15.03.2020: Piedecuesta to Barichara
Despite the heavy rain overnight at Nukak campground, we still decided to leave and head for a small colonial town called Barichara. We hoped that the road south would be open and that driving on a Sunday meant less traffic and maybe less stops because of road damage.
After breakfast, we started packing up and getting ready to drive. We'd sent off an update for our website yesterday and had some replies from friends who'd received our email about it. Two of our friends from Canada were on a cruise but they had been stopped from docking at Cartagena, Colombia! They weren't sure what was going to happen. (They finally managed to disembark as planned in Fort Lauderdale, USA to weeks later and managed to get back home to Canada just as all the borders closed! They were really lucky!) Kirsten's brother and his wife had driven back home to Germany after their skiing holiday in Austria but had to go into a 14 day quarantine at home because they had returned from a coronavirus hotspot!
We said goodbye to John the manager and drove to a nearby supermarket to pick up supplies for 2 to 4 weeks - rice, beans, toilet paper. We weren't panic buying but we knew we were heading for a very small town. The chances of finding a supermarket there would be zero!
We headed south along the main road and saw all the damage that had been caused by the torrential rain. Mud slides, lots of trees and debris in the swollen river had crashed into the banks at the river bends and taken out parts of the road with it. We got stopped a few times as parts of the road were one lane only, but, because it was a Sunday, there was no road construction being done. That meant we got through a lot quicker, but the damage was extensive and quite shocking.
We had a coffee stop at a viewpoint above Cañón del Chicamocha. We saw beautiful valleys but, unfortunately, it was very hazy. We had a fresh baguette and opened a jar of homemade jam from Marion, Hasta La Pasta campground in Paraguay. A real coincidence because they sent us an email telling us, amongst other things, that Paraguay had closed its borders, Argentina too!! We continued along the hilly route, going up to 1800m and down to 650m, then back up again. It was already dark by the time we turned off the main road at San Gil and took the narrow, winding 25 km route to Barichara that was steep in parts. We drove into the small town where we needed to bump along cobblestone streets and then up an extremely steep street to a parking area behind a church at the top of the town. It was 7-15 pm when we parked up and there was one other motorhome there too.
Kirsten went out for some night shots of the town and I put away the rest of the shopping. We also watched a German talk show discussing the virus. A doctor on the show criticised them for not being 2 metres apart in the studio (!) and we also learned that the deaths and cases we are seeing now are from 10 days ago. Holy moly!! In 10 days time we'll see the deaths and cases from today. Alarming!! This was not quite right, as we now know, but this was the information at the time. One virologist also said that if everyone in the world stayed at home for 2 or 3 weeks, the virus would die out! If only we'd done exactly that!!??!! Next time ... I think we will!
What we didn't realise was that the following day would turn our world upside down!
16.03.2020: Barichara
This was the day that everything went ass over tea kettle and we were caught out, without any warnings. Little did we know that this would be our last day of freedom! Canada, the EU and Chile closed their borders. Colombia had already closed its border with Venezuela two days ago. The world started to completely shut down and travelling as we knew it ended abruptly. Unbelievable!
After breakfast I went out for a sightseeing walk around the town and found a bakery where I bought some cakes for us to have with our coffee later. Afterwards Kirsten went out to take more photos and heard a police car with a loudspeaker on the back telling everybody in Spanish to stay at home. She came back and told me.
Immediately, I sent a WhatsApp to Kika to see if she had heard anything. We had originally planned to stay at her campground north of Popayán in a couple of weeks on our way back to Ecuador. She then phoned up the Moroccan embassy in Bogotá (she is Morrocan and has very good connections!) and was told that Bogotá is closing down in 2 days and that all of us travellers should find a place to stay - NOW!
Oh, boy ... so I looked on iOverlander and found a campground just outside of Barichara owned by a Dutch couple. We sent them a WhatsApp to see if they're open. They sent us a message back saying "We have to think about it!" They closed the campground 2 days ago because of the Coronavirus. We sent them a message back saying that we are not infected and that we have been in Colombia for the past 7 weeks. We are now stuck in Barichara with nowhere to go. A bit later that evening they sent another WhatsApp saying that we could go there provided we self quarantine for the first 2 weeks. Great! No problem!
We were going to need propane and knew there was a company on the main road, south of San Gil, where we could get our bottles filled. On MapsMe we found a Western Union office in San Gil where we were hoping to get money and we also found a large supermarket. So we made a shopping list.
Unfortunately we got plagued by mosquitoes that night and had to put up our mosquito net. So we didn't sleep much - it wasn't just the mosquitoes causing us problems but all the world events buzzing around in our heads!
