Last Day At La Bonanza

The plan is to leave the campground Sunday morning and drive to another campground close to the city of Pasto about four hours south. The PanAmerican Highway is the only road to Ecuador from Cali and it’s a safe corridor to the next country on our list.

You will see two other roads to the border but neither one runs through country controlled by the government and we aren’t keen to meet the cocaine traders face to face so we stick to the main road like the old farts we are.

We have an appointment in Pasto to get Rusty his border clearances. Technically he has to check out of bureaucracy riddled Colombia and into Ecuador. We’ve heard the agriculture inspectors at the border don’t care about traveling pets but in the event they decide to care about Rusty I want to be able to present his papers to save hassle. They could stick him in quarantine if they felt like it, if he doesn’t have his papers. Or they could do worse if they deem him a threat to agriculture in Ecuador. The vet in Pasto said it will cost $55 to make him legal. No problem to keep Rusty safe. The iOverlander entry:

The border crossing itself the rules are up in the air in Ecuador. For some months land travelers have had to present a police clearance from their home country saying the travelers have no criminal history. In many countries these certificates are routine but for us in the States there is thank god, no tradition of having to prove one’s innocence to the authorities. Which is a problem if you want to drive into Ecuador from Colombia. The requirement has been dropped for travelers driving from Peru so I suspect recent guerrilla attacks in Colombia have Ecuadorean authorities concerned about the violence spilling into their country. 

Fortunately there is a campground operator three hours inside Ecuador who has contacts with the ministry of tourism and has got permission to send our names to the border to guarantee our entry to the country. When we arrive at Ecuadorean immigration our name on the list should get us a 90 day permit. Frankly all this faffing around is annoying but it’s how you have to play the game sometimes. This sort of stuff is the daily reality behind the glamor of travel portrayed on YouTube so I write about it here to keep things real.

Cora and Clint from the Netherlands bought a Mercedes Vito van in Chile and in two months will hand it over to a buyer back in Chile while they go home. In the US the Vito is called Metris a gasoline powered version of the diesel sold around the world.  The US Metris is discontinued but it makes a great small camper if you’re thinking about one. These two young travelers left for Ecuador and as far as we know they got through okay so we aren’t worried about the border dance. We are still coughing a bit but we both feel much better. We’re sleeping more and coughing less so we’re ready. Actually I’ve been ready for a while as four months in Colombia has been plenty but I notice Layne has been hitting the Ecuador guide pretty hard. I don’t know much about the country so it’s going to be a learning curve for yours truly.   

A Birthday And A Story

Malika in Arabic means “the Queen” and she had a birthday at her campground. 

She and her husband Anwar (“the Light”) sat down to a table of appetizers put together by Layne (“my wife”) so Arab and Jew ate Spanish ham and PriceSmart salami and sang the words of that ridiculous international anthem in Spanish Arabic and English and then toasted her in Mexican Mezcal we brought from Oaxaca and thanked her and Anwar for the campground they own where we are staying.

Seven years ago they opened La Bonanza to travelers after they toured South America with their three children. Their children are grown and La Bonanza is for sale. Two of their kids are here sitting next to a traveler from Spain and what extraordinary lives they will live is hard to imagine. Arabic English French and Spanish, US university degrees at their fingertips, gentle thoughtful personalities and a determination to get things done. I felt old and used up. 

I rode a motorcycle across Morocco in 1977 and I met a young Moroccan who took me into the Atlas Mountains where he had been invited to a Berber wedding. I ate lamb and drank mint tea and watched the colorful impenetrable ceremony with the ease of youth, the only European for miles around in that tiny village lost in the mountains. Now I’m old and the internet breeds mistrust and I see fearlessness in youth and I feel reassured. 

Kika (a nickname for Malika) gave us a bar of Moroccan chocolate to try which was nice because I couldn’t read the sugar content or sodium warnings as I don’t read Arabic. But then the phone rang and she, Kika listened to the message. 

(Rusty got his share of cheese and salami-did you need to ask?). Here’s a thing you need to know about leaving messages in these countries. First everyone uses WhatsApp an internet based phone system. Travelers exchanged WhatsApps, not email or anything old fashioned like that.  Second when you leave a message you don’t type it out. You leave a voice message which as you might imagine is a concept I love. No I don’t; I hate it. Voice messages are intrusive and awkward to listen to but writing comes hard to lots of people other than me.

The message stunned the table into silence. We heard a high pitched woman’s voice speaking rapidly in French and sounding pretty anxious. I could understand enough of her outpouring to get an idea of the content and as Kika played it back in the silence we got a clearer idea. 

