The Equator must be around here somewhere

The border crossing from Colombia to Ecuador on Thursday 18th February was largely uneventful and much less shambolic than the border crossings we have experienced in Central America. It only took fifteen minutes to complete the formalities on the Colombian side but the total time taken was an hour and three quarters mainly due to a very long queue for immigration on the Ecuador side. The personnel on both sides were very friendly and helpful and when we had been standing in the Ecuador immigration queue for about forty five minutes an official came up to us and asked how old we both were. She then decided we had waited long enough and took us to the front of the queue. It obviously pays to be grey haired and wrinkly sometimes!

Having crossed the border we continued south for about 80 kilometres until we reached a pleasant campsite overlooking a lake next to the town of Ibarra. By coincidence Guy and Nurit, the Israeli couple whom we have befriended, had arrived with their boys just a couple of hours before us.
The campsite was owned and run by Hans, a large florid German man with hands like spades who kept matters running smoothly. Unsurprisingly, the majority of people staying at the site were German and they all seemed to know each other well, as several of them had apparently been staying there some considerable time and it was hard not to feel a bit of an outsider. There was also a charming couple of gentlemen in their seventies staying there and they were driving a 1938 Morris and have been, as far as we could tell, pretty well all over the world in it. What a magnificent obsession!

There was a barbeque on Saturday night organised by some of the Germans and we enjoyed some extremely good marinated meat and a variety of salads which we all provided. Everyone stood round and chatted and drank beer and swapped travellers tales in the way that overland people do whenever chance brings them to the same place at one time.

Our enjoyment of the barbeque was tainted somewhat the following morning when we heard of an unpleasant incident involving Guy and Nurit. The tables had been pushed together to make one long table but whilst Guy and Nurit were getting their food two German women moved their table, together with the two young boys, away from the main group to a different part of the veranda and then sat with their backs to Guy and Nurit and the children. They were understandably very upset by this ill mannered and, we thought, probably racist behaviour but Hans was unable to provide an explanation when it was mentioned to him. By then Alan had rather ungraciously nicknamed the campsite Stalag 15 and we were all quite pleased to leave the campsite on Sunday morning for Otavalo.

The drive to Otavalo, a town famous across Ecuador for its tradition of weaving going back 4,000 years, was a pleasant one on good tarmac road. A cobbled road led back up into the hills and thence to our hostel where we soaked in the wonderful view across the valley towards Otavalo about four kilometres away. It was a delightful spot in terms of the relaxed nature of both the premises and the staff and, in sharp contrast to Stalag 15, we were immediately made to feel at home.

La Luna hostel, outside Otavalo

On Monday we went down into the town and wandered around the appropriately named Plaza de Poncho which strangely enough was full of people selling ponchos. We bought one each and both agreed that Sue's was quite fetching and Alan didn't look a complete pillock in his although he could have been mistaken for an extra from Lord of the Rings. The ponchos were certainly beautifully warm and we were assured that they were pure alpaca although we both observed a pig flying past the market place when we received that intelligence.

Sue modelling the latest in Alpaca ponchos

After Gandalf shaved his beard off even the hobbits didn't recognise him

Otavaleno women

Elderly Otavaleno woman

The hostel restaurant had a lovely log fire where we could sit and enjoy a glass of wine and we also had a stove in our cabana so, in spite of the chilly evenings, it was always nice and cosy once the damp wood dried out and the fires got going.

Our stay in such a beautiful area would not have been complete without a walk and that is exactly what we did on Tuesday. It took us four hours and we walked up and down the hills and along the tracks, only getting lost once due to misreading the hostel's hand drawn map, but we were rewarded with some absolutely amazing views over the lake and Otavalo and across to the surrounding mountains. We took some sandwiches with us and a bottle of water and life was very good.

Walk in the mountains above Otavalo

Arty shot above Otavalo

View from our picnic spot

Attempt at a selfie, picnic spot above Otavalo

Meeting a campanero on our walk above Otavalo

Two country women walking past the bull ring above Otavalo

It's worth noting that the flora up at this height which was something like 9,000 or 10,000 feet was remarkably similar to that which one would find in England although sometimes the dimensions were a little bit crazy. For instance, we saw oil seed rape growing, we saw a plant which looked remarkably like our English vetch only it was fifteen feet high, we saw geraniums, dahlias and gladioli as well as dandelions and thistles growing by the roadside. We also saw three different varieties of moonflower.

