Day 20: Mindo: The tarabita

Health and Safety employees had better look away now. Today's excitement was to ride, with some fellow backpackers (hello Susan, Sue, Linda), across a deep ravine in a tarabita (pic). This is defined on Spanish Wikipedia as un primitivo teleférico utilizado en ciertas regiones de los andes. Primitivo it certainly is, but thrilling.


During the two-minute crossing of this milk crate suspended from coat-hanger wire (pic), which Lonely Planet stresses is PERFECTLY SAFE, you get a good chance to examine the forest canopy from far above, and your own mortality.

On the other side there's a half-day hike to various pleasant waterfalls (pic). You can also see a wide variety of brightly-coloured butterflies, hummingbirds, and insects to be bitten by.

Then it was back to the hostel for a dip in the river that fronts the bar, and a beer. I like Mindo.

Day 19: Mindo

Heading south from Otavalo, I crossed the equator today. There's a theme park and large monument (pic) marking the exact spot where it's 300 metres away. I only saw it from the bus, so I never got to demonstrate that water does not go straight down the plug hole in a shower at this point.


After six hours on a bus I needed to stretch my legs, so walked the last 7km down to Mindo rather than take a taxi. It's a pleasant, quiet little backpacker town surrounded by lush green mountains (pic).

The hostel is a rustic delight, with a riverside terrace round which toucans and hummingbirds flit, and its own little swimming hole (pic). I did this in lieu of a shower, so I never got to find out which way the water goes the plug hole here either.



In the evening I joined a group of fellow backpackers on a night jungle safari looking at tiny but extremely noisy frogs, and huge hairy DEADLY spiders the size of your HAND (pic).

Day 18: Otavalo: Biking nearby villages

I hired a bike in Otavalo today, to explore the surrounding scenery and indigenous villages. I know two things from experience: if in doubt, hiring a bike is always the right thing to do; and it'll always be too small for my 33" inside leg. Both proved true again, as I cycled a few kilometres into the hills outside the town, enjoying the fine scenery, when it wasn't being blocked by my knees.


These locals (pic) are waiting for the Sunday church service to start in the village of Iluman. Like virtually all locals, they're in traditional costume, which consists of headdresses, embroidered blouses and shawls for the women, and hats and ponchos, or Barcelona football shirts, for the men.


Iluman must be quite a local service town, because it has a bike shop (pic). It also has all the other things you'd expect in a regional centre for a rural backwater, such as a church, bank, car workshop, and centre for treating alcohol and drug addiction.


Down the road in Peguche, another indigenous village, there was a fiesta, organised by the local authorities. I enjoyed some excellent caldo de patas (a tasty big fresh-herby soup with potatoes and bits of meat) and guanabana (custard apple drink), there was a mobile walk-in dentist and psychologist, and there were balloons and pot plants up for grabs free, which the kids snapped up happily (pic).


After sightseeing the modestly pleasant Peguche Falls, I cycled up and over the mountain on a very bumpy cobbled road to Laguna San Pablo (pic). On the way back I got a puncture and had to walk the last 4km to the bike rental place, and I wasn't smiling quite as much then.

Day 17: Ipiales (Colombia) to Otavalo (Ecuador)

I spent yesterday (Day 16) on buses - through huge, awesome valley and gorge scenery - getting from Popayan to Ipiales, a border town consisting largely of unlit, scary back streets. The reward this morning was a dawn trip to the remarkable Santuario de Las Lajas (pic), a church built out over the gorge, and a magnet for pilgrims.

On that bridge-forecourt thing are statues of musical angels, and I was particularly taken with the cool chick evidently playing a jazzy alto-sax solo (pic).



Then it was goodbye to Colombia and hello to Ecuador. Somehow, as I looked out the bus window, it was less like the Andes, and more like Keswick, than I expected (pic).

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I got off the bus at Otavalo, a town famous for its Saturday market, when indigenous people come from miles around to sell high-quality handicrafts (pic), many made from alpaca wool. It overflows with gorgeously-coloured blankets, bags, hats, socks, sweaters, football scarves for all major European teams, and anything to do with Bob Marley.

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It's a chance to see local people in their traditional dress (pic). And a huge number of bargain-hunting gringos, toting their Frommer's or Lonely Planet guides, in theirs (no pic).

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Several stores sell so-called 'Panama hats' (pic). As you know, they actually come from Ecuador. As opposed to the 'Panama hats' you get in the UK, which come from China.

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Quite a few stallholders seem to have trikes for shifting stuff to and from, like this chap (pic), and he could teach even me a thing or two about how to stack a bike trailer.

