Colombia

Colombia: Armenia, Cali, Ipiales, Las Lajas

07.04

F: Panama City Armenia $153

T: Armenia - Cali Espreso Palmira COP 22,000
T: Cali - Ipiales Bolivariano COP 63,000

08.04

S: Santuario Las Lajas

H: Las Vegas

09.04

F: Ecuador

1000 COP = 0.31 EUR (2017)

Initially I had planned about two weeks through Central America and back. But, planning and planning, reading about all the wonders I was going to see, I started asking myself: what if I go a bit further south, at least to the Equator in Ecuador? The one big hurdle was the Darien Gap, the jungle between southernmost Panama and Colombia. There is no Panamerican highway, no buses, no ferry, the flight to Medelin lands in the evening leaving you at the mercy of the colombian cartels.

I read about passages on yachts, people robbed in buses, abandoned on islands and other gothic stories. Strange how the negative news always gets the upper hand. I traveled nearly 10,000 km walked in the evenings alone, climbed two volcanoes, got lost in a Buenos Aires slum, still no one ever even said a cross word to me. People were so open, cordial,  friendly and helpful. All that happened  to me was the dog bite in Honduras. I lost a couple of things on the way, but I found a whole continent and many many friends. Gracias Amigos!

But to return to the  flight into Colombia. Our plane  and Armenia airport were not huge so there were no crowds. A bus into the city duly came and a mariachi sang for us and was really good, everyone collected for him. I have him in the Panama-Colombia video clip. Next there was a mini bus to Kali and this vagabond/drunkard/ladies man song on the radio, that sounded much more dangerous than the mariachi:

vagabundo un borracho, 

vagabundo un perdido 

vagabundo mujeriego, 

vagabundo es mi mundo

Colombia was green, already close to the Equator and high up : 1500 meters at Armenia and over 2800 at Ipiales. But I was yet to go higher and higher. I had  a couple of hours to spend in Kali terminal, so bought some medicine a Colombian doctor recommended to me on the plane, tried to dress up the wound, dine and charge my phones. No vagabonds or borrachos bothered me and next morning I awoke at Ipiales, which is already at the border with Ecuador.

Ipiales
Streets are steep in Ipiales, and at this altitude I was gasping for air. Maybe also the wound was inflamed. At Las Vegas hotel I had a room with a bathroom all to myself and they kindly let me check in as early as 10 am. I went to a drugstore to buy some bandages, but the lady looked at me, looked at my wound at told me to hurry to the urgencias and then come back with a proper prescription. I found the emergency ward and explained my problem, indeed a week had passed and the wound was not bleeding but was not healing either. But there may have been more than that, the doctor first handed me over to a nurse to take my blood pressure, explained a lot of people suffer with the altitude, although I do think of myself as a mountaineer and have been hiking many times at similar altitudes.
But I was told to stay calm and stabilize, suck a pill, my wound was dressed, they gave me some pills against inflammation, bandages and a prescription to keep my blood pressure down. In brief I was taken care of like never before at a hospital even in my home country and I did not have to pay a cent.
When I was going out the doctor asked me what I was going to do in Ipiales, but I was well prepared for this as Ipiales has a hidden gem,  one of my main incentives to venture south of Panama.

Santuario de las Lajas 
La leyenda goes that a local girl Rosa saw the image of Our Lady on the rocks (Lajas) in a mountain gorge near Ipiales and it became a place of worship and the current shrine and stunning neo-Gothic church were built in the last century. I'll say no more, just look at the photos below and in the online album.

Santuario de la Nuestra Senora de las Lajas

The church set against the deep blue sky was stunning, towering 100 meters above the Guiatara river. Instead of an altar, the nave ends with the rocks upon which the miraculous image appeared. I spent hours in and around, on the high bridge across the gorge and below, watching the waterfall and going into the church again. 

There were a lot of colorful shops in the steep street to the shared taxis, in front of a restaurant there were some roasted rat looking creatures and indeed they turned out to be "cuy", the South American for "guinea pig". I could not imagine myself eating one of these sympathetic pets, but they are considered a gourmet food here and in Ecuador, and I took a photo with Gustavo from Ecuador.

With Gustavo from Ecuador

It was a day full of wonderful views and the kindness of the people of Ipiales. Finally at a local eatery they catered well for my "Tengo mucho hambre" and I slept like a log. Ipiales is very near the border --about an hour, and I decided to walk it, moreover there are no buses. There was a story on the net of a Spanish guy that was pursued on the way out of Ipiales by a gang with machetes and he had to take shelter in a prison. But there was no prison on the way out, only the National Guard barracks. All I saw on the way were nicely dressed people, already preparing for Easter, only a few days away.