33.0 El - y - sh - ch - j

When we started to learn Spanish we were told that 'll' didn't phonetically make a sound like 'el', or even 'thl' if you were Welsh, but made a 'y' sound. So Paella was pronounced Pah-eh-yah. Except when we got to Argentina it wasn't. It was now Pah-eh-sha. And in Chile there was a hint of Pah-eh-cha. In Colombia that has evolved to Pah-eh-jah. So Medellin is actually Med-eh-jean and you remember it because Medellin is where jeans came from as they had a big garment/fashion industry.

But of course Medellin is known for other reasons now. It wasn't those other reasons that brought us here; we needed new tyres, brake pads and other things looking at on the bike. This is the last country before Mexico where there is an official Harley dealer and unofficial ones are unlikely to be able to deal with our bike. And it is still a very long way to Mexico.

As is our wont, we went on a walking tour. Medellin is a pretty long drawn out city and there was a walking tour in the area where we were staying - chosen for its proximity to the Harley garage. It was also said to be one of the safest parts of Medellin. But even here we were told both by our accommodation and also by the Harley garage and later on by the walking tour guide as well not to walk back to the accommodation at night, even though it was only fifteen minutes walk from Nightlife Central. But we did.

The area we were staying in, all three of us, is El Poblado. It didn't really exist as much that long ago, but it is now Soho on steroids with extras. It really was a walking tour like no other we have had - note to ourselves, we should do some London ones. The guide said there was a 20th Century church at our meeting point but that was the only mention of an 'important' building in the area. Instead we got a download of the current situation. The cities are effectively controlled by the state, police and military if you like. Areas out in the fertile jungle areas WHERE STUFF GROWS are basically controlled by guerrillas and drug cartels, sometimes the same thing. The cities are therefore pretty much conflict free. This was the same as what we had heard in Popayan. But crime is increasing. Our guide had been mugged twice in the last six months. He showed us a recent stab wound in his arm and he hasn't yet regained complete use of his hand due to the stabbing. He told us that in his view there was only one place to take a taxi in the area as it had video surveillance of passengers getting into cabs - don't flag a cab down. He then talked about tourism and that 90% of tourists in Medellin were single men - as an aside there is Guardian article from about two weeks ago that talks about what has happened to some of them who have used online dating apps here. We then got a spiel about some of the bars offering happy hours and two for the price of one drinks might also have had things added to them.  Our guide asked us whether we believed that Colombians had very sweet teeth as there were so many people walking round selling lollipops from trays. There were two prices for the lollipops. If you paid the more expensive price you got a little packet with the lollipop. He told us that in the last year things had been spiralling out of control after a number of years of calmness, as Medellin had started to become used to being a tourist destination.

El Poblado as we said is Soho on steroids. Bars, restaurants, fast food outlets, discos, clubs, sex shops everywhere. Young girls at the doors of them all trying to entice you in. The whole place is noisy, brash and very lively indeed. Our guide also showed us where the bombs had gone off and where innocent civilians had been killed as collateral damage during the drug wars and how this had been a turning point for 'cleaning' up the city. He also showed us the shrines to the Virgin Mary and explained that a lot of the little plaques were for those killed in the fighting; civilians and those from the cartels. He explained how the Metro stations had become safe havens after shrines to the Virgin Mary had been built into them - apparently the cartels didn't shoot in churches. And then there was the cult of Pablo Escobar and how many still respected him for what he had done donation wise for the city, whilst others counted the bodies.

The place is all bright lights. It certainly isn't seedy. The girls wear well the little that they are wearing. You don't get hassled by anyone whilst you are walking around. There is nobody hanging around who looks wasted. However...

One image that sticks in our mind is a group of young girls, late teenagers, all dressed up - not with much - withdrawing money from an ATM. Sat on the floor on sheets of cardboard were women with their babies and toddlers. It's totally unclear to us whether the women were displaced indigenous people or Venezuelan refugees. There are quite a number of them on Calle 10 and the internet suggests they have been there a while - no matter, the babies hadn't been. We don't understand how the basic fundamentals of life play out for the mothers and their children - the babies weren't born on the street were they?

