We left Medellín on the morning of Wednesday, July 25, and rode south for almost three hours to our next stop in Jardín, a colourful colonial town with an abundance of flowers, as its name implies. We arrived fairly early in the afternoon, giving us a good amount of time to have some lunch, check-in at our hotel, get cleaned up, and explore the town. There isn’t a lot to do in the town so we didn’t stay more than one night, but we did enjoy spending our afternoon walking through the colourful streets and people-watching in the main plaza. We took a peek inside the Basílica de la Inmaculada Concepción (Basilica of the Immaculate Conception), a neo-gothic style basilica that was built in 1872.
Our ride to Salento on the following day was a bit longer at close to five hours so we had only a limited amount of daylight to explore the town. Salento is another colourful town and it is known for its coffee estates. While it was a charming town, it didn’t measure up to Guatapé and Jardín. Plus, it was heavier on the tourist traffic than the aforementioned two. We did have some amazing trout for dinner and some good coffee afterwards 🙂
We headed to Cali on Friday and arrived after riding for a little under four hours. Cali is the salsa capital of Colombia (perhaps the world) so it is a city where the party is always on. Since parties give us headaches, we did not partake in the nightlife during our short stay in the city. Traffic in Cali was dense and, obviously, drivers drove according to their own rules. However, we had a bit of a funny incident upon entering the city where we were greeted by a taxi driver with a car full of passengers in the lane beside ours. He was so impressed at seeing two foreigners carrying their house on a big red bike that he decided to hold up traffic to take selfies with us. Of course, the drivers behind him were annoyed and honking, but we felt like minor celebrities and had a good laugh.
On the following day, we rode for just under three hours to our next stop, Popayán. We were taken by surprise at Popayán because we did not come across any mention of the place before we added it as a stop on our way to the Ecuadorian border. The town turned out to be beautiful with stark white colonial architecture, earning it the nickname of “the white city.” We explored the town in the afternoon and visited the National Museum Guillermo Valencia, a mansion dedicated to the Colombian poet.
Sunday’s ride to Pasto was on the longer side at just over five hours. The town was nothing remarkable so no exploring, but we did enjoy some amazing views on the way.
Our last stop in Colombia was in Ipiales and under two hours from Pasto. We deliberately planned for our ride to be short because we intended to see the Las Lajas Sanctuary, which is a 15-minute ride from the town. The sanctuary is a gothic revival style basilica church and was built between 1916 and 1949. The sanctuary sits on a 40-meter high bridge over the over the Guaitara bridge, making for a gorgeous setting. While the structure is stunning on the outside, the interior was a bit lacklustre. It was beautiful, but I guess we were expecting more based on the exterior. One thing we discovered after we had returned to our hotel (before nightfall) was that the sanctuary gets lit up with colourful lights at night. But we were too tired to go out again 🙁
With that we conclude out time in this amazing country that we didn’t expect to fall in love with the way we did. Colombia is one of the most beautiful countries we have visited with the most wonderful people. We do intend to return one day, especially to visit the Caño Cristales, which we didn’t do this time because the season was wrong and it was outside our budget. Nonetheless, Ecuador has big shoes to fill!
