I love coffee. I used to drink coffee to keep me awake during 24-hour halibut fishing openers in Kodiak. I has a skipper on my crab boat that brought a 50lb bag of Espresso beans on the boat and would make the crew freshly ground super strong coffee BEFORE he woke us up every day. I really came to love coffee shortly after I met Michelle. I was at her cabin on Goldhill Road one night and she made me coffee with vanilla ice cream in it. It changed my life.
I prefer my coffee in a large cup with a teaspoon and a half of sugar and Coffeemate (TM). Many people have suggested cream or half and half to me, like I’m missing out on something. I have to say here that Coffeemate (TM), for me, adds a wonderfully delicious flavor to my sweetened coffee that I totally enjoy. No other non-dairy creamer adds the same flavor as Coffeemate (TM), nor does cream, etc. Just to be clear.
Michelle and I have been drinking hazelnut coffee for as long as I can remember. It used to be that the only place in Fairbanks you could get it was at Country Kitchen, but as the coffee movement in the USA grew, it became more widely available. At some point we switched from fresh ground coffee to Folgers hazelnut coffee. With six kids, you do what you can to save money.
Coffee availability in SA was a big concern for us. Mary and Brian had been to Ecuador not too long before we were heading there and told us there was no good coffee in Ecuador. This was pretty horrifying What about the rest of SA? We were going to Colombia so thing should be pretty good, right? Just in case, we stocked up on Folgers in Florida before we shipped the camper over. I think we had like 8 cans of coffee. We also had a giant can of Coffeemate (TM).
In Colombia it turns out that most of the coffee there is for export. When I was picking up the van and trailer from the port I was in a warehouse filled with coffee. And I mean filled. One hundred pound burlap sacks stacked on pallets and then stacked on top of each other something like 40 feet high. It was all unroasted coffee beans. It reminded me of the warehouse they stuck the Ark of the Covenant in Raiders of the Lost Ark. It was an unbelievable amount of coffee. Inconceivable really.
As we drove south all too quickly through Colombia we came to the city of Caucasia. We saw our first supermarket in SA and screeched to a halt on the side of the road to head in. We stocked up on many groceries, but one of the things we bought was a 5 kilo bag of ground coffee. It was something like $35. It turns out we should have bought more.
Our giant bag of coffee was pretty good stuff. I have to say, Colombian coffee is really good. We didn’t have any coffee worries at all through Ecuador. We didn’t run out until our lengthy stay in Puno. At the supermarket in Puno (Plaza Vea) they sold some coffee that turned out to be tolerable. Altiplano was the brand. It was pretty expensive, at least compared to the prices of other things in Peru, which were generally pretty cheap. It was about $7 a pound. One night we stopped into a smaller market that had coffee for sale in plastic bags. It smelled pretty good so we bought it. It was $5 for two pounds. It was terrible and still sits in the cupboard to this day.
We has a lot of hopes for Chile after spending two months in Peru. Good coffee was one of them. Oh well. So far we have tried four or five different brands of coffee in Chile. They were all OK, but Chile itself is pretty expensive and coffee is no exception. It runs $10 a pound for cheaper stuff (Haiti brand or Colombia brand) but quality coffee is way up there. Juan Valdez brand (REALLY!) from Colombia is $20 a pound. We have not bought it.
We have quite a bit of our Folgers hazelnut coffee left, but it turns out that we are not liking it so much. We ran out of Coffeemate (TM) a long, long time ago and it seems hazelnut Folgers is not the same without it. Especially black. Many of you who have been to our house may already have known this. We did not, since we had been adding stuff to our coffee. I don’t know what this means for us when we get home. Will we continue to drink strictly Folgers hazelnut? I don’t think so. I am looking forward to moving back to fresh ground coffees of many varieties . I am hoping to have a few or several different types of coffee on hand for whatever mood suites me. But first I must talk about an unforeseen development. NESCAFE!
The coffee aisles in supermarkets (or any market that has coffee) are filled with instant coffee. Seriously. There is something like 3 feet of shelf space for ground North American style coffee and then 25 feet of instant stuff. Ryan had brought some Nescafe from the US with us and we (Michelle and I) decided to try it. It turned out to be not so bad. Really. We followed the directions exactly to see what it would be like and it was pretty good! Best of all, it was really easy to make. Just heat up some water and pour it over the instant coffee in a cup. No need to get out the generator and the coffee maker, find the filters, measure out X amount of coffee, make sure we have enough water (always an issue in SA since any water we consume, we buy), etc. Most importantly, since we have all moved to black coffee (except for Ryan, who was already there), it tasted good. And we can make it quickly anytime anywhere, which can be pretty important when you’re traveling like we are.
Now I’m not saying we are switching to instant coffee on a permanent basis. I don’t really know what this means. I am still looking forward to stocking up on coffee as I mentioned earlier in this post. I am curious to see what happens when we get back. I can certainly see the advantages instant coffee can present when you need coffee pretty bad.
One thing I know, I sure do miss good coffee.
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This is a back-dated post. I originally wrote several days ago while we were in Popayan and added to it for several days since I didn’t have internet. I’m in Otavalo, Ecuador right now, and a recent turn of events has prevented me from uploading it and writing a new post covering the last four or five days.