One of the other things you notice as soon as you get 50m away from the bright lights is the smell of any greenery. Human waste smell. 

So you have all this going on simultaneously with people splashing over the odds money on cocktails, drugs and beer. And a Harley garage...

We had beers with our guide Santi after the tour. And we accepted free samples. We walked back to the hotel 15minutes from the bright lights at nine thirty at night. And we wondered when the bright lights would be turned off and what happened to the women and their babies?

The following morning we had a follow-up tour in the City Centre with another excellent guide. He mentioned three buildings and the Botero sculptures but then it was back into the issues and how things seemed to be escalating and the risk of them getting out of control. We met in Plaza Botero which is full of Botero sculptures donated by the artist. The donation was dependent on them being in a public square in the centre meant to help civilise the area. The working girls were already at work around the square.  

Of the three global cocaine producers Peru and Bolivia's production was static and accounted for 33% of the current market according to the UN. Colombia's was the rest and growing exponentially with the majority being shipped out of Ecuador and ending up in Antwerp, as the growing European market demanded more cocaine.  Production currently covers an area the size of Luxembourg. The UN forecast that cocaine will overtake oil and coal next year as Colombia's biggest export. We were taken to the Saturday night dance Plaza where a bomb had gone off killing and maiming innocent people of all ages. Botero donated a sibling bird sculpture for the shattered one in this Plaza - as long as both were displayed side by side. There is another Plaza with light sticks that is meant to be seen as a beacon from the surrounding hills. During the day it is there to represent the victims of the drug wars.

All this comes across as very negative and scary. It's what we were told by locals who had lived through the Colombian troubles and seen their city recreated into something better and different where they weren't afraid. And they were proud of it. But current trends worried them. We were careful but we never felt in danger at any time. There wasn't the massive police presence like in the centre of Buenos Aires. One of the guides even postulated that their might be an unwritten rule not to target tourists as tourists were feeding all aspects of the economies in the city. But the recent sex related crimes were suggesting otherwise.

After two quite heavy and, in a lot of ways, emotional days - including getting a hopefully rejuvenated bike back - we took a day off to visit the strange Piedra at Guatape outside of Medellin. La Piedra is a giant granite monolith outside the very touristy village of Guadape. Guadape had been watching Grayson Perry on TV. The whole area had been flooded to create a massive reservoir feeding a Hydroelectric plant. The plant supplied 5% of Colombia's needs on top of some being exported. The new lake had submerged a small town which was rebuild on higher ground. A cross marked the spot of the old church.

The lake reminded us of Lake Como with some very substantial villas bordering it. Built with money from which sources? Pablo Escobar had one but it was bombed by some of his rivals and has been left as a ruin. Otherwise its footballers and their wives now.

Back to La Piedra. 200m above its new datum level and first climbed in 1956. Now there is a CONCRETE staircase to the top; all 708 steps. Having trained at altitude, we fairly ran up them to the top.

Our last day in Medellin was spent on another walking tour this time of the area called Comuna 13. Comuna 13 is an area of Medellin where a number of military operations were undertaken to cleanse the area of guerrillas. Apparently the military employed some paramilitaries to do the dirty work on a per-head basis and not all the heads were those of guerrillas. There were 4,000 missing people after the last operation back in the early naughties and bones are still being found in nearby disused mine workings. Today the area is a bit of a theme park in our view. A theme park with an edge and an edgy back story. So there is an 'urban' story - hip-hop, rap, break dancing, graffiti, bars, music, cannabis beer, that sort of thing. It doesn't have the veggie food stalls of Camden Lock. Yet. There were no homeless there and no police. It was self-policed by the community...and somebody presumably took a cut somewhere along the line. But we only saw what we were shown. There is more than likely another side if not sides to Comuna 13.

