July 20 - Popayan to Manizales

We said goodbye to Popayan with the hope of reaching Medellin by night fall and perhaps staying a couple of nights and enjoying the big city.  However, our "plans" do not seem to align with the reality of driving Colombia's twisty mountain pass roads.

The drive was much slower than expected due to the steep climbs, increase truck traffic and the Defender's limited top speed going up (or down) switchback roads.   We realized that Medellin was out of the question by lunch time when we were just leaving Cali.  All the quiet thoughts of gun wielding masked gunmen taking the truck never materialized.  Cali was just like any other large city with loads of traffic, people and street vendors.

With a relatively quick lunch pit stop (ie: 1 hour) out of the way we continued north and entered Coffee country!

We choose to head slightly east into Manizales and stay the night, again easier said than done.  The city centre of Manizales is perched on top of a 7100 foot mountain which offers stunning 360 degree views of the valley below along with the coffee farms.  Given that Manizales was an ad-hoc stop, we had to just wing it and find a hotel.  The GPS was of little help so we asked for directions and eventually found the city centre.  However, we could not find a hotel, so I decided to ask the local Police for directions. The officer offered to jump into the truck and take us to a hotel which was extremely nice and thoughtful of him.

Of course, he took us to a nice hotel but the price was reasonable and due to the fact we showed with a police escort, they rolled out the red carpet!  We had a huge room on the top floor with a great view of the basilica, great beds and a big bathroom.   They also allowed for the truck to be parked in front of the lobby to ensure safekeeping.