A lot has happened in the past few days. It’s harder to keep up in South America, everything’s so different and interesting. In the United States, it was hard to come up with anything interesting at all to say about Southeastern Colorado and rural Idaho. Even my posts in Canada were mostly Tim Horton’s jokes.
We spent Christmas in Santa Rosa de Osos, behind a 24-hour travel stop/cafeteria/quesodero. We left the morning of the 26th and headed south towards Medellin. We had wanted to stop and walk around Medellin, but the traffic was too chaotic, and the only parking lot we found was quite a distance from where we thought the city center was. A lot of businesses employed armed security guards to patrol their property with slackly-held pistol-grip shotguns. With safety and logistics in mind, we decided to move on, albeit disappointedly, without seeing the city.
We drove further south through the spectacular Colombian countryside, on narrow shoulderless roads carved into mountains thousands of feet from the valley floor. The scenery in the United States pales in comparison to Colombia. It’s indescribable. The mountains are terraced here, so cows can graze on them (I think? It seems like an incredible amount of work to raise a cow), perched on a 40%+ grade. It seems like they would fall more since cows aren’t known for their agility.
We found a hotel in La Pintada with a pool to stay at, about seventy kilometers outside of Medellin. We spent two nights there because of the pool. The first night we drove into the town of La Pintada, two kilometers away at the bottom of the mountain. We parked, and walked around for a while. We needed to buy a few things, namely bags of water (or boulsas de agua, an ingenious and yet incredibly unwieldy way to sell it). When we walked back to our car we were greeted by a couple of people who gestured for us to come over to their restaurant. Our Spanish isn’t very good, especially the ‘listening’ part, so there’s a lot of guesswork. They gave us bottles of juice and suddenly we were surrounded by incredibly nice and inquisitive people. We talked to them for about an hour before we headed back to our campsite. Several of the people were in a band, and they gave a copy of their CD which is great, downtempo, Colombian music.
The next day, my brother, dad, and I drove into town to buy groceries, look for an ATM and email a photo to our insurance company. We found the ATM, then began to look for Wifi. There were several internet cafes in town, ranging from dust caked, sun bleached Gateways sitting on a dirt floor to shiny new 32” LCD monitors with webcams and headsets. But everywhere seemed to run their computers on Ethernet cables. It looked like nearly every storefront or house in the town had a Wifi router from the scanner on my phone, but every single one was locked—a feat that the people of Louisiana or Florida still can’t seem to achieve. We found a restaurant that had free wifi, and ordered three pandequesos; a bread that theoretically has cheese in it, hence the ‘queso’, however every pandequeso I have seen has been all pan and no queso. The restaurant was an open air café, and surprisingly upscale for the area. They did all of their cooking on a charcoal stove, and the whole kitchen was visible from the seating area. They have no idea how incredibly hip they are—a restaurant serving traditional, locally grown, Colombian cuisine cooked over a biomass stove… We finished using the Wifi and went to pick up some produce before heading back to our camp site for the night.
The next day we got up and stopped in town to attempt to get the address of the family we talked to the first night in La Pintada so we could send them postcards. It was then that we realized that Colombia might not have a national postal service. We talked to them for twenty some minutes trying to convey the concept of postal mail, and ended up with two pages of contact information (no physical address still). I wrote down the name plate on their store, their names, and the road; I think with that I can deduce how to get mail to them if something like that does exist in Colombia.
We drove south towards Cali out of La Pintada. Another 200km of winding mountain roads through rural Colombia. It’s stunningly beautiful, but after a week and a half of it, you become a little jaded. The sun is hot here, nothing like the sun in the US, and especially not like the sun in Alaska. In Alaska, the sun contains barely any heat, like holding your hand inside the lampshade of a 70w bulb. Here it’s like holding your hand near a gas stove. Our van overheats going up the huge hills, and we have to turn the heater on in the already hot climate. I think I’ve acquired some minor heat resistance from the 110F car. That day we figured out that we could take the one window off to allow some airflow, which helped tremendously. The temperature decreases substantially as you go up—from the mid 90s at sea level to the mid 70s at 6000 feet. The difference might be from Houston to Denver, but here you can traverse it in thirty kilometers.
We spent the night that night near Tulau, forty kilometers outside of Cali. We pulled into a gas station and, as always, were the center of attention. After about forty minutes of talking to people about our trailer and Alaska, we were able to retreat inside. The people were incredibly nice yet again, and I think we made a new facebook friend or two. The place we were stopped at was like one of those exits on the interstate outside of a major city where all of the seedy hotels congregate, except in Colombia. Several of them had their hourly rates on their sign. We were almost out of drinking water, but all we could find in the village was 600ml bags of water, and we ended up paying ~7000COP a gallon for it. We saw a bus hit a taxi in front of our gas station—about all the excitement for the night. Nothing appeared to have happened to the taxi, but the Mercedes bus probably had $1000 in frontend cosmetic damage. Everyone on the minibus got off right away and walked to the adjacent restaurant where manager looked excited that he’d be able to sell the three empanadas that had been sitting under a fluorescent light bulb since 4:00pm.
