Salento, Popayan and Ipiales

This tree is a little bigger than it seems

The trip to Salento was a fairly convoluted one. We get a bus at 8am to Riosucio, that takes a couple of hours, then we go onwards to Pereira, with one final change to Salento. Easy peasy, we’d be there eventually, hopefully.

We arrived at the bus stop about 15 minutes early, where we were told in high velocity Spanish something along the lines of ‘The bus will be here at 8.30. Mudslide.’ - or at least, those are the words we successfully pulled out. No worries, we walked over the road so I could grab a coffee at the restaurant at the corner. A few minutes later, the bus arrived. Well, it wasn’t 8.30, so unsure what was going on we asked if it was the correct bus. They accepted it was and we presumed that the mudslide had been cleared quicker than anticipated, but had now told everyone it would be 30 minutes late, so we had to wait regardless.

The bus itself was a little less luxurious than most we’d experienced in Colombia so far. Where most of them had a bathroom, plug sockets and sometimes Wi-Fi, this one had smashed lights and foliage on the seats. Not that we mind, but more we should probably have realised what was coming (and why this relatively short distance of road would take as long as the next leg which was over twice the distance). The roads were narrow, bumpy and just dirt, straight up a mountain. Fortunately no fillings were lost in the process, but it certainly wasn’t a comfortable experience.

Some maintenance required

Around 30 minutes into the journey, and with the driver continually making phone calls, we pulled over for an unplanned stop. At this point, we realised that the aforementioned mudslide wasn’t prior, but now, and their intention was to leave 30 minutes later in order to avoid the landslide. Needless to say, that didn’t happen, when we were greeted by a digger and mud in the road as high as our waists. The driver assured us it’d be 30 minutes of digging and we’d be on our way. Watching the digger unable to get traction in the mud itself, I didn’t have particularly high hopes. Anyway, two hours later we all got back in the coach and we were on our way.

There's a road under there!

Everything was once again going fine, until we reached a spot about 10 kilometres from our destination. At this point, the bus pulled into a driveway and proceeded to reverse out, in the direction we were heading. The road was still clearly one way here, so I presumed he was turning around in order to take another turn nearby easier. Until we passed that turn and continued reversing down the hill for another kilometre and a half. Baffled at this point, the driver announced we needed to change vehicle, and we all grabbed our bags and went to assess what was going on.

It seemed the previous mudslide had simply been an amateur attempt at slowing us down, and now we’d discovered the king of all roadblocks. Balancing our large, heavy bags we proceeded to climb up the fallen mud and across the planks kindly left for us, turning our simple journey into an episode of Total Wipeout.

A slightly larger setback

After finally crossing the ravine, we found ourselves not at another bus, but greeted by a Jeep, already containing several people. We asked if another Jeep was coming, but they insisted all 14 of us would fit, with bags. And sure, we did, with 8 inside, 2 on the roof, 3 in the front and 3 hanging off the back. About halfway along the journey, we pulled up to some people with horses, joking that we’d stopped to pick up more people in the already crowded vehicle. Well, yes, we did, and drove off, now with 6 people hanging off the back. I won’t say it was a comfortable journey, but we did eventually get to our destination, so that was something.

On arrival, we took the next bus to our second leg, which fortunately left pretty soon after, and made for a far less eventful trip. Finally, we arrived at the last terminal, where we’d just about get the last bus to Salento, several hours after we thought we would arrive.

We’d done some research before arriving, and one of the main attractions of the area were the extremely tall and thin palm trees in the area, known as wax palms. Unusually for South America and much to my delight, this involved a 5 hour walk, without a doubt my favourite activity. We gathered some lunch supplies at a supermarket, and hopped in a Jeep (a little less crowded this time, but still with two people hanging off the back) to the start of the walk.

The walk itself was somewhat a mixed bag, consisting of fields, jungle, mud and hills, with a stop around halfway at a hummingbird sanctuary for a drink. We both ordered a hot chocolate. She asked if we wanted cheese. I’m still not quite sure why, but regardless, Diana opted for the with-cheese option like the crazy weirdo she is. Meanwhile, hummingbirds flew past our ears sounding like jet engines. Do you know how many flaps per minute a hummingbird can achieve? I haven't looked it up, but I can assure you, it’s fucking loads.

