March 2020: Colombia #2 and #3 - Lockdown
The eagle-eyed amongst you will sport that there is currently a video 'gap' between Belize and Colombia. My tardiness in creating the Central America videos is primarily based on the fact that I only have a fairly random collection of video clips. I will throw them all together soon.
In the meantime .... Lockdown!
We were about to complete the Southern part of Colombia and head towards Ecuador when the COVID-19 issues got real. We only had 29 days left on our Colombian temporary import permit (TIP) and visa, and it sounded like borders would be closing fast. What to do?
It was a strange feeling, trying to gamble on quite serious future events. Ecuador had announced that they were closing the borders to both foreigners and returning Ecuadorians in 24 hours. We were 15 hours away at least.
Surely everyone making a mad dash to the Ecuador border would be a ******** show. Even if we drove there, the line ups / crossing could take forever, we may not get through, and who knows how people would react to foreigners at times of stress. That said, with under a month left on our current TIP and Visa, a border crossing would give us three more months of wiggle room.
Colombia had been an amazing place to be, it was certainly more in our comfort zone. Our friends in Ecuador were not exactly reporting the greatest of news. Locals had become suspicious of foreign virus carriers, their new services heavily promoting that white people were to blame for all existing corona cases.
The other issue was that we had just paid for some brand new tires, they were sitting in a city called Pereira further north. Do we lose over a thousand bucks of rubber too? We doubled led down on Colombian hospitality, also relying a little on reports that Colombia was incredibly lenient with people outstaying their TIP and Visa. If we overstayed or had to get flights back home and leave the camper, that could be a massive issue. In Ecuador, it could cost us thousands, in Colombia a couple of hundred bucks.
With almost every multiple choice answer going the way of Colombia we decided to stay and headed north towards Pereira to collect the tires. It seemed like as good an option as any. We almost made it too. Claire had decided we would hunker down at the popular Campground Bonanza, making a trip to Pereira in the morning; returning to Bonanza the same day. Covid had other ideas.
A rush of overlanders looking for sanctuary filled the campsite with 10 vehicles and 35 people. Following a frenzy of local indigenous concern over virus spread (which we understand) our campground was quickly put under quarantine.
These two videos are where we were, what was going on and what a typical day looked like.
Quarantine at Bonanza Campground
A Typical Day in Quarantine
Two very different rigs too.
