Day 59: Cali to Pasto - Wednesday January 5, 2011

We received an omen this morning in the form of the hotel bill under the door. Time to hightail it out of Cali toward the frontier. After 7 hours of thrilling driving in the mountains, we arrived at Pasto where the car was promptly blanco’ed with a huge amount of flour. If I weren’t tired, I would have gone out to throw flour or shaving cream at the colorful miscreants. Earlier on the road near Popayan, the car had hoses turned on it and buckets of water.

The elevation on the drive ranged from 1900-9000’ and ran along the ridge of and in between 2 mountain ranges. The last part was like driving the Colorado River canyons with oranges and bananas in a tropical alpine setting. This was another inundation area where some people were reduced to looking for help along the roads. Rather than river overflow, in these mountains, crops and homes were washed away.

The inundation made driving the mountain ranges more challenging. There were rock slides, road shifts or washouts, potholes and trucks that needed the entire road in some places. That is just part of what the road and nature have to throw at one. The odious part is the poor navigational information for motorists. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry about the poor information. I choose to laugh – effective road signage is easy enough to have if the culture calls for it. Hopefully, the Latin countries can jump right into contemporary GPS navigation devices with accurate mapping.

Par for the course, today, we lost our way twice: Once in leaving Cali when I followed big signs toward our target town (leaving the Pan American Hwy) on a beautiful bypass only to be abandoned by the signs in a small town with no signs on getting back on track. We asked a policeman how to find our way back. He started to explain where we missed our turn but he then led us on his bike to the correct path. In Pasto, we were in the area of our hotel and asked someone for directions as the Blanco celebration rerouted the main drag. He not only gave us precise and simple directions, but also apparently followed us to our hotel to make sure we didn’t get lost. I cannot applaud the Colombians enough for their protectiveness of strangers.