Colombia
Adventures
Colombia
"Fin Del Mundo"
Colombia with Your Coffee?
“Bridging the (Bardo) Gap”
Our trip through Mexico and Central America was full of amazing, once in a lifetime adventures. But overlanding isn’t always glamorous. After a few magical weeks of scuba diving and surfing in Panama, we learned this the hard way as we found ourselves bogged down in the expensive and painful process of shipping our rig from Panama to Colombia. Life would get even more challenging in Colombia where we spent three weeks getting a range of repairs done on our truck in Bogota. These challenges tested our determination and, at times, our sanity. But we nevertheless had plenty of time to enjoy the fascinating country of Colombia on our way south through South America.
The Columbian Conflict
Colombia has been in a state of political and social unrest for at least the last 50 years with groups like the ELN (led by priests), FARC (led by farmers) and M-19 (led by members of the upper class) engaged in violent conflict against right wing governments and paramilitary groups.
In the early 2000s, this resulted in the death of over ten thousand innocent civilians (called Falso Positivos) who were killed during the government’s civil war with the FARC. Graffiti writers and street artists use art to help articulate this resistance. Nobody knows what the future holds for Colombia, but it’s clear that political and social resistance is still alive and well.
The good news is that many areas of Colombia are starting to emerge from a state of endless conflict and open up to foreigners. The state of Santander is an example of this. For over 100 years many communities in Santander have been plagued by war. One of our favorite towns in Santander is Barichara, a small colonial town in northeastern Colombia whose ~7,000 residents suffered through numerous wars over the past 100 years including the 1,000 day war and most recently the Colombian Civil War that ended in 2016. Frozen in time, visiting Barichara (and the tiny villages nearby) is a great way to see what colonial cities were like 300 years ago. We also loved Villa de Leyva, despite the fact that it has definitely been discovered and is on the beaten path for Colombians and other tourists.
Bogota
From Santander we headed south to Bogota where we planned to spend a few days exploring the city and getting some minor repairs done on our overland vehicle.
Unfortunately, the mechanic who was working on our car found metal in our rear differential fluid and later that day we discovered that the rear differential was cracked in multiple places. It’s pretty hard to crack the rear differential of a huge truck like our Dodge Ram 35000 so we assumed that it had been that way when we bought it in Idaho. The story about how we got a replacement rear differential from the US (since they aren’t sold in South America) is a long story involving a flight back to the US and some serendipitous help from the US embassy in Bogota. But to keep the story short, it took us almost 3 weeks to get the part and get it installed at the mechanic. But while we were dealing with it, we had plenty of time to explore Bogota which is actually an interesting city full of markets, museums, restaurants and street art.
The Coffee Triangle
After our vehicle was back up and running, we headed west to the Eje Cafetero or coffee triangle.
We found a coffee finca called Hacienda Guayabal to the west of Manzanillo where we could camp and spent several days exploring the finca, observing the coffee harvest and sipping on wonderful “supremo” coffee that is difficult to buy in Colombia since almost all of it is imported to the US and other international markets.
No trip to the coffee triangle is complete without a trip to the wax palm forest of Cocora Valley. Unimpressed with Salento, the gateway to the Cocora Valley, we decided to camp at the end of the valley and completed an amazing hike through the Quindío wax palm forest. The Quindío wax palms are the tallest palm trees in the world and can grow up to 200 feet tall. Karl also did an amazing day of enduro mountain biking in the mountains above the valley.
From Salento, we headed south through Popayán toward the Ecuadorian border. Our delay in Bogota had put us behind schedule so we were excited to move onto our second country in South America.
Bridging the (Bardo) Gap
Unfortunately, our time in Colombia was cut a bit short due to the time that we had to spend in Bogota getting our vehicle fixed.
However, we nevertheless had plenty of time to immerse ourselves in what is an amazing, and rapidly developing country. Although Colombia isn’t as easy to explore as countries like Peru, Chile or Argentina, it’s nevertheless a fascinating country that we’d recommend that everyone explore at least once in their lifetime.
Here are a few of Our Colombia Favorite Adventures.
