Highs, lows, deserts and rains

First off, I want to say thanks to everyone who has read and commented all around on my last post, Traveling While Asian. I was a little unsure of posting something so different from our usual stuff, but due to the great response, I’m going to post more non-photo based essays. I also still would like to write something more nuts-and-bolts about our milestone of a year on the road, and now that I have that pseudo-rant off of my chest, maybe I can move on. We are still on the move, after all. 

After two nights in the tony neighborhood of El Poblado in Medellín, we set off on a rambling route toward Ecuador. Our first stop was El Peñol de Guatape, a large monolith that you can climb via a set of switchback stairs, giving the rock the appearance of having a zipper up its seam.

It was a fantastic place to camp for the night–cool and quiet, with an unbeatable view over the water-filled valley, and another spectacular lightning show. We entertained a lot of locals while hanging out in the parking lot, and then went to visit the colorful town of Guatape in the morning.

We have been enjoying Colombia so much that we have sort of stopped planning for things to do–planning being a bigger priority when we’re desperate to get someplace else. After leaving Guatape, however, we plunged ourselves into a valley, where we were promptly bitten up by bugs. The driving in Colombia hasn’t been great to us. As in every country we’ve visited so far, Colombia seems to be in the process of repairing all of its roadways. This means that major thoroughfares often become one-lane roads, and we are brought to a dead stop on a dirt road, sometimes waiting up to an hour for our turn to pass through the construction zone. After three days of this patience-practicing pace, we arrived in the Tatacoa Desert where, to our surprise, it was raining. The cloud cover was welcome, since it protected us from scorching heat, but it also prevented us from star-gazing very much.

Excited to get back into the cool mountains, we spent two more days driving to Popayán. We spent a night in the town of La Plata, which has probably the most helpful people of any place we’ve ever been. Driving from La Plata to Popayán, however, we were told to take Interstate 24, which ended up being 100 km of dirt and rocky road, punctuated by periods of washboard and paved speed bumps through small stretches of mountain villages. The drive took us all day, because, in the helpful nature of the region, Juan stopped twice to help out stranded motorists (that road is killer).

The town of Popayán is blindingly white, even in the rain, and is bearing graffiti scars from the recent agricultural strike, which affected this region.

To close, this is my new favorite photo. We have, I think, two photos of us together on the trip, but the Tatacoa Desert was so awesome that we wanted to take a posed photo. I set up my timer on a rock, and this is the first one we took. 

More photos from the desert and the surrounding valley at limpire.