Hola! Back again.

So, we survived the the Trampoline of Death but more on that later!
After Salento, (hummingbirds, wax palms and more chilling) we cycled to Armenia to stay with Karen and Jorge. Karen is an old friend of Michelle’s who she last saw 34 years ago when they were exchange students together in Mexico! Karen now lives in Atlanta with her husband Jorge a Colombian but they also have a house in Armenia that they frequently visit and invited us to stay. It was great to be looked after and shown around.

They took us to see more great coffee towns in the mountains and their cowboy culture; we felt very spoilt to be chauffeured around without having to toil up hills on our bikes. They also took us their friend Alexander’s house, where he was having a birthday party for his 5 year old girl – we felt somewhat underdressed for this lavish event at his amazing house with it’s stunning views and infinity pool!

We decided to take the bus from Armenia to Popayan, known as the “White City”, to cover some ground and avoid cycling on truck and bus infested roads through a hot valley; Jorge and Karen were amazing again and took us and our bikes to the bus station where we said our goodbyes.

We didn’t really give Popayan much of a chance but decided to go on a city tour. Terrible! Not the city, the tour. We abandoned it early on the pretext of having to catch a bus. Felt a bit sorry for the guide for dropping out of the group but listening to someone read Google’s privacy statement would have been more interesting…..

Our route from Popayan took us over the mountains on more quiet, rough dirt roads to San Agustin and it’s archaeological park. It contains the largest collection of religious monuments and megalithic sculptures in Latin America^[1]and is considered the world’s largest necropolis. We did think about paying for a guide but the little museum tells you all there is to know which isn’t much as no-one really knows who these people were or what it was really all about and apparently the guides just repeat the same stuff and have no answers, just speculative waffle!

It was very quiet and peaceful with few visitors, probably because it’s quite away off the normal backpacker/tourist trail; the park is beautifully laid out and a pleasure to walk around although we were reminded that we weren’t in Hyde park when Michelle saw a snake ( I didn’t but wished I had! ) and had a bit of a drama queen moment.

The road to San Agustin took us up over 3000m and into the Páramo ( Páramo generally describes an area above the continuous forest line (3000m), yet below the permanent snowline ) typified by Frailejones, a weird looking plant that only grows in this environment. Related to sunflowers they capture water vapour from passing clouds in their spongy trunks and release it through their roots into the soil.

Had to wild camp on the way to San Agustin and ended up camping on a school football pitch! Once again we were amazed at the helpfulness of the Colombians – a teacher from the school and her friend came back after dark with coffee and arepas for us as they were worried about us being cold and hungry!

From San Agustin we continued heading south towards Ecuador. We had to again climb up over 3000m and drop down into the Amazon basin where it became very hot, very sticky and very jungly. The dramatic change in vegetation  and the stunning variety of birds, butterflies, insects and their crazy cacophony of noises made up for the super sweaty cycling! Awesome downhills on sealed roads also meant awesome velocities! 🙂

Amazonian bird and its odd call.

The Trampoline of Death!

The road from Mocoa to Pasto takes you up out of the Amazon basin (450m up to 3200m) via El Trampolin del el Muerte, Colombias’ answer to Bolivia’s Yungas death road. This precipitous, narrow, unstable gravel road has several rivers literally flowing over it and is notorious for lots vehicles plunging off it either whilst trying to squeeze past each other or simply when the road edge gives way and they plummet screaming over the edge. It also has a reputation with cycle-tourists for its tough, steep climbs over 4 high passes, stunning scenery, lack of places to stay and torrential rain.

We were somewhat nervous when we set out but decided to simply try and enjoy the experience and not worry about the potential pitfalls…. Not long after we set out, we were caught up by James, the first other cycle-tourist we’d seen. James talked about having averaged 160km a day so far and said he’d thought he might get to Pasto in one day. Bloody hell! We were planning 3 days. Given how tough it was, we suspect even James had to scale down to doing it in two. We’d like to think so anyway!

The tarmac ended after 15km and the steep, rough, river-fording 1750m dirt road climb to the first pass pretty much did us in however, the scenery on the way up was amazing with views of the winding road far, far below, appearing and disappearing through the clouds as we climbed through them. Descending after the pass, we considered cycling on but decided to  camp on a patch of grass by a restaurant just as heavy rain started. Good thing we did. The following morning we cycled for two hours without seeing anything remotely suitable for a camp spot. This is really wild and remote country. The next day was equally tough, equally remote and just as rewarding but this time had an hotel and a hot shower waiting at the end of it. 🙂

Day three took us on a sealed but tough road over another 3200m pass and more Frailejones, to Laguna de la Cocha where we camped for free at the idyllic Hotel Jardin Del Lago sitting just above the lake.

Tomorrow we leave Pasto and head for Ecuador!