It’s 5.50pm and we are camped beside a house in an extremely rural setting. It’s 20deg c, the sun has just gone behind the hills and we are enjoying a single can of beer under our side awning. It’s peaceful though there are dogs and roosters!!! We have grass under our feet.
The journey today.
El Cerrito is down in a fertile valley. The main road south is comparatively straight and flat as far as Popayan. Consequently our speed is up and constant around 50mph. The miles or K’s, are slipping under our wheels. Checking the oil and water this morning, the oil level is down a bit. Along the way a couple of single litres of the right oil is purchased, though it only takes about 300ml to top up. Service stations don’t seem to stock 4 or 5L packs,
Yesterday we were in coffee country, today it’s sugar. Sugar plants as far as the eye can see. Smoke present from burning off. Sugar trains too, wending their cumbersome way down the main roads. Some with four trailers on behind an articulated prime mover.
It’s interesting how the ethnicity of the population has changed as we enter the sugar belt. The majority now, Black.
As Jen mentioned yesterday, we decided to make a detour around the city of Cali. It’s reputation carried by the drug cartel that maybe, used to operate there? I say maybe, as they may well still be active, but apart from some impressive, menacing looking matt black, reinforced, police trucks at the road side, there has been little in the way of military or police presence.
Popayan.
Jen wanted to visit the centre of Popayan, 130ks south of Cali, as it’s supposed to have a pretty, historic Spanish center. We’ll never know, as google maps could not recognise the request to take us there. It wanted to take us to all sorts of other centres and the aggravation didn’t seem worth it.!!
The outskirts along the main road are chaos. Cars, trucks, buses and motorbikes..
Driving in Colombia.
The driving is fascinating. Every inch of the road is contested. Trucks pull out from the roadside without the slightest regard for on-coming traffic. Nobody hoots or gets angry, they simply go around it, inside or outside. When stopping for roadworks cars or trucks, will go around the queue and cut in closer to the obstacle. Five ton trucks are the racing machines. Mostly Chevrolet badged Isuzu, engined, that fly. The upside is to use them as battering rams by following them to get around the sluggish, cumbersome big trucks. There is no railway in Colombia, so everything travels by road.
We have yet, still to see a road accident. The occasional cyclist that has been crunched and lying in the road with attendant ambulance and onlookers but no vehicles. However, from the above photo, they do happen.
On the same truck, a “pile” of police motorbikes. Probably just worn out?
Getting to our present camp was only possible by 4×4. Once down to 1st in low ratio. iOverlander lead us on a merry goose chase to find it. Not reading the whole report from other campers, we had not seen the warning not to take the first exit off the main road! Each request for directions from the few houses along the way, elicited a different direction to find the camp. Weary and frustrated, we finally found it, after some backtracking. Basically we are camped in someone’s yard and we will use their facilities. There are no other campers present.
A rest day.
Tomorrow, Sunday is our rest day. Nothing religious about it, just a need to take a day off. We are approximately 400k’s from the Ecuador border. A new country soon along with new challenges and pleasures.
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