Did I mention that last night it rained ... well this is the rainy season, and so it did more than drizzle and I was to find out to my cost just how much the next day, and why few people visit Colombia during the rainy season.
I woke up early enough in the morning to check out when my friends could meet me before I decided to take a daytrip in the centre of town, and I found out that she would be busy til the early afternoon, so I had time to touch up my photos and catch up on the blogging.
However my plans changed when an English lady, who is volunteer working in an Orphanage in Medellin, came down to breakfast and said that she was on her own and just off to visit the local thermal spa's in the area before dashing off to a nearby Coffee plantation to get some discount Christmas presents, as well as the experience of course.
Although I doubted I would have time for it all, the thermal spa's sounded tempting and so in order to split the taxi fare, we agreed to go together, borrowe a couple of towels from the hostel and set off.
Did I mention it rained, well I found out that it had rained almost the entire night and caused a lot of flooding and landslides in the area, so much so that the main road to Bogota was blocked and plenty of huge rocks and overhanging trees had their roots slip out from under them and cover entire lanes of the roads going up high into the mountain.
Being at 2000 above sea level,and raining, the weather was cold so we had both wrapped up warm, but after half an hour stuck in traffic filtering through bottle neck after bottle neck we soon realised that the ten minute taxi ride to the thermal spa's was going seriously pear shaped.
After an hour we were glad that the taxi meter was running more on distance than on time, so it had only clocked up to 13,000 pesos, though we were told it would be only around 8,000 when we left, and we werent even there, so we started asking questions of our taxi driver. We eventually passed a hotspot where all the big buses were being diverted down a hill ( to avoid an obvious impassable road ) and found it amusing that the meter and a half frontal clearance that they had from the front wheel was not enough to let them go down the hill without damaging their fenders.
We never actually reached our objective as no matter how close we got the road would always be blocked off, and the though of walking across and around muddy slopes just didn't appeal to either of us, so we turned around and headed back into town, 33,000 pesos and a few hours lighter, but much wiser for it and I already knew that I would have to but a flight to Bogota as with the weather forcasting more heavy rain for the next week it would be sods law that the roads would be still blocked when I would need them in a few days. I only hope that the road to the airport isn't affected or else I really will be stuck.
I woke up early enough in the morning to check out when my friends could meet me before I decided to take a daytrip in the centre of town, and I found out that she would be busy til the early afternoon, so I had time to touch up my photos and catch up on the blogging.
However my plans changed when an English lady, who is volunteer working in an Orphanage in Medellin, came down to breakfast and said that she was on her own and just off to visit the local thermal spa's in the area before dashing off to a nearby Coffee plantation to get some discount Christmas presents, as well as the experience of course.
Although I doubted I would have time for it all, the thermal spa's sounded tempting and so in order to split the taxi fare, we agreed to go together, borrowe a couple of towels from the hostel and set off.
Did I mention it rained, well I found out that it had rained almost the entire night and caused a lot of flooding and landslides in the area, so much so that the main road to Bogota was blocked and plenty of huge rocks and overhanging trees had their roots slip out from under them and cover entire lanes of the roads going up high into the mountain.
Being at 2000 above sea level,and raining, the weather was cold so we had both wrapped up warm, but after half an hour stuck in traffic filtering through bottle neck after bottle neck we soon realised that the ten minute taxi ride to the thermal spa's was going seriously pear shaped.
After an hour we were glad that the taxi meter was running more on distance than on time, so it had only clocked up to 13,000 pesos, though we were told it would be only around 8,000 when we left, and we werent even there, so we started asking questions of our taxi driver. We eventually passed a hotspot where all the big buses were being diverted down a hill ( to avoid an obvious impassable road ) and found it amusing that the meter and a half frontal clearance that they had from the front wheel was not enough to let them go down the hill without damaging their fenders.
We never actually reached our objective as no matter how close we got the road would always be blocked off, and the though of walking across and around muddy slopes just didn't appeal to either of us, so we turned around and headed back into town, 33,000 pesos and a few hours lighter, but much wiser for it and I already knew that I would have to but a flight to Bogota as with the weather forcasting more heavy rain for the next week it would be sods law that the roads would be still blocked when I would need them in a few days. I only hope that the road to the airport isn't affected or else I really will be stuck.
I have to admit that I spotted lots of work being done to rectify and remove the obstrctions, but what I found most bizarre is that at least half the road works were of a normal nature, so heaven knows why they decided to do normal road works during the rainy season, as it just turned a bad situation into an absolute nightmare.
When I got back to my hostel I found that the water in the whole of the town was also out, from damaged pipes and yet more mud slides, and looking out of my hostel window I have doubts about not only my visiting much during my stay in Manizales but also of the safety of the small wooden houses that I had spotted earlier perched dangerously on the side of hills and mountains.
We split the taxi fare as fair as possible as she jumped out near the city centre and I had a chance to take a few quick piccies before I got back.
As boring as it may be, the safest bet might be to invite my friends over to the hostel, get some pizza or whatever delivered and just stay in watchinig movies, as I haven't got enough strong waterproofs to protect me for a full weeks solid rain and I don't want to be carrying around wet clothes for days as they are twice as heavy and I am already having second thoughts about continuing to travel with my mini dictionary and other books that I have bought recently.
Actually, this is our "dry season" sadly. The last few years our "dry season" has changed drastically. I won't go on about the culprits.
ReplyDeleteHope you got out safe. Those of us who live here and work out of town will be getting back to work this week. We haven't even been able to get out on the roads to work.