Architecturally it was an incredible place with only narrow alleys separating the buildings and hundreds and hundreds of steps. A recent  mayor on a free-beer stance had installed external escalators to help the community. The place was very vibrant and lively but was full of tourists. We wondered what was left when the tourists went to El Poblado in the evening to drink, eat and sleep?

32.0 Anyone for coffee?

Colombia was built on coffee. And bananas and sugar cane. Now its about  other things, but more of that another day. The centre of Colombia is coffee-land or 'cafetera' and as we are travelling South to North a stop or two in the centre seemed appropriate, so we found ourselves in the village of Salento which turned out to be a pretty fun place. The village has a Plaza as do all villages, towns and cities in South America. The buildings and houses are all painted in a number of bright colours and, according to the locals we spoke to who had lived there for 50 years, they always have been - it's not something that has happened to draw tourists to a picturesque village high up in the hills.

Sometimes on a long 'adventure' we find we need some downtime. Not just relaxing but also catching up on things like the washing and planning where we are going to next! This was going to be our downtime. 

From the Plaza or town square in Salento, transport is available in two principal directions - one to see Cocora National Park with its wax palm trees that can grow up to 70m high and the other to visit small scale coffee farms. The interesting thing is that the transport is run by a local cooperative and it does not involve the ubiquitous white minivan. They actually run a fleet of Jeeps, real ones, not Japanese equivalents. With a Jeep you can get two up front with the driver, six sat down in the back and another three stood up, outside, on a shelf at the back of the Jeep holding onto the roof and riding shotgun. Of course we have no idea how insurance works on these trips. No seat belts and hanging on outside? Yes they drive slowly - they have to on the coffee trip as it is down an unmade lane, but things happen. And we did pass a stopped Jeep where someone had quite clearly fallen off the back which was what caused the question in our minds about insurance... Nonetheless we rode shotgun together on one trip and it was quite fun.

So we went to learn about coffee, the plant, its growing, the flowers that become little beans, the types of trees etc. Surprisingly a fresh bean picked off the tree and popped out of its shell tastes not coffee-like at all and quite sweet if you just suck it. The 'history myth' about coffee, and who knows, it might be true, is that people tried and failed to make a tea-like drink out of the leaves and gave up. They then threw everything on to a fire in disgust and it was only when the fire roasted the beans and gave off an aroma... well, the rest is history. Good beans, when they have been scrubbed, apparently float. They are also a creamy white colour. A large number don't pass this test and they end up in Colombian supermarket coffee we were told... we wonder, when we get back to the UK, whether we will be able to interrogate those coffee sellers with our newfound knowledge.

The 'finca' called El Recuerdo we visited was very small scale and trying to operate on an environmental basis. It was really pleasant; a shame in many respects that we didn't stay chatting with the people there a bit longer. But they will have had work to do and our return Jeep was calling. So was the coffee cake we had sampled the day before...

Visiting the palm trees in the National Park gave us the opportunity for a walk - something we find necessary when riding the bike so much. Even when it is hot and sticky and the insects are hungry/thirsty. The wax palm trees are the national symbol of Colombia and can grow to over 60m. They look as though they could be the subject of some anthropological TV programme about indigenous people who climb them for some bizarre reason. But then again they might be called wax palms for a reason which might make this difficult.

From Salento we moved to Jardin which had been recommended to us by a couple we met in Popayan. It was supposedly similar to Salento, relatively high up in the hills, coffee, town square and walks. However this time we were staying quite a way out of town which gave us the opportunity to use the taxi tuktuks to get back to our accommodation, after having walked down to the village. Jardin had the first European type Plaza we had come across in South America. By that we mean that there were lots of cafes all round the square with tables and chairs set out in the middle. And we benefited from this arrangement.

We had a long arduous walk to a cafe on the top of a surrounding hill on an old mule track still used by mules from what we could see/step in. Francoise's sandals were far from the ideal footwear. It was amazingly steep in some places; we don't know how the mules manage, but they clearly do, as that is the only way to get the bananas down. The bunches would be pretty good in the gym, lift one, eat one, lift again, eat another one.

