Colombia: Bikes on buses continued...

Pics here!

Coffee - Colombia's other famous export.

Continuing our bus oydessy through Colombia was proving to be more of a struggle than we thought. It turns out that Colombian buses are all tiny 15 seaters with no storage, which makes shoving two touring bikes and all our associated luggage onto them a bit of a chore. This became obvious upon leaving Popyan, where we were sold a ticket with the assurance that the bikes wouldn't be a problem, only for the bus driver to completely freak out when he saw us. This isn't unusual in itself, bus drivers usually freak out when they see us, mostly beacuse they don't want to do any lifting work, but this time it really was a problem. After 20 minutes of walking around all the buses, begging someone to let us on and then watching 3 guys treat our bikes with a disrespect we feel only we can dish out, we were on another little local bus heading to Cali. A 150km, 2 hour ride turned into a 4 hour tiki tour as the bus went anywhere and everywhere to pick up customers and their assorted luggage. The bus came equipped with a big screen displaying the travelling speed and it  barely made it over 35kmph the whole trip. It was sometimes climbing hills slower than we go on our bikes. We were even stopped and made to get out of the bus for a random drugs and weapons search, all the men had to put their hands on the bus while they were patted down. We passed a number of police checkpoints which were fortified with sandbags, especially around bridges. This area obviously was still a bit contentious in Colombias' ongoing security problems. We felt totally safe though and Anna was relieved for the weapons search as it allowed a much needed toilet stop after she drank too much fizzy early in the ride - the whole "If I drink this now I don't have to carry it around" mistake.

We were planning on changing busses at Cali and carrying on that day to Manizales in the Zona Cafeteria for Bens birthday. This also turned into a stress-filled palava of oversized luggage but eventually we found a bus that would accept us and we got to try so deep-fried and reheated Colombian bus station food while we waited (verdict: disgusting). We arrived in Mainzales at about 9pm, completely disorientated as we didn't seem to be anywhere near a town, in the bottom of a valley in fact. We had a map in our guidebook but it didn't have the bus station on it (naturally, who would include such a useful thing?) and we couldn't relate the map at all to where we were. The only standout feature of the bus station was a cable car that left from it and ascended into darkness. We looked at it for a while and thought surely there's another way into town other than a cable car, but a friendly local family walking past sensed our complete hopelessness and told us to take the cable car. They assured us the bikes would be okay, and when the security guard said we couldn't take the bikes in the lift to get to the platform they helped us prove him wrong. If there's something we've learnt on this trip, its that we can make fulled loaded touring bikes fit ANYWHERE, including the smallest of lifts. Sure, it was a one-at-a-time operation but we got to the platform and had little touble fitting the bikes into a cable car each, despite the cable car being on motion. The more concerning thing was that the cable car just disappeared into darkness and we didn't know exactly where we were getting off. In a stroke of rare good fortune it dropped us pretty much in the middle of town. As we gathered our bearings Ben began to pull the map out to find a place to stay while Anna just looked up and saw a giant flashing neon "Hostel" sign right in front of us. It turned out to be an awesome new backpacker hostel where the kind staff indulged us by speaking english. We could even drink the tap water, the first time since we left Argentina in early March we have been able to do so.

The next day (Bens brithday day) dawned overcast and drizzly but it didn't matter as we were going to the famous hotsprings nearby. The hostel staff said it was better in the evening so we filled our day walking around town, eating hamburgers for lunch in a mall and two helpings of giant tirimisu from the bakery next door. The hot springs were really great, we had them pretty much to ourselves the whole time which was quite different from our previous South American hot springs experinces. We finished the day by having a birthday dinner at a Chinese place down the road from the hostal.

The next morning dawned brought and early as we headed off for a tour of a local coffee farm, to get a taste of the other thing Colombia is famous for. It was all really interesting and things took on an adventuous note when during a tour of the farm we had to ford a flooded river in our gumboots. We sampled what was probably too much coffee learning how to pick out its oaky notes and hints of chocolate and all that other stuff you're meant to notice.

Desperate times called for desperate solutions. We sat in the two seats on the left hoping that the bus would not take too many sharp corners and send our bags toppling on us.

More bus drama later that day led to us buying up the whole back seat of a bus and putting all our gear across it and then sitting amongst said gear for another 6 hour trip to Mendellin. This we have agreed is a new low point in bus travel for us. Things got worse when we left the tent on the bus. Anna thought this was good news as it meant we wouldn't have to sleep in the tent anymore. Unfortunately for her we got the tent back the next day. We spent a nice couple of days in Mendellin staying at the Black Sheep Hostal, run by a New Zealander from Christchurch. While it was once infamous as the world's murder capital it now has a number of interesting modern buildings and urban design initaitives which we geekily enjoyed.