I prepare mentally for the next few days and weeks.

It is going to be tough. Roughly estimated, there are still more than 2000 kilometers waiting for me, unless my battery runs out beforehand (first signs are noticeable). The actual plan (which might change easily) is to cross the border into Colombia (the eighth and last country on the route), then head north to Cartagena by the ocean and finally make the turn back to Bogota. In fact, it's more than I had imagined in my wildest dreams.

But let's see, as mentioned before, everything may change from one moment to the other ... That's what traveling is supposed for.

 

Goodbye Yellow House

So goodbye to Yellow House, I had a good time here.

I am the first at breakfast and also the first to leave the house. No time to say goodbye to Yoko, the teacher from Tokyo who travels without a cell phone and doesn't have any problems with that.

Hardly imaginable. A life without a smartphone? Without Whatsapp or Google Maps or media or Wikipedia? We might feel naked, helpless, as if our hands and feet had been amputated. Am I exaggerating? Perhaps. The Internet has brought us many advantages, and the benefits - especially when traveling - are enormous.

On the other hand, it also turns us into slaves, we move backwards in our development. Nobody remembers phone numbers anymore, nobody calculates anything in the head, nobody is interested in routes and directions, everything is there, anytime and anywhere.

Sometimes I wonder if we are on the right track ...

Anyway, even Gabriela, the hotel manager, with whom I had long and intense conversations about the world, being a (forthcoming) grandfather, children and their future, marriages and divorces, and being alone and lonely, has to do without a farewell greeting.

 

A weird Driver

The ride north, towards Colombia, brings nothing significantly new.

 

From Quito to Pasto

Past Quito, the bus follows the road to the north, and outside the window the eternally same landscapes pass by. This is not bad, but we must not forget that the hills and mountains and plains and rivers are by no means just necessary ingredients, created and provided for the bored eye of the tourist. I sometimes wonder if they always have been that from the perspective of the tourist.

 

along hills and mountains and valleys towards north sometimes a factory, sometimes just landscape the road cuts through hills and mountains

As I said, the trip offers a lot for the eye, for the camera, maybe even for future memories.

There is, however, an oddity that is guaranteed to stick in the long-term memory. The driver (or whoever is responsible for the film programming) puts in one film after the other, but in principle always switches to the next about ten or twenty minutes before the end of the one before.

And what's even more peculiar - no one seems to mind one bit. I mean, how do these people watch a movie? Aren't they interested in how the story ends? Or do they know the ending? Do they give a shit about it anyway? For me it's no problem, I know most of the movies and therefore also the finale (although with "Hacksaw Ridge" I would have liked to know how the story ends). But that's just how it is - bus stories ...

 

Last stop in Ecuador

In Tulcan, the last stop in Ecuador, you have to change to a taxi.

Two locals invite me to share the cost with them. No problem. And then we are standing in front of a long yellow bridge, get the stamp at the Ecuadorian customs - adios Ecuador - and then we walk over the bridge towards the eighth and last destination of this trip.

Again, a quick check-in, once again a stamp, a friendly "Bienvenidos en Colombia", and I enter God's own Drug Country. But that's it. Again a cab, again an invitation to share the costs, again a fast ride over bad roads, to Ipiales, the town where the next bus to Pasto in the north is waiting for me.

 

A new country, a new currency

For once, however, as I am amazed, it is not a bus, but a minibus, very comfortable and cheap.

Once again a new currency - Colombian pesos this time. Did I mention that Ecuador's currency is American dollars? At some point, the government decided (probably out of economic desperation) to subjugate itself skin and bones to the US currency. With all the disadvantages, of course, because it is simply impossible to have its own monetary policy. The funny thing is that they have their own coins, e.g. one-dollar coins, but they are only valid in Ecuador. In the states, they would laugh their asses off.

 

fog capped mountains empty space covered with clouds but then the influence of man fields and farms

Anyway, Colombia has its own currency, almost like in Vietnam with very high nominal monetary units (ten thousand, fifty thousand, hundred thousand). So I pay for the minibus 10'000 pesos, which is the equivalent of about 4 francs (but only at the miserable rate that the two young ladies at the Casa de Cambio at the border have changed my money; for once even my charm offensive was of no use at all). Even in the minibus a film is being shown, again one from the lowest blood and blast kind, but the little girl next to me is thankfully falling asleep.

 

Pasto

Pasto, a small town you might think, but has more inhabitants than Zurich, turns out to be what I thought it might be, just an overnight stop.

The cab driver who is supposed to take me to the "Posada Divino Niño" is past his best days, in any case he looks as if he had known Simon Bolivar personally. He takes it very easy, but as it soon turns out, he doesn't have the slightest idea where to find my hotel.

"Hay que preguntar al Senor," he keeps repeating. Whether he is referring to God in person, I don't know; in any case, his personal relationships in this regard are very useful.

 

The Posada Divino Niño

The "Posada Divino Niño" - again a religious allusion - provides exactly one room, as it turns out later.

As for the room, it's an apartment with a bedroom, living room, kitchen and bathroom, all quite a distance from each other, so I unexpectedly get to do fitness exercises that same evening.

It is already pitch dark, I set off in search of an ATM machine, because the "Child of God" is also expecting cash payment. The restaurants I pass do not make much of an impression on me, so I have the food (for the months to come, there will be no chicken and fries on my menus ) delivered. Then I sit in front of the TV and poke without enthusiasm on a tough chicken, greasy fries and rice without flavor out of a plastic bowl. Well then ...

 

Mileage: 7464

Matching Song: Tom Waits - The World is Green

And here the journey continues ... to Cali

 

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