Hello everyone, well as I move South I finally move away from people trying to shove knives up my nose for my poultry fortune of a few dollars, instead I have once again reached hippy country, where the malnourished traveler prances around in their hemp underpants secretly dreaming he or of course she could really accept that all they want is a bacon sandwich. I'm not sure what it is about Latin America but they are all over the place. Seriously, as soon as there are no more bypasses to live on in the South of England, it seems they have all decided to come here. But on a more positive note would you believe that I am now paying around 19 pence for a litre of petrol, and to top it off so far the petrol has gone back to being clear from the normal brown colour I have been getting used to. A great help for the finacial side of things I must say (as well as for my fuel filter!)
So me and Kev left Medellin after having a pretty funny evening out on Halloween. We rode to the coffee area and a place called Salento, and much to my disappointment were not stopped by any military blocks, in fact there were hardly any, and there was me wanting a photo op. with heavily armored locals, god dam it. So the ride to Salento was really long and very wet, which I'm sure is to no-ones surprise now days. We managed to get lost on the way and ended up riding some dodgy country roads in totally the wrong direction, not really a good idea in this country! Finally after having to turn around as the road on my map didn't actually exist, and instead driving down a road that did exist, but not on my map (I really need a better map!) we found the main road once more. The route towards the main road was covered with landslides and mud, which in fact made the ride quite fun. After seeing some incredible views of the foot hills of the Andes and me riding my bike into a drain hole we finally arrived in the dark in Salento (I think some thoughtful person had stolen the drain cover)
Solento was lovely, really rather picturesque stuff...clouds, hills, coffee, that kind of thing. We spent two nights there and in the day visited a coffee farm with its own performing cat with a lead on which I managed to photograph upside down up a tree. All very impressive. The coffee tour was also interesting but the cat did steal the show for me I'm afraid. I learned how to make coffee from the plant to the pot, and more importantly discovered a really useless fact; that a pineapple takes 2 whole years to grow... very interesting I know, so you should appreciate the work that has gone into it next time you eat one.
After doing the coffee thing we took the bikes out without all the luggage to ride some great dirt tracks to see some palm trees. Yes, some palm trees, sounds riveting doesn't it, but in fact they are far more meaningful than your common garden palms, they to hide another useless fact, so useless in fact that I forget exactly what it was. It was either that they are the tallest palms in the world or the highest altitude palms in the world. Anyway, they were actually very cool and the valley they were in was tear-jerkingly beautiful, well maybe not quite that emotional, but it was nice. The dirt riding however was great fun, and almost won the prize for being the most fun thing that day, that was until I witnessed my mate Kev in his big heavy expensive BMW slipping and spinning and sliding his way up a muddy hill that the lovely KLR just floated up.... ha ha ha, he needed to be mocked about it as he keeps taking the piss out of my bike for its road performance. Sweet Justice prevails.
After Salento we rode to Popayan a town which I had images of being great and lovely, but for those of you who know me well, yes I arrived and was met straight away with my now infamous feeling of disappointment. What a dull place. So what the buildings are white, that doesn't make it nice. In fact it reminded me of somewhere like Crawley, or another equally depressing town. And honestly, does the pond life thats frequents Crawley shopping center equipped with their triple prams loaded with malnourished Dr Pepper drinking brats really think that if they whitewashed Woolworth's and Argos it would suddenly be listed in the guidebooks as a quaint town? Well maybe the answer is yes, as Popayan has managed it and has clearly sold itself to the arse that wrote the `rouge guide´ as the Elysian fields of Southern Colombia purely by whitewashing their local equivalent to an Argos outlet. Maybe I am being a bit harsh, and maybe you have sensed a wisp of sarcasm in my description of the town, but firstly yes, I'm English, so yes its my job to be sarcastic, but also I am merely trying to prove a point that it really isn't all it made out to be in the guide books Yes its a town worth a visit, but there´s no point in getting sweaty palms about it.
