HIGHLIGHT OF THE DAY: Driving through the beautiful Andes
BUMMER OF THE DAY: Our last overland border crossing of the trip
WORD OF THE DAY: Welcome back!
DISTANCE TRAVELLED: 380km
We leave Colombia today after 17 days in this magic country and enter into Ecuador this afternoon. This is where the tour started for 3 people back on the 14th November last year. They have completed the full 171 day loop by the time we get back. I started in Lima on the 29th November so it is not a welcome back home, but I have been to Ecuador before when I did my Galapagos cruise with my mate Amy in mid- November but either way it marks the end of this great adventure.
As my broken record keeps playing, we knew that today was going to be a long day! We had over 380km to travel which doesn’t sound like it should take all day, but for the last time, and I have said this before as well, but this is the last time that we will be in Andes, with its winding roads and traffic, mainly trucks, it will take us over 10 hours today and also a border crossing. It is our last BIG drive and our 2nd last truck day of the whole trip and as we pulled out of Popayán, listening to my IPod, it has finally hit me that it is all coming to an end and I am sad. I have feeling a little fragile emotionally the last few days and I think it is just the movement if my life, the end of one thing-the start of new things and the unknown of what the future holds. Don’t worry I am okay, the circle of life continues and life moves on, but we can have sad moments every now and then.
Once we were out of the city limits the scenery changed dramatically and we found ourselves in the beautiful Andes where we hovered around the 2000m above sea level for the rest of the day. The views from up here were AMAZING. The sky was blue, the sun was shining down and the hills were a shade of green that changed with every twist and turn of the road. It wasn’t too cold, so I could keep my window open and have the wind in my hair all day. I LOVE sticking my head out the window and just watch the world go past. The Andes Mountains form the most populated region of Colombia and contain the majority of the country's urban centers. They were also the location of the most significant pre-Columbian indigenous settlement. In this section there are some small houses and home style shops along the way, but no massive service stations as there is just not enough room. These shops do supply fuel for the small trucks and cars, but via a funnel out of a drum should people find themselves short. Where the road is wide enough, there are some truck stops that have public showers and food that they can purchase, and at some of these stops they have truck cleaners, that get dressed all in raincoats and boots and wash the trucks with high pressure hoses and buckets. There are a lot of trucks on this route and patience is a virtue on waiting for the right time to get more than 20m of straight road for Gray to manage an overtake and then for other trucks travelling faster than us (hard to believe with Gray behind the wheel) that they then try and over take us! At one stage there was a yellow cabbed truck behind us and I took a photo of them behind us on one of the bends. It’s actually a cool picture, but then the passenger in the truck started waving on each right bend and then they started tooting on the right bends and smiling and waving. We got to over-take on one of the few straits and they tooted as they got stuck behind the slower truck. I could see them trying to catch up with us again, when we pulled up to one of the few petrol stations for a toilet stop they passed us and gave around 10 toots and waves as they continued in there way! It helped kill an hour or so of the drive.
We arrived into a small town 15km from the Colombian border that is famous for the Las Lajas Sanctuary. We parked at the top of the town and had to make our way down a sloping pathway and a few steps to get us to the basilica church built inside the canyon of the Guáitara River. The present church was built in Gothic Revival style in 1949. The name Laja comes from the name of a type of flat sedimentary rock similar to shale. The inspiration for the church's creation was a result of a miraculous event in 1754 when an Amerindian named Maria Mueces and her deaf-mute daughter Rosa were caught in a very strong storm. The two sought refuge between the gigantic Lajas, when to Maria Mueces's surprise, her mute daughter, Rosa exclaimed "the mestiza is calling me..." and pointed to the lightning-illuminated silhouette over the laja. This apparition of the Virgin Mary caused pilgrimage to this location, with occasional miraculous cases of healing reported. The image on the stone is still visible today.
The existence of a shrine in this location was recorded in the accounts of friar Juan de Santa Gertrudis's journey through the southern region of the New Kingdom of Granada between 1756 and 1764. The first shrine was built here in the middle of 18th century from straw and wood. It was replaced with a new, larger shrine in 1802, which in turn was extended and connected to the opposite side of canyon with a bridge. The current church was built in the time period from January 1, 1916 to August 20, 1949, with donations from local churchgoers. It rises 100m high from the bottom of canyon and is connected with a 50m tall bridge to the opposite side of the canyon. In 1951 the Roman Catholic Church authorized the Nuestra Señora de Las Lajas Virgin, and it declared the sanctuary a minor basilica in 1954. It was pretty cool and to be able to go inside the church and see the rock wall that makes up the alter side of the church was amazing. The only bad thing is that walking ‘down’ to the church after getting some pretty magic pictures of the church and the gorge, we had to walk back ‘up’. The cherry on the top was that Mark and Gray had prepared lunch in our presence, so it was all ready to go after I had caught my breath. I am putting it down to altitude and has nothing to do with my level of fitness!
It only took us 20 minutes to get to the Colombian border control and it was a busy place with people, cars, trucks, money changers, fruit sellers and National Guards all around. We all got off the truck and there was no queue for the stamping out process and we were all processed within 20 minutes. We all had to have our thumb and pointer finger scanned which was a little strange when we didn’t have then scanned on the way in. Shaz and I made a joke about our finger prints matching up with our postage that we sent from Cartagena where we had to give our finger prints on the postage paperwork, but we were all allowed out of the country and back into the truck for the Ecuador formalities. The Ecuador formalities were just as easy, we had to fill in a simple form and then our passports were put into a machine and given an electronic stamp rather than an ink stamp. The truck took a little longer to clear here but we were back on the road again at 5.25pm with around 180km left to go till Otavalo and out stop for the last 2 nights.
WELCOME TO ECUADOR. We are now on USD for the local currency which is great for me, not only is the rate still in the AUD favor but I will be on the USD for the next 51 days. I will be on the Chilean peso on Easter Island and then I can use USD in Barbados and then the USA. I think I will pull more money out in LA before leaving for home, as it will be good to have some USD when I head back to Ethiopia and I am sure it will be cheaper to withdraw it out in the US than use the exchange when I am at home.
The border controls were at 2750m, which from memory is ranking up there within the top 5 of the highest crossings to date. Within half an hour we had risen to 3200m above sea level where we stayed pretty much until we descended into Otavalo at 1800m at 8.15pm. It was another 14 hour day, but we were all happy to out in the time today as it got us into Otavalo on a Friday night which then gave us all day at the Otavalo markets tomorrow, which is the main market day of the week. We were supposed to stay at a small town just over the border and then arrive into Otavalo around lunchtime, but we decided to put in the hard yards and get there the night before to give us all day.
The hostel was in a great location and was 2 small blocks from where the stalls of the markets would be set up tomorrow. It was getting late so by the time we had dropped all our bags Marina, Steph, Sharon and I decided to eat at a small café/restaurant just off the Poncho Plaza, the group went to a small bar, but we figured it would take too long to serve 22 people, so we branched off to speed up the process of getting back to the hostel. We were knackered. Our room at the hostel was so small you couldn’t even swing a cat in there. BUT the beds were comfortable and warm enough and we had hot water, so what else did we need. The weather was cold and our rooms were located on the ground floor in like a little outdoor cottage surrounded by the rest of the rooms, but once in bed we were snug as bugs in a rug. Sharon and I had taken every single thing we owned off Rosita and we were going to go through our stuff tomorrow to make sure all fits into our packs and depending on what we buy tomorrow at the markets work out whether we needed to send another package home. It will be interesting with the amount of space we have how the room will look with all our stuff, but we’ll work it out tomorrow.
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