There's plenty of cheap and tasty street food here too (pic). But no, I didn't see any guinea pig.

Day 15: Popayan, car-free

I spent yesterday (Day 14) on buses and motorbike / rolling-stock chimerae getting from San Cipriano to the colonial city of Popayan (pic). My timing was perfect: today, by coincidence, was Popayan's Dia sin carros y sin motos - Car Free Day, which as the local government website notes, is actividad obligatoria.

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There was a morning launch party in the main square with all the familiar elements of similar events at home. Media interviews with local cycling campaigners, for instance (pic). Even though I couldn't understand much of their lightning-fast local-accented Spanish, I knew exactly what they were saying.

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There was also free soft drinks and fresh fruit, free bike maintenance, free pens, and - perhaps something you wouldn't get in say Wolverhampton or Hull - some lively salsa dancing (pic), which at times verged on wrestling.

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So I hired a bike and spent a very enjoyable day exploring the town centre by (mostly) vehicle-free streets (pic, though taxis and buses were still allowed on some routes). I got out to some very non-touristed 'local' (ie poor and scruffy) districts with friendly local markets. They have all the things we have at home, like papayas and corn on the cob and even potatoes.

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I also cycled out to some hilltop churches nearby for views over the city (pic). Behind those discreet whitewashed facades lurk an astonishing number of restaurants doing a full two-course lunch with soft drink for 3500 pesos (just over £1). You can imagine what my route was after taking this picture...

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Day 13: San Cipriano's unique DIY rail trolleys

The village of San Cipriano, in south-west Colombia, is famous for its unique mode of transport. It's 12km from the nearest road: to get there, you have to take a three-hour bus from Cali, get off in the middle of nowhere, and walk across this footbridge... (pic)


...and wait around by the railway tracks on the other side. Trains no longer run, but the track is the only way (apart from a very rough footpath) to get to San Cipriano. So the resourceful locals came up with brujitas, 'little witches' (pic): a motorbike with platform at the side, fitted with railway wheels.
The bike's front tyre rests on the platform, and the back one on the track, driving the whole thing along. It's the standard local transport for the 12km between village and roadhead (pic), and a taxi service for visitors. If two meet mid-track, one driver just has to stop and haul it off.


The twenty-minute journey is a thrilling experience (pic), especially when the Colombian lady of a certain age next to you keeps grabbing your thigh to stop herself falling off, and then giggles an apology.


There are tunnels... (pic)


... and alarming short bridges with no visible means of support. (pic)


San Cipriano itself is a jungle village (pic) of ramshackle tin-roofed wooden huts, many of which offer food and very basic accommodation. They are draughty and completely uninsulated, so would probably score only a B on British homebuyers' efficiency ratings.


Life is simple here. With no electricity or internet, the locals simply enjoy the outdoors, chatting or playing in the cool, lovely river (pic). Until the electricity came on at 5pm, that is, when the young people all gathered in one of the bars to play pool, listen to very loud Colombian rap, and text their friends.


I enjoyed a beer on the balcony of my hotel and watched the local families sit outside talking in the warm evening (pic), and had a superb fish supper. Not quite as fresh as it could be - the man who caught it walked quite slowly from the riverside to the hotel.

Day 12: Villa de Leyva, and lots of buses

Another day largely spent on buses or in bus stations. But I got a good look round Villa de Leyva in the morning, and - with the mountain backdrop now revealed - a very fine main square (pic) it is too. And people go on about Richmond's square, in Yorkshire. Pah. That's just a car park. This is how to do it.


The streets are unspoilt too (pic). The pace of life is gentle. Here's one of the quicker residents.


After that was a long slog during which I got familiar with Bogota Bus Terminal's various eating opportunities and cheap internet facilities, en route south to Cali. It was a sleepless night, thanks to the aircon being switched permanently to 'quick freeze' mode.

Day 11: Buses to Villa de Leyva

A day spent mostly on minibuses, looking out of the window at epic scenery, making my way to the unspoilt old colonial town of Villa de Leyva. It was dark when I arrived, but the vast, cobbled main square was gently humming with activity. A beer or two at a local bar (pic) and a couple of street-stall empanadas seemed an appropriate and proportionate response.

Day 10: Barichara

Barichara (pic) is a pretty small town an hour's bus ride from San Gil through stunning scenery. The streets are kept film-set clean by proud residents with brooms and litter picks.


The lovely, sociable main square is the focus for everyday life, where men gather to talk about cars and football, but sometimes get distracted (pic).


Tracey and I walked the Camino real, a 9km path (pic) through epic lush valley scenery to the tiny village of Guane.


