Mountain Palms, Ghost Towns, And Unexpected Friends

I left Medellin somewhat reluctantly, but eager to continue exploring more of Colombia. My next major destination would be Cali, but I had several natural and man-made points of interest I wanted to see as I meandered south. I couldn't get out without a few more stoplight conversations and a couple of selfies to go along with them, though; small talk about my trip was starting to get old, but the enthusiasm that Medellin's motorcyclists had showed towards me, my bike, and the trip was infectious. I was going to miss Medellin.

My first destination would be Manizales, where I'd booked two nights at a hostel run by the Hacienda Venecia coffee farm in the small mountain city, and I rejoined Colombia's section of the Pan-American Highway for the approximately five-hour ride through the mountains. While the parts of the Panamericana I'd ridden through Costa Rica and Panama had been mostly flat and straight, Colombia's Highway 25 was anything but; most of the route to Manizales consisted of switchback curves with the bare minimum of straight pavement in between. It was a motorcyclist's paradise...or would have been, if not for the fact that it was still one of the busiest highways in Colombia and heavily traveled by trucks and buses. I spent much of my first couple of hours on the road stuck behind slow-moving trucks, taking advantage of any straight bits of road to get past, but almost always running up on another line of cars before too long.

At some point, I glanced in my mirrors and saw the driver of the pickup behind me waving frantically out his window. Thinking something had fallen off the back of the bike, or that I'd run over a nail or piece of metal on the ground and punctured my tire, I pulled off as soon as I could. The pickup driver got out behind me, and with a huge smile, explained that he owned a nearly identical red, white, and blue Africa Twin, and that mine was the first other one he'd seen in nearly two years of ownership. When I explained that I'd ridden all the way from the U.S. and was on my way to Chile, Adrian immediately offered to put me up for a night in his hometown of Armenia, beyond Manizales on my way to Cali. I gratefully accepted his offer, and we agreed to stay in touch via Whatsapp in the meantime. I couldn't help but marvel at the total, random chance of the whole thing as I rode off again.

I didn't manage to make it to Manizales before nightfall, which only became a problem when I got to the Hacienda Venecia and realized that it was at the end of a long, rocky dirt road with several steep slopes that weren't entirely dry. I probably would have been fine had it been daytime, but not being able to see more than a few feet in front of me made those final few kilometers absolutely nerve-wracking, particularly since the last section was very steep and covered in sawdust, making it impossible to see what I was actually riding over. As the saying goes, send it and hope for the best. Once past the nighttime obstacle course, I found one of the most comfortable hostel dorms I've yet stayed in, along with a cozy garden and friendly hosts.

The next day, with low clouds hanging around and a slight threat of rain, I headed east from Manizales over the mountains. Climbing quickly to a chilly 12,000 feet through fog and rain, I found myself on one of the genuinely best roads I've ever experienced on a motorcycle. Even the slippery and cold conditions couldn't dampen the fun I was having on the nearly deserted switchbacks winding around and through the Los Nevados range, and it only got better once I descended below the clouds and back onto dry pavement.

My destination for the day was the abandoned town of Armero, a site I'd read about several times before, and one that had held a morbid and somber fascination to me since I'd first learned about it. Located in a river valley approximately 30 miles from the Nevado del Ruiz volcano, Armero was one of the most productive agricultural centers in Colombia, and at its peak boasted a population of nearly 29,000 people. On the night of November 13th, 1985 after several months of low-level activity, Nevado del Ruiz erupted, producing pyroclastic flows that rapidly turned into lahars (volcanic mudslides) as they melted glacial ice on the volcano's slopes and gathered material on the way down. Although Colombia's national geology institute had produced maps warning of an imminent eruption and extreme hazards to Armero and many surrounding towns, the maps were poorly distributed and confusing to anyone not familiar with reading topography. In addition, despite warnings from scientists and pleas for assistance prior to the eruption from Armero's mayor, the Colombian congress largely dismissed warnings of an eruption and potential danger from lahars as scaremongering. Storms on the night of the eruption hampered communications and kept most residents of the region inside, and as a result, nearly the entire population of Armero was in their homes when the first of the lahars slammed into the city around midnight. In a matter of minutes, a 30-mph wave of mud the consistency of concrete and up to 100 feet deep almost completely buried Armero; when the mudflows stopped after more than two hours, over 23,000 people, nearly three-quarters of the population, were dead, and hundreds of thousands displaced from homes all over the region.

Photos copyright U.S. Geological Survey

Nearly all roads to Armero had been destroyed by the lahars, and as a result, the first rescuers took more than 12 hours to reach the buried city. Rescue efforts were haphazard and disorganized, due in large part to a lack of equipment and preparation, and the soft mud made it nearly impossible for rescuers reach victims without sinking in themselves. The events that came to be known as the Armero tragedy were immortalized by photojournalist Frank Fournier's iconic photograph of 13 year-old Omayra Sanchez; discovered trapped in water up to her neck, rescuers were unable to disentangle Sanchez from the ruins of her home, and she died of gangrene and hypothermia after two and a half days in the water. Sanchez became a symbol of what many in Colombia and around the world saw, with good reason, as a disaster caused in large part by governmental negligence.

Armero appears almost without warning when heading south on Hwy 43 through Tolima; other than a couple of signs in the neighboring town of Guayabal, the first indication that one has entered the site of the worst natural disaster in Colombian history and second-worst volcanic disaster of the 20th century are the rows of gutted buildings on either side of the road. The few buildings that remained above the mud were abandoned more or less as-is, and the streets running between them, though mostly loose gravel and broken pavement, can still be traversed on foot (or motorcycle). Though I did see a building marked "MUSEO" just off the main highway, no one was there to open it for the two hours I spent in the city, and so my tour of Armero was almost entirely self-guided. 