Yellow moonflowers at Otavalo

Red moonflowers

and white moonflowers

On Wednesday morning we packed up and set off for the village of Mindo, north west of Quito, apparently a beautiful area renowned for being full of bird life. We weren't disappointed.

We found a very nice hostel with camping space on the outskirts of Mindo. It had a beautiful garden full of bougainvillea, gardenias and flowering banana plants and it was rammed with birds. The hummingbirds were buzzing everywhere but they mostly evaded Alan's camera as they hardly ever kept still for long enough.

Hummingbird, Mindo

Hummingbird, Mindo

Hummingbird, Mindo

Hummingbird, Mindo

On Friday morning we were up at five to go out with a bird guide who certainly knew his stuff and where to take us to get the best viewings. We went up above the canopy and one of the high points of the morning was seeing twelve toucans and an aracari in the same tree.

Choco toucan, Mindo

While we were walking down from the toucan area we saw a pair of swallow tailed kites lazily circling in the sky above our heads. These are hugely elegant birds and were on Alan's 'must see' list. They were quite a long way away but their profile with those wonderfully forked tails was very satisfying.

Amongst other birds whose names we have forgotten we saw a common potoo which, as is the habit with potoos, was sitting on a tree pretending to be a dead branch. These things have their eyes closed most of the time but this one was good enough to open its eye a crack and Alan said it had the look of his old maths teacher when he was recoiling at the crass stupidity of the class he was paid to teach.

Common potoo

Our guide finally took us to an area where they put out bananas for the fruit eating birds and we saw many types of tanager and a crimson rumped toucanet. Altogether a very worthwhile morning.

Blue grey tanager, Mindo

Golden tanager, Mindo

Squirrel getting in on the act

Crimson rumped toucanet, Mindo

Crimson rumped toucanet with breakfast

Capital cities are places we have normally steered clear of but we made our way to Quito on Saturday morning with the sole intention of arranging a trip to the Galapagos Islands. We found a very nice German run hostel, this time with some exceedingly pleasant proprietors and members of staff who were very helpful and made us feel at home. Once again we were up at high altitude and were glad to see a log fire blazing in the communal area to keep the chill off.

Quito is by all accounts a bit of a dodgy city and we were advised not to go anywhere after six o'clock unless it was in a taxi and not to accept drinks from strangers as they would likely be spiked with a doping drug. We took the advice and did as we were told.

Since arriving in Ecuador we have been back and forth across the equator two or three times. It's sometimes hard to believe we have journeyed to the centre of the world when we are wrapped up in jumpers and sitting in front of a log fire, but that is the Andes for you!

It is now Monday 27th February and in the space of two days we have organised our trip to Galapagos, not made easy by the fact that we are in the middle of a three day bank holiday and most places are shut, but where there's a will .....

Tomorrow morning we fly to Galagapos where we will board a first class motor/sailboat, the MS The Beagle (though not of course the original Beagle in which Charles Darwin made his famous voyage to the Galapagos), along with eleven other passengers. We will be exploring the islands for the next eight days and thereafter we will stay at Puerto Ayora on one of the islands for a further couple of days so that Alan can do some diving.

This is without doubt the biggest luxury we have afforded ourselves on this trip but we both agreed that if we're going to get the most out of the experience, we'd rather spend a little more and do it right.  However, we also take pleasure in having saved over £3,000 by making a last minute booking!!

Flight of the Condor

The drive to the Tatacoa desert from El Espinal on Saturday 4th February was interesting. The first part of the drive was a very fast, very straight, very smooth tarmac road and then we turned off for Villavieja, the main access point for the desert. Here the road changed somewhat abruptly to a rough dirt track which passed through some wetlands, rice paddy fields and some hills until eventually we started to see signs of desert close to Villavieja.

Tree in full blossom - on the road to Villavieja

Elderly man giving us directions

As we were approaching Villavieja we saw a huge rainstorm coming towards us and sure enough we drove right through it. In consequence the dry and dusty track turned to something resembling thick porridge and became exceedingly slippery and even with Diff Lock on we were slithering about. Not quite what we were expecting in the desert.

Thunderstorm heading for Tatacoa desert

Youngsters in Villavieja

We found a hostel right in the heart of the desert and we spent the evening sitting out under the stars and although there was no ambient light a full moon and cloud cover did not make it the perfect star gazing experience we were hoping for.

On Sunday morning we trooped off with a number of other people into the desert. It was not really what we had in mind, it was basically a tour with a Spanish guide giving a Spanish commentary that he'd done a hundred times before but he did his best and certainly he led us through some very dramatic areas of this rather small and compact desert region.

In places the earth has been eroded back down leaving some oddly shaped mesas in place, some of them thirty feet high and in much of the area the erosion of periodic heavy rainfall has left the ground deeply cracked and crevassed like an old man's face (a little like Alan's really).

Erosion patterns in the Tatacoa desert

Erosion in the Tatacoa desert

Some very spooky erosion patterns

Small person, big cactus, Tatacoa desert

Erosion patterns, Tatacoa desert

Tatacoa desert

Erosion patterns, Tatacoa desert

Local residents, Tatacoa desert

Mesa, Tatacoa desert

Moonscape, Tatacoa desert

Flowering cactus, Tatacoa desert

Whilst we were in the red desert area we saw some reasonably interesting birds including a couple of young falcons and Alan returned later in the afternoon to photograph them in better light and admitted to being very pleased with the result.

Adult American Kestrel with two hungry juveniles, Tatacoa desert

American Kestrel

American Kestrel on thorn bush

American Kestrel on thorn bush

Monday morning was quite eventful. A couple of girls at the hostel had just come off their motor cycle and one of them had a badly lacerated knee. For the first time in nine and a half months of travelling we were able to make use of our first aid kit and Sue administered antiseptic and sterile dressings. Alan meanwhile was guzzling his breakfast of scrambled eggs.

Just then there was a loud noise and the ground started to shake. Alan looked around to see if someone had started a generator but they hadn't and so it occurred to him that what we had was a tremor. A minute or so later there was an even larger tremor which started the corrugated roof swaying and rattling loudly and everybody headed out for the open ground until it stopped. The sensation of the earth moving beneath our feet was quite weird, not unlike the very wobbly bridge Sue had stood on a few days previously. It was not a full on Richter scale registering earthquake but it was undoubtedly a significant earth tremor and we found out later that we had been very close to the epicentre.

After that bit of excitement we were on the road again, this time to Neiva, a rather unremarkable commercial city about thirty miles south of Tatacoa. Our purpose was not to see the sights but because we were still on a mission to get Lucy's oil changed and also one or two minor matters attended to. Without any knowledge of the place this was likely to be difficult but as luck would have it we were able once more to avail ourselves of the kindness  of strangers, in this case a taxi driver called Orlando.

Orlando first of all took us to a place that fixed the bonnet catch, in fact they fixed it so securely that Alan could then hardly open it. Similarly the headlights were also 'fixed', in this case with a combination of epoxy resin glue and silicone adhesive. Whether anybody will ever get them apart again is another matter.

Orlando then took us to another garage that did an oil change and fitted a new oil filter and then he went off for his lunch, telling us that he would come back and take us to a hotel and further telling us that he did not want any money for doing so. Orlando turned out to the be latest in a long line of thoroughly kind and decent Colombians. Indeed throughout our travels we have often found kindness in places where we had perhaps anticipated indifference or animosity.

Mission accomplished, we set off on Tuesday morning for the moderately long drive to San Agustin. We drove mostly uphill, thank goodness because the temperature cooled down nicely, through some truly wonderful countryside, much of it following the course of the Rio Magdalena, one of Colombia's major rivers.

Confluence of crystal clear river with the muddy brown Rio Magdalena

Intrigued udience watching Sue making lunch

We found a very pleasant campsite set in a grove of Guava trees with yet another very helpful proprietor by the name of Manuel. A lovely Israeli family, Guy, Nurit and their two young sons, whom we had met on the road to the desert, were also camping there and we spent a couple of very pleasant evenings chatting with them. On the second evening Alan lit a lovely camp fire and we sat around it until well after eleven chatting with Guy. They have been travelling in a very large camper van for a similar time to us and it was good to hear their experiences both of travel and of life.