Out of the frantic garbled back and forth ( the melon and Serrano ham still tasted pretty good to me) a rather unfortunate story came clear that I shall condense herewith. A young French couple who had stayed at La Bonanza and whom we never met was in trouble while visiting Jericó the town we had recently seen tucked away in coffee country. 

An angry dog had confronted them on the street whereupon he had kicked the dog to the ground where it hits it head and passed out. The owner of the dog appeared and yelled at the young French couple. In front of witnesses the verbal became physical and they fought in the street. The French man got arrested and is in jail. The dog is said to be recovering.  

To their credit Colombians take animal abuse very seriously and the welfare of dogs is something that makes this country easy to like for me, but I have a technique to fend off street dogs which is to bend down as if to pick up a stone. I. Mexico dogs scatter because Mexicans will hurt them, here they usually back off a bit at least. Kicking them insensible does not appear to be a good idea.

Anwar had no idea how to help but the young man   has   been fingerprinted and his mugshot is now on file.  The police were telling the prisoner it might be better not to call a lawyer and for the two parties to settle the grievance. Anwar was worried that the case and the fingerprints would thus be left as an open case and not resolved. It was not I should stress a case of bribing the police, they had arrested the tourist but were trying to mediate a settlement.

It was I suppose you could say a sobering moment that is still unresolved. I have no idea yet if there is a resolution but there is a lesson to be learned. Do not lose your temper. As a guest in a foreign culture don’t get angry and don’t call the police. But for that tourist all the advice in the world is too late. No matter how your day has been going his is worse.   

Layne and I  are still coughing and spluttering horribly. We are weak and unable to sleep much and hoping the symptoms will ease up soon. We are alone in the campground with everyone else leaving after the Tuesday market.

The multitudes of French and German children have gone, bound for Cartagena port to ship home to Europe their year long journey unfinished. One of the parents came by which was weird as they hadn’t spoken to us in three days and he had found a bundle of Argentine pesos he had no use for.  That seemed very nice of him but he wasn’t giving away $16 worth of useless paper money. No sit, he wanted the equivalent in pesos. Lat gave it to him good naturedly but it seemed rather venal. Aside from anything else Argentine currency is devaluing daily do it may only be worth $12 or less when we get there but the idea that he wanted to used to make a buck on paper worthless to him did not make him come across as particularly nice. It’s not what we have done upon finding ourselves holding money worthless to us. Last year at the Rome airport I made a cleaning lady’s day pressing on her $35 in euros that I hadn’t spent when I went to visit my sisters in Italy ( and where I got Covid for the first time lucky me). It was no good to me and she couldn’t believe her luck. Not this Frenchman though. 

That is one thing we are coming to understand in this journey. Not everyone is a traveler by nature. There are lots of Europeans in a journey in their campers but they are here for a short time with a defined goal and then back to their real lives. That notion of a community on the road doesn’t really exist for them, this is an interlude not a way of living. That we have been traveling for three years is a shock to them. 

And now we have dates to enter Ecuador. Hoping we will be over these infernal colds we plan to leave here Sunday and Rusty has a vet appointment four hours away in Pasto where he will get his border crossing papers. It’s said no one at the border inch cares about pet papers but I will happily pay $90 to have them if we need them. Rusty is worth it as is the peace of mind.

In a surprise change of policy Ecuador still requires anyone driving into the country by road from Colombia to have a police clearance from their home country, a problem free criminal history. In many countries this is easily available even online. For US citizens not so much so a campground operator in Ecuador is working with the tourism ministry to help us enter Ecuador and get 90 days to visit.  We have sent him our information and supposedly we should be good to cross the border on Tuesday. 

All set to leave Colombia. Now if only we could stop coughing.  

On another note 1944 seems so far away now not many people remember the longest day anymore and none are left who participated in the Longest Day. 80 years for these sorts of memories is a long time but that is perhaps the burden of the older generation. Hard for us to forget. 

Market Day

Tuesday is known in the small town of Silvia as market day and lest you under estimate it the market in this town of 34,000 is known across the country.

We first arrived at La Bonanza in mid April so Layne has Visited the Tuesday market four times I think, in between our various sorties around Central Colombia but we always end up back here. Besides Rusty loves La Bonanza, wandering the garden and sunbathing in the thick grass. Layne and I though recovered are still coughing and spluttering and having difficulty sleeping as a consequence so a few days of rest will do us good. 