We also visited a small bird sanctuary where some male birds, of an astonishing red colour, gather to 'sound' each other out. They are far prettier than they sound...

31.0 Breaking up is hard to do.

Leaving our accommodation is starting to be a very time consuming business as lots of staff want their photos with us and the opportunity to say their good- byes and wish us luck with our trip. Otovalo was no exception.

There was a time when Colombia was thought to be one of the most dangerous places in the world. It might still be. Coupled with the issues in Ecuador, which are of course linked to Colombia, we were wondering what to expect at the border? There was only one military checkpoint prior to the border in Ecuador and that was on the other side of the road. Maybe there were patrols elsewhere along the frontier in the fields, woods, mountains whatever?

The border was pretty obvious when we arrived there as it was full of taxis, people calling out to you, people trying to sell you things and the usual groups of people just hanging around. But no police of any sort, and no military, no uniforms of any sort. In anticipation of needing them imminently, we stopped on the side of the road and got our passports and other documents ready. We then set off slowly looking for the Ecuador checkpoint. To no avail. We then passed the Colombian checkpoint and decided that this wasn't right. We had entered Colombia and had no paperwork to prove we had either left Ecuador or entered Colombia. And nobody in any sort of uniform to ask anything.  Bizarre we thought.

So we turned round and headed back to Ecuador. We passed the Colombian checkpoint without stopping and headed for the Ecuadorian building. In order to access it, we mounted the pavement and parked the bike outside the front door - cars were being herded elsewhere and we didn't really want to get in a queue to officially re-enter Ecuador, having not officially exited it. And everything was fine. It seemed like this was what we should have done in the first place but we have no idea how we would have done it.

We have mentioned that generally people are not very tall here. Officialdom behind glass windows tends to sit down behind desks with their computers to check our papers. The windows that you speak to them through are slightly lower than waist height on Paul. Our Spanish is far from perfect. This means that Paul has to get down on his knees at these windows to be able to deal with things. God knows what would happen if a basketball team went through here!

Colombia in comparison was all electronic and online and as things had been prepared in advance, all we needed to do was knock on the Customs Officer's door for him to unlock it and then give a few details so he could send emails to Paul and we were done. But only after a discussion about the colour of the bike. Our V5 document describes the bike as black. You can only have one colour; what you see is the petrol tank which is bright orange. It was too hard to explain in Spanish... the Officer got a bit bored with Paul's Spanish and there was an agreement that the bike was black. We were officially in Colombia!

Fearing the worst we had booked accommodation in Ipiales 5km from the border. It was nowhere, BUT, in the morning, it gave us the opportunity to visit Las Lajas - chosen not so long ago by the Daily Telegraph, apparently from a list of 23, as the most beautiful church in the world with its altar built into the rock face. But it would have been so much better without the rain and some blue sky...

Our direction is always generally North and as it turns out this, luckily, corresponds with a green zone on the UK FCO map of where and where not to go. Pasto was our next stop and we found ourselves in a modern bit of town with nice comfortable accommodation, coffee shops and nice restaurants. We forgot all about sightseeing and went cakeseeing at coffee shops - well not just seeing- and later on, we pre-empted Valentine's Day at a posh restaurant.

And then we hit the road again. It was Winter in Ecuador but it is very hot in Colombia. We are confused. The heat is also tiring; we are wanting to stop more but it's not always easy to find places. The roads are pretty good really but we are slowed up by being caught up in the sport of truck-jousting. Some of the trucks are very slow, especially up hills, which there are a lot of.  The black smoke they spurt out is pretty grim too. We also overheat, all three of us, when going slow. So we just have to overtake whenever and wherever we can immaterial of the double yellow lines in the middle of the road. We will practice our excuses in Spanish for when we get stopped by the police.

In medieval jousting the objective is to unseat your opponent. The bike is quite powerful and relatively thin and we have not had issues overtaking. Cars aren't quite the same and from the bent armco, police presence, yellow tape and crowds peering over the edge, two cars had tragically been 'unseated' in a head-on and gone over a very high vertical drop. There would have been no hope for them.

