Making panela, in the hills around Supia

A machine to extract juice from sugar cane.

Humberto y su familia - muchas gracias!

Bolívar, Colombia

The rolling hills of northern Colombia lent into the sun. A sweltering heat rose from the ground and beat down from the sky. Buffaloes wallowed in mud to their shoulders, and the trunks of trees stood always surrounded by a closely bunched herd of cows, the intermittent shadows of leaves dappled on their hides. People dipped only momentarily into the yellow heat; the darkened angular shade always crowded, the people still as cows. Even the hammocks failed to swing, slumped and exhausted, under a hot and heavy weight.

I hadn´t cycled for almost two weeks and the activities I´d replaced the exercise with, namely drinking too much and sleeping too little, meant that on more than one occasion I had the sensation of fainting as I collapsed into the shade or sat down to drink water.

Small wooden shacks lined a dusty roadside, counters piled high with fruit: oranges and pineapples; passion fruit, guavas and tree tomatoes. Cafes served an abundance of food better suited to the frigid climate of the highlands: mountains of rice; beans and potatoes; slabs of meat and legs of chicken; deep fried empanadas and deep fried bread. Hot steam and hot smoke under the hot roofs rose.

I was tired when I reached San Juan Nepomuceno. Too tired to ask coherently about a place to sleep, and much too tired to pronounce the town´s name properly. Coherency and cultural awareness though are not always so important, and I was soon led to a residencia, and it´s crumbling concrete walls.

An iguana swaggered slowly across the yard. Hens scratched in the dust and dried leaves, leading always behind them a trail of young. And humming birds hovered; blurred wings against sky, and a falling sun.

Inside a moth beat itself against a dirty white wall, and did do so `til it died, exhausted, on a grey and dusty floor.

Iguana, on the road towards Supia.

Leaving La Pintada

more mist, rain, cold etc.

Gustavo y su familia en Caldas... muchas gracias.

View from the second floor of the aforementioned museum

Myself and Janko outside the Museum of Antioquia

Drinking mate, from Argentina. .. oh, just read that... not like a drinking buddy... it´s a drink called maté (mah-te) made by steeping the dried leaves of yerba maté in hot water.

Football... Deportiva Independiente Medellín

Comida tipica, a little prettier than it´s usually found.

The view from poorer neighbourhoods to the north.

Coming back down to the city in a cable car.

A break from the city,

Medellín´s metro.

A wet horse. wet everything.

Climbing towards Yarumal

Poor visibility in the Colombian Andes.