Las Brisas to Popoyan Colombia

Waking up on a cold mountain in hot Colombia!!

After our late night discovery in the little wooden lifeless shack of Hosteria Las Brisas, we found it to be quite the bustling wooden shack full of life in the morning! I would have never imagined this to be a major depot for the mountain!

Early morning warm sun feels so goooood....The owner made us a wonderful large cup of hot chocolate... we are HAPPY!!!!!! 

 Kevin brings out his inner model for this cuppa shot ;-)

So much is happening in such a short space of time!  These mountain bikers show up first on their way down the mountain (already?)  They had camped higher up, freezing, so they are more or less needing to ride early to get warm.

Next came a group of tourists in a car heading up to Parque Los Nevados for a guided hike and they are getting a nice hot cuppa as well.

Then!  The milk man comes in!  

I'm finding this all quite fascinating in this day and age that milk is delivered by horse and donkey..

Then! A big truck pulls up.. Gee whiz!  All these men jump out and start bringing big sacks of potatoes from a storage bin below the house.  I'm guessing both the milk and potatoes are being dispatched from here just like any warehouse distribution on the highways in America.

What a beautiful spot in the world to wake up to... Wow...

Early morning walk includes two VERY happy dogs..! I think most any dog I've ever known is ALWAYS happy to go for a walk with a human.. always!! The stayed with me, but not sure why. They just attacked and played with each other the whole way, but when I turned around and came back, so did they.

Okay, seriously, we better pack up now and get on the road.

Even though the lady at the hostel tells us we can't ride through the park, we still want to go on up and check it out for ourselves.

Yup.. she was right!  The park rangers are no way going to let 2 motorcycles through!  But they were super nice and had us come in and learn about the Parque Nacional Los Nevados.  We told them about our sleepless night due to elevation head aches, and the ranger gave us heaps of information about drinking extra water, etc. It was all in Spanish, but we get it.. then she gave us each another bottle of water.  So nice!  This is a great place for high altitude hiking.  Sounds and looks awesome, but it's not on our list today. ;-)

Some of the animals you can see here are the Condor (would love to see one of those!) and Puma (aka cougar, mountain lion).  I've seen plenty at the Exotic Feline Rescue Center where I volunteer in Indiana, but none in this hemisphere nor in the wild.  Looks like I won't be seeing them today either..

Aww, well.  If it weren't for the fact that the road up here last night was amazing and the views we woke up to also amazing, then I might be disappointed.  But we are happy and decide to head back down the hill.

The dirt track turns into a paved track.

So if we didn't explore the dirt track last night, this is the paved road we could have climbed instead.  I'm more happy with our dirt choice! But this is pretty too and it's always nice to not have to go back the same way we came.

Mud slide!

Eventually made it back to Manizales where we re-configure our route plan.  Kevin loves to get advice from the locals.

Plus a quick stop to get some fuel and take off all our layers of winter gear so we can be back into summer riding at a lower elevation once again.

A very big part of Central America and Colombia is sugar cane.

These super long road trains can be quite fun to pass or quite dangerous if you time it a bit close with oncoming traffic.

Closing in on our destination of Popayan, Colombia with over 400 km riding today.

With our late start from the Park Los Nevados, we arrived Popayan all those kilometers later in the dark. Scoured the town for a place to stay.  Once the bikes were tucked away in a garage with massive dead bolts, we were free to wander the town to find some dinner.  I know it's South America, but we found a 3 table restaurant and a little old lady who made a fantastic Italian pizza and bottle of red.

Kevin is still practicing with the new camera and I must say his following night shots are better than any I've ever taken! 

Hasta manana....  Ciao!

Moving South to Las Brisas Colombia

Time to leave Medellin.. However! Kevin is still playing with that new camera.  Dude!  "Wait.. if I take a photo on this setting it looks like this.."   Great...ready yet?  "Nope.... if I take a photo on this other setting it looks like this.."  You can see how thrilled I am as I'm trying to go out the door.. ;-)  C'mon, Kev....  Get this man some breakfast and coffee so we can get on the road!

Woo hoo, we're on the road again!

Besides the big trucks that bellow heaps of black or blue exhaust, it's an absolutely gorgeous ride through the little mountain towns of Colombia.

One thing I love about this country is when there are toll boothes, there is a little lane to the right for motorcycles to pass without paying.  In some of the other countries, it's such a pain to stop the bike, take my gloves off, unzip jackets or pockets to get the small change needed.  By the time I'm putting it all back together again, the people behind me are beeping the horns.  So I appreciate a country that allows free moto access!

It's one of those super nice flowy riding days.  Roads are great, not much traffic, and gorgeous!

Kevin spots a view stop.  I have to admit looks pretty good.

Until we started down these rickety rotten stairs!  Honestly, if this stair case was in sue-happy countries like America, they would have this completely closed off if not torn down.

The entire structure would sway with every step.  Stepping over gigantic holes of the pieces that have truly rotted and fallen away.  Which piece of wood will I break through and end up rolling down the cliff into the muddy river below!?  I'm a wussy, Kevin is the brave one.  He's down the bottom watching me nerviously make my way with lots of photos while laughing.

