Alistair Robinson and Maria Sanchez from London (England) are traveling through south America on a motorbike. They started in Bogota (Colombia) and want to go as far as Ushuaia in the very south of Argentina.
.....During our trip around Colombia, many people asked me "when you go back to your country, tell the people about Colombia". They love their country and worry about the very bad reputation it still has. If you believe the travel advice of the Foreign Office from various countries, if you go there you will be murdered, kidnapped, drugged, etc... Well, we went all round, often out of the beaten track, stopping in places where they had never seen a tourist, eating by the side of the road in the middle of nowhere, stopping in little hostals by the side of the road again... and everywhere we went what we encountered was great kindness, hospitality and generosity. In my opinion the greatest danger was driving. They are truly lunatic on the road! Ha yes the other big danger is that you may fall in love with this country. Most hostals were foreign owned. People who came and never left! Apart from being one of the most beautiful countries I have visited, it also has the friendliest people too.
But Colombia also has a darker side, and I want to say few words on this.
In the West we're all good caring people these days.
We turn vegetarian because we care about the animals, we recycle carefully our garbage because we want to save the planet. Maybe some of you cycle to work instead of driving. Many of us support charities. Yes, the middle classes of the West have turned into such a bunch of nice, caring people. So we feel good about ourselves, and got our friends round for a party. We serve them nice food, and to spice things up a bit (we all have such stressful lives!) we offer them few lines of Cocaine. After all, it's all just a bit of harmless fun, isn't it? Hey! If Kate Moss is at it, must be cool! Can't be seen not doing it! Would be so uncool right?
If you believe the papers, everybody is at it these days, politicians, journalists, housewives, obviously the fashion industry.... Consumption of cocaine is booming in the West, it's the latest fashion trend among the middles classes.
Colombia produces 80% of the world cocaine. It also has the highest number of refugees in the world after Sudan: 3 million.These people are fleeing to save their lives. The 20th of June was the International day of Refugees. Let me tell you briefly the story of Pablo as I read it in a local paper. Pablo, his wife and 4 very young kids had to flee their village to save their lives. Various family members and friends had been murdered and many families fled the village. The paramilitaries suspected someone was passing information to the police. Pablo and his family were now living in the streets of Ibarra, a border town in Ecuador. Begging in the streets, just to survive. One of Pablo's kids was ill, but without any money to buy a work permit, no way to get a job and get money for a doctor.
I'm not going to get into the details of paramilitaries, narco-trafficants, guerillas and the various armed forces that rob, kill and prey on the poor. What all have in common is that they make a hell of a lot of money from the traffic of cocaine. And they kill anyone who they suspect might get in the way. The victims are often the most vulnerable members of the Colombian society: villagers, laborers, entire families....the poor. Maybe Pablo's kid will die, maybe not... who cares?
What you stick up your nose, or any other of your orifices for that matter, is none of my concern. But I want you know that if you do cocaine you have blood in your hands. The blood of innocent people... and there is nothing cool or trendy about that..
As we are about to cross the border into Peru I thought I'd do a little piece about the differences we've seen between Colombia and Ecuador.
The Dogs
I'd say that the main difference between Colombia and Ecuador are the dogs. The Ecuadorean dogs are no where near as bright or streetwise as their Colombian counterparts. This is borne out by the fact that we didn't see a single dead dog in the whole of our time in Colombia (and there are millions of dogs all over the place). Yet within an hour of crossing the border we'd seen 2 dead dogs in the road. We've now seen scores of them. I'm pretty sure that there is a direct correlation between the number of dead dogs and the number of stupid ones who dart out of their hiding places and launch themselves at our front wheels, which is a little unnerving to say the least.
2. The Wind
It is much windier in Ecuador (and not only because both Maria and I have had a bad case of food poisoning). It's probably due to the fact that we are riding at much higher altitudes (regularly well over 3000m) than in Colombia. Sometimes you really have to fight the bike when coming around a corner into gusting winds. It doesn't help the fact that the bikes, with all the luggage on, have all the aerodynamics of a house brick! I'm really looking forward to the 70mph cross winds we'll see in Tierra Del Fuego - not.
3. The Roads
I long for the roads of Colombia, bus drivers, trucks and all (see an earlier entry for why). The roads in Ecuador are in a pretty poor state. It all looked good at the start. When we crossed the border and made our way down to Quito, the Panamerica was a tarmaced, 4 lane highway. We even reached the dizzy speeds of 70mph, unheard of in Colombia. Unfortunately, somewhere between Quito and Cuenca, the Panamerica turned from a 4 lane highway into what can best be described as a stony, rutted track. And not for the 50 - 100m that we regularly saw in Colombia. This lasted for 20 - 30km. It got a little better again, but south of Cuenca the Panamerican can only be described as a series of pot holes punctuated every now and then by stretches of decent road! Combine that fact with the wind (see 2) and you can imagine it's not always fun. The frequent landslides don't help. We couldn't get to Banos as the road was completely cut and on our (accidental)trip to Zamora we did get a little dirty (Maria a bit more than me) as a result of trying to get around the results of a landslide. However, on the plus side the drivers here are much better than in Colombia. Don't get me wrong, the bus drivers are still maniacs, but not the completely, homicidal maniacs they were in Colombia.
4. The Scenery
The scenery is beautiful in Ecuador, but in a different way to Colombia. I'm always amazed how green and relatively lush it is even when we are riding above 3000m (which we do on a regular basis). It even seems to be green up to the snow line on the volcanoes. It's a lot drier though and a lot dustier as a result. The green frequently gives way to rock which can vary from pale beige to deep red, which is still beatiful in its own way.
5. The People
In general, the Ecuadoreans are friendly but nothing in comparison to the Colombians. I should qualify that by adding that on the way to Quito we stopped on the side of the road to put a few more layers of clothes on and were befriended by a couple (to be fair he was Argentinian) who stopped to speak to us. We ended up going to their place for dinner that evening (they even insisted on paying for our breakfast shopping on the way), taking us around the the bike shops of Quito the next day and we ended up going out with them every day we were in Quito (thanks again to Gabriel and Maria Belen (the radio star)). We still get a fair amount of attention in Ecuador, but not quite up to Colombian standards.
It is definitely more prosperous in Ecuador. You don`t see the total wrecks on the road that you do in Colombia. The big cities in Ecuador don`t have the associated shanty towns which is the case in Colombia. We stayed in the expensive, prosperous part of Medellin full of appartment blocks, expensive shops, cafes bars and restaurants, but our trip to Santa Domingo revealed how most of the people in the city lived - in self built shacks most of the time. Going up in the cable car we saw that someone had written on their roof "Very Dangerous, Only for the Poor and the Illiterate". That said it all! You just don`t see that in the cities of Ecuador. However, there is no doubt that there is still severe poverty in the small villages in Ecuador, especially in the native communities.
Let's see what Peru and Bolivia have in store! I can't wait!........
