Cali is a town that is famous for Salsa, there are party buses that drive around the city with music blaring, lights flashing, filled with people drinking and doing the salsa. That is on the weekends, during the week it is a pretty quiet normal city. At the hostel we were staying a small trip was being organized to go to a small town called San Cipriano, which is west towards the coast but in the depths of the jungle. Both mums and dad close your eyes…this trip was the most life threatening adventure, where Boos Boos sustained the most serious of injuries thus far (although not that bad) yet it has been the most enjoyable and the highlight of this whole trip. It was Amazing!
A group of us gringos set off to find this small town. Only one person had been there before and it was 8 months prior and could remember the details. We found the bus and got on for a 3 ½ hour drive to a town called Buenaventura. This is a small town on the side of the road full of the biggest, muscliest, dark skinned people we have ever seen, they were picture perfect gods and goddesses. Here we had to cross a bridge but this wasn’t just any bridge. This was a bridge true SA style – not even a meter wide this rackety, unstable and bouncy bridge held up by thin steel wires. With people crossing both ways, at one point Boos Boos was faced with a man carrying a heavy looking hessian bag on his shoulder, he had to pass but at this point of the bridge there was no wire on the side to hold on to, it was just open and looking down all that could be seen was rapid gushing water. Squealing like a little white girl we slowly passed each other – Boos Boos has never felt more like a gringo than at that moment.
There is a train track that runs through the jungle, some people say it not in used anymore others say just by a cargo train – we don’t know which to believe. The native people have built these contraptions in order to use the rail way line. It is a wooden platform with bearings on the insides and a motorbike with it front wheel on the platform and the other on the train track.
With the locals they can squeeze up to 20 people onto them, lucky with us gringos they only put 10 on each. Doodles and Boos Boos were lucky enough to be sitting at the very front. We hit speeds of about 40km/hr which in a car is pretty slow but on this we felt like we were on the tower of terror at Dreamworld. It was one track used 2 ways so anytime you encountered someone coming the other we would stop get off and the big muscular man would literally lift it off the track. Except one time…we were approaching a double platform cart carrying plastic barrels of fuel and our driver didn’t seem to be slowing down. We thought that maybe they knew each other and were just playing around. But no, it the time between our last stop and now the breaks broke. We ended up running head on into the oncoming cart with Boos Boos not lifting her legs in time getting one caught and scraped by the fuel barrel.
We fixed the breaks, let the fuel carriers pass then continued on with Doodles and Boos Boos now in the middle of the cart – protected. After a 50 minute ride further into the jungle it was getting hotter and more humid as time passed. We finally arrived in San Cipriano, which is the smallest town we have ever visited, being one street about 800m long. Although this doesn’t stop the kids getting on facebook…how far technology reaches is amazing!
There is a river that passes by the town, big rubber tire tubes are available for hire to take down the river. It is about a 2 hour walk to reach a waterfall then float back down taking hours. With all the humidity it started to rain which was a nice relief, but on our walk up some locals warned us that the further you walk the rougher the water gets so not to go too far. We went to the third entrance (only about ½ hour walk) and checked the river. It looked calm enough so we jumped it. The water was a perfect temperature and crystal clear. We were having lots of fun until we approached a corner where a tree had fallen and all of the water was being taken under it. With no time to warn others all five of us got taken under this tree one at a time, all thinking that we were about to drown. The boys got some scratches on their backs and this is where Boos Boos broke her toe. Feeling very silly afterwards, Boos Boos realised that whilst trapped under the tree apart from thoughts of death, she ensured to hold onto the waterproof camera tight...wouldn't want to loose it!
After this we were a little shaken but that was the worst of it, the rest of the river was so so much fun, finding some whirl pools and trying to stay in them for as long as possible.
The town was very quite at night, not much to do so being the only gringos in town we made our own fun. Things gor real messy real quick, drinking games always seem like a good idea but they never actually are! By the end of the night one of the others had his shirt on his head making animal noises ???
It was not fun the next day getting back on the train cart bike thingos and the ride back to Cali. We took what is called an Expresso (An express van non stop instead of a bus that will stop anywhere picking people up) but it took us about 4 hours until we got back to our hostal. This man was the worst driver in the whole of SA, almost having head on crashes 3 time, overtaking a truck filled with gas bottles on a blind corner. We asked him to slow down and he just laughed and went faster. It was this man that led us to fly the rest of the way, we just did not want to risk our lives any more.
So we jumped on an Aires (equivalent of Jetstar) plane and flew from Cali to Bogota, Colombia’s capital, turning a hectic 13hour bus trip into a smooth 45 min plane ride!
See you in Bogota.
Peace and Love
Doodles and Boos Boos
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