November 28, 2018 – November 30, 2018
We left the city of Mendoza and drove through several wine producing regions, towards the Atuel Canyon. We watched people raft down a beautiful mountain river as we drove the narrow road built along the base of a cliff. Deeper into the canyon, we began a short series of switchbacks, then entered a tunnel carved out of stone, emerging at the far end to find ourselves driving across the top of a dam. The resulting reservoir was fantastic.
October 18, 2018 – October 19, 2018
We camped for a night outside of Tupiza near the Canon del Inca. We didn’t know much about the area before we arrived, other than it was near to here that Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were killed. Until we read about this, I had always assumed they were largely fictionalized characters. But no, they were real, and they are generally believed to have died in a gunfight with the Bolivian army in San Vicente in 1908, close to Tupiza, while planning to rob the payroll for a rich mine in the area.
September 18, 2018 – September 20, 2018
Although we really enjoyed the city of Arequipa, we were happy to be back out in the countryside again. We were driving to the Colca Canyon, which is only a hundred or so metres shy of being the deepest canyon in the world, and more than twice the depth of the Grand Canyon in the United States.
We drove past this erupting volcano on our way to the Colca Canyon
August 17, 2018 – August 19, 2018
Canon del Pato (Duck Canyon) lies between the Cordillera Blanca and the Cordillera Negra (White Mountain Range and Black Mountain Range), and it is a spectacular drive. The canyon is at times as narrow as 15 metres and the gorge can be as deep at 1,000 metres. Top that off with about 35 single lane tunnels carved out of the rock, and you get a beautiful, exciting drive.
July 8, 2018 – July 12, 2018
We were heading up a hill, when suddenly Derek took his foot off of the gas and the truck responded, instantly slowing to a crawl. I looked at Derek, I looked to the road immediately ahead, and then back at Derek. There was no animal, no debris, no tope in the road. “What’s up?”, I asked. “I have no steering”, Derek said.
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.
April 1 – April 3, 2018
We were happy to be back on the road and after a few hours of driving on good roads we arrived at our campsite at Somoto Canyon. We parked in a green field next to the river with a great variety of birds, including the national bird of Nicaragua, the Guardabarranco, which looks like this, I have yet to get a good picture of one, but, as you can see, they are pretty gorgeous. Feathers like that and you may imagine that this beauty lives in an elegant nest, surrounded by eider down throw pillows and firefly lanterns, but no, they live in a hole in the dirt banks alongside roads, trails and rivers (thus the name which translates to the guard of the bank). Could be quite nice inside I guess….