Daytrip to San Cipriano and Buenaventura

I was planning my trip to Quito when the guys from the hostel told me that they are going to San Cipriano. I thought about it a bit and decided to join them. This town is quite far, more than two hours by bus from Cali. It’s in the coastal mountains of the Pacific Ocean. This town is special because there are no roads leading there. Only a railway, but there are no trains either. Instead, they have weird little vehicules made of wood, powered by motorcycles. There is a natural park next to the city as well, with wonderful tropical rainforest, rivers and waterfalls.

Sometimes my problem is that people talk too much, and I’m not able to follow it. Sometimes they don’t say anything because they think that I wouldn’t understand it anyway. This morning when we arrived at the bus station, the situation was the second one, they kept saying “veintisiete”, “veintisiete”. But nothing else. I only understood it later, when I realized that there are three different prices for tickets to San Cipriano. 25, 27, 30. And we had tickets for 27 which is veintisiete in Spanish. Fortunately we found our bus anyway. When the bus started we were the only ones on the bus, but at the time when we left Cali, the Bus was already filled with people as it usually happens. The road goes between huge, beautiful mountains. It is still breathtaking, however I stopped taking photos of them because I am starting to get used to this view. This road was the first where tunnels and viaducts were built in big numbers. Colombia would need much more of these. Traffic is so slow through the mountains and so much fuel is wasted when 1000 trucks have to climb up and down on the mountains.

Because of these new roads we were able to travel pretty fast. The bus has no official stop in San Cipriano, but it is no problem here. They usually stop anywhere if you ask the driver. Unfortunately it didn’t happen this time. They forgot to stop and we only realized it a few minutes later. The solution was ridiculously easy. The bus driver waved to a bus which went in the opposite direction. It stopped as well, our bus driver asked the other one to take us back. And they did. I think in Europe something like that would never happen.

There are no roads leading to San Cipriano from here. There is only one railway which can bring us there, but there are no trains either. I won’t try to explain which kind of vehicle they have, just check out the pictures.

This journey was really fun. And then the walk in the rain forest was amazing just like having a shower in a waterfall. I loved it.

After we got back on the “train” I said goodbye to the guys, because I wanted to see the Pacific Ocean even if it isn’t really there in Buenaventura. It’s just the estuary of several rivers, but the waves of the oceans are there on the horizon. Buenaventura is an interesting city. Nobody would say that it is nice, but it’s special in many ways. The city center is on an Island. Huge part of the city is built on water. There are some safety issues though, due to drug trafficking.