The Ultimate Overland

  For once we departed having had an excellent cup pf coffee and a proper breakfact. Chris was responsible for quality control regarding the coffee and bumble the same for the scrambled egg. Maria, left to her own devices, would have scrambled the eggs into oblivion but Bumble took control and we all enjoyed delicious scrambled eggs, toast, fruit   and fresh orange juice. A perfect start to what should be a short day, 140km into Cali, previously the Cartel capital of Colombia.                     It had rained all night which concerned us as we had to travel along a dirt track for 6km back to Popayan. In fact the rain had softened the track, making our progress far easier than the previous evening. In no time we were through Popayan and onto the road to Cali.   The road to Cali was very straight forward, unlike Cali itself! The Boulevard del Rio Hotel proved challenging to find, to say the least. ...

  The road from Ambato to Popayan is a relatively straightforward one of 270km through rich rainforest rising and falling to about 2000m. We departed the hotel at 7:00am as the roadworks started soon afterwards and if we weren’t out of the garage we would be entombed for the whole day. The promise of breakfast failed to materialise and we left feeling we had missed out on our usual starter of coffee and some form of nourishment.   Despite an early navigational error by Chris and Barbara (or will they blame Waze?) which resulted in a loop around back to our hotel to start again we were soon enjoying a magnificent drive. The promise of rain all day failed to materialise although we were driving for considerable amounts of time in low damp cloud.   We stopped for coffee around 11:00am, making steady progress on brilliant roads. For a country which produces its own wonderful coffee, the drink we were offered hardly constituted what anyone would call ...

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 int...

  We left our AirBnB after a very satisfactory breakfast with a clear, fast and smooth run to Quito. The road was duel carriageway for most of the 153km and took us by Cotopaxi volcano, the largest of a neckless of volcanos that surrounded us. Reaching a height of 5897m Cotopaxi is amongst the highest active volcanoes in the world   The road at the end of our drive took us straight onto the pan-American highway and soon we hit the excellent duel carriageway all three cars purred along like kittens. This was indeed a pleasant surprise since the previous evening, by the time we eventually found our AirBnB, all three cars were sounding like a bag of nails. Cleaned spark plugs seem to have made all the difference and in Nigel’s case cleaning his carburettors. Unfortunately, under the omnipresent gaze of Cotopaxi, Nigel smelt an overpowering smell of petrol and had to pull over. One of the carburettors was pouring petrol out. On   the road side a rapid di...

  Why would today be any different from any other of our current totally unpredictable journey. And so it proved once again a day full of the unexpected, unplanned and downright challenging!   We departed our excellently located, if a little weird, AirBnB in central Cuenca after an early morning search for coffee and croissants. The one thing we have discovered is that the opening times published on google have very little relationship with reality. None of the bakeries which supposedly open at 07:00am showed any sign of life whatsoever. We departed in good spirits if a little hungry and a little short on coffee. This was remedied at the first service station.   We then began to rise, Cuenca being at 2350m and the highest we reached being about 3800m. The weather was crisp, sunny and crystal clear. We rose above the clouds to experience stunning, ‘Swiss” like scenery. The hills are well populated with what appears to be the most extraordinary agr...