Crossing the Americas: COLOMBIA PART 2

Things started feeling better when they crossed into the city of Cucuta from Venezuela after the horrible border traffic. Cucuta looked good, in fact most of the largest towns in Colombia felt quite safe and looked nice, but they didn't stay. They headed south attempting to make headway fast and kept on driving into the night for a few extra hours on slow, rough mountain roads.

CANYON

ROADSIDE SCENERY

Around 10:00 p.m. they descended into a large good looking city called Bucaramanga despite remanences of recent serious landslides and destruction on its out-skirt roads. They slept in the car on a safe looking street, and in the morning Pat woke up sick (probably from some left over pizza from Michelana Venezuela they had eaten the night before), but he cured the problem with a pit-stop in the local grocery store. From there they continued all day through the Colombian Andes on beautiful scenic roads, with little traffic and great pavement until they got to Bogota in the late afternoon.

They were hoping to find a nice place to sleep in the car but were discouraged by Bogota's large size and commuter traffic. They had arrived at rush hour and decided not to waste time exiting the highway in search of a nearby safe neighborhood which might not be easy to find. Instead they chose to press on through the chaotic traffic and out of Bogota for a couple hours more in search of a place to rest. They found Fusagasuga (a.k.a Fusa) which surprised them pleasantly, because as soon as they entered the town and made their first random turn onto a side-street, they immediately encountered a nice colorful Christmas lit neighborhood in which they spent a quiet night's sleep in the car.

In the morning they made coffee in a small park next to their parking spot and played with some pet dogs that were being walked by their owners. After that they drove through more beautiful Colombian Andes mountains, some of which had New Years eve heavy traffic, passing by many large and small towns until they got to Cali which did not appeal to them. It was the first big city in Colombia that looked ugly, dirty and dangerous so they do not recommend a stop there. They drove a bit further to Popayan where they spent the New Years Eve getting buzzed with empty stomaches on one bottle of wine. It was a nice town and they found a cheap hotel to stay at. They walked around at night to eat and see some people celebrating, but it was rainy so they didn't go too far. Still they had some cheap and delicious empanadas, pizza and hotdogs (the cheapest food they had found in Colombia so far). A little alcohol on New Years eve was enough to make them happily drunk, but they weren't hung over in the morning, so they got up early and drove through the empty streets past colonial white buildings of sleeping Popayan before they moved along towards Ecuador.

On the way towards the border they drove through beautiful roadside scenery with waterfalls and a deep canyon, and just before exiting the country they stopped in the town of Ipiales to see its spectacular cathedral built over a canyon.

They decided to consider the first of 2011 a good luck day for seeing their first llamas dressed in full attire, an occasion that certainly deserved some pictures.

After a bit of paper work they entered Ecuador at nightfall.