A vacation home made for a Lithuanian couple fascinated by an exotic country was complicated by a trip home: thanks to compatriots for such a “surprise”

It was the only unpleasant episode of the entire trip.

They all took care of the tourists.

Saying goodbye was much more pleasant than saying goodbye. It all started at the Bogotá airport. On the way to the city we were accompanied and cared for by several locals, although we did not ask anyone for help, themselves, seeing the eyes of the tourists exploring the surroundings, they offered to help, advise and even accompany.

At the guest house we were greeted by a charming receptionist. When I asked her if it was safe to leave the hotel late at night, she said here, on the left, where the park should not go, and right here, where the old town is possible. She accompanied her to the restaurant herself so we could have dinner after the trip. The restaurant was cozy, the staff helpful and the food delicious. There were many busy streets around the old town, where youth “swelled.”

During a short trip from the airport to the hotel, 6 people offered to help us. We have not received as much attention in any other country!

Colombians are very nice people, they want to show how friendly their country is, how open their country is to tourists. After all, it is no secret that Colombia has the image of a criminogenic state, only a few dare to travel there.

Two Frenchmen in one

We decided to travel around the country by car, since Colombia is a large country (1.14 million square kilometers), almost twice the size of France, the largest country in Europe (643 thousand square kilometers). It is bathed by two oceans, the Pacific and the Atlantic, with a coastline of 3,208 kilometers and the Andes in most of the country.

There are 43 national natural parks in the country, dozens of places marked “must see”, so when we planned the trip, we realized that we definitely would not be bored here. We realized that if we traveled on the buses, we would not be able to see anything. So we rented a car from the local company Localiza. $ 28 per day: that’s what the Chevrolet Surf, the European analogue of the Opel Corsa, costs. The car, with a 1.3-liter, 75-hp engine and manual transmission, was not a nimble horse that delighted the heart of the driver on mountain roads. However, it is possible to drive, there was no need to rush anywhere, although we planned a short route: first we drove from Bogotá to Brazil, then we turned to Ecuador and from the south we drove north.

3,700 kilometers: we cover that distance in two weeks. The pace of the trip was not high, since many roads are in the mountains, with many speed limits. And if a slow truck or bus is driving along the front, then traffic barely moves.

They also don’t take turns

There are also quite fast roads in the country where you can enjoy speed. Although I wasn’t in a hurry and I was driving quite slowly, admiring the environment, in a couple of weeks maybe a couple of cars passed me. Incidentally, both were Audi RS4. Colombians are not hot drivers. They don’t run like crazy. There’s only one huge problem: Almost 80 percent of drivers show no turn signals. When driving in the city, you need to watch the front wheel of an adjacent car when it turns unexpectedly to hit the road. It is true that we still have to get used to the large number of “secondary”. No one resents them, only deviates them from the right. This is the case in all Central American countries.

Speedometers are installed on the country’s roads. Many of them are on the streets of the city. Highway police teams with mobile speedometers have been seen more than once on rural roads.

Numerous police posts appear on the roads in the afternoons. They inspect cars optionally. Therefore, it is best not to drive at night not only for safety reasons, but also because you will have to waste time and try to communicate with non-English speaking officials. We were detained twice, but when we saw that we were foreigners, we were immediately released. The military often works alongside the police. Hiding their faces under the masks, holding automatic weapons in their hands, these men look quite convincing.

Is Colombia safe?

Do we feel insecure in Colombia? That is what people often ask. There were all kinds of episodes on the trip, but we rarely felt the threat.

During the trip, there were places where they did not want to stop. Once we drove to the city of Cali, we took a very poor mountain road, it began to get dark. We started looking for accommodation. We headed into town on the way and started looking around the hotel. However, as we drove down the main street in this city, we realized that we needed to get out of here as soon as possible. The street was full of angry guys escorting our car with surprised looks. Do you know that feeling? Well, just like in the movies about bad Americans, about areas of American cities that are not recommended to visit. I have experienced this feeling in Bogotá and Medeline, another city in South Africa. When you enter, you realize that you must leave quickly with the windows closed, with your eyes down, otherwise the best ending is the stones in the windows, the worst is the shooting in your car.

Overnight for $ 7 for two

That night we found accommodation in a small roadside motel near a large gas station and a parking lot full of trucks. We were greeted by two administrators. And the price of the accommodation was surprising: $ 7 for a double room. And the room is like a room: clean double bed, TV, shower, toilet. The boys showed us where to park the car safely and we slept very well.

