With our somewhat scary encounter with the armed, uniformless men behind us, our next stop was to be the Tatacoa Desert, an arid but beautiful landscape in Southern Colombia. We decided to take the more direct route in which turned out to be an interesting drive along an old railroad bed that included train tunnels and bridges!

Quinn got a kick out of the fact that we were driving through train tunnels

The Tatacoa desert was nice, but this landscape was actually pretty limited in extent. To be honest it doesn’t compare with the landscapes of south-eastern Utah.

Even though everyone says Colombia is completely safe now (the ministry of tourism has adopted the tagline, “The only risk is wanting to stay”), there are still a few hot spots in the country where the FARC continue to intimidate the local people. Tourists, we had heard, are never targeted, but we wanted to make sure, since the area we wanted to visit next was in the middle of the area where the FARC are still active.

We asked at a couple of police checkpoints, and in both cases were told, “It’s a little complicated.” Sounded to us like, “It’s dangerous, but we don’t want to tell the tourists that.” We were heading to an archeological site known as Tierradentro, where there are 1000 year old underground tombs to explore. The police told us that it was definitely safe as far as La Plata, and that we should enquire further there.

We stopped at a military post near La Plata, and the soldiers there told us that there was no problem. So we pressed ahead and enjoyed a day off from driving in a tiny town in the mountains exploring the tombs.

The buses in this part of Colombia appear to be hand-made from truck chassis.

Quinn had a good time climbing down into the old tombs.

Some of them still bore their original paintings.

We at lunch at a restaurant down the road from where we were staying. Quinn played with the owners’ kids (and puppy) and we ate for $5 for all three of us.

In the afternoon I went for a hike to the top of a nearby mountain while Quinn played with his new friends.

After another long day during which we covered less than 100 miles, we re-emerged onto the Pan-Americana (the Pan-Am highway) at Popoyan, from where headed south to the Ecuador border. The roads remained slow and winding, but the scenery was beautiful. We spent the night at the famous Santuario de Las Lajas, a spectacular cathedral built over a river canyon in commemoration of a sighting of the Virgin Mary in the rocks there.

Our next driving day featured lots of mud.

The cathedral at Las Lajas was spectacular.

Surprisingly, Quinn agreed to pose for us on a llama.

And this llama agreed to pose for us

Ipiales, on the Colombia-Ecuador border, is famous for Cuy, roasted guinea pig. We didn’t try any, but we did take a picture!

We crossed into Ecuador the next day and were greeted by two wonderful things: Diesel costs $1.03 per gallon and the roads are beautiful! Heaven!

We’re staying at Finca Sommerwind, relaxing until our flight to the Galapagos. The German owners are great, and we’ve met several other overlanders here.

The farm is outside of town near a lake.

On a clear day we can see snow on a nearby peak – which also happens to be the highest point in the world that the equator passes through.