Day 31 Thursday 25th October: Flying higher than a kite

Paul writes:

Before we even started today there is late news from last night following the pick up of the damaged car. Chris can be seen here in a slightly aggressive manner about to demonstrate the “Luton Kiss” which involves the use of a plastic chair. On the subject of plastic chairs the team is considering setting up a plastic chair import business as we have observed that half of the population of Colombia seem to spend most of their waking hours sitting on one.

Following last nights incident this mornings check out was fairly straight forward as usual as we certainly were not going to argue with the reception staff.

I cleverly played the jet lag card in order to get the first shift of driving as I was pretty sure it would be the easiest.

So we set off on another lovely sunny day and we soon found ourselves back on the Pan American highway which is either an unbelievably good road or pretty hellish.  My first observation was the number of toll booths each requiring a bizarre amount of local currency and all armed with endless locals trying to sell you your body weight in doughnuts and/or dough balls.

A little further along we passed two random parrott vendors and then a massive series of people offering truck washing services. There were so many of these operations we decided this part of Columbia suffers from the same over supply issue as the famous Cartagena hat selling fraternity.

We then of course had the inevitable police check point scenario which yet again following big smiles and saying “we no speaka da language” we just got waved on as usual. I was a bit disappointed not to be asked for my driving licence to prove I was old enough to drive.

The terrain became very different from the first day of our journey with it changing from a lush English County look to a much more tropical feel. At this point I needed to stop for a quick call of nature much to the shock of one of the locals.

After a much needed coffee stop I handed over the keys to Mike at which point the rate of progress slowed down dramatically. At one point I am sure we were passed by a couple of Sloths out for a casual stroll. We then ground to a complete halt as a couple of large (freshly washed) trucks got totally stuck. Luckily Chris came to the rescue to sort things out in short order just before the appearance of a round of plastic chairs for everyone to sit and watch.

After last nights excesses we decided to swap beers for coke today.  The scenery then just got better and better as we continued to climb and soon we were all very high. Although I didn’t see any skiers there seems to be no shortage of fresh white powder in this part of the world.

Before we knew it we were all on cloud nine although at times this meant we actually couldn’t see very much but strangely at the time nobody seemed to care. We all just snorted, laughed outrageously and said how much we were enjoying the trip.

We finally had a fairly dramatic come down and before we knew it we had arrived safe and sound in Medellin which is pretty big and industrial. After a missed turn off and the inevitable detour we checked into our backpackers hotel which claims five stars mainly because its rather nice.

Tomorrow  we head off to the coffee growing area although so far the coffee has bean (only kidding Mike) been a bit pants to be honest. The local licence plate rules requires our car not to leave until 8.30 so a leisurely breakfast awaits us in the morning.