This morning we got up early before the heat and left at about 7:00am. We stopped at a truck stop with Wifi to check a few things before proceeding on past Cali to Popayan. We made good time across the flat plain, and had climbed the three thousand feet to Popayan by 3:00pm. We looked for a parking lot for the night, but couldn’t find one so we drove to the next town. We also needed an ATM, but after twenty minutes in the town we figured out that the only ATM was out of service for the day, forcing us to go back to Popayan. We found a parking lot on the way back and dropped off our trailer before we drove into the “White City”. Popayan’s historic town center consists of hundreds of whitewashed Colonial buildings densely packed into a valley. Popayan also happens to look very American on the main roads, strangely so. There were more than a few times when I like I had been transported to some sort Spanish-speaking United States. One giveaway, though, is that the United States seems to be the pinnacle of cool in this Southern Colombian city. In the mall we went to, nearly all the stores were tapping into this market. One was called “JOSH: define yourself”, another was all about the wonders of New York, and had giant pictures of New York symbolism “Subway Wall Street Empire State Building Times Square Brooklyn” proclaimed a giant green sign also filled with pictures of buses, taxis and other urban miscellanea. I am far from a mall person, I can’t even ironically go to malls in the US, they just grate on me, but this Colombian mall was pretty awesome. Most of the stores actually had cool stuff, from a vintage South American leather store with a window full of Che Guevara-Motorcycle Diaries bags and jackets to a Colombian Hot Topic (titled “B KUL”) and a Latin American watch designer.
At the mall, I hunted down the Movistar store to try to buy an unlocked broadband router. The clerk spoke some English, I spoke some Spanish, and together we figured out that I would have to buy it myself in Ecuador and that “unlocked” doesn’t seem to translate. I looked for a Claro store, but only found a kiosk in the upscale Supermercado that anchored one side of the mall. From what I got from them, their modems are unlocked, but they only sell modems and not routers. It amazes me how pervasive the incongruency seems to be in cellular providers down here. Claro is a giant company, but it appears that their phones don’t work from country to country, even though they exist in seemingly every nation from Mexico down. Movistar, I still can’t figure what they are. I did some research in the mall last night on my phone, and I think that Movistar and Clara moved in recently and bought old telecommunications networks in different countries, making them more like a conglomerate than a single operator. While this may explain why some phones wouldn’t work internationally, it doesn’t explain why a Claro SIM card in my iPhone would work in Colombia but not Ecuador. I’m hoping that the Claro dealer in Ecuador might have an English speaking clerk to help me buy a data plan for my phone, as unlikely as that sounds.
We stayed late at the mall, we spent an hour or so sitting in some sort of indoor park checking things on our phones while my dad, Sylvia and Annebelle spent time at an amped-up Chuck E Cheese. A couple of people eagerly tried their English on me; it must be how a European person would feel in the US.
We left the mall at about 8:00 and stopped to buy water but were only able to find 600ml bags for 700COP each. We bought twelve (because I couldn’t remember how to say fourteen), and drove back to the parking lot where we were staying. The parking lot wasn’t in the best area of Popayan, sort of like the end of Peger Road in Fairbanks. At about 9:00pm, and bunch of people started fighting and chanting across the street—it sounded like a two-by-four brawl. That was when I went back into the trailer. Sometime around 11:00pm, a giant trash pile was set on fire at the bus barn next store and a plume of acrid smoke settled over our trailer.
We left the next morning to head to Pasto, but the road was slow going. We made it within 100km of Pasto, but the road climbs 7000 feet in the next sixty miles. We camped at 4:00pm at Texaco station because this is one of the most dangerous stretches of road, and we didn’t want to be caught out after dark. I don’t know the name of the town where we’re at, but it’s in the center of the weird part of Colombia. It’s in some sort of desert complete with giant cacti. It actually isn’t dissimilar in appearance to the Sonoran Desert, but it’s a little more verdant. We’re in some sort of plain at an elevation of 1700 feet. People stand in the road with bamboo poles so you can’t drive past in your car until you give them change. It was kind of amusing at first, but after six roadblocks in the same village… You don’t have to pay them, but it really helps expedite the process. Several of the groups of people at the roadblocks were in costumes, including a guy in a wig pretending to be a pregnant woman. There’s also faded billboards with a Junta Hotline on them—completely serious here, you call the toll free number if you have Junta problems. It’s a very desolate place.
Tomorrow we’re planning on making it to Ipales, the Colombia-Ecuador border town about 150km and 7000 feet away. We need to find wifi somewhere, so we might be in an internet café for a few hours in Pasto. These major Colombian cities are extraordinarily difficult to navigate, so it’s hard to tell where we’ll end up. Internet cafes are really hit or miss too, most seem to have dusty emachines in a particle board booth, and none that I have seen have wifi.
I’ve been updating this nightly for the past several days, so the continuity might seem jarring. It seemed like a better idea than publishing three separate posts at once.
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We had planned on spending a short time in Colombia. People say that you can drive from Cartagena to Ecuador in a day or two as it is only about 700 miles. Our initial plan was to drive straight to Ecuador – but that was before we all fell in love with Colombia. The food was some of the best we have ever had. The people were without a doubt the nicest we had ever met traveling. The scenery was unbelievable (and we are from Alaska!).
