South America Road-trip in an old-timer
A summer breeze warms my face as I look out from the oldfortified city wall across the skyline of the new part of town. Cartagena deIndias, can you think of a better name for the place where we were to end thisfantastic trip? A great finish to a great tour, but also a confirmation of myfeelings about a country that has been longing to be discovered for over fourdecades. I visited Colombia for the first time in 1991 and was instantly wonover; the nature, the colonial cities and the people... especially the people.
The next day we left our hotel at 10am for a 400km drive toMedellin. We had already heard that the first part would be relatively flat,then more or less sloping up until Manizales, and from there a final pass of3,000masl just before Medellin. The road started out perfectly smooth, eventurning into a four-lane highway of sorts after the first 25km. Intervals oftwo and four-lane roads, and road-works kept us on our toes, and it becameclear that by next year this entire stretch would probably be much faster totraverse. We reached Pereira and entered the famous coffee region of Colombia,one of the more prosperous parts of the country. The region is one beautifullygreen and fertile land filled with coffee plantations doubling as hotels. Onecan spend a good time here between the picturesque towns of Pereira and Armenia,relaxing at the haciendas, learning all there is to know about coffee and enjoyingthe splendid natural surroundings. We sadly did not have much time to stop, butluckily I had been here before (see a few blog entries back).
We pushed on toward Medellin, which was still quite a long way off.We were experiencing some minor problems with the car. The passenger window hadsunk into the door and decided it did not want to come up again, whilst darkclouds were gathering in the sky above us. The “Amp” light was on again,meaning we were once more driving without charging the battery, and the Volvo’sloyal engine was having difficulties adjusting to the climate and had startedto heat up. We stopped at a gas station upon leaving Pereira, filled up ourtank and provisionally sealed the window using an old raincoat and a lot ofduct tape. As the rain started pouring out of the sky, we ordered and devouredone of the best hamburgers on our trip in the station’s cafeteria. Thiscombined with really great service and one of the most impeccable toilets everseen anywhere, let alone in a gas station, caused Johan to officially baptizethe place as one of the very best pit-stops along the entire South AmericanPan-American Highway. And I think he was right!
Stomachs filled and window temporarily closed we drove on. Thoughhalf of our challenges were taken care of, the battery and overheating problemspersisted. However, anyone who has driven an older car before knows that anoverheating engine can be dealt with, at least temporarily, by turning on thecar’s heater. That said, the fans that transport the hot air from the engine tothe passenger compartment do so by means of electricity, so when your engineproblem is combined with a battery charging issue, then you are kind ofscrewed. On the road to Manizales we were stopped by another one of thoseunexpectedly friendly police officers, who wished to see our papers. We killedthe engine and did as we were asked. After a nice conversation we were told wecould move on, but of course our battery was as dead as could be. Without muchado the police officer stopped another car and ordered the driver to help usjumpstart the Volvo, which was taken care of without questions and with muchfriendliness and ease. As we stood there with our heads under the hood of our1968 travel companion, I had a closer look at the electrical wiring. I followedone of the wires that seemed to come from the alternator to one of thefuse-boxes and opened it. It seemed like one of the fuses was kind of dirty andnot plugged in as tightly as it should be, but that was nothing a Swiss armyknife and a band-aid from our first aid kit could not resolve. I have never beenmuch of a McGiver, but the “Amp” light did not bother us anymore after that.
What with all the pit-stops we had kind of fallen behind scheduleand had to make haste. Around 5pm, dusk set in just as we were headed back intothe mountains. We had one last pass to conquer before we would be able todescend into Medellin. With the day fading, we found ourselves on a meanderingmountain road littered with heavy trucks, slowing us down quite a bit. The carwas not happy with this at all, and as well as having the now perfectlyfunctioning heater at full blast, I had to resort to hitting the clutch, brakeand gas pedals at regular 20-50m intervals to make sure the engine ran enoughrpm’s to keep itself from boiling over. The last 25km were kind of tormenting,the temperature inside the car was around that of an over-eager Swedish sauna,and there was no way for us to escape the huge traffic jam slowly creeping downthe hill into Medellin. We eventually reached the city limits around 8pm, butdue to the maze of one-way streets that managed not to match with our map atall, it was another hour and a half before we finally found our hotel in theold city center. Old indeed, as our hotel, built in the 1940s, seemed not thehave been touched since. We didn’t even bother to have dinner, but located ourcopper grandma beds and crashed straight away.
We checked out one early Sunday morning, and without having seen onebit of the much-heralded city of Medellin we hit the highway at 6am and madeour way towards Cartagena de Indias. We had been informed about yet another3000m pass we would have to cross 200km after leaving our hotel, and withanother 500km to go after that, so we did not take any risks this time. Theearly bird factor, and the fact that it was Sunday and this is still a catholiccountry, made for sparse traffic (apart from many sinning cyclists) and weconquered the pass around 11am. After this point we descended easily into thenext valley, which would be our stomping ground until reaching Cartagena thatnight. We made good time and even though we had left the mountains behind usthe landscape was attractive and varied. We encountered very little trafficthroughout most of the rest of the trip, and sometime around 4.30pm we only had150km to go before Cartagena. Here we encountered a little more traffic and sawthe damage done by the high waters of the past weeks. Colombia is graced bythree Andean mountain ranges, intersected by three large rivers, all of which endin the Caribbean Sea near Cartagena. As all three of them had been processingmuch more water than normal, they had simultaneously overflowed, flooding manyvillages in the area. We passed numerous houses under water and crossed variousbridges on the verge of being inundated by the huge mass of water surroundingus. Parts of some of the bridges had already given in, but we managed to crossthem and drove into Cartagena through little back streets around 6pm. Of coursewe got neatly entangled in the evening peak traffic, but we did not care. Cartagenais a beautiful city, and we were happy to slowly finish the last part of our journey,savoring the salty air of the Caribbean after 10 days of hard driving all theway north from Lima. We eventually made it to the Hilton, our hotel for thatnight, located in the new part of town and looking out over the Caribbean Sea.A feeling of euphoria came over us and we lost very little time parking thecar, stuffing our luggage in our rooms and cleaning up just enough to beallowed into the Café del Mar in the old part of town. A nice and cool placelocated on top of the fortified wall surrounding the old city, with spectacularviews of both the city and the sea. Nothing could taste better than a couple ofice-cold beers to finish off yet another unforgettable trip.
The next day, December 20th, Johan took the Volvo to theharbor from where it would be shipped back to Europe. Just before he left wesaid our goodbyes, as I would fly back to Lima that same afternoon and fromthere to Buenos Aires the next day. I was going to arrive in Peru around 1amand had arranged for a room in the Ramada Hotel at Lima Airport to catch asmuch sleep as possible before my 10am ongoing flight to BA. Of course my lifewould not be what it is if it had not thrown me one last little curve ball inthe form of my old fried Guillermo Gomez, a pal from the early days in Peru,who had moved to Venezuela a long time ago, but who happened to be in Lima anddecided it was time to pay me a short visit, even in the middle of the night.This is how I ended up in the hotel lobby drinking double pisco sours with agreat friend until the wee hours of the night, missing my flight that nextmorning and almost arriving too late for Karin’s birthday the next day… Luckilyeverything was planned well ahead, so when I finally touched down at EzeizaAirport at 7am on the 22nd, my father was there to pick me up, whilemy visiting sister and my daughters had already arranged a beautiful breakfastin our garden. Karin just walked down the stairs when I entered the front door.“Ah, you’re back,” she said, “just in time!” We hugged and life was simplygreat.
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