We had heard about Cabo de la Vela from a couple of people and decided it might be just what we needed to shake things up!
We consulted the 'not so trusty Lonely Planet' which described it...
'Cabo de la Vela isn't for everybody. Really. Getting there by public transportation involves a bone shaking ride in the back of a truck, driven at a lunatic speed with no apparent fear of death or injury. He may spend much of the journey draining beer cans in a single slug'
...And this time the Lonely Planet was spot on with it's advice, the journey was as described with even more fun and games!
The truck to take us there was loaded up to probably over double it's height with crates of produce and luggage. Meanwhile in the back, you didn't even have breathing space in front of your face as it was so rammed with people, bags, gas and everything else under the sun!
After about 3 minutes of driving - we hadn't even made it out of town, the trucks suspension completely gave out on one side, leaving the truck unable to move and tilting beyond repair! What a great start...
Luckily we were with some people from Argentina and they went back off into town to tell some locals what had happened and arrange another truck. I very much doubt that between all of our pigeon Spanish we could have explained the situation and managed to get a solution without them!
So after about an hour of sitting on the roadside in the blistering heat, we were back on another truck and ready to get going again. This truck had about 10 of us in and was so much nicer as we had space to breath and move.
Once we eventually made it out of town, we started driving literally into the middle of the desert! It was so strange and barely felt like Colombia as we could only see cactus & dry sand ahead of us.
At one point the driver actually got lost, (pretty easy to do in the middle of the desert with no roads, signs or markings) and we drove around until we found a random house to stop at and ask the locals for directions.
By the time we arrived in Cabo we were covered head to toe in red dust and were bruised all over, but it was definitely an adventure!
xxx