We left the coastal lands (the hot lands) and entered the highlands where most people live. The temperature was better for us. We stuck to the Pan American Highway and disconnected the camper when we wanted to drive to villages off the Highway.
Driving in Colombia Pulling a 29 ft Trailer
When we first began researching this trip, we could find very little information on the roads in South America. The descriptions we did find were usually vague (fine or rough or slow). We figured (correctly so far) that if a truck could drive the Pan American, then so could we.
First, it was always our plan to stick to the Pan American Highway. All adventures off the
highway involve parking and either disconnecting the van and driving, walking or taking a bus / taxi. The first rule of driving a big rig is Don’t Leave the Highway unless you know for sure you can get where you are going. We are lucky that our rig is short (many are not) so we fit under archways and such. The Pan American wends through several big cities in Colombia and driving gets tense but it is all part of the adventure.
Here are some things to note about the Pan American in Colombia:
- Parquaederos are everywhere, all along the highway. There is always a place to park over night. Some are industrial like parking lots (we only stayed in one of those near Popayon), some are gas stations (some are crowded and loud, some are close to the road but many are spacious and quiet), some are restaurants and some are in hotel parking lots where you can pay the price of a room ($12 USD seemed to be the most expensive) and use the pool, the showers, the wifi and the room. The cost ranged from free to $7000 pesos ($4 USD).
- There are often no signs especially when you need them most. Sometimes there is a sign that says something is about to happen (like turn left up ahead) but then when you get to the point it is a roundabout with three left turns off of it – none are marked.
- GPS barely works when you need it. Often we were driving in a white space.
- Roundabouts are in every city and manage all traffic flow.
- Traffic lights turn yellow before they turn green as well as before they turn red (green – yellow – red – yellow – green)
- The Pan American is a toll highway. We paid about $7000 pesos per toll (same as a car). We paid $82,000 in tolls (about $42 USD).
- People stretch ropes across the road and you have to stop. A few coins and you are on your way – a kind of unofficial toll.
- There is a strong police / military presence but they never stopped us once and were always kind and helpful
- We passed many gas stations in southern Colombia that were sold out of gas (not diesel)
- Many gas stations do not take credit cards.
- Most small towns do not have an ATM. ATMs are often out of cash.
- There are sections of the highway that are literally a steep uphill /downhill for thousands of feet.
- Vehicles pass three and four at a time so there are sections of the highway that may look like a four lane, one way highway but it is just trucks and cars passing a truck. At the same time. Early on, we got confused coming out of Cartagena because the road divided (one side went into a town) and the other turned into a major passing section. It looked entirely like a divided highway section.
- There are few places to pull over when you most want to pull over (scenic overlooks, steep uphills)
- We nearly overheated a few times driving. Make sure you have plenty of water.
- We filled up with water at almost every gas station. The water is clear and smells like chlorine but we only used it for showering, dishes, laundry — and overheating.
- People fill the pot holes in and remove rocks from the road and expect you to pay them. We handed out coins and it was never too little.
- There are military police check points all over the place but they always gave us the thumbs up (meaning we could drive on). We did see buses stopped and searched and we met some people who worked with the police at a restaurant – they wanted to see pictures of snow.
- Expect to be the center of attention every place you stop. We were sometimes swarmed with people and it feels a bit scary at first but every single time it was a fabulous experience.
We divided our trip through Colombia into five sections:
- Cartagena
- Cartagena – Medellin
- Medellin – Popayon
- Popayon – Pasto
- Pasto – Border of Ecuador
Cartagena – Medellin
The roads out of Cartagena are smooth and paved. We passed through one police check point, they looked at Mark’s passport and asked us questions about Alaska. The inland country is very hot and humid. The first night, we actually felt like we couldn’t breathe (but we are Alaskans). The road is two lanes and there are not a lot of cars – but there are many trucks and even more motorcycles. There are no passing lanes and few places to pull over. Once you start the climb into the mountains, things move pretty slow. Trucks average about 35mph and there is really no passing because there is just another truck uphead. Better to just relax and enjoy the slow and beautiful drive. We could have made the trip to Medellin comfortably in three days but we weren’t in a hurry.
Camping spots:
- A field in Arjona on the left side of the Pan American.
- Parquedearo with a big field and a restaurant and a little store
- Santa Rosa de Osos parquedearo, a five minute walk into the lovely town and the parquedearo is behind a 24 Hour Travel Stop which had a cheese maker, a bakery, a small store and restaurant with excellent and inexpensive food.
Medellin – Popayon
We spent wonderful and relaxing days in the beautiful town of La Pinatada.We saw a parquedearo with a hotel and a pool and it turned out to be one listed in Americas Overland but the name had changed to Mirador del Rocio. We were not really looking for a place to camp but this looked so wonderful that we had to stay. It was $20,000 pesos a night ($11 USD) and that included the pool, the bathrooms and showers and a nice lobby patio with hammocks and ping pong and a pool table. The hotel overlooks the coffee fincas.
