Hitchhiking to Ecuador Part Four: Busted

Usually when we saw police at military checkpoints we would dive into the back of the truck to hide. Amilkar had warned us that is was illegal to carry people in the back of his truck and he only had one seat in the front.



This time, though, in our tired state we just laid still. As the truck slowed over a speed bump I looked straight at the Po-Po through our small flap of folded-back tarp. We felt the truck slow further and then pull in.
Immediately grabbed what we could and dived over several rows of salt to lie as flat and quiet as we could in the darkness.

Hitchiking to Equador Part Three: Salt, Salt and More Salt.

 After what seemed like an eternity of late nights and early mornings we got up at 3am to walk down to the garage where Amilka would pick us up and take us to the border with Equador.

 Amilkar appeared from his truck, beaming, and we scrambled into our four day home of 40 kg sacks of salt-based animal feed. Not the most comfortable bed but I was relieved that it was not the same as his last load: bricks. The smell is something else though. At first it is the kind of smell that your brain is not sure how to process. It is not quite a bad smell or repulsive, but it isn´t pleasant either. You kind of get used to the smell but are again overwhelmed after leaving the lorry for a few hours for fresh air.

Hitchhiking to Ecuador, Part Two: Three Days in a Truck Stop

Raul and his family

There seemed to be no sound when I woke up. I felt suspended in darkness, blackness. My memories of the days previous had slipped away. For that moment I was nobody, nowhere. My eyes felt sticky with tiredness and I struggled to open them. As I blinked them open the sounds of the environment around began to make themselves known: the birds out in the garden; the whoosh of trucks and cars trundling on the road close by; the whir of the electric fan, the only thing protecting us from the mosquitos in this tiny house of exposed brick and corrugated tin roofing; Emma's soft breathing beside me on this tiny bed. As I looked around, my memories gradually fell into place. This was our second day in Malambo and we were staying in the house of a complete stranger.

Hitchhiking from Colombia to Ecuador, Part One: "As Long As We Don´t Get Stuck Here."

It was strange saying goodbye to Samantha, Emma's sister. We were at the end of our three weeks together in Colombia and at the beginning of something altogether different for Emma and I. Once she had gone we were left in Santa Marta airport, confronted by the facts: we had next to zero money and a very, very long way to travel. All in, we'd need to cover the entire length of Colombia (approximately 1400 km) and then a fair old chunk of Ecuador (approximately 300km).

Smuggling Contraband: Our First Hitchhike in Colombia

Our kitchen at Palomino

"You don´t have any contraband do you?" Alex asked with an ambiguous smile. We had spent about thirty idle minutes in the sleepy, dusty town of Palomino up in the north east of Colombia, