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.
No comments:
Post a Comment