It was the cheapest accommodation for the entire trip. It is true that we pay similarly in the Tieradentro Natural Park. This park made an interesting impression on us. The path to it was divinely beautiful, winding along the river. The coasts are steep, rocky, the river extends in a valley between the Andes, seen very far away. But the road was empty, we only knew a few cars a day.

The jungle is ruled by revolutionaries.

In the end I had to climb the mountains. That’s where what we would call off-road started. Not wanting to break the car, we were moving at about 20 km / h. Along the way, I saw the FARC inscriptions. This abbreviation stands for Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. It is a radical military group that has operated in the country since 1964 and controls some territories. We also got into one of them. Maybe that’s why the roads were so empty. When we got to the central park town, it was also very quiet here, no tourists were seen. Locals were reluctant to talk about the FARC. We found that this group often blocks roads, making demands on the government. Locals said, “FARC soldiers don’t touch tourists, rest easy!”

But Internet sources spoke more brutally. The military group, which numbered tens of thousands of members, was famous for kidnapping, ransom, extortion, and drug distribution. Many civilians were killed at his hands. The FARC is said to have had annual revenues of approximately $ 300 million.

In 2016, the FARC signed a peace treaty with the President of Colombia and lived in peace for a couple of years. But last year, the FARC was reborn. They announced that the government was not complying with the agreements, which led them to take up arms again. We learned this on the penultimate day of our trip, when the FARC circulated an aggressive message. He announced that the FARC were accusing the government of violating the agreements reached, which led to a blockade of the country’s roads for three days starting tomorrow. Only ambulances will go through the firewalls.

When this message came out, we were 400 miles from the airport. The news was alarming, but at that time the Dutch who were eating breakfast at the hotel turned to their MFA website and found information here with a map showing that the FARC actions were planned in the south of the country, and we were in the north at that time. I opened the page of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania, but here there was no information about it.

Then we got to the airport successfully. We delivered the car without any problem, the rental company did not charge any fines and we were not deceived by what is rare in this business.

On farms and temples

We start the trip from the old town of Bogotá, which is very charming. Here are mainly single-story buildings, almost all of which are painted with drawings. And speckled not with children’s fats, but with very nice drawings. As we walked through the old town, we saw artists painting walls. There were beautiful walls not only in Bogotá but also in other cities.

Two mountains jutted out over the old town of Bogotá. In one of them is the Guadalupe Temple and the observation platform of the city, which is reached by elevators. There is a cross on another hill. This makes navigating the city a breeze, you will always find your direction by looking at these two mountains. The climate in Bogotá was quite pleasant, Lithuanian, with a heat of about 18 degrees, since this city is located at an altitude of 2,000 meters. At that time, the temperature in the areas below was over 30 degrees.

After a couple of days in Bogotá, we happily disappeared from civilization. Because we were in a hurry to leave before the weekend. The Internet has announced that cyclists are flooding Bogotá on weekends, with some streets closed.

After leaving Bogotá, we decided to visit the temples installed in the miners’ mines, and then drive to one of the most beautiful cities in the area: Villa de Lejva.

The museum, located in the old Nemocon salt mines, tells the story of these mines, the natural architecture made of salt crystals, and the temples found here. And the city of Nemocon itself is very welcoming and inexpensive. On the way to Villa de Lejva we found a motel on the road and stopped for the night. This is a farmer’s family inn. We settled in a stylishly furnished room, which did not like just one thing: the name of the room “Siberia”. The friendly motel owners fed us a great breakfast, and then we admired the surroundings, made friends with the owners’ three dogs, saw goats, llamas, and other animals.

The next day we went to Villa de Lejva. Along the way, we realized that we were in Colombian Suwalki. Agriculture is highly developed in this region. Big farms everywhere, lots of machinery, livestock, big plantations. Around Villa de Lejva there were many beautiful luxury houses, expensive cars, a completely different view from that of the country’s capital. The city itself is a beautiful legacy of Spanish architecture with a large, single-story old town with many cozy cafes, restaurants, and hotels. There is a lot of entertainment in the city: quad biking, museums, natural parks. It is unfortunate that our travel time was limited and we could only stay in that region for a couple of days.

