I treated myself to a late start, at 10 am, confident that I
could navigate myself through the city to reach the highway to Cali. Famous
last words. A couple of bad decisions and a very heavy traffic held me back for
a couple of hours, so it was not until 12 noon that I left the Bogotá urban
area, headed west.
Colombia has the poster child of subduction-related mountain
belts. Collectively called the Andes, the mountain chains of Colombia form
three distinctive alignments. From the ocean landward they include the
Cordillera Occidental (Western Cordillera), the Cordillera Central, and the
Cordillera Oriental (Eastern Cordillera). The Cordillera Occidental is also
what we geologists would call the forearc fold-and-thrust belt (this is where
the cities of Cali and Medellín are located). The Central Cordillera is known
to geologists as the magmatic arc, and this is where the volcanoes and the city
of Manizales are located. Finally, the Cordillera Oriental—where Bogotá is
located—is what we geologists would call the back-arc fold-and-thrust belt. One
of my goals in this trip is to spend some time looking at the geology of all
three geologic provinces.
Back to my narrative, I am heading west from the back-arc
fold-and-thrust belt to go visit the magmatic arc, in this case represented by
the Parque Natural Nacional de Los Nevados, home to the Nevado Del Ruiz volcano
and the Nevado Tolimán volcano (more about this tomorrow). My goal for a
sleeping place tonight is the mountain city of Manizales.
Had driven a couple
of hours when I started getting hungry, and seeing a crowded roadside
restaurant stopped there for a magnificent meal of fish soup, fried trout, rice
and beans, salad and a beer for less than US$ 10! I also got the chance to see
the end of the match in which France beat Brazil 2-1, and with it the dashed hopes
of a Latin American country making it to the final match.
A few kilometers farther, at a toll station, I picked one of
the supervisors who was going to the town of Ibagué, about 50 km distant. We
fell in easy conversation and he gave me all sorts of good tips on how to get
to Manizales. The only thing I didn’t like is that he figured I still had 4
hours to go. Rats! That would put me in Manizales at 8 pm. I was hoping for an
earlier arrival. I cannot imagine why it would take so long. After Ibagué I was
following the valley of the Rio Magdalena, which is a flat and straight
north-trending valley. Yes, there were trucks that sometimes slowed me down,
but four hours?
On the way I passed signs to the locality of Armero, of
which I will tell you more tomorrow. I thought about stopping and visiting the
site, but I felt the time pressure and kept going. Finally the road ended at a
small town whose name I cannot remember, and from there took a mountain road
that headed due west. Now I understood the 4 hours (ended being more like 6
hours) time estimate. Not that I have not seen similar roads in Mexico and
other mountainous countries, but the road to Manizales are amongst the worst I
have met with respect to tight curves and extreme grades. I was a wreck when I
finally reached the town at 9:00 pm. Reaching the town was not enough. I had to
find my hotel, and pronto. The city has probably half a million people, and is
very similar to Jalapa in that it was built following contour lines, rather
than a grid pattern.
Good luck prevailed, and after I asked a taxi how to reach
Calle 26 with Carrera 24 he simply said “Follow me”, and he proceeded to take
me through a maze of up and down streets until we reached my destination. My
Good Samaritan pointed to me the location of a parking garage before taking his
leave, leaving me to ponder about the many good people who you meet while
traveling. The owner of the garage was also a wonderful person, who promptly
assigned me a place and then admonished me to go straight to my hotel, without
talking with anybody. “This is not a good part of town at night”, he concluded
in parting.
My hotel was a block away, and I had chosen it because it
was in a central location, with good access to public monuments, and looked
“hip” in the website. “Hip” when seen in person translated into Love Hotel, but
I was too tired to be picky. It turned out alright, because three women in
their 30’s operate it half as Love Hotel and half as hostel for working
families and the odd tourist. You learn all sorts of things in this traveling
business.
P.S. I have developed a story about the Hotel Amanacer. I
believe the women who run it do so as a service to the sex workers of the area,
both to give them a safe place to ply their trade, but also as a place for
their kids to get supervised care. I base this story on the fact that for
breakfast I was told that my breakfast would be at 8:15 am, because there were
a lot of people having breakfast at 8 am. At 8 am I heard a great commotion of
kids getting ready to go to school and having breakfast. An unrelated
observation is that the ladies are very sweet with me, calling me Don Horacio,
and making sure my breakfast is perfect. It pays having white hair in Latin
America.
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