Dan Perry

November 13, 2007
Day 718

Aiana and I took a jeep uphill far above Salento to go camping in a place called the Valle de Cocora. The surrounding region was very beautiful with lush green cloud forest everywhere. The highlight of the area was the multitude of wax palms, which were supposedly the highest in the world. We walked around a bit and stared in awe at the hundreds of huge palm trees in the distance which were usually partially covered by thick plumes of fog. Every now and then a few cowboys rode by on their horses, but otherwise there weren’t any people around, despite the fact that there were a few restaurants and a hotel. The mixture of a symbol of the tropics and the cold, damp weather gave the area an eerie feel, like we had stumbled back in time to a land long forgotten. Apparently all of the tourists visiting Salento had forgotten this place, too.

The photo album for this entry is here.

November 10, 2007
Day 715

Last night while looking for a salsa club, Aiana and I saw several buses pass us that were blaring music and everyone on board was dancing the night away. We learned that the buses were called chivas, and that they used to be the only form of transportation in Brazil. However, nowadays, the open-air, wood-covered, brightly painted buses with the seats removed were used more as moving discotheques than as a standard form of transportation. Aiana and I decided we had to try to get a ride on one tonight.

Boarding a chiva proved to be a frustrating experience. A few people told us to wait near a certain building at around 7:00 and one would show up. It didn’t come, and some employees at a nearby restaurant were pretty sure the chivas never stopped there, but they did recommend a new place for us to wait. Once again, we couldn’t get on any chivas at the new place, but a few did pass by us, and everyone was screaming and dancing to the loud music. Someone told us to go to a hotel and wait there, but once again, none of the chivas that passed us would stop. I started to think that the chivas never stopped, and that the people on board were in a chiva limbo of perpetual partying.

Just when Aiana and I were calling it quits and walking back to the area with the salsa clubs, we finally spotted a chiva that was picking up passengers! We got on board and were soon driving around the city. There were a couple disco balls, lots of colored lights, and even a DJ to keep the music rocking. We made a stop for booze, and most of the passengers bought bottles of aguardiente, a sugarcane liquor similar to ouzo, black sambuca, or black licorice. We screamed at everyone on the streets because that seemed like the proper thing to do. The party on wheels had begun.

I soon realized that it was impossible to be unhappy on a chiva. I challenge anyone who’s angry or depressed to spend five minutes on a chiva and not be in a better mood. Then an idea hit me: Why limit the use of chivas to weekend nights in big cities? Why not make every bus into a chiva? It would be great to go all the way to Bogotá overnight on a chiva. In fact, chivas could be used for all the world’s problems. If we could just get all of the world leaders together and put them on a chiva (along with a bunch of the girls of Cali) for the night, I’m confident that within days we could achieve world peace. The power of the chiva is practically unlimited.

November 8, 2007
Day 713

I hung out with Jaime most of the day and got to know his neighborhood in Cali, but then he had to leave for Bogotá. He called a few of his friends to try to find me a place to stay, but they were all out of town. He finally got hold of another guy from Couchsurfing named Urzuz who could host me. I took a taxi to the bus station with Jaime and a few of his friends, and Jaime gave the driver instructions on how to get to Urzuz’ place.

It was late at night, raining, I had all of my possessions with me, and I had no idea where we were going. Suddenly we were outside the city altogether and there were no more street lights to give me a bit of comfort. The driver pulled down a deserted and potholed alley in the city’s industrial zone and started looking around nervously. It was a perfect situation to get robbed or worse.

After a few minutes, it became apparent that the driver was lost, even though Jaime had given him specific instructions. He called Urzuz on his cell phone and figured out that he had pulled down the wrong alley. I was screaming at him to get us out of there, that people didn’t live in deserted alleys in industrial zones. He backed the car out, but then pulled down another dark alley a block away. He got on his cell phone again, and this time I saw a figure backing into the shadows in the distance. I thought that was it, this guy was going to rob me of everything I owned and then kill me. But when we got a little closer, I realized that the shadowy figure was actually Urzuz!

I stood corrected, some people actually did live at the end of dark and deserted alleys in the middle of industrial zones. Urzuz introduced me to his house mates Claudia and Rambo (yes, that was his name), but I was still too shaken up to hang out. The house was a kind of open air structure, so I set up my tent in the back under the roof and went to bed early.