In the evening, we disconnected the van and drove into town and walked around. We bought popsicles and some supplies (potatoes, avocados, oranges for juice) and were headed back to the van. Women were gathered around the van peering inside – it was Sylvia’s car seat that they were looking at. The car seat led to a lengthy discussion which involved Sylvie buckling herself in as a demonstration. Car seats are completely unheard of in Colombia. We told them they were the law in the USA and there was much conversation about this. Our van is also quite the conversation starter, even without the Alaska plates. Kids always ask us why we have a bus as even minivans do not exist in Colombia.
In La Pintada, we met some wonderful and friendly people who brought us all to their restaurant and gave us all bottles of juice. The juice was Colombian and they were wanting to share things from Colombia with us. It is hard for us to understand Colombian Spanish as there is a strong accent so we talked haltingly for a long time and had a very nice evening. We left with a great CD (the folks we met were in a band) and promises to meet up when we left La Pintada so they could see the camper. We did this – which is no easy task but we had great luck and a truck was delivering produce when we pulled up and it promptly left so we had plenty of space to park.
We drove through Medellin which was beautiful. Medellin is mostly red brick and it is nestled high in the mountains with no sprawl so you sort of meander down a two lane highway from the mountains right into Medellin. Here are some things we learned about Medellin: it has one of the most efficient public transportation systems in the world which includes trams up the steep mountainsides and it has art everywhere and is very beautiful. Medellin has a law that says that all public buildings must have art so there are statues and gardens and fountains and mosaics everywhere and many light up at night. Along the river which runs through the city is a park completely lit up the entire length at night with colorful decorative lights. All along the trip, people kept asking us if we were from Medellin and once we got there, we knew why. Most people in Medellin are much lighter skinned than coastal people and tourists are so rare everyone assumed we were from Medellin.
We headed into a small town on the advice of a Colombian / Irish gas station attendant and camped at a Esso station next to a hotel. It was quite the exciting moment when we arrived and we soon had a crowd of about 20 people outside hanging around. We were too far from the town to walk and we were pretty tired that night so we stayed around our neighborhood. Our neighborhood turned out to be filled with prostitutes and hotels you could rent by the hour, hotels called things like the Love Karma Sutra and Cupid Love Shack with gigantic nativities set up outside. Apparently this is part of the truck driving industry.
We camped in Popayon in a parquedearo listed in Americas Overland and disconnected the camper and drove into Popayon. The van and camper were secure but the parquedearo was filthy and smelled really bad. Oil and gas had been spilled or dumped all over it and it was pretty toxic smelling. The section of town was kind of rowdy and from the camper we could here plenty of fights and screaming and even a few gunshots. The security guards at the parquedearo were constantly walking the gate and the evening was not tranquillo. Once it got dark, there was some kind of massive trash fire that filled the entire valley with smoke that made your eyes sting. This lasted all night. We shut all the windows – luckily it was not very hot.
Popayon – Pasto
We camped at a very nice Texaco station that was quiet and about a 5 minute walk to town. The Texaco had free showers and water and a stunning view across the valley.
Pasto – Border of Ecuador
Pasto was a very nice city. It reminded us of Vancouver, BC.
In a perfect example of the lack of signs, the Pan American drives right through the center of Pasto and then turns right. The upcoming right turn is marked but when you get to the point of turning right, there are actually two right turns; one heads west and one heads more southwest. We took the wrong one. The GPS completely failed us here. It had us floating about 10 feet off the road anyway.
There was no gasoline and lines were long at the stations that did have gas. Diesel was not a problem. The price of gas drops dramatically here, from over $8000 pesos a gallon (yes, a gallon) to $5600 a gallon.
We camped at a Bio station with a huge empty parquedearo and disconnected the camper and drove into the small towns.
Ipiales is the Colombian border town. Driving through it was confusing and the streets were narrow and crowded. The border was easy, we had our passports stamped and we were on our way to Ecuador. It is funny how a few feet can make such a great difference. The Ecuador side of the border was much dirtier, buildings covered with graffiti and litter all over the place. We had to wait about an hour to get our passports stamped. Someone had thrown up on the floor and it was covered up with pieces of paper. The good part was that it was a little meet up of fellow travelers so we had some fun conversations with a man on a motorcycle from Scotland and another couple on motorcycles from Australia. The Ecuadorian border town is Tulcan and it was more narrow than Ipiales. Lucky we got behind a bus and just followed it out of town.
Ecuador
We were sad at first with Ecuador. It was dirty and covered with graffiti and litter and the people were not so nice. On the other hand, we were not such a freak show and no one seemed to care. It was New Years day and there were drunk people men everywhere, sleeping on the sidewalk and lying in the grass and stumbling around. Everything was closed. We drove up and up and up and up to more than 10,000’ and then down to 2,000’ and then we did it once more. It was kind of stressful. The roads are much better but there are many more drivers and cars in Ecuador due to the fact that gas is $1 USD a gallon. Ecuador uses the USD and we learned where all the $2 bills and Susan B. Anthony coins are – Ecuador. We were headed to Otavalo and Americas Overland said there were two conveniently located parqueaderos near the market but we never know what that means. We hired a taxi for $2 to lead us to one and we arrived at a huge parqueadero right next to the market with bathrooms and a nice level cement pad we got to park on.
Otavalo
Otavalo has one of the biggest (or perhaps the biggest) market of indigenous crafts in South America.
