We should start off this blog by saying we are back home in Victoria. The decision to come home happened fairly quickly but the journey to get here was long and tiring. Meantime, we spent 8 wonderful days at Cheryl's 'Above the Clouds' guest house. We had settled into a routine while we were here. We would usually be up with the sun and the birds singing at about 6:30, have a quick bite to eat and then walk the 400 meters to the mirador (lookout) to watch f...

Our travel plans have change numerous times in the last 24 hours. It has been crazy with updates on the coronavirus coming in hourly. Our original plan was to hunker down for a couple of weeks in an isolated rustic lodge in Junin. The village of Junin is actually about 1 KM away which consists of a few houses, a church, a store and an incredible orchid garden. We were looking forward to many days of bird watching and hiking. The lodge was empty and we would be co...

(Not sure why the title says Otavalo, Colombia. I am pretty sure we are in Otavalo, Ecuador. The stamp on our passport says we are in Ecuador) We crossed the border into Ecuador a few days ago and the people here are just as generous and gracious as the people in Colombia. A few of the dogs we have come across however were not so welcoming. Before we arrived at the border there were still a few mountains to overcome in Colombia. We had relatively easy rides fr...

As we left Ibagué we started to descend in altitude and the lower we got the hotter it became. Our next tourist destination was the Tatacoa desert with its unusual geographical formations. The first stop after Ibagué was just outside of Rovira when we saw a sign for camping with a pool. We didn't know it at the time but this would be the first of 4 nights with a pool. This wasn't planned but the prices were too good to pass up in this heat. We alwa...

From Pereira we rode to the nearby Otún Quimbaya nature sanctuary and did a couple of guided hikes with Oswaldo who spoke good English. We stayed overnight and woke to a forest full of birdsong. We were very lucky to see Howler monkeys way up high in the trees and lots of butterflies and birds. Yes the monkeys get their name from their howl but they weren’t calling each other when we saw them. They are amazing to watch make a path through the treetops without...