12. - 15.02.2020: Lago Calima to Salento
Throughout our journey through South America we had kept in contact with our friend Janette who is leading a group of motorhomes along the Panamerican Highway. The group was behind us, further south, so we gave updates on road conditions and possible overnight spots for her large group.
Janette sent us a worrying message. She'd received info from a friend who lives in Colombia saying that a guerilla group called ELN were planning disruption for the coming weekend from Friday 14/2 to Mon 17/2 and threatening to attack vehicles on Colombian roads. Travellers were advised to stay off the roads! We passed on the warning to other travellers we'd met along the way and decided to head to the coffee region and stay there for the whole weekend. Janette had to delay her border crossing from Ecuador into Colombia, which took a lot of extra planning because there are so many motorhomes in the group.
We drove from Lago Calima heading east and then north and had a very hot and extremely noisy night at a service station. The next day we had problems because our extra fan in the engine had stopped working. We'd have to get it fixed but for now we needed to get to our campground to sit out the planned guerilla attacks. That meant turning our heating on full blast in the extreme heat because that cools down the engine. We were sweating buckets!!
We looked up the ELN online and found out that this weekend is the anniversary of a priest's murder in 1966. The priest was a member of the group. Unfortunately there were several reports of attacks over the weekend with vehicles and even a bus being set on fire in a region close to the Venezuelan border so we were grateful for the warning.
We stayed at campground in Salento which is a very colourful town in the coffee region where all the famous Colombian coffee is grown. We got a parking spot next to the shower block where we could plug in and went for a walk around the town. We worked up quite an appetite and there were too many restaurants enticing us so we eventually succumbed and went for a burger. Kirsten had the Holy Guacamole - a massive burger with skin fries, and I had BBQ spare ribs with salad. The portions were so huge that we ended up bringing most of it back as a doggy bag!
During our time in Salento we went for several walks in the town including climbing up 242 steps to a mirador, got all our laundry done at a self service laundrette, cleaned our motorhome, worked on our website, and watched our football team get a lucky draw ... we'd been losing 1-0 until we finally scored in the 90 + 5 minute!! Phew!
16.02.2020: Valle de Cocora
On the Sunday we took one of Willy's Jeeps to the Valle de Cocora. Kirsten had to stand on the back step for the 25 minute ride. I held onto her belt so she didn't fall off!! The Jeep and park entrance cost $10 each, well worth it for a superb day walking through the park to see the tall wax palms. It was quite a tough 5 hour walk, steeply uphill to two viewpoints, climbing 460 metres, and then walking back over 7 rickety footbridges. A very enjoyable day that we finished off by going to a very good restaurant for yummy chicken wraps. We only ordered one to share but it was so good we ordered a second!!
Beautiful town, bird watching & tallest palm trees in the world.
