16th March 2015 – Pasto to San Agustin – 2015-03-26 23:32

This morning we have an earlier than usual start as we have 390 kilometers to drive on very winding roads over mountains with some dirt surfaces. We have been told by the Police it could take us 14 hours.ÿÿ We have also been told not to drive at night in Colombia and to all stay together. There are no go areas which we will be steering clear of so today we are taking the road to Popayan and then to San Agustin. We leave Pasto driving through thick forest and a national park.The scenery then changes to dramatic mountains and beautiful green slopes. The road is good with the occasional rock slides. We have an anxious moment as a tanker is on the wrong side of the road to avoid a rock slide & we have to move right over off the road to avoid it. There is a truck strike on at the moment and trucks are parked in service stations with a big police and army presence. There is also a comprehensive army presence allÿ along the road today. We get a bit lost going through Popayan as the GPS can’t locate the road we need to be on to go through to San Agustin. We eventually use another map on Michael’s phone and find our road. Once we get onto the right road out if town we stop for lunch at a very picturesque spot with sweeping views over the mountains and continue driving through beautiful countryside. After lunch we drive through a national park on the worst dirt road that we have been on so far. It’s like doing an OST for 50 kilometers and it takes us over 2 hours to drive. Fortunately it’s drizzling rain so there is no dust, just rocks, ditches and mud so it’s slow going the fastest we get up to is 20kph. The jungle either side of the road is very dense with unusual plants and gorgeous colour flowers. Once we’re back on the bitumen we have a lovely drive on great MG roads through small villages with beautiful scenery.We are stopped at one of the army control points and Goldie has their luggage searched. Once the officer is satisfied with what he sees we are all waved through. They are all very friendly and today we are only stopped the once. We make it to our hotel just on dark at 6:30 pm so it’s been a long day. Our guide Moreno organises a ute to take us all to a local restaurant for dinner. The ute makes 2 trips to get us all there. The back of the ute has a bench seat down each side and a canopy over the top, so plenty of room in the back for our guys plus Moreno.