After all that I feel I must summarise what I thought of Colombia. (this bits for you Salavador-ref, conv. to neg.) The country as a whole was, I think, one of the best countries I have visited. Although everyone says this, the people there really were the nicest by far of any of the countries I have been through. The security situation, although clearly an issue, is not one to be concerned about at all. If I were a FARC rebel why an earth would I want to kidnap a fat tourist. All they are going to do is moan and sob and proberly eat all the rebels food, and we all know backpackers have no money so whats the point in trying to get a ransom for them. But seriously what a great country The only good point about its current reputation is that it keeps the hundreds of package tourists out and thus offers a far greater insight into the country and its people without being tarnished like most tourist hotspots. Apart from the slight disipointment of Popayan (which I totally blame the guidebooks for building it up) I give Colombia a 10/10. Great Coutnry, great scenary and great people.
We left Popayan the next morning for the push to Ecuador. It was a long ride of around 300 miles but the roads were actually really good. The scenery was incredible as the Andes are quickly rising up to meet us. We stopped in a tiny town in Southern Colombia. An area which is still deemed dangerous enough not to travel at all at night. In actual fact, during the day there were very few check points and it was all very pleasant. During our stop I was talking to the woman who was feeding me cakes and biscuits for breakfast and I innocently asked if coffee was the main source of income for the area. She bluntly replies in a most serious of tones that no coffee is not the source of incomes but Coca plants, and to be more precise, Cocaine labs, she then points to a few mountains and informs me that thats where the labs are, and that they are the main source of income for the area. She also then points out that it is far to dangerous to visit, in case I felt like it!
We soon arrived at the Ecuador border. This was pretty much a breeze apart from the Aduana man (customs guy) first saying he wouldn't do our bike paperwork till 8am the next day. After complimenting items such as his bushy mustache and his polished shoes he decided that maybe he could work passed 11.45 am that day and process our bikes. After that was sorted out and we had chased the resident leper away from our bikes after he insisted he wanted to clean our number plates (in my opinion he should have been focusing on his personal hygiene rather than the bikes) off we went.
After 10 Min's I was ferociously hungry, the cake fed to me by cocaine woman was clearly not enough for a days sustenance so we stopped at a decent looking Ecuadorian restaurant. Now you must remember that I am in Ecuador so by decent I mean it doesn't have any dead dog carcasses outside the front. So we stop and the withered old crone dished up several delightful platters. The first of which Kev claims could be a mushroom soup, so I tuck in to find out that they are not mushrooms but in fact incredibly chunky lumps of artery. After a few chews I really quite wanted to spit it out, but my good manners, a bit of British stiff upper lip and the fact that said crone was looking at me like she had just treated me to the best course on the menu at the Savoy, I decided it only fair to swallow. When I had almost recovered from the chunk of cow tube the next dish came out, lucky for me Kev had the majority, but after a bit of chewing, some close examination and some extensive vocab searching we realized we were chewing on some boiled cows udders. By Christ, I mean I'm game for trying most thing but this was frankly horrible, and just the thought of me chewing on a wedge of cow tit made me feel really quite ill. By this stage the wrinkly Delia Smith impersonator thought the whole situation was rather amusing, so she was way beyond being offended, and to make up for it she was even kind enough to offer me some lumps of spinal chord to make up for the cow boob. Very sweet but I declined, and maybe it beats eating cows head tachos. In fact, I think I have eaten almost every part of a cow by now!
After leaving the restaurant feeling pretty much hungrier than before we carried on to Otavlo, a small town in northern Ecuador. To coin a great blackadder line, at this altitude without re-jetting the carb. my poor bike seems to be accelerating like a asthmatic ant with heavy shopping. Rather frustrating when speed is the key whilst trying to negotiate round the hundreds of black smoke billowing lorries. I think all will be well though as long as I don't spend the length of the Andes dealing with the whole of the delapidated ex USA school bus fleet billowing black smoke in my face.
Today we leave Otavlo to go see the equator and test whether or not that sink and water buisness does really work. I promise ill try not to be dissipointed if its a big lie. Oh also check out the quality (genuine of course) duracell batteries I found.
p.s for more pics of this post look at the albums on the side.
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