What I found was one of the most haunting places I've ever been. I have always been fascinated by abandoned buildings and ghost towns, but knowledge of how the town was destroyed made for an unsettling experience. In parts, all that's visible of the houses and businesses that once formed the town are foundations and bits of rubble peeking through the grass, some with grave markers in front of them and cattle grazing in between. Other deaths are marked simply by names spraypainted on the sides of the buildings where entire families were buried alive. The sheer scale of destruction is hard to comprehend, but the names, and the simple gravestones clustered around the memorial in what used to be Armero's central square, brought it home in a very real way. The knowledge that tens of thousands of people had died in the buildings I was looking at, and that many of them were still buried in the ground beneath my feet, was ever-present in the back of my mind as I walked the quiet gravel streets. It is hard to put the thoughts that ran through my head into words, so I'll let the photos I took speak for themselves.

Riding back to Manizales revealed many things I hadn't seen on the way out. With the fog lifted and most of the rain gone, I could actually see all the way around corners, which made the ride even more fun, and the scenery around was as amazing as anything I'd seen in Colombia thus far. Around the halfway point, the parting clouds revealed a distant landscape of rock and snow above the rolling green peaks, and I realized with slight turn of my stomach that I was looking at Nevado del Ruiz, the volcano that had wiped out the town I'd just spent my afternoon in. 

The following day, I packed up and headed south again, intending to head to Armenia for a rendezvous with Adrian, with a stop in Salento to see the Valle del Cocora and its world-famous wax palms. Salento itself was gorgeous, with yet another beautiful and tightly curving road to get there, and the Valle de Cocora absolutely lived up to the hype. The mountain landscape was gorgeous, with easily accessible hiking trails, and the wax palms, so-called for the natural wax covering their trunks, stood more than 100 feet tall all around. Cocora has the distinction of hosting both the tallest and highest palm trees in the world, and they made for a unique landscape juxtaposed against the Andean paramo. I even saw an Andean Condor soaring among the slopes and trees, the first one I'd ever seen up close. 

At the highest of the overlooks in the valley itself, I met Sergio, a fellow motorcyclist who'd recognized my boots and riding gear for what they were, and after hearing about my trip and how far I'd ridden to get to Cocora, he and his girlfriend invited me for coffee in Salento on the way back. Sergio was eager to hear some of my stories from the road, hoping to do a similar trip in reverse someday, and it turned out that his girlfriend was a nurse and volunteer paramedic with one of the local Cruz Roja squads, so we had lots to talk about for the rest of the afternoon, while enjoying some excellent coffee and nice views at the overlook atop Salento. After chasing each other back down the winding road connecting Salento to the main highway, we parted ways.

I managed to make it to Armenia before nightfall, and after some confusion with directions, met Adrian at the costume and party shop he owns in downtown Armenia. His Africa Twin, identical to mine but for a few accessories, sat out front, looking sparkling clean and immaculate next to my dust-covered machine with its missing handguard and battered crash bars. I figured it was a sign I was using it properly, and besides, Adrian had already shown me photos of him hurling his Twin around some very rough trails. He welcomed me happily, and after closing up shop, I followed him a few blocks to his apartment, where I was able to park under shelter and get changed.

I'd expected to shower off, find a cheap dinner somewhere nearby, and turn in early, but Adrian would have none of it. Unbeknownst to me, he'd gathered a couple of his motorcycling friends for dinner at a steakhouse in Armenia, and took me to meet them there. Over drinks and some truly excellent steak, we spent the evening discussing my trip, the joys of riding motorcycles in Colombia, the seven years one of Adrian's friends had spent living in New York, and anything else that came to mind.

They refused to let me pay for anything at the end of the night, and I found myself both humbled and incredulous. Adrian and I had met by the most cosmically tiny chance, connected by nothing but the fact that we owned the same motorcycle and I liked his country, but that had been enough for him to not only offer me the hospitality of his home, but also pitch in on buying me one of the best meals I'd had all trip, and it was hard to wrap my head around. The phrase "mi casa es su casa" gets bandied around a lot, but my experiences all throughout Central and South America, particularly in Mexico and now Colombia, had convinced me that it's more than just a saying.

The hospitality and friendship I had been offered from complete strangers in through seven countries, across nearly 7,000 miles of traveling, had been unlike anything I'd ever experienced, and while Adrian had gone far above and beyond some of my previous hosts, I was starting to understand that what I was experiencing was as much cultural as it was personal. While I won't go as far as saying that Americans are inherently paranoid, we're taught from a young age that our first reaction to meeting new people should be to distrust them until proven otherwise. It had taken a while, but I was starting to realize that that instinct had unconsciously colored many of my interactions with people over the previous two months, whether through a reluctance to engage in conversation in the first place, or having to suppress the idea that people couldn't be this friendly to strangers without an ulterior motive. This cultural norm that I'd grown up with didn't seem to exist in Latin America as such; if someone greeted you with a smile and you responded in kind, you were OK. If someone asked you a question and you responded in a positive fashion, you were worth talking to. And if someone flagged you down on the side of the road because they owned the same motorcycle as you and you professed your love for their country while not immediately bailing out of misplaced paranoia, you were worth opening their home and circle of friends to. This is likely a lesson that every world traveler learns at some point; for me, that point had been the side of a Colombian mountain highway kilometers from anything, but I wasn't going to forget it any time soon.