So Ecuador lost the football match. And we returned to Colombia!
I know, I know. I have just spent I don’t know how many posts being excited about our plans to leave Colombia (6 is the answer, I just had to count them 🙂 ), and he we go, jumping at the first chance to return. But it really does make sense. 1) We want to go spend at least a few weeks to over a month working our way down the Pacific Coast of Ecuador surfing and generally relaxing. And the coast is about 12 hours away from Northern Ecuador, where we were planning on waiting for our family. So the timing doesn’t really work there since they arrive on the 1st of February. Also, 2) we intend on performing a loop through the Amazon but that would make us see the same parts of Ecuador again later with the G & M visit. Our choice was to either spend our time looking for things to do in Northern Ecuador (and the other things we were interested in were all much more expensive – parks, transport & lodging) or to trek back to Cali to visit our people while we had the time. Also, 3) this gave us a finite amount of time that we could subsequently spend in Cali (which is a sticky city if I’ve ever seen one!) since we must meet M & G’s plane in Quito.
Plus, Colombia won the game.
So we decided to stop by the beautiful Cascada la Paluz waterfall 3km outside the city of San Gabriel (which was surprisingly adorable) on the way to the border. We had vague directions from the guidebook I had been studying, and we assumed that once we got on the right road it would simply be a matter of following the path. Not so much. Turns out you can take any road, according to the locals, and yet not all of the various diverging paths lead to the same spot. So H lead us into another pathless, flower-filled field and we rolled down the steep hill together. We even greeted the woman doing laundry who watched us stumble down through her fields! But in the end we followed the groups of livestock (pigs that lead to sheep which in turn put us in contact with the cows who really seemed to know the way) and just sat and marveled at the natural beauty.
We probably could have stayed the entire afternoon, but we were hesitant to sleep in Ipiales again. So we crossed the border, bused, and then colectivo taxi-ed all the way to Tuquerres. We were back to bartering and our ridiculously sweet driver decided to help us find accommodation in town for the night. Everyone in town seemed absolutely shocked to see us, and were not very exact with responses to simple questions (like is there hot water, or where is there internet, or where does the bus pass to the Laguna Verde and at what time does it pass by). This does not seem too surprising with the abundance of information that link above will give you on the city… Locals also disagreed about the relative safety of the area (which we find in Southern Colombia to just be generally true) so we decided that on the off-chance some people were right and it was dangerous we were not going to simply go and hike to the volcano ourselves.
We eventually did find a bus to take us to the base of the mountain, had quite a climb to the crater. H found some really interesting new friends and took some fabulous photos, which she will post at some undetermined time in the future (we need internet, a computer, and the software to all match up… this has become increasingly rare these days). This is the best I have for you:
Then we jumped into the ridiculously long travel portion of this mad dash north and bused ourselves all the way to Cali. We are staying with my boyfriend (yes, family and friends… I have a boyfriend. He insists on the title. It must be a machismo labeling thing that we either don’t have or I have never encountered up north) and we started our time here by getting the cutest inexpensive dresses we could get our hands on and dancing the night away. So. Much. FUN!!!
But somehow said boyfriend got deathly ill with some sort of throat abscess and we have been cooking soup, learning and preparing random local remedies, and chilling close to home for the past few days. I have spent more time with him at different doctors’ offices than I could had imagined possible, and my vision of the health system here is a little shocked. H has been a trooper and using our extensive network of contacts here to still get her dance on with as many different salsa partners as possible while she can (we can only hope that Ecuador has the same quality of dancers as we found to learn from here in Cali!), but largely we are a relaxing, movie-watching, and quiet-afternoon-lunches-out-with-friends-we-met-across-the-country sort of house. We will shuffle along to Ecuador on the 31st early, and plan on arriving at yet another volcano before we meet G & M in Quito at night on the 1st.
Luck & Love all, because (hopefully) this may be my last post for a couple of weeks!!
H
G
R:
Rule #2: Don't Die. 