The trailer was in this dirt lot surrounded by semi trucks and broken glass. Someone stole the license plate off of the trailer while it was stationary. After a few minutes of doing something (I forget exactly what we were doing) we were off and heading out of Cartagena.
It took longer than I would have liked to leave the city; in retrospect Cartagena was kind of horrible and nasty. A few wrong turns were made but we eventually we got out onto the country side. The day was starting to turn into the night by the time we got to this one town where a police officer stopped us and almost took my father’s passport away because our windshield was cracked. After taking care of the cop, we pulled out of town and headed towards the next. All along our way we past plenty of military check point things and toll booths. It was now dark and we were pulling into yet another town. We took a few lefts and a few rights and then boom, we were stuck in the middle of the main road. A kind stranger helped us out of our trap and took us to an empty lot where we could rest for the night. This lot was framed by the Pan American highway on one side, and by a small bunch houses on the other. We were parked for about an hour and already a crowed of interested children had gathered right outside our door. Mother invited them in and then the crowd grew from fifteen kids to fifty four mixed aged peoples. We gathered outside and were fed fruits that grew in the area. I am most certainly not fluent in any other language other than English so communicating was difficult. I have loved llamas since the day I was born and when a girl said something about llamas to me, I sort of got really excited and happy, until I learned that ‘llama’ means phone and she really just wanted my phone number. Anywho. The night went well and we were invited to eat breakfast with them tomorrow. We woke up and headed out to meet up with our new friends. Someone took a toucan bird out of their house, you probably don’t know this about me but I have been drawn toucan birds for years so this was also really exciting for me.
The people who were feeding us had a really nice and big sound system. Our breakfast consisted of cheese, bacon, bollos, guacamole, and juice. It was then time for us to go, we went into our van and then headed off for new lands.
The new lands we headed towards were just as painfully hot as the lands before it. We took a wrong turn down a horrible road for a good thirty minutes until we realized what we did. Once back on the right road, we passed through a ton of small, colorful towns. The first five or so had about fifty booths selling hats and baskets, and then the other towns had mostly fruit stalls. That night we camped inside a parqueadero.
When we awoke we started to ascend up the mountains to a cooler, more enjoyable, temperature. The mountain drive was awesome. Houses were built on top of stilts that stuck into the sides of cliffs. The valleys were covered in fog, and the cliffs were covered in thick, green, pretty, jungle foliage. I spent most of the ride looking for monkeys out the window but sadly there weren’t any. Once we made it over the top of the one mountain we were on, we came to a small town which we then drove through. We descended until dark and stopped in Santa Rosa for the night and Santa Rosa is where I am writing this from. I think I’ll go now. Merry Christmas.
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requires driving over two gigantic speed bumps at each end of the town where you literally have to come to a complete stop and then slowly get back up to 60km and then slow back down for the next town. We are not in a hurry so the slow pace is good for us. We were also worried about driving Expedition Vehicle – would it be too slow? too big? too long? We can now definitively say that we are not by any stretch the slowest, biggest, or longest vehicle on the road. We left Arjona around noon and drove (slightly uphill) the next
day until about 4pm when we camped (I mean overnight parked – here camping means tents and fires) in a big field on the edge of a town. The field had a small market and a restaurant at the town end. We tossed a frisbee for a few hours for the dogs and went to sleep early. The next day, we left by 8am. This part of the drive was the start of the Andes. The highway is two lanes and we continued to ascend. The scenery was beautiful. Photos do not capture how beautiful it is here. 
We ascended for 7 hours. More or less straight up and variety of grades, generally around 10% but as steep as 15%. Steeper than we have ever seen in the US. We kept thinking we had reached the top but we still have not reached the top here in Santa Rosa de Osos. Houses are built right on the side of the road, on stilts over the cliff below and landslides have caused piles of rocks in the road making it one lane in some places. And on this road are gigantic vehicles: first class buses, car carrier trucks, cement trucks, 
container trucks, trucks filled with cows, a semi truck filled with scrap metal as well as motorcycles and donkeys and children. The van was close to overheating (we had this happen in Death Valley). Jack ran out and poured some water on the radiator. We continued to drive because we could not really stop. There are no shoulders. Or parking lots. Or anything really. The road got steeper and steeper and we entered the clouds and visibility reduced to about 10 feet and we came to a place where the road had washed out and it was one lane and very steep, like a grade of 17% for 200 ft, and buses and trucks going in both directions were queued up to shoot the gap. We are stopped 
on a steep hill on the side of a cliff with trucks and buses all around us waiting for our turn and when it came – the van would not move. Like it would not drive forward. We had to back down the steep hill to a more or less flat spot (around buses and trucks and children) and then Mark had to figure out what was wrong. It was a tense 10 minutes. What was wrong? We needed more transmission fluid. Mark fixed it and we headed on our way. We had to stop once more to let the van cool down a bit but the road was flat and wider and there was a great view.
- When the van would not move, we made new friends.
