus, a motorbike and a "train" (i.e. car on rails driven by the same motorbike that brought us down the hill). Unfortunately, we learned the hard way that some Colombians are dishonest. They try to exploit tourists and do not mind lying. We paid way to much for the motor taxi and the train ride. I had never experienced this kind of behaviour in Ecuador and now always take this into account when discussing with the locals. When we came back via the same railroad, I wanted to go on foot because I did not want to give one single peso to those thieves. San Cipriano was beautiful and there were almost no foreign tourists, only Colombians. We met Herman and his wife, 2 citizens of Cali spending the weekend in San Cipriano. When we explained them how we where ripped off, they were ashamed for what their fellow citizens had done. They helped us to find cheap accommodation and negotiated a good price for us as well. They also lended us their "tube" so that we could go tubing on the river without the need to rent the equipment.

From the rain forest of San Cipriano, we traveled to Popayán, the white city. Initially, we intended to spend only 2 days there but we ended up spending much more time. The city was very beautiful and the people were very nice. It felt good to be in a city where the cars did not drive over you when you are crossing the street ! From there, we also went to the National park Puracé, where we climbed the volcano Puracé and where we visited the thermal baths of San Juan. The volcano was at an altitude of 4.700m and we did this on ourselves without a guide. A good decision because the path was very clearly marked. I managed to make it to the top in a little bit more than 3 hours, but ended up waiting there for more than 1h30 for my travel companions. A girl we had met in Popayán who had joined us, did not make it to the top. My travel companion did make it but was exhausted and very sick from the altitude. They way back ended up being even more difficult for him than reaching the top ! I on the other hand had been expecting good weather and was not carrying a lot of warm cloths, only a rain jacked. I walked around the crater enjoying the views, more because I could not stand still in this cold with no place to protect myself from the wind. After spending the night in a cabana in the national park, we went on foot to the thermal baths of San Juan. Very beautiful, but bathing was not possible because they contain sulfur. Back to Popayán to recover from our trip...

Afterwards, a bumpy bus took us to San Agustin, for most tourists one of the highlights from the South of Colombia. With a guided tour, we did horseback riding to discover the region. We also went to the park with the mysterious statues. After 1 full day in the city, we decided to leave for the Tatacoa desert, although it seemed a little bit strange to us to call this a "desert". The temperatures were very high indeed and the land had strange colors, but we had some rain and there are some plants. Very beautiful ! Although we spent the nights in hammocks in open air accompanied by the mosquitoes, I slept surprisingly well ! During the day, we went hiking and enjoyed the extraordinary grey and red landscapes. There was a observatory next door to watch the stars, but this was unfortunately closed when we where there because the scientist was in the city. Communicating with the locals was very difficult though. Their accent was very strong. After 3 days in the desert, it felt good to go back to the city in order to take a shower !

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Comments

[Glenn]

Hi Bert, Mooi om zo nu en dan te lezen welke avonturen je beleefd. Goed dat je nu met je reisgenoot kan doorreizen, al kan ik lezen dat jij al iets meer aan de hoogteverschillen gewend ben geraakt. Je foto's van het zuiden van Colombia zorgen ervoor dat ik mijn backpack wil gaan inpakken ;) Groeten, Glenn