June 25, 2018 – June 28, 2018
The drive to Salento (about 267 km) was going to take us 6.75 hours, according to Google Maps. We started the long drive, single lane most of the way, and were sharing the road with many trucks. On top of that, there was a lot of road construction to repair damage done by land slides (it has been a very wet year for most of Colombia). We could see that we were not going to make Salento before dark (we do everything we can to avoid driving at night on this trip, one of our few self imposed rules). iOverlander showed a free spot in a rest area above the town of Perreira and it turned out to be great; clean washrooms, fairly quiet after it got dark and an amazing view.
The view looking over the city of Pereira.
The next day we visited the Termales Santa Rosa, beautiful hot springs not far from our previous night’s camp. We would, in fact, have skipped these if we had made it to Salento the night before…glad we ran out of time. We soaked in the pools while we chatted, mostly in Spanish with some teens who were very interested in who we were and where we were from. It was fun but my head felt like it would explode after about an hour of trying to converse in Spanish.
Termales Santa Rosa. You could stand under these cold falls one level up, but we preferred staring at the falls from the nearby thermal pools.
We then made it to Salento and to Serrana Hostel, where many backpackers and overlanders stay, a short walk from the main town of Salento. The views were out of this world!
The view from our camping location.
The morning of our second day we decided to partake in an outdoor yoga class that was being offered. Derek and I were the only students, and the class would have been perfect if not for the tiny flies that kept biting our ankles.
As we were finishing the class, Derek said, “Hey, I think that Lindsey and Doug just pulled in!”, and sure enough, when we got back to our truck, there they were. We had first met Lindsey and Doug in Zipolite, Mexico, and then had run into them again in Chetumal, Mexico. We had spoken of them from time to time, and followed their blog, and wondering how they were doing, so it was great to see them again. We made plans to do a hike the next day into the Valle de Cocora, to see the wax palms the area is famous for (also, the national tree of Colombia).
The rigs, both Dodge Rams, reunited.
The trail into Cocoa is known to be muddy at the best of times, like calf deep muddy, and so after waking up in the morning after an entire night of rain, we all four decided to bail on the hike. It was Doug’s birthday, and he and Lindsey decided to head into town to watch Colombia play against Senegal in the World Cup football (soccer) match. The town square had a huge television screen set up, and we had fun watching the game and the crowd as Colombia scored the only goal of the game.
Every time Colombia plays in the World Cup people swarm around TVs in bars, plazas, coffee shops, mechanic shops….basically anywhere with a TV.
Even dogs are into it…well, maybe not this little fella.
England and Belgium were playing later the afternoon, and so we made our way to a pub to watch the second game. After some appetizers and many drinks, we finished up the day with some Indian food. It was really fun to help them celebrate Doug’s birthday. We had plans for a down hill bike tour the next day, and so the joke became, of course, that it was all down hill from here for Doug.