Leaving the hotel in Cartagena was as complicated as we thought it would be. Mark had moved the van and camper to a parqueadero near the port, which was a half an hour cab ride away. He had to go get propane tanks and hook them up so we could run the fridge and the stove. He had to get mandatory Colombian car insurance. He had to take many cab rides on the back of the motorcycle taxis. We had to get the dogs. And we could not drive in the dark. By 4pm, the dogs, the kids, the bags and the propane tanks were at the parqueadaro. Mark noticed someone had stolen the camper license plate. We thought we might spend the night there and leave early the next morning but it became clear that we could not do that. The camper had been in the sun since it left Florida. The inside of the camper was 123 degrees. Even with all the windows open we could not be inside for more than a few minutes. The dogs were frantic – they had another cab ride (this time Trek rode on top) and they had been kenneled at a great vet office with a dog courtyard and other dogs but they were just literally freaking out. The heat did not help the dogs either. We had to move and get some air circulating into the camper and van and get the dogs and kids out of the sun. So we piled in and plunged into the Cartagena traffic. We are following the Pan American highway the entire time. All we had to do was find another parqueadero before dark. A parqueadero is a lot where you pay a small fee to park overnight and it has a guard that keeps an eye on your vehicle and sometimes services. Parqueaderos are everywhere.
The drive was fine. The van cooled down and the dogs relaxed and all was going well. Until it appeared the road had divided and we might be going the wrong way down a one way road so Mark pulled into a gas station and we realized we were right on course so he had to go around the block to turn around. Around the block was through a small town and it was a little tricky. Busses, cars, people, donkeys – and motorcycles are everywhere, literally tens of thousands of motorcycles weaving in and out of traffic. We drove through h the small town and at one point a buss passed us going in the other direction. At that exact moment, a motorcycle decided to try to pass us on the left and squeeze between the bus and our vehicle. It did not work. The motorcycle got stuck. No one could move – the bus, the motorcycle and Team DeCorso were frozen there and people were yelling and gathering and then there was a loud THUNK (did someone hit the camper?) and the motorcycle was free and we could all move. We moved about 100 feet and we came to where we had to turn left. A policeman was standing there with a whistle and he stopped the traffic so we could make our turn – and then noticed we had a crack in the windshield. We turned, he pulled us over and began explaining how we needed to get the windshield fixed. Right then. Except it was Friday at 5pm so we would need to stop driving immediately and get a hotel for the next three days. He had Mark’s passport, driver’s license and vehicle paperwork. The van, he said, was immobilized. It was 93 degrees and the sun was setting. A hotel meant the dogs would go where? How would this work? So I resorted to a lesson learned in the classic book A People’s Guide to Mexico. I begged him. And it worked!! He smiled and gave Mark back his passport, wished us a merry Christmas and waved us on.
But now it was nearly dark and we were nowhere near the parqueadaro. We drove on, nervously, because YOU ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO DRIVE IN COLOMBIA IN THE DARK!
The next town we came to was Arjona and it had a gas station so Mark pulled in but it was closed and we couldn’t get in and we couldn’t turn around so we had to head down the narrow the road until we could go around the block. The road where we could turn had a metal blockade at it and we were stuck. The only option was to back up about a mile through the donkeys and motorcycles and children. We were near a little store and a man there came to check us out and he said he knew a place where we could park overnight, we could follow him. A bunch of guys moved the metal blockade and we headed off following the guy on a motorcycle. He took us to a field ringed with small houses and told us to park. Then he went and told some people in a house that we were staying. He asked for 5000 pesos, about $2.75, and he left.
We got out. It was even hotter here than in Cartagena. The air was so thick with moisture we could almost not breathe. The camper had cooled down to about 100 degrees and we had to make dinner. We had some food in the cupboard but the fridge had not cooled down yet so we made some pasta. We sat in the camper, sweating and hot and feeling kind of overwhelmed and down. Our license plate was stolen. We had a motorcycle stuck on us. We had gotten stuck twice. The police had nearly immobilized the van. And we had not even gone 35 miles. It was suffocatingly hot and we were just literally dripping with sweat.
We needed water (sold in bags here) so Mark and Jack headed off to find water and returned to tell us that there were a bunch of kids outside. I peeked out and there were about 20 kids looking at me. So naturally I asked them if they wanted to come inside. And of course they did. And then their parents came over and came inside. We talked and they said there was a man in the town that spoke English so they dispersed some children to get him. He came over and we all began to talk. It was clear we were about to eat so the English-speaking man, whose name was Hilo, said we should finish eating and then come outside and sit in a circle with them. We agreed. As we finished our pasta, we could see them bringing chairs and chairs over and setting up a circle 2 feet from our door. We went outside and there were more than 50 people smiling at us. They had brought eight chairs for us. We sat down. And then the best Solstice Party ever began. They brought us gifts and snacks, using English / Spanish phrase books to ask us how to say things. Jack and Ryan were flanked by girls each. Girls were putting earrings on Jennah. Laptops appeared with Google Translate and Facebook. We tried to ask if avocados grew there – we had seen these gigantic ones in Cartagena. The word for avocado did not translate with the phrase book or Google Translate and in the process they brought us a bunch of exotic fruit we had never even heard of. One had skin like an avocado but was hollow inside except for a blob of jelly with some seeds and it was delicious! Tangy and sweet. There were berries with hard skins and seeds that Sylvia loved. And then at one point, we had a group realization about avocados and it was a beautiful moment. They gave Sylvia a teddy bear and at one point Annabelle asked for the Spanish word for tag and when she learned it, all the kids took off to play. Annabelle and Sylvia went off to play inside a house. Several times, the girls began chanting beso (kiss).
