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06.02.2020: Silvia to Cali
After our short but super stay at La Bonanza we set off north again and got straight into problems because our GPS took us the wrong way ... again!!! We ended up asking the police for the correct route out which, unfortunately, meant a short, but very steep, rough road to get back onto the main road and we ended up scraping the underside of our motorhome!
We headed north to the huge city of Cali. There's nothing there for tourists but we had made an appointment with Henry, a very nice mechanic who's helped lots of motorhomes in the past. We hit heavy traffic en route so stopped at a supermarket and also had a coffee break. There was even heavier traffic going into Cali so we didn't get to the garage until 5pm. Henry wasn't there and we'd been hoping to stay inside the workshop for the night. But the manager told us to come back in the morning!
Cali is not exactly the safest place for tourists so we drove around the corner and with help from some locals found a parking spot with a security guard for the night. We didn't get much sleep though because it was way too hot - it didn't go below 30 °C.
07. - 09.02.2020: Cali to San Cipriano
At 7-50am the next morning we drove back to Henry for our repairs. New brake pads in the front, rear brakes cleaned out, drive shaft joint sent off for repair, and new bolts for our brake shoes. We spent the time in their office working on the computer and everything got finished by 6-30pm. Henry is a really interesting guy - he races his own souped up cars as a hobby. His next race was in 4 weeks - a race he's won for the last 4 years!!
We stayed in the garage for the night (with the fan on) which meant we could watch our football team win the next morning! Yippee! At 9-15am we went on a test drive with Henry to check that our drive shaft and brakes all worked properly. No more knocking noise!! It cost us approx $250 dollars in total and we drove to Jumbo supermarket for supplies. It started pouring with rain so we ended up staying in the city for another hot night!
Our next destination further north was Finca Alejandría, el paraiso de los colibris. It was a tip we found in iOverlander and was superb! We spent over 3 hours being totally amazed by hundreds of beautiful colibris and other birds. Our favourites were the little colibris with fluffy feet!! There were also Tanagers that were a beautiful blue and even a pair of Quetzals - not very often you get to see those!!
Unfortunately no one is allowed to park there overnight so we had to drive back out on the heavily potholed, gravel and mud road. Then we got onto a brand new tarmac road, heading west through 12 tunnels towards the port of Buenaventura. It started bucketing down with rain again and a few kilometres before the port we turned off onto a large car park in San Cipriano and took a concrete driveway, steeply downhill, to a covered parking area where we could park for the night.
It cost us $6 but we were really grateful to get power. It was really hot and humid so we needed two fans running all night but we didn't sleep because the rain was thumping down onto the corrugated iron roof above us!! It was soooo loud we could hardly hear each other speak!!!
Why were we putting ourselves through that??? Because we wanted to take a train tour, another tip from iOverlander and well worth it.
Tour in Popayán. Great market in Silvia. Bird paradise Finca Finca Alejandría.
