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After a rainy, but very quiet night we awoke in the restaurant car park next to Laguna De La Cocha. This was supposed to be a pretty lake, someone had recommended we visit, but when we awoke to steady rain we decided it wasn’t meant to be. We decided to power on and do the last stretch to the border town of Ipiales. There we could relax a little more knowing that the driving was done. It was the 2nd of November and with our visa expiring on the 4th, we planned to cross the fo

With Tatacoa behind us, we continued on. Ruby’s suspension had held up just fine in the desert but I am ever cautious of cutting deadlines fine. We had only a few days left and a lot of ground still to cover before we hit Ipiales, the border town. There wasn’t too many places of interest between here and there and so we broke up the drive by heading for a viewpoint near Gigante. We stopped in Nieba to replenish our supplies after three days in the desert and by the time we w

After Bogota, the first point of interest is, as ever in Colombia, a fair drive. We wanted to spend the majority of our remaining time in the Tatacoa desert, to the south. By the time we got out of Mauro’s, thanks to Aimee’s escapades, it was now the afternoon. This was not ideal for a day of driving. To add to the inconvenience, the huge bag of filthy dust covered garage clothes we had given to the laundrette had not been washed. We were told to wait until 6pm or collected t

So that morning we awoke to find ourselves in the garden of a nice Colombian family with yet another breakdown on our hands. Mauro had kindly offered that we could stay as long as we wanted and we also had the option to access the basic garage on his property. While it would have been convenient to be in the capital, we would have needed to leave the van somewhere and pay for a hostel. Things start to add up quickly that way. Staying for free in the garage meant that we could

There’s nothing like some peace and quiet in the woods after spending two days in the capital city and we headed for what looked like a tranquil spot just above the pretty little town of Guatavita. As we reached the woods, it began to rain and that made it a bit harder to find the spot to camp we were looking for. It wasn’t really a proper spot as such, there was no proper track just a small path through the trees leading to a little clearing. After we managed to find the ro

We didn't plan to drive too far that afternoon, just enough to make it to the town of Guadas as we slowly crept our way back up to the capital city of Bogota. As much as I could have stayed another night, we needed to get to the capital. Our broken inverter and diesel cooker needed fixing. After confirming that the Wallas definitely didn't work at any altitude and spending a lot of time testing and refitting the old components, I had got in contact with the service centre in

Having spent a while at a higher altitude, it was time to drop back down again. The road from Murillo drops from 10,000ft to nearly sea level and was a process in brake management. Having made it down to the bottom successfully, we were now not far from the former town of Armero. This town is the reason that the volcano Nevado del Ruiz has earned the title of being one of the most deadly volcanos in the world. Back in 1985, a large eruption caused the glaciers surrounding the

The city of Manizales is around 8,000ft above sea level and the route we would be taking to the west climbed quickly to around 13,000ft, before we turned off to head further up El Sifon. While we were pretty comfortable at this altitude, it had been a while since be had been up much higher and to date this would be the highest road we had driven Ruby on. There was nowhere in the way of places to stop in-between either, so we would climb straight up and then take it easy for t

While we are not city people, we do sometimes enjoy the perks of big towns. One of them is the restaurants. We love to cook and most of the space in our van that isn't dedicated to tools and spare parts, is full of kitchen equipment and ingredients. While we cook 95% of the time, we cant resist a good veggie or vegan restaurant when they come up. It looked like Periera had a rather exciting, all vegan menu and while we didn’t want to stay in the city, we couldn't resist dropp

As we hadn’t been on a paid campsite for a while, we were happy enough to pay and fill up our water tanks and use their hot shower. Not only did we need the services, but being in walking distance to the town was a bonus. This little village is a popular tourist destination for the valley nearby but also for the coffee that the region produces. It was also the inspiration behind Disney’s Encanto, which is clear to see in the colourful streets and mountain scenery. We enquired

Having only planned to stay for two nights in Jardin, we couldn't quite bring ourselves to leave yet. For one thing, we still needed to return to the bird garden with a proper camera. We packed up the tripod, the camera and headed off. It's about a 15 minute walk to the garden down a steep hill, we arrived at the bottom, paid the lady and entered. We hadn’t been there for long when it dawned on us that we had left the camper keys in the door. As we were just parked outside on

After too long, we were suddenly packed up, paid up and leaving Al Bosque. While we still wanted to head to Jardin as we had originally planned, we needed to pick up our final parcel. After many phone calls on our behalf and the use of his friend's address in the city centre, we could finally get hold of our new gas struts. They were on the other side of the city however, and instead of retracing our steps back to the south and then hitting Jardin at the weekend, we decided t

As is ever the way, a 8.30am flight sounds fairly sociable. Then you work it back and realise that despite the fact the airport is only half an hour away and its a domestic flight, you still gotta get up at 5am. The taxi arrived bang on time, outside the gates at 6.30am. I loaded my bags and said goodbye to Lee, this would be the longest time we'd spent apart in ten years! I cant say I envied him hanging around in the damp mountain weather while I got spoilt at home. First th

Despite the fact that we supposedly took the easier of the roads to reach the hostel, Ruby still reluctantly crawled the last few kilometres uphill to the entrance. That was something on the list for this city, a visit to Subaru. First though, we decided we would get settled in for a day or two. On our arrival, we met Catalina who gave us a choice of a couple of spots to park at in the large garden and gave us the tour of the place. I could see why people had stayed a while.

The town of Guatape is on the list of every visitor to Colombia. Here is the famous Piedra del Penol, a huge rock monolith that stands 220m high, overlooking the reservoir. You can climb up over 700 steps imbedded in a giant fissure of the rock face to reach what looked like an incredible viewpoint. That was definitely something we would be doing, but not on a Saturday. Instead, we headed to a small place called Portus. It was mainly a rental apartment, but you could also cam

Hacienda Napoles was the former estate of the infamous Pablo Escobar, one the most notorious drug lords from the 1980s. He created this private estate which included a private zoo and large house as well as a collection of cars and bikes. It also had a private airport, brothel and racing track. He was clearly not short of money. He was shot and killed later in 1993 at which point the government took control of the property. Now it's a water park with a zoo, open to the genera

After a generally peaceful stay in Florian, it was time to face the road once again.  We decided to take a different route, in the hope that it would avoid the last horrible section and also because we wanted to head south rather than north. We would drive the first decent section until the first village, then turn left rather than head straight head on. Its always a bit of a gamble what you’ll get on the roads here, but it seemed worth a go.  While it had been dry for the la

After reading several reviews and speaking to Sim and Kartik who had just driven the road, we knew that the route into Florain was not good. They had said it had taken them 6 hours to drive the 60km in from Barbosa. Armed with this information, we decided to split up the drive. Especially as when we started, we were still two hours north of Barbosa. We decided we would head to a point marked just outside the town of Jesus Maria, apparently this is where it gets bad. We would

After our stay at the eco ranch La Pacha, we had left with a set of recommendations from Jason. Ultimately our next stop was Florian for it’s spectacular waterfall but this was longer than a days drive and so we decided to to break it up with some of these recommendations.  First off we headed towards Guadalupe, where we spent a peaceful night in a lovely free spot on the side of a river.  We had meant to visit the other river nearby which is famous for its round swimming hol

Having no desire to camp in the city itself, we planned to be in and out having got what we needed, with time to head to the canyon that night. The canyon isn’t too far, around an hour or so and so that gave us plenty of time to hit the city with our shopping list.  We decided to finally take the plunge, and after eyeing up the ‘proper’ camping table in Decathlon for some time we went to buy it. Our is not only small, but a weird height. This one was adjustable, foldable and