Many, many photos were taken. We had 59 people inside the camper. They asked us to stay for Christmas. Many times. We stayed up until midnight. One woman wanted to make us breakfast and we tried to decline because we did not have any breakfast food to offer at all. The woman who made us breakfast gave us 15 beautiful peacock feathers.
We woke up in the morning and one of our new friends brought us a pot of strong, sweet coffee. Then they brought us to see a toucan!
We headed to a house where they presented us with the best breakfast I have ever had – bacon that was thick and tasty, bollos, fresh homemade cheese, a HUGE amount of the best guacamole ever and fresh ice cold juice made from the sweet & tart unknown fruit. After breakfast, Hilo cut Ryan’s hair. Hilo was a really neat and interesting person. He had learned to speak English himself, some from American music. He was a hair stylist and he did a great job on Ryan’s hair.
We wished we had some things to give them because we had been given so much from the people of the town. We had been kind of bummed and feeling like maybe the trip was a mistake and the people of Arjona completely turned our day around. We didn’t have very much with us, most of the stuff we had was not so cool (like spoons) but I dropped a penny on the ground and the kids were amazed at the penny so we handed out a bunch of American change and there was a lot of explaining what the English word was and how many pesos each coin was worth. We were able to fill up our water tank from someone’s house. We left to a waving crowd of people. It is impossible to describe how wonderful our short stay in Arjono was. This had truly been one of the most amazing experiences of our lives!
I wanted to say how easy this has all been. For a year, we researched how to get the van & camper here, reading many other travelers accounts of shipping across the Darien gap. People got robbed, vehicles got damaged, folks got fleeced. None of this has happened to us. In fact, the cost of shipping turned out to be $1000 less and faster than we anticipated. All of the details that seemed so stressful when we were planning the trip have simply fallen into place. Everyone has been kind and helpful.
We were worried about so many things. It turns out that we will be traveling with trucks and there are places trucks stop to spend the night – just like in America! It turns out that there are parking lots with big walls around them and you park there and pay a small fee and your stuff is guarded.
Officially clearing customs with your shipped vehicle takes three days and port costs are $350 per vehicle. Our bill was $700+ and the two vehicles arrived Monday morning at 8:15am. Mark, the Awesome Latin Negotiator, somehow got the port fees reduced to just $200 and got the vehicle out in a day and a half.
]]>Another food cart that we ate from had these banana shaped things that were filled with potato like things, but Mother said it was probably plantain. Yesterday Ryan and Mother went out for a vegan lunch. After they came back all of us went out. We meandered around, and stopped at a grocery store, where we got cookies and apple soda, which was… interesting. It started to get dark, so we headed back to the hotel around six. After that, Ryan and Dad headed out alone to get food alone. They came back with these little dough things filled with egg and cheese. I opted for having a bologna sandwich instead. There were various grocery stores around and Saturday night we bought bologna and bread to make sandwiches.
Today Dad left to go deal with the trailer and van stuff, since it’s ship arrived today. Mother thinks we’ll leave tomorrow.
Our hotel room(s) are small, with white walls. There’s a bunk bed in the corner, and the top bunk is right under the air conditioner, so it’s really cold at night. There’s a big bed where Dad/Mom sleep, and then a little bed that can slide underneath their bed, which is where I usually sleep. Though last night, I got to sleep in the bunk. Score! The bathroom is small, and the shower is situated between the toilet and sink, so it’s kind of hard to shower.
Jack and Ryan’s room had two beds of equal size, and their bathroom is actually seperated with a curtain. One day, the maids rearranged the sheet on the beds so it was shaped like a bow.
®©Jennah©®
Cartagena is hot and the air is moist. We managed to squeeze all seven of us into a small cab and headed off towards our hotel. Cartagena is really nice I think. The air is about 80-90 degrees Fahrenheit and thanks to our stay in Florida, I was more climatized than I would be; however, it was still hot enough to give you a head ache or make you sweat a river. Our hotel is just a walk away from the Walled City area. We’ve been eating only bread from this bakery down the street and food off the street.
Everywhere inside the walled city there’s horse draw carriages. I don’t really know where the horses go to eat or sleep or drink, maybe there’s a massive stable in the middle of the city. There are also these motorcycle taxies which are just like normal taxies, except you get to ride on the back of a motor cycle instead of inside a car!
I think that’s all now. Bye.
We boarded the plane and took off. The flight was about three hours.
We arrived in Cartagena, and when I stepped off the plane, it was so hot, I assumed it was from the plane engines. Unfortunately, not. It was always that hot.
We hailed a taxi to the hotel, where we had reserved two rooms. Ryan and Jack had one whilst Mother, Max, Annie, Sylvia and I had the other. The hotel had internet and air conditioning. We spent the remainder of the day in our hotel room, only leaving to get bread to eat from a bakery.
At nine o’clock the next morning, we stepped out into the heat to explore Cartagena. We meandered around, going to a castle, and whatnot. I started to almost pass out from lack of fluids and heat. We bought some sodas and went back to the hotel.
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