As mentioned in our last post, Mozart was complete and ready to hit the roads September 26th, and that is what we did (we’re catching up and bringing this blog up to date shortly). We left our long-time home Cotinga and are finally on the route south. Since Mozart’s Temporary Import Permit is expiring soon, we do not have much time left to stay in Colombia, and this is how we enjoyed the last days in this wonderful country.
Quindío is Colombia’s smallest district. Even if it includes high Andean mountain areas, we’d say that its main character is formed by green, rolling hills, small villages and an impressive coffee culture. Our first stop was Pijao, a tiny village in the Cordillera and the only place in Colombia participating in the Cittàslow organization, a conglomerate of villages and cities round the world focusing on maintaining their original face, keeping a high quality of living, avoiding franchise chains and protecting the regional culture from outside impacts. Pijao is a wonderful, calm place at the edge of the Andes. The village’s firefighters allowed us to stay in front of their station with a beautiful view over the area. We do not want to sound arrogant, but after our first night in Mozart, we knew we did a good job. An amazing camper to live in and extremely comfortable.
The following day we got an intense class on Quindío’s coffee culture at Recuca, including dressing up, dancing lessons, coffee harvesting and all around history of this region. Really a mind-blowing experience. We spent the night in Buenavista, and its name speaks for itself. Another beautiful tiny village in Quindío’s Andean mountain range. Parking next to a school yard overnight, Buenavista’s police came three times at night to admire our car and make sure we’re doing fine, having a small chat about the area and giving us a very friendly goodbye.
Before leaving Quindío we visited our friend Jorge Andres and his family again in his recently opened restaurant Churrasco Steak House and enjoyed Colombian hospitality and some amazing dishes with a cup of wine.
Finally time to turn towards Ecuador. After two days of driving staying the night close to Popayán and Pasto, we finally had to say Hasta Luego to Colombia and Muy Buenos Días Ecuador.
We’d like to finish this post with a quote of our very dear friend Tobias, concerning, but not limited to Mozart. We didn’t crash him, it’s meant figuratively and applies to more situations in one’s life we could have imagined before our journey. To us, Tobias’ phrase became a motivational ethos we had to apply more often than we wanted and are glad that some things took their own way, to give us unknown opportunities and outgrow ourselves.
Sometimes you just have to drive it against the wall, smash it entirely, so you can arrange it and built something completely new.
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