Thus we have fixed our departure day for Sunday with our planned arrival at the border with Ecuador Tuesday morning. Monday we hope to be in Pasto getting Rusty’s health certificate even though rumor has it the Ecuadoreans don’t care about dog papers. I like to face borders prepared for every eventuality and I don’t want to put Rusty at risk by not having the legally required papers. 

So when the market opens next Tuesday in the nearby town of Silvia we hope to be doing the immigration dance on the bridge into Ecuador. 

The market draws people in from all around the city and offers them everything they could need or want, fruit, flowers, meat, bread, hardware, clothing and shoes as well as agricultural products like seeds and fertilizers. The place is vast as you can see. Layne and I got separated when I put Rusty in the van and we had to meet up by coordinating over the phone. Rusty took one look down the street when I was walking him and turned right back to the privacy and comfort of his bed aboard GANNET2. He was having none of the crowds. 

Men and women wear the same outfit which I find confusing because I’m simple minded.  I’d hate to be asking someone in a skirt out on a date and get it wrong. 

Outside the market they sell stuff as well and though it was overcast the rain held off. 

Apparently even wooden hand carts need licence plates in this bureaucratically obsessed country. 

I retreated to the main square where a chorus was giving some kind of concert so I stood for the rather jaunty Colombian national anthem. I listen to the anthems on YouTube before we arrive in a new country  in an effort to avoid making an ass of myself at public gatherings, so I recognized the tune and stood respectfully, then I sat down as they played a bunch of hymns and choruses to the tune of freedom for all and so forth. 

I wasn’t the only one burnt out by mass commercialization either. On the other hand I got a potato ball fried with meat inside and Layne got us some locally made rum “Black Soul” for her and “Jaguar” for panther-like me. 

When the Guandiamo women deem conditions appropriate they swap out their trim bowlers for natty folding straw hats which they carry around on their backs hanging on chin straps, like pancakes when not in use. 

Here is a woman with her straw hat in carry mode: 

And when your shopping is done you hire a mototaxi to take you home, sidesaddle of course, dignity intact. 

And back at La Bonanza the French German and Dutch travelers got ready to leave as they only stayed this long to see the market. 

By Wednesday lunch we would be alone in the lot. For how long? Who knows…

Colombia Still

Thank you for the best wishes and recovery has taken place rather faster than I expected.

The good news is that our test run to Medellin and back went well and oil leaks appear vanquished, the new oil cooler is doing its job and the brakes are better than they have been since El Salvador. They are trouble free and responsive as they were when they came from the factory so I feel ready to go south. 

And that’s where the wheels come off the wagon once again.

We arrived back at La Bonanza campground Sunday night at five and as we pulled up our neighbors from California asked if we had heard about the hassles at the border with Ecuador. My heart sank. 

The four vehicles in the picture had come north from Peru through Ecuador with no problems but the border with Colombia is now not completely open. They say it’s a computer glitch but I wonder if the Ecuadoreans don’t have some concerns about the Colombian drug traffickers. Supposedly the Ecuadorean border police have computers that aren’t up to date and linked to Interpol so they don’t know who they are letting in. 

All four vehicles have children and last night they showed a movie for them on the white screen hanging from Jan’s green Iveco truck. The world outside may be chaos but in here it’s all normal; we now hang about and wait for things to get better.

Our neighbors from California left this morning before I got their picture, and they plan to test the border in a couple of days to see what it might take to get through. A young Dutch couple with an appointment in Chile in a couple of months is also waiting to see if southbound travel is possible. 

They bought their Mercedes Vito van in Chile for their South American trip and have arranged to meet buyers back in Chile where they can sell it and fly home. Ecuador is not their friend. Incidentally the Vito was sold in the US as the Metris except ours got a gasoline engine and the rest of the world uses a diesel. It makes a nice camper but it’s been discontinued in the US which is a shame.

Layne and I are coughing a bit still but we are much better now. We spent a couple of days in the heat of Cali at 3,000 feet, did a last shop at PriceSmart which is just Costco under another name and came back up the mountain to prepare to drive south. 

Apparently tourism operators in Ecuador are working to sort out the border glitch and the consensus is that things should be worked out by the end of the week. Unfortunately not many people visit by car from Colombia so I’m not sure what the motivation is to act quickly, but I still hope this weekend will see us in Ecuador.

And as if that weren’t enough Bolivian truck drivers are closing the country’s borders demanding better pay. I get the feeling they are warming up for our arrival in a few months. Sigh.