Americas Project

The expected but unwanted happened. On the day we wanted to cross to Ecuador our van broke down on the middle of the highway, only 40km away from Ecuador 🥴
Vini had already a weird feeling the night before. He was talking to Vanbora, telling her to only hold on a little longer that soon in Brasil we will treat her well and do a big maintenance. A little longer in this case meant 50km 😂
As the clutch was broken (see the video) there was no way to fix this on the highway, so the towing vehicle had to come. Luckily the whole service was free and gets paid with the highway tolls.
The towing vehicle unloaded our van at the entrance of the city Ipiales (it's not allowed to drive any further). We were lucky that right there was a good mechanic who let us sleep inside his garage and store our van there as long as we were waiting for the spare parts to arrive from Bogotá. Of course it all happened during weekend with a holiday on monday which meant extra waiting time.
The next day we decided to drive back by bus to a city called Pasto as we heared from our friends that it's possible to climb there. Thanks to the great climbing community in Colombia we got the contact of Carlos, a climber who lives in Pasto. He was a great help these days. He let us stay in his small cottage next to the climbing sectors, guided us to the sectors, showed us local food, and even went to the mechanics to check how things were going! We feel very grateful to meet so many amazing people during our trip. Hopefully one day we can give it back to them.
When the parts were about to arrive we traveled back to Ipiales and made a short visit to the cathedral "las lajas" , a stop at the gym and the city center (not very beautiful).
After 6 days of delay we were finally able to continue and cross the border to Ecuador.

Some facts:
* we had diner in a restaurant for 1.50$ per person
* paid 2$ for gym entrance
* waited 40min at the ATM to get money. When it was our turn there was not enough money left in the ATM
* at the mechanics you have to pay all the parts and productos yourself before the car gets fixed. Which meant withdrawing money 10 times and then go to the bank and make the payment. Vini even had to go to the gas stations to get some stuff so they could do the work.
* colombian roads are tough for cars. Many up and down, steep and curvy and many bumps and wholes. All this at >2000m above sea. When we got towed we saw 4 other vehicles that had to be towed at almost the same spotLue lisää