You may have been to a festival or two growing up, a weekend where it’s OK to sleep on the ground, go without a shower and sit on a pretty stinky portaloo. Loud music is tolerated, expensive pricing is a given, broken plastic cups carpet the fields and yet, everyone’s spirits are still running high. Well, imagine if you had all of the above but without the bad odor, trash and extortionate prices.
Welcome to Colombia’s first-ever Overland Fest! Fifteen hectares of farmland dug, trenched and designed to meet the adrenaline needs of 1000 off-road enthusiasts. Dirt bikers, old Willys Jeeps, Rubicons and Land Cruisers gather together to take on the race tracks for the next three days. There are free showers, free bouncy castles and ball pits, and a burger and fries will not break the bank! Portaloos are cleaned six times a day and trash cans are taken care of regularly. As for the good mood? This is Colombia! The music is on, families share their homemade tamales and as always we receive the warmest of welcomes.
In actual fact, they have even organised someone to look after the four overland tourists that have been invited to attend the event for free. He goes by the name of ‘Overland Sally’, speaks excellent English, and sure enough, was there to guide us to our camping area upon arrival; along with Rodney & Heather from @White_Troopy, Dieke & Rob from @kdg_van_travels and our German friends Alex, Jochan, Paul & Emil.
As we drive through the makeshift adventure playground to get to camp, we find ourselves stopping to chat with our fans. (It turns out we’re a little famous in Colombia!) People have already heard about us: From the airwaves, the magazines and through social media. It won’t stop there either. TV broadcasters are lined up to interview us more over the weekend.
Although the name suggests otherwise, this overland fest has less to do with travelling overland but rather more to do with 4X4 off-roading, so seeing rigs like the ones on display in the ‘extranjero’ (foreigners) corner was quite the attraction with the other 989 attendees. Our door remained open for multiple room tours, stickers were shared and the grill was always hot.
As with all festivals, there was live music in the evenings, vendors selling gadgets and gizmos, and specialist workshops.
And the mud tracks? Well, who doesn’t like watching mean machines (and some pretty standard ones too) build up momentum to take on tough hill climbs, plummet down 19-foot high drops and power through thick muddy ravines? Adrenaline was pumping and not just through the veins of the participants. It was a great event!
During the course of the weekend, we received a phone call from Switzerland. Richie’s Dad invited us to fly back home for a visit. Now that was an unexpected surprise and certainly stopped us in our tracks! Of course, we were not going to turn down a free opportunity to see our family and friends, it had, after all, been three years! But how would this be done? We had a little short of two months left on our visas and we had barely even touched the surface of this enormous country. Would it be easy to renew our TIP (temporary import permit) once we flew back? Could we even legally leave our vehicle behind? Would Passport control grant us another three months at the airport? Where would we even store our camper when we were gone?
Well, receiving the call at the festival was pretty good timing actually. This place was full of ‘Rolos’ (people from the country’s capital, Bogotá), and we needn’t worry about a place to park Silverskin when we get there. We were inundated with storage options.
With that said and done, we would just have to book that flight and make our way to Bogotá- taking the back roads of course!
When it comes to roads and traffic, Colombia is well on par with Guatemala. Don’t plan on getting anywhere fast soon!
It is not uncommon to be stuck in a long line of cars, sipping on a small plastic beaker of cafe tinto that was served at your window. And as for diversions; they are in their plenty. We had already heard of one road closure between Puerto Berrio and Bogotá and set out to go a different way upon leaving the festival.
About 500m into our journey we noticed Rob & Dieke from @kdg_van_travels driving on the opposite side of the road coming back from where they had tried to get to two hours prior. And yes, it happened to us as well; a simple block in the road, no explanation necessary, twice over! So we ended up heading back north, revisiting towns we had seen on our way down to Medellin about three weeks ago.
To jazz things up a little, we did decide to cut across the country towards Barichara instead of the much quicker smooth paved highways over Bucaramanga.
Uhm…perhaps going up to Bucaramanga and down to Barichara may have not been such a bad idea after all. To say that the path we had chosen going through the town of San Vicente de Chucuri was easy is a huge understatement. It was narrow, slow-going and full of potholes. There were no other cars to be seen and we could definitely see why. It was a camper-killer and by the time we got to Zapatoca, our camper chassis was in desperate need of repair!
Luckily we passed a welder at the beginning of town. It was evening but they were more than happy to accommodate our needs the next morning- “Just drop by at 6am”, they suggested! Six o’clock in the morning might have been a tall order, but we did manage it for seven and those guys worked solidly for a further seven hours with the total bill only coming up to $100.
Zapatoca itself was a typical quaint Colombian town with a plaza at its centre and restaurants, tiendas and souvenir shops lining up the square, and so it appeared, was much like many of the other towns that followed. These plazas were mirror images of each other!
Barichara the bigger and more upscale version is set in the middle of acres and acres of green lush valley. Flowers drape outside window bays and the cobbled streets and red-tiled roofs create a picturesque background to what could be yet another scene in the movie ‘Encanto’. Big-bottomed ants are the thing to traditionally eat here and we made sure to purchase a few pots to take home with us when visiting our friends and family, as well as ponchos, hammocks and other artisanal gifts. Our evenings were spent at the very tranquil ‘Camping Guaimaro’ nearby, run by an eco-friendly and sustainable couple from the Netherlands. It’s worth a visit if only to go and have a pee on their toilet;-) Everything is architecturally designed to look like a piece of art.
The other charming pueblo that is popular with tourists and ‘Rolo’ weekenders is the famous ‘Villa de Leyva’. This was on our route and is a four-hour drive from Bogotá. Our flight departure date was steadily approaching, but we did make time to pop in and see what all the fuss was about, spending a very quiet Saturday night on a school football field, just five minutes away from the main plaza. This plaza is large (said to be the largest in South America), lively and full of street vendors selling kites and bubbles.
The colonial buildings that surround are vibrantly white-washed and host the same tiled roofs that are so iconic for Colombia. There is much to do in this area not to mention the fine gourmet restaurants to eat at, but as the rain descended upon us, we decided to get that much-needed barber haircut done for Richie (still only $4 despite the touristy location) and make ways for the capital, knowing we’ll have plenty of time to revisit this rather pleasant setting when we return.
Our storage container for Silverskin ended up being in a warehouse of a small trucking company. It was situated about 10km away from the airport and had access to a small garden, shower and even a washing machine! The perfect place to get organised and start packing.
Switzerland here we come!
Thanks for reading, and we’ll ‘meat’ you guys around the world!
Good for you. Family time. Always good.
Absolutely! Thanks Pim. Wishing you a happy new year!