The epic drive continues!

We then drove through mile after mile of plantain and banana plantations.  When the bunches reach a certain size, the farmers cover them with perforated plastic bags which help with the ripening whilst allowing air to circulate around the fruits.

At this point, the road conditions deteriorated massively and our progress was severely hampered.  It was very hot and dusty, too!  It's at times like this when, fleetingly, you question whether overlanding really is the best way to travel!  Then, you catch sight of something out of the window that you wouldn't have seen if you'd been travelling in any other way, or you exchange a few words and a smile with a local going about their daily activities, and you remember that it definitely is!! 😊

Eventually, we reached a tarmacked road and were able to get a bit of speed up!  The surrounding countryside was so lush and green.  We were passing numerous horse and cattle ranches.  Ritchie was looking for a suitable lunch stop.  In the absence of one, we stopped at a garage to use the toilets.  The guy there was selling just a few bits and bobs out of a small fridge.  He had cold beers and bags of crisps, which suited most of the group!  Mark had a beer and I succumbed and had my first packet of crisps in several months.  I was just craving salt!  My low-carb regime is definitely suffering here, but my blood sugar still seems to be under control, so I'm not going to worry too much.

We then drove on to the busy town of Necocli where we stopped for lunch.  About half of us ended up in the same local restaurant where we had the menu del dia - chicken, salad, patacones, and rice.  It was very tasty and will do us for the rest of the day.  I did call at the supermarket next door and get a couple of Greek yoghurts and some fresh blueberries, though!

Back on the truck, Nikki updated us on the situation with the protests.  From what she was hearing, the road we were on should be OK.  However, we did still have around 10 hours to go, so it was going to be a very late arrival!

We stopped briefly when we met an Oasis truck coming the other way.  He had no passengers on board.  Ritchie went over to chat to him.  He was coming from Medellin and said the road was clear.

Between then and when the sun set, we drove through lots more lush countryside with views of the Andes.  We passed lots of pineapple plantations and grape vines, and saw herds of water buffalo wallowing in streams and rivers.  Once the sun went down, though, we had several more hours of driving in complete darkness before we finally reached our destination. 

We stopped again at about 6.30pm for toilets and for anyone who wanted something else to eat to get a takeaway.  Then we continued.  There was very little to see apart from the sheet lightning over the mountains. 

As we carried on across the Andes, we went through many tunnels.  In between, we could vaguely make out the shapes of the mountains all around.  I imagine that the road would be very scenic in daylight!

We had a final toilet stop at 11.30pm at a garage with 50km to go.  We were a very tired group, but there was very little moaning.  Everyone was still pretty upbeat - maybe it's because we are still at the start of the trip 😂. Czytaj więcej