Sunday cyclists

Leaving Villa de Lejva, we head towards Ecuador. On the way we had to cross the city of Bogotá again. We realized that driving through a city of 10 million people would be quite difficult, but we did not understand what the saying “popular cycling in Bogotá on weekends” was.

When we approached the city, we saw the first groups of cyclists within 50 kilometers. Everyone who could have had something. Children drove, their parents and grandparents drove. Some carried very modern bicycles, wearing fashionable cycling clothes. Other dresses in any way.

Some groups were accompanied by women driving cars. Maybe it was for the safety of the group, or maybe they were carrying drinks or snacks. As the city approached, the number of cyclists increased, and a multi-million dollar cycling marathon already seemed to be taking place here in Bogotá.

Behind Bogotá, I swore to cyclists on a mountain road. After all, it’s hard to overtake groups of bikers on narrow mountain roads, so my speed has obviously slowed down as a result.

Lithuanians lost in the deserts

After Bogotá, our first destination is the Tatakoa desert. We drive in green and mountainous areas, there is a river that flows nearby, it is even difficult to imagine that we are approaching the desert. And it is small, 330 square kilometers. The car can be reached in a few minutes. But you want to drive slowly every two kilometers to stop, get off, get around the wheel, despite the depressing heat of the desert. One part of the desert is called red, the other is gray, and both are exceptionally beautiful. By the way, this is a rare place where nobody has to pay anything for a visit. At the end of the day, we get lost in the desert and take some adrenaline in search of our car.

At the end of the trip, we visited another desert, La Guwira, almost 1,300 kilometers north, on the border with Venezuela. This desert is much larger and covers an area of ​​25,000 hectares. There was no time to plunge into the depths of the desert, so we plunged into the outskirts, staying in poor and heavily littered fishing villages. And the nature here is very beautiful: the sandy desert is replaced by mountains of sand that fall on the shore of the ocean. The area is quite mysterious, with few tourists visiting. It repels not only dirt and poverty, but also danger. More than once, tourist buses were fired when locals faced a fight against international tourism companies for influence in the region.

Mysterious things are happening in the mysterious desert. It is estimated that around 30 percent of cocaine and heroin travel from Colombia through this route, through the La Guwira desert, the Dominican islands to the United States. FARC fighters are also involved. About 250 members of the organization “work” in supplying drugs from Venezuela through Colombia to America. So I was not surprised that, even before entering the desert, there were many roadside checkpoints with very seriously armed officers on duty.

After driving a few tens of kilometers from this limit, the Caribbean resorts begin. Here you can find small, fully angled hotels, some of which have a huge, palm-covered sandy beach. Rent a country house for 40 euros and enjoy solitude, sun and sea.

Monaco, Colombia

One of the main attractions of the North Region is the historic city of Cartago. It is a kind of Colombian Monaco, a beautiful old town with many attractions, surrounded on all sides by water and elegant yachts.

In the nearby town of Barranquilla and we finish our trip. Unfortunately, we got here a week too early. The city hosts a traditional carnival in late February, which is considered the second largest event after the Rio de Janeiro festival.

Barankilo did not surprise or disappoint us. It is a city without special attractions, with areas to visit and better not to visit. This is where we only visit the store, the cafeteria and the hairdresser. For $ 5, I was cut at a prestigious hair salon. I was assigned a local English-speaking man who lived in the United States. Proudly showed the barber and he was proud to have the largest barber in town, that even the US has so few.

Then I was lucky. And for another Lithuanian, no. When I came back, I knew that almost at the same time, Mindaugas G. de Vilnius was also walking the streets of this city on the phone. Here, a boy approached him on a motorcycle and took out his pistol and asked him to deliver the machine to him. The Lithuanian was not a pedestrian, there were small fights in which the winner was ours.

How that. So I cannot say that Colombia is already very safe. But what kind of journey without adventure? In this sense, ours was quite boring: in two months in Central and South America, no one has cheated on us, stolen or robbed us.

We find the entire world in Colombia. There were the Swiss Alps, the Scottish mountains, the jungles of Costa Rica, the villages and deserts of Africa, the temples of Ethiopia, the distant and valleys of the Republic of South Africa, the hospitality of the Iranian people. After spending 17 days in the country and driving 3,700 kilometers by car, we did not feel familiar with him. Colombia is on the list of countries to which he would like to return.