It was time to plot a route from Mocoa to Ecuador and I had three choices. The first option was to continue South and East, deeper into the Oriente, or Eastern slope of the Andes on the Amazon side. The border crossing is near San Miguel and it leads to the Amazonian side of Ecuador. It is also an area where FARC is active, contraband is big business, and the oil companies are hard at work destroying the ecosystem. More importantly, it is almost a no-go zone for solo travelers. Besides the risks, it would put me far off the route for the portion of Ecuador I am trying to see.
Option number two was to backtrack four hours to San Agustin and six hours to Popayan, where I would turn south for five hours to Pasto and then two more to the border. Hmmm... seventeen hours by bus and backtracking as well. That's not much of an option, sez I.
That left option number three, the direct route from Mocoa to Pasto. I planned to overnight in Pasto because the road from Pasto to the border is not safe to travel at night due to banditry along the highway, or so the reports read at present. The route from Mocoa to Pasto is over the Trampoline de la Muerte, of the Trampoline of Death. Lonely Planet describes the road as "one of the most dangerous and spectacular roads on the continent." What's not to like, I ask you?
The ten seat mini-van pulled out of Mocoa and quickly began climbing into the Andes. Mocoa, despite being billed as being on the Amazon Basin is, in fact, just above flat expanse of the Amazon. The town sits in the last foothills of the Andes, a land of dense jungle, untold numbers of rivers and streams, and countless waterfalls. Directly to the West of Mocoa is the first great escarpement of the Andes and this is the route of the Trampoline de la Muerte.
The pavement disappeared quickly, as did any semblance of sanity. The road, to strain the term, devolved into a one-lane gravel affair with overhanging cliffs on one side and huge drops into the jungle on the other. Regardless of which way the road twisted, these two things remained a constant. In places there are guardrails, but much of the edge of the "road" is marked with the magic yellow tape and the reason for the magic yellow tape is to show you that the road has been undercut. Where there was once guardrail, there are now ribbons of twisted steel lying hundreds of feet below the road.
Bridges? We don't need no stinkin' bridges! Water crossings in the mini-van became par for the course.
This was the gentle portion of the road, early on in the day. That little line in the jungle? That's the road.
When you meet oncoming traffic, someone has to back up until there is a spot where both vehicles can squeeze by. Backing up on this road, well, its not for the faint of heart.
Ho hum, another water crossing in a mini-van. Yawn.
After an hour of hanging on for dear life, the preliminaries were over. Things got serious. Really serious. The road started to climb with a vengance and the drops over the side became chilling. There were many, many places where a min-van would plunge, roll or bounce 400 meters or more before it even thought about stopping. That's over 1,200 feet for you English measure folks. What was even more awe inspiring was that it just kept going and going. One could die from falling rocks tossed down by the overhanging cliffs, and there was plenty of evidence of rock fall. One could slide off the road and die the obvious way, or one could head-on another vehicle in one of the thousand blind turns, then proceed to the former step of plunging to death. Or oould simple have a heart attack.
Even the magic tape gives way. Now things are getting very, very real.
Did I mention that the driver was going really, really fast?
The view from the inside as we squeeze past a truck. There are lorries on this road!! Who thought that was a good idea?
And then, just when I was getting into my own sense of mortality, the Trampoline of Death became the Waiting Room of Death. Everything came to a complete halt. There was some trouble up ahead and chaos ensued. Well, gridlock ensued actually. No one was going anywhere. After about a half hour of this, there was some shuffling of vehicles and an attempt to make a second lane by using the ditch on the cliff side. All of the trucks and lorries, including the cattle trucks at the front of the line, were jockeyed perilously close to the abyss. That left enough room on the inside for smaller vehicles to pass the lorries with a few inches to spare. I am in no way exaggerating the units of measure. The most extraordinary thing that occured during the long wait was the appearance of the street vendors. They must spring from the ground like someone has sown the Hydra's teeth. We were literally in the middle of the mountains, kilometers from anywhere that resembled a tienda (store) and yet there appeared several hombres with chips and crackers and warm soda. They were doing a brisk business amidst the confusion. Finally, we began to inch forward. Lets just say that it was not the time to have one's elbow sticking out of the window.
As our turn came, we queezed by the problem. Here is the Chiva that almost went over the side. The former passengers were standing in the ditch line looking wet and scared. I know that there are a few bushes showing in this quickly fired photo, but just past the greenery is a gully that went down forever.
A better view of the abyss below and the squeeze getting by.
Now you would think that seeing this near catastrophe would give our driver pause. That and the rain that was slickening the road quite effectively. What actually happened, as near as I can guess, is that our intrepid pilot decided that being behind schedule, he would try to make up time. The road got slighly less frightening, but the maniac at the wheel now took it upon himself to start drifting the min-van through the wet corners in a rush to reach safety. This part of the run was where I tried to remember the ephemeral nature of existence and the belief of the Ogallala that it was indeed "A good day to die."
Since you are reading this and I am writing in the past tense, I am assuming you have figured out that we survived. Despite the sliding and hanging on and being thrown about the van for almost four hours, suddenly there was pavement. We dropped into the first of the upland valleys, an almost gentle farm landscape. The van windows were coated in mud and photos became impossible. We stopped for the obligatory meal in the first small town. I have never been in a restaurant which features an air compressor in the front window. As I slurped my sopa, I watched the driver airing the tires back up toroad pressure. Like good moto riders, he had started out with the tire pressure really low to aid in traction.
The odd sound of an air compressor running next to your table while eating your soup.
We lived to see another small Andean town.
Cookies for the quick. I don't know what the dead get.
Laguna de la Cocha, the last landmark before Pasto and an almost sure sign that I would live to tell this tale.
Wheeling into the Pasto terminal on a late Sunday afternoon was a sign to me. I am destined to die another day. Not today Mister Sharkey, not today. I shouldered the Deuter and made my way through the tough streets of Pasto, a hard edged town made even harder by the eerie quiet of a shuttered Sunday afternoon. The bars were the only businesses open. The street felt dodgy and sketchy, but i walked boldly. Had I not just seen my mortality up close and personal? And not in a fleeting glimpse either, but over and over throughout the hours of traversing the Trampoline de la Muerte. What did I have to fear from street drunks? Nothing! The air was sweet in my lungs! I was a giant walking the earth, shaking the ground with my invincibility!!
One of the sweetest pleasures in life is to give old Mr. Death a tweak on the nose and get away with it.
Just a little tweak, mind you, just a little one. And even with that, not too often or without thought. He always wins in the end.
