Monthly Archives: June 2018

Canon Chicamocha

June 6, 2018 – June 8, 2018

The main highway from the city of Bucaramanga to the capital city of Bogota is a two lane highway that winds itself through the foothills and mountains of the Cordillera Occidental, part of the Andean Mountains. Because of the large rigs, the steep curving roads and the complete lack of passing lanes, short distances take a surprisingly long time to drive. Our route for the day was only 77 kilometres but took us approximately 2.5 hours to drive.

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Finca Carajo, Bucaramanga

June 4, 2018 – June 6, 2018

We left Mompox and headed towards the city of Bucaramanga. We had plans to camp at Finca Carajo, a small farm in a cloud forest that had a few hiking trails, and we were excited to get to some cooler temperatures. We made it to the beautiful city of Bucaramanga, where I saw that there were two routes up into the mountains surrounding the city. The recommended one would get us out of the city faster, but then showed miles and miles of curving, switched back roads. The second route would keep us in the city longer, but the mountain road looked much straighter. We chose the second route.

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Finca Manantial and Mompox

June 1, 2018 – June 4, 2018

We needed to do a fairly major resupply before we could leave Cartagena. After a few false stops at what Google Maps had mistakenly indicated were grocery stores, we had a full fridge and were on the road again. Not knowing how long our shopping would take we had picked a spot close to Cartagena for the night to break up the drive the drive to our next destination which was Mompox.

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Cartagena….Welcome to South America!

May 25, 2018 to June 1, 2018

Upon arriving in Cartagena, we needed pesos, as always, and then looked for a place we could stay for a few days until we could get our truck back. It was super hot we were carrying our travel bags and we had our dog in tow. Fortunately, we found our land legs, a bank machine and some free wifi pretty quickly. Derek waited outside with the dog while I went into the air-conditioned shopping mall and selected a convenient hotel.

The container was supposed to arrive on Friday the 25th, the same day that we arrived, but when we were finally able to get some shipping information, we found out that the shipment had been delayed…at first we were told that the truck would arrive on Wednesday the 30th, then we were told it would arrive on Monday the 28th. Eventually, it actually arrived on the 29th.

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Sailing from Panama to Cartagena, Colombia

May 20, 2018 – May 25, 2018

We had been told to meet our captain and the crew at a nearby restaurant at 5pm on Sunday, May the 20th.  We had visited the restaurant the day before and they told us that it was not pet friendly….the owner has 7 dogs and she said her dogs would EAT Piper….so, we left Piper (temporarily) with the gracious owner of Wunderbar Hostel where we had stayed the last two nights. We then went and met up with the people we would be living in close quarters with for the next five days.

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Mainland Panama

May 8, 2018 – May 20, 2018

Arriving back on the mainland from the islands of Bocas Del Toro, we were happy to see our truck exactly as we had left it.  We began the drive inland, and within minutes of leaving the small village of Almirante, a roadside police officer was signalling for us to pull over.  He approached the car, and informed us that we were speeding and this was an infraction. It looked like we had left the village several kilometres ago but apparently the speed limit here was still 40 kmh.  He asked for Derek’s driver’s license and passport.  He asked Derek to get out of the car to show him the reading on the radar gun which, was laying on the hood of the police car…70km/h!..funny, we hadn’t seen him anywhere near the cop car or the radar gun which was on the other side of the road, as we had approached.  Derek was pretty sure we hadn’t been going 70 kph anyway but didn’t say anything….it all seemed a bit fishy.

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