Into Colombia!

We left the Hacienda at Tabacundo at 07:30 after Chris had cooked us all with tomato toasties and coffee. The cars were slightly damp after it had rained consistently overnight.

 

177km to the Colombian border and the drive took in spectacular climbs up to a height of 3500m on steep winding duel carriageway. It was a cold start to the day but soon warmed as the sun rose. The road to the border is spectacular.

 

We arrived at the border at 11:30am, plenty of time for the formalities and indeed Ecuadorian migration and car permits were all handled quickly. Onto Colombian immigration which involved taking a seat in a tent and waiting ones turn. There seemed little logic to how people were selected but we had left the cars by the border entrance and cars and lorries were stopping to take pictures and causing a degree of chaos.  Think that the management decided to get us processed as quickly as possible.

 

Once through migration it was into the transport department to get a temporary permit to input the cars. This took a long time to process with Daniel (not a word of English) helping Chris (not a word of Spanish) to complete the endlessly complex form. Having taken about an hour to process the first form the subsequent ones for Nigel and I were completed quickly. Once Daniel had finished we thought we were off, but sadly not, we now had to wait for Julie, Daniel’s boss to arrive at 14:00pm. Julie then completed the Carnets (the first time we have used them since being in South America). And finally after about 3.5hrs we were back on the road.

 

We all agreed that, given the current situation on Colombia, we decided to stick together. We only had 80km to Pasto and the road was excellent, much to our surprise given what we had been lead to expect. That lasted until Chris and Barbara left the main road to follow some inexplicable instructions from Waze. That was the last we saw of them until they turned up at the hotel about 30mins after our arrival. So much for sticking together!

 

The hotel, in the middle of Pasto, were charming and couldn’t have been more helpful, crucially providing us with safe underground parking. Fortunately Didier and Nigel’s order for roast Guinee pig was rejected on the basis that the restaurant was out of Guinee pig much to everyone else’s relief.