 Dag gone it, he wore the same t-shirt as me today... ;-)

It was absolutely beautiful here and since the wood stairs didn't break down, it was totally worth the trip.

Later in the afternoon we pull into Manizales.  My number one goal is to find a bank, totally out of money. 

Very good looking but busy town!

After we both scored with the magic money that comes out of a machine, neither of us was quite ready to give it up for the day yet.  We've been in Medellin for days and had enough of city life.  Small village or camping sounds good to me for tonight!  That is the beauty of living on the road..

Kevin has got the Lonely Planet book and there are a couple of parks around here with thermal springs.  The book even shows a couple hostels within or around the park, so that's where we head. Not long after this nicely paved road it turned into dirt.  I pulled Kevin over to make sure he wants to do the dirt.  His street tires have no tread to begin with, but he's traveling on a rear tire that is extra bald and needing to be changed at this point.  He's still keen and says let's do it.

We took a photo of this sign after traveling on the rough road for a while.  It is so out of place and surprises us both to see it here. There is food in 500 meters?  If there was, it's not there now! ;-)

Up, up and up we continue to go.  A lot of the road is getting really rough.  Like little rivers running through it, deep crevases from the water with slippery rock and mud.

A chance to pull over and one of my favorite photos I ever took of Kevin.  So beautiful here and so glad to have somebody to share the views with...

As usual, the dirt roads take you to the prettiest places, never fails.

One of the hostels and hot springs coming up from Kevin's LP, Termales de Ruiz.

This hostel was VERY closed.  Nobody has been here in ages, big chains and bolts across the door. It looks and feels really creepy.  This old man comes out from the back with a dog.  He seems nice enough and we tell him we are looking for a place to camp instead (sort of wish we didn't tell him that..)  He takes us out the back to the thermal pools and says we can camp here.

The pools are good looking even though unmaintained.  Lots of thermal hot steam. We've got our tents so we can set up on the wet ground, and even go for a midnight dip.. Cool! Kevin is scaring me with stories of what the creepy old man is going to do to us tonight. ;-/

The more we walked around to check it out, the more questions we had.  Why is this guy here?  Is he a guard or simply a squatter?  He had a little bed set up in the pool mechanics room.  He was strange, but we still thought we'd stay here.  Kevin pulled the machete out of his pannier and said we'd be fine. ;-)

All was well until he said we needed to pay.  How much?  It worked out to be the same as any ol' hostel that had a warm bed and running water!  Kevin was telling him that we are not going to pay that much to camp but the man wouldn't back down.  It made no sense to charge even a little, let alone a lot. So we left, even though it was nearly dark now.

There is still one more hostel listed in his book called Las Brisas.  We confirmed we are on the right track and continued up the hill.

Kevin said he's feeling a bit dizzy.. We had a look at the elevation (4032m = 13228ft). He said the dizziness wasn't bad, however it was noticeable.  I didn't feel it at all, but we better get off the bike sooner than later.


I had no idea we'd come up this far!

After some tricky slippery riding in the dark we come across this little shack. According to Kevin's calculations from the little paper map in his LP, this should be Hosteria Las Brisas. It looks more to me like a temporary wooden shed and at the time there were no lights on outside or inside.  So I am trying to make out the words on the wall in the dark. I am laughing so hard and telling Kevin that the sign says this is it!  Kevin is taking a photo through the fog.  My head is turned because there is a lady inside that heard me and she is yelling at me through the wall after she turned the front light on.

I'm like, Oh Sh..!  There's somebody in there!! She is speaking so fast, but I explain to her in my much more simple Spanish that we are looking for a room tonight???  Ha! I said it sort of cocky and expected her to shooo us away.

She then turned on all the lights, opened the door, and what a surprise!  This is a working hostel, the owner was just the only one here and must have gone to bed for the night.  There is nothing up here, no towns, no reason for traffic or to expect anyone this late. She said she was worried at first, and then surprised to see two motorcycles!

The hostel has one tiny room here with 2 bunk beds.  Anything looked good to us.  Such a nice lady, she made us a wonderful dinner too!  We had soup, hot tea, and big plate full of rice veggies and chicken...  SCORE!!!

I have often found in the world when I am struggling to stop for the night trying to figure out where to sleep; just around the time I am about to give up, not only a good place, but a PERFECT place shows up.

We ended up at about 4200 meters (13,770ft) and it was freakin' cold!!  We drank the tea and had our soup as quick as possible since it wouldn't stay warm that long in this air.  Dinner was fantastic and she even had a couple beers in her cabinet!  I had already settled in my brain we would have a chilly night camping on wet earth with a tin of tuna for dinner. How lucky are we!?

This night we squished together into the one bottom bunk wearing every bit of warm clothes, wool socks and beenie hats.  I counted at one stage after stealing from all the other beds, that we accumulated 12 blankets! (including Spiderman and Cinderella ;-)

For months we've been in hot humid weather and didn't expect (or research properly) that it would be like winter tonight! No problem getting warm enough, however we both had massive headaches. Kevin was still feeling a bit dizzy and we could not sleep for anything; which I have since learned is normal when you are not yet acclimatized.

Lucky for me, Kevin has a few movies in his computer, and we literally watched movies and laughed all night long.  Turned out to be quite fun actually!  See ya tomorrow.. ;-)