Flowering Monstera Deliciosa, San Agustin

Lazy old hobo in hammock, San Agustin campsite

Lucy at home in guava orchard, San Agustin campsite

Bromeliads, San Agustin

Orchids in bloom, San Agustin

About three kilometres from the town of San Agustin is a very large and fascinating archaeological park, declared a World Heritage site in 1995. We went to have a look at the archaeological site on Wednesday and marvelled at the pre Colombian statues with their sharp canine teeth and diverse and strange expressions. Some of them appeared menacing, some benign, one of them looked like the manager of a department store ingratiatingly enquiring whether madam was being served.

Statue in urgent need of dental treatment, San Agustin

The pre-Colombian god of baseball

Eagle with snake

As the tickets were valid for two days we returned to the site again on Thursday to have a longer walk around the tomb sites, the foot washing fountain where there was also a birthing pool, and then a little hike up to the Feet Washing hilltop where we had a 360 degree view of the surrounding countryside.

Statue detail, San Agustin

Statue detail, San Agustin

Birthing pool, San Agustin

Group of carved stones, San Agustin

View from the feet washing hilltop

The statues and ceremonial stones are very strange, they are nearly all anthropomorphised, either animals with human attributes or humans with animal attributes. Very little is known about the origins of the site and in the absence of any written record nobody really knows what the stones are meant to represent although it's a fair bet that it's something to do with the gods looking after the deceased.

We packed Lucy up on Friday morning and set off on the road again for the city of Popayan, some 130 kilometres away. Not very far out from San Agustin we turned off at a sign to a waterfall and followed the track until it stopped suddenly in front of a 2,000 foot drop. It turned out to be an absolutely dramatic waterfall with a completely sheer drop which we saw from the opposite side of the gorge. Somebody had built a little ramp out into the void and you could stand on this and look the couple of hundred yards to the waterfall which appeared to issue out of a crack in the rock and then fall an unimaginable distance. When we looked down it was difficult not to have vertigo as the splash pool was a tiny maelstrom of churning water about a quarter of a mile beneath our feet.

Waterfall with 1,000 foot drop

The road to Popayan was very windy, a mixture of tarmac, good dirt road and very pot-holey dirt road where we discovered that the bonnet fix had become unfixed again. Continuing along the road and rising all the time into and over the Andes the vegetation changed quite dramatically such that we moved from the tropical area with bananas, through the coffee growing zone and up into the montane forest which had the look of the Welsh hills about them.

Flowering tree with bi-colour flowers

High montane vegetation at 3,000 metres, on the road to Popayan

Popayan is a handsome colonial city known throughout Colombia as 'La Cuidad Blanca' (The White City) due to its immaculate whitewashed buildings. In 1983 an earthquake caused massive destruction to much of Popayan's historic core. About 250 people were killed, 1,500 injured, 2,500 buildings and homes were completely destroyed with another 7,000 suffering major structural damage. Over the next couple of decades the city was rebuilt in the original colonial style with stunning results and very little evidence of the destruction the earthquake caused.

We found a very nice hostel in Popayan owned and run by a British couple, Tony and Kim. The first thing Tony did when we were chatting about Lucy was to take Alan off down the back doubles to a series of 'specialists'. One was a specialist on cables, one was a specialist on lights, one was a specialist on turning things out of metal and the upshot of all that was that the bonnet catch was properly fixed with a new cable, we had a new halogen bulb fitted in the spotlight and a new brass adaptor made for the gas bottle which we were then able to fill with gas. A result!

Popayan turned out to be a great place for the last part of our stay in Colombia. It was nice enough pottering around the city and looking at the churches and beautiful whitewashed buildings but it was the surrounding countryside  which really blew us away.

Partly retracing our journey from San Agustin we drove up into the Purace National Park, at the top of which is an inactive volcano. It was a truly wonderful drive up through the various climatic zones and differing strata of vegetation. Among the surprises waiting for us was gorse in flower, foxgloves, and wild dahlias anything up to twenty feet high. There were also wonderful views down into the deep valleys with the winding dirt roads seeming to plait with the winding rushing streams far down in the valley bottom.

Tree fern against the light

Twenty foot high wild dahlias, Purace national park

At 4,000 metres is the old military station which is now a rustic visitor centre from where you can make a three hour trek to the top of the volcano (which we didn't). One of the staff there told us, almost casually, that there was a place called the Mirador de Condores where they feed the wild condors by putting bits of rotting meat out for them. A condor, so far as Alan is concerned, is the Holy Grail of photography so we then set about arranging for a guide to take us there.