What we have also seen encountered is refugees. We are told that they are Venezuelan but we don't understand the geography. We are also told that most of them are 'undesirables'; bad people. We were told the same thing in Chile. We have seen two sorts of refugees, maybe three. We have seen families with pushchairs and wheelbarrows walking along the side of the road primarily heading North. This is not a convoy, but isolated families. It is very sad indeed. We are in southern Colombia; we would have expected them to have crossed over in the north if they are heading for Central America and then the USA. According to the Colombians they are returning north having tried and failed to get into Peru and Chile. We don't know but we haven't seen any refugees prior to Colombia. We also see groups of three or four young men. We saw some hanging around speed humps so that, when the lorries slow down, they jump on the back of them. We also spot quite a lot of individuals walking on their own a long way from anything. We don't know whether they are locals or refugees.

Popayan. We came here to do one of our city tours and learn a bit about its history. It's also a pretty good idea to have a rest from the bike from time to time. In addition you meet others and Manon gave us some tips fkr elsewhere in Colombia as did Heather and Charles, who used to live in Lewisham who we had dinner with that evening. Popayan is called the White City as all the buildings in the historic centre are painted white, maximum two storey and protected by UNESCO. Well nearly all. They weren't always painted. At the time of the Spaniards chalk was used. According to our guide it was used because the indigenous population had a terrible problem with foot lice or 'chiggers' and chalk relieved the itching. Patches of unrendered, unchalked stone were left on some buildings for people to relieve their itching Baloo like. Popayan is also, in Colombia, the City of Universities, the City of Gastronomy and the City of Colombian Presidents. It tries to cover its bases to maintain tourist interest. It is also a cIty just on the edge of the FCO red zone. The buildings that were something other than white used their colour to signify whether they were courts or other things.

On our trip so far accommodation, where it existed, has been available. In Colombia we are finding for the first time that we are not the only guests. This doesn't always help the budget. On our first night in Popayan there was an electrical blackout over most of the historic centre. We struggled to find somewhere to eat but eventually found a pizzeria that had power. Just as interesting was that it had a collection of small vintage Japanese motorcycles including a 1967 Yamaha 250 - Paul had guessed 1968. In addition, all its pizzas were named after Italian motorcycles - Paul chose the Agusta after Bernardo who sorted our bike in Montevideo nearly four months ago. Well clearly Paul got talking and we had to return the following day with our bike for the photo shoot. Not just the bike. Shame it was a bit dirty.

We have been careful with the police here. We wave and smile at them whenever we see them.  We watch our speed if we see them about, though it is difficult to maintain 20km/h when that is imposed. Anyway we spotted a police pickup a few vehicles in front and obeyed the rules on speed and overtaking until a police motorcycle came up behind us and signalled that we should pull to oneside. The police motorcycle stopped alongside us making it difficult for others to pass but he was allowed to. There were two policemen on the bike. The rider had a submachine gun across his chest whilst the pillion had a rifle on his lap. They were both wearing black mirror goggles and black face masks totally obscuring their faces. And we chatted for 5 to 10 minutes about our bike...

We think we are in banana and sugarcane territory here in Colombia. Sometimes they are crappy old lorries that shouldn't be on the road. Sometimes they are cabs pulling up to five trailers  - longer than Aussie road trains.

We have been joining dots on the map rather than searching out interesting roads and our next stop was Buga which was very hot and humid. Putting to one side some quaint painted single storey buildings its claim to fame was its Basilica which seemed to be quite modern and built in immaculate brickwork. Until we got close. Then we found that the immaculately straight and aligned mortar courses had been even more immaculately painted on to brick coloured render! Surely this was harder? Maybe it was some sort of Catholic penance for the sins of the bricklayer because beneath the brick coloured render with painted mortar courses was a brick wall with real mortar joints.

We are in Colombia so we need to go for that cup of coffee now. And maybe cake.