Bogota to Cali

At some point we had to leave the lovely Bogota and carry on our journey south through Columbia. The next port of call was the lively town of Cali, known for its hot climate, salsa dancing and plastic surgery!

The journey would take us through some pretty mahoosive mountains and would take nearly 12 hours, although we didn't know either of these points until we were underway. Fortunately, the bus was comfortable and cool. Unfortunately, the bus driver drove at the standard latin american 'pant wettingly fast' pace.

One of the slightly comedy aspects of our first foray into Columbian buses was the fact that, by law every bus must have a digital speedometre for the passengers to be able to see. On this particular journey, the speedo was down the front of the bus, but directly in my eyeline. Below 50 the readout was green, then when the driver went above 50km/h, the speed was displayed in yellow. When he went above 80km/h the speed was displayed in red, and when he went above 100km/h the number disappeared and was simply replaced by the scrolling word 'Alerta'. This was what was displayed for the vast majority of the journey. At a later date a nice english speaking Columbian was laughing about this saying that it was ironic, as most of the speedos on the dashboard probably didn't work anyway.

Once we had left the vast sprawl of Bogota, we passed some vast rivers that were raging torrents of the likes I've never seen before.


Not sure even Baggins would want to be canoeing on this muddy beast.


Soon enough we were moving up into some vast mountains. I'm thinking its the start of the Andes although someone with better geography, and or a decent map may be able to prove me wrong.


As they got larger, Clairy sensibly decided to move from the window nearest the edge, to a seat on the other side of the bus.


She snapped this pic of me peeking over the edge at the massive drop below.


There was an endless succession of large trucks for our driver to insist on overtaking. This preferably happened on blind corners like this one. Quite soon it became too much for Clairy and she had to resort to covering her head with her fleece.


Meanwhile I took dozens of pictures of the stunning green hillsides.


'I'm sure I can squeeze through there'




Just looking at these shots gives Clairy a uneasy feeling.




The tiny motorbike was undertaking on the inside on the lethal bends. As you do.




As we got higher the clouds looked incredible.






Along the side of the road was the occasional gravesite with photo of unfortunate soul who died there. There was also this shrine on a particularly dangerous looking bend for people to be distracted by.






Soon enough we reached the cloud-line and the viewing distance dropped to bugger all. This seemed to make no difference whatsoever to our driver's general speed or outrageous overtaking manoeuvres. Clairy was still under her coat making deep impressions on the armrest with her fingernails. I told her that we were in the clouds and that she wouldn't be able to see any of the huge drops around us, but stangely she didn't seem to find that comforting.

Soon enough though, we came out of the cloud the other side and began to head down into the valley.




In the distance I could make out towns and cities down on the plane.






Finally when we got down there, I coaxed Clairy out from under her coat, and we discussed what fun the real Andes are going to be. Unfortunately thinking we were nearly at Cali, I then saw a sign sayng we were still 196km away, so we put our headphones back on and sped along at outrageous speeds for another couple of hours. We are still in one piece though, so all credit to that crazy driver.