We returned the following morning, collected our guide and then walked together to the Mirador. Our guide put some bits of rather smelly meat on a rock and a bunch of vultures promptly came and started trying to eat them so guide was kept busy throwing stones at them.

Alan waiting hopefully to photograph condors

The view from 4,000 metres, Purace national park

The meat didn't attract any condors at first but before too long we saw a pair of condors on a rock nearby and we watched as the female spread her wings on the rock face to warm them. Shortly thereafter they soared off down the valley and it was apparent that they hardly ever flap their wings. The female did eventually land on the rock where the meat had been put out and shooed a few vultures out of the way and delicately picked at a couple of pieces of meat. Alan never thought he would have the opportunity to photograph these magnificent birds and we both agreed it was one of the high points of our trip.

Male condor

Female condor warming its wings

Female condor at rest

The flight of the condor

Condor in flight

Condor with black vultures

Condor feeding

About an hour and a half's drive from Popayan is the highland town of Silvia where the indigenous Guambiano people hold their weekly market o a Tuesday. We did not want to miss the opportunity and it turned out to be a very worthwhile trip. The market was fascinating, it was not a tourist market but it sold fruit and vegetables, herbs and spices, hardware, clothing and plastic goods, in fact all the things that people come in from the outlying areas to buy or, in the case of the produce, to sell.
On the herbal remedies stall Alan was tempted to buy a little pot of coca ointment. This is about as close as he is likely to get to cocaine but he smeared it on his thumb where he has a bit of arthritis and strange to report it didn't make the slightest difference.

Herb seller, Silvia market

Chicken bus, Silvia

The Guambiano people were fascinating to watch and were distinctive in a number of ways. Firstly, they didn't look like most other Colombians, they were more weathered, darker skinned, with slit eyes and, as far as we could tell, spoke an entirely different language. Secondly, they were a very cohesive group and did appear not to talk to anyone apart from their own people unless they were buying or selling something. Thirdly, they had a distinctive mode of dress including a bowler hat which looked about two sizes too small.

Young Guambiano woman, Silvia market

Guambiano women, Silvia market

Guambiano man, Silvia market

Guambiano woman, Silvia market

Guambiano woman happy to be at Silvia market

Guambiano woman bored with market day

Group of Guambiano women chatting

Young Guambiano woman

Rear view of Guambiano man showing skirt

Group of Guambiano people in the plaza

After a very enjoyable few days in Popayan we set off on Wednesday towards the border, stopping off at another unremarkable town called Pasto for the night. We crossed the border on Thursday 16th February and we are now in Ecuador - more of that in our next post.

Having spent nearly two months in Colombia, here are a few of our thoughts on the country and its people. Our overview of Colombians is that they are loud, noisy, friendly, happy and generally quite delightful. As in much of Latin America, the women tend to dress in a sexually provocative manner as long as they are reasonably able to carry it off and sometimes rather beyond that. Alan admitted that some of the Colombian women when they are young are amongst the most alluring that he's ever seen (Sue reckons they work very hard at it, including the breast implants!). There is considerable pride in their country and like all the people that we have met along the road they take great delight in being told how much we like Colombia.

We both agree that Colombia probably has the most dramatic countryside that we have seen on this trip so far. We did not go to the Pacific coast, there being very little there to interest us, nor did we go down into Amazonia as we are reserving that particular treat for Brazil. Therefore our impressions are principally of the Andes highlands where we spent most of our time. These mountains are dramatic in the extreme. Deep green valleys with turbulent rivers crashing down through boulder filled ravines, high mountains up to around 6,000 metres poking through the clouds. We frequently found ourselves travelling through several climatic zones in a short space of time from a tropical environment with bananas and sugar and palm trees and cactus up through the cooler areas where they grow the coffee, up into the temperate zones which look very much like the hills of Wales or the Peak district, thence into the high montane forests up at around 4,000 metres which is as high as we went.

All around us we have seen tree orchids and bromeliads including the maidenhair lichen which is so ethereal, not to say a little eerie. The misconceptions we had about Colombia have been completely blown away like chaff in the wind and we are left with the impression of a stunningly beautiful country with some delightful people.