Humanity upsets me at times

See? Fucking loads

Ever seen a hummingbird being nagged whilst shitting? Well, good news!

This marked 50% of the walk, where the remaining 50% initially started by scaling a mountain, as is tradition around here. Diana ran off ahead, being that this was her idea of fun or something, and left me to get up at what others would define as a ‘normal pace’. At the top, we were greeted by a huge chicken, an ugly dog and fairly adequate views, along with what seemed to be a farm house but with no evidence of whether it was in use or not.

The walk back was primarily down hill thankfully, and passed the star attraction of the area, the wax palms. I had a full expectation of what I’d see when I got here, and I can promise you all, my expectations were not dashed. These were indeed tall trees.

Diana next to a shorter than average Bonsai tree

The way back was fairly uneventful, and upon arriving back to where the Jeep dropped off, we watched some of the drivers racing each other (on foot mind you) to pass the time, and then went to the fullest one in the area for the trip back. It was what I’d consider full, however they said there was room in the front for one and on the back for another. Diana wanted to hang on, so I took the seat and wondered if we’d hit a pothole big enough to dislodge her. We didn’t.

Arriving back in town, we went for a traditional Colombian meal (Curry – I had the tikka masala) and then headed to a nearby bar where we’d heard about a traditional game called ‘Tejo’, where you throw a heavy weight at a target. A target of gunpowder. We arrived and were told the rules – closest to the target gets a point, hit the gunpowder and get 3 points, land in the middle and get 6 points. Hit the gunpowder and land in the middle, 9 points. Easy!

Harder than it looks. Most points were purely from proximity, occasionally we’d skim the target and knock the gunpowder off, but only on a few occasions did we set off a particularly exciting bang. I did finally manage to not only hit the powder, but land in the middle, and had one leave a little pool of smoke behind, so it wasn’t an entire failure on my part. Diana also got a couple of explosions off, but honestly made more of a case for them to rebuild the walls than much else, but she had fun.

Not all misses!

We were headed towards the border, but from Salento it was a fair journey so we decided to break it up a little and head to the town of Popayan. We didn’t know a huge amount about it, other than apparently it was very white (the buildings, not the people), so we decided we’d head there for a day before continuing on. We arrived at about 7pm without a reservation, so we headed for a hostel we knew about and hoped they had a room available. Being fairly late, we headed out hoping to find somewhere to find something to eat, and found they had decided to put on a show for us, an entire orchestra was set up in the centre. A few of the songs were theme tunes from Spanish shows we didn’t know, but we did recognise ‘Piratas del Caribe’ and ‘Juego de Tronos’ (Pirates of the Caribbean and Game of Thrones).

The following day we took a look around and saw that everything was indeed white. We later found out on a tour that this had a good reason behind it – that there was a time when people didn’t have shoes and a foot parasite was rife in the area, apparently repelled by white clay. We also found out that’s why some corners of buildings were made of a rougher brick than the rest of the building, for people to scratch their feet on. Apparently the corners would eventually be red with blood. We believe that times have moved on a little since then, however the building regulations in the area now state that all buildings must be white. Interesting, if not somewhat revolting.

Rough part of town, just check out those staring faces...

Looooovely stuff 

Otherwise, it was a nice place, but nothing to keep us there a lot longer, so we headed off towards the easiest border town Ipiales. Unfortunately no sooner than I arrived my brain imploded, so whilst I slept off a migraine, Diana headed to the only real attraction in the area, a church built over a canyon. At night, when Diana visited, it becomes a crazy light show, which was described to me as being like a princesses castle.

The next morning I was feeling a little better, we took a taxi to the border, and changed up our remaining Colombian Pesos into dollars. We’d heard about scams with this, where they have rigged calculators, apparently they show you a fair rate per dollar, calculate it against the amount of pesos you have, but when they hit equals it automatically deducts a percentage from the total. Fully prepared to call someone out on it, they sure enough produced a calculator, did the sum and… Well, it was not only legit, but the actual market rate. I’m not quite sure why they bother really, they didn’t seem to be making any commission from it, but we were happy with our trade. A two hour queue to stamp out of Colombia (and a 2 minute queue to stamp into Ecuador… Not sure why the disparity!) later, and we were on to our next country!