The photo album for this entry is here.

November 5-6, 2007
Days 710-711

The next stop on my tour of Colombia was Tierradentro, a little-visited region near Popayan. Well, at least it’s near Popayan on a map. However, the bus to get there took most of the day because the roads were unpaved, full of mud and potholes, and posed a serious mudslide risk in many places.

Toward the end of the day we arrived in the tiny town of San Andres de Pisimbala. I stayed with a Norwegian couple at a sweet old lady’s house as there were no regular hostels in town. We took a walk around the area and soon ran into a party of sorts in the road where a bunch of the locals were getting drunk on chicha, a strong liquor made locally from sugar cane. They were friendly people, but soon I got annoyed with a guy whose breath smelled like someone defecated down his throat. He was extremely intoxicated and insisted on talking to me from such a short distance I thought he was going to kiss me as soon as I let my guard down. The Norwegians were ready to leave after the same guy pulled the girl away for a “dance,” but actually did try to kiss her several times. But the good news was that I felt like I could strike up a conversation with any random person, drunk or sober, without feeling like they were trying to get something from me.

The next day I walked to the tombs, which were the area’s main attraction. There were three locations scattered around the region, each with several large underground burial sights that were created well over 1000 years ago. A lot of them were plain, but most had painted walls, carvings etched in the columns, or pottery scattered throughout the interior. But the one thing all the tombs had in common was a staircase where the steps were so large, even I had to jump to reach them. I think the ancient people of this region were all at least eight feet tall. That being said, the best part of visiting the tombs for me was entering them. As I jumped down the stairs, I imagined what the inside was going to look like, and as my eyes adjusted to the light, the images from thousands of years ago slowly became clear, sometimes amazing, sometimes disappointing, but always a surprise.

There were a few other things between the tombs like museums and statues that had been collected and arranged under one roof. The area was green everywhere, there were lots of coffee plantations with piles of beans drying under the sun, the locals were unbelievably nice, and there weren’t any tourists other than myself and the Norwegians. Tierradentro was a great introduction to the Colombian countryside.

The photo album for this entry is here.

November 2, 2007
Day 707

I found out this morning that there were no buses going directly to the border, a surprise considering that normally buses go wherever you want them to go, but I didn’t think it was a big deal. Instead, I first went to Ibarra, which was still a few hours from Colombia. The lady at the ticket window said she couldn’t sell tickets to Tulcán (the border town), but I could simply wait for the bus to show up and board it. The bus was nearly full when it came and everyone pushed and shoved to get the last remaining seats. It reminded me of my Greyhound experience in Miami last year, but still nowhere near as bad (nothing is as bad as Greyhound).

The bus attendant said another one would show up in twenty minutes, but I’d been in South America long enough to know that was a lie. People here will say anything to get you to stop asking them questions. I noticed the guy waiting in line in front of me had a ticket in his hand, and sure enough, he had bought the last ticket for the next bus from the same lady who told me she wasn’t selling tickets. I went back to her and got a ticket for the next available bus, but it wasn’t set to leave for another ninety minutes, meaning I would have to waste a total of three hours in Ibarra. It was an incredibly frustrating situation with nothing resembling even the smallest sense of order. Things were even less organized than they normally are in South America.

Eventually I made it to Tulcán and took care of the border formalities. I took a taxi to immigration, got stamped out of Ecuador, walked across the Rio Putumayo, got stamped back into Colombia, and took a colectivo to Ipiales, the border town on the Colombian side. While I was waiting in line, I met a guy from Bogotá named Juan Carlos who was returning home from his trip to southern Peru. He was taking buses directly from Cusco all the way back home, which would probably take eighty hours to complete. Maybe I’ll meet up with him in his hometown after he’s recovered from the whirlwind vacation.

My final step of the long day was to take another bus a few hours north to Pasto. I wanted to get all the way to Popayán, but that will have to wait until tomorrow because the road is rather dangerous to travel on at night. In the end, the snafu in Ibarra ended up costing me a day. So I’ve been Colombia for most of a day, but still haven’t had any Shakira sightings.