Day two of riding South in Colombia.
Today was a good day.
After leaving the "hotel of no sleep" we continued South and wound our way along a quite large river. The road was in excellent condition, the drivers were all careful and well behaved, and the scenery was amazing. Other things to note were:
1) The only people around here with guns are the police and military. They are quite visible but are not very intrusive. This is different to all of central America where there are lots of locals with guns on there hips and lots and lots of rent-a-guards all with shotguns or pistols standing around all over the place (from beer trucks to donut shops)
2) There is very little garbage around the place. Again this is very different to central America. The people here seem to care more about keeping the place tidy.
3) The houses here are much more pleasant to look at. I had a good rant in an earlier blog about the "architectural litter" in Mexico, and the same was true of central America. However, here the houses are made with the same materials and even with less (there are lots of houses with thatched roofs and woven matting walls), but they are neat and finished and painted and there are very few chunks of reinforcing steel sticking out all over the place. Not sure why this is but it is far nicer to look at.
In short, Colombia seems to be the nicest place I have been to yet! The countryside is like Costa Rica but it is much bigger and has far less traffic and very few tourists - I love it :)