Guane is a very small, very quiet little village where people take goats for walks (pic). Inspired by this, we had a fine cabrito (roast goat) in a local restaurant. One of the side-dishes was a sort of goat haggis, and the locals amused themselves by trying to mime the part of the body this involved.


After the hard work of a bus ride back we all deserved a leisurely beer by the hostel pool, chatting to some holidaying marketing execs who were still on London pace, and broke off from their cigarette now and then to check their tindr account.

Day 9: San Gil: Rafting and swimming holes

A day of water. Usually I avoid water, as anyone who's seen me in a whisky bar knows (hello Mark and Si). But, along with Tracey, a fellow inmate at the hostel, I went white-water rafting this morning. On a sunny day it seemed too good an opportunity to miss, especially at just 30000 pesos (under a tenner) for 45 minutes of delightful, mostly gentle, floating downriver amid San Gil's lovely scenery, occasionally practising our technique for hauling people out of the water.


No pics of the rafting, but pictures of course of lunch (pic) in the local market. This is your typical Colombian almuerzo: a hearty soup followed by an equally hearty plateful of rice, cassava, lentils, salad, and well-stewed, randomly-shaped chunks of meat apparently chopped in anger.


In the afternoon, along with Paul and Faye, an entertaining English couple on a big trip, we took a bus to the local swimming-hole near Curiti. This was excellent, and we had the place to ourselves (pic). Just as well, as our in-jokes around English popular culture circa 1984 to 2010, over our beer from the downriver stall, would have bored everyone else.


In response to a request that has been pouring into my email inbox, here's a rare picture of me (pic, right) showing off my cyclist-pattern tan. Let that be a lesson to you all.


Our walk back to the village to get the bus was enlivened by a lift from a man transporting eggs in a pickup truck (pic). Given the state of many back streets here, it was probably an omelette when he arrived. Colombia is a nice place.

Day 8: San Gil

From Bucaramanga bus station early this morning I continued straight on by minibus to San Gil, a small town specialising in backpacker adventures such as rafting, rappelling, and eating ants.


This area, heartland Colombia, is full of huge mountains and plunging gorges. The bus to San Gil was a thrilling sequence of bendy climbs and bendy descents with vast views (pic). Everyone else on the bus was a local. I could tell, because they ignored the scenery and did things on their smartphones instead.


I checked into a delightful hostel on the easy-going main square and strolled round the town and its botanical gardens. And, oh yes, those edible insects. Here they are in the dish, a selection of hormigas culonas: the local speciality, fat-bottomed ants, fried or toasted. They're crunchy and salty, rather like micro-pork scratchings, and taste curiously of Bovril. I offered the dish to my fellow hostellers (pic), but they politely declined. I expect they were too engrossed in the card game.

Day 7: Cartagena to Bucaramanga

In fact today's pics come from last night, after I'd updated my blog. The old town (pic) was all very nice but very touristy, full of white middle class middle aged people, which is fine, and who knows I might be one of those one day, but...


...instead I walked a few blocks south to the Plaza de Trinidad, a cool local hangout and great place for cheap street food. I bumped into a couple of fellow backpackers and we sipped some cheap beers from the shop opposite and chatted. It was a fabulous evening, with laid-back locals congregating to do social things like play chess al fresco - quite a spectator sport (pic). There was also an impromptu band - a guitarist/singer and several percussionists (who didn't know each other, they'd just turned up) struck up some salsa singalongs, with lots of beautiful young people clapping along and joining in. I blended in unnoticed - but that was mainly because regular power cuts kept sabotaging the lights, so nobody saw me.

As for today, I spent most of today doing a final stroll round the old town, finding cheap street food and fresh fruit juice. I took a local bus through torrential rain to the bus terminal outside town, where I got on an overnight bus south to Bucaramanga. Forget all those tired old clichés about Colombia being dangerous: night buses are perfectly safe. That's because there are armed security guards frisking everyone who gets on, searching their bags, and taking videos of all the passengers so they can identify the victims later on.

Day 6: Cartagena

I flew up yesterday from Bogota to Cartagena, up north on the Caribbean coast. Cartagena - an old colonial gateway town - is probably Colombia's most beautiful, with some lovely old squares... (pic)


...and lovely old streets with timeless sights: balconies overflowing with bouganivillea, brightly-coloured colonial facades, and touts trying to flog middle-class tourists donkey rides and terrible souvenirs.


Luckily I'd done my sightseeing in the morning, because at eleven it started pelting with rain - a real tropical downpour. This was the view from my hostel (pic) for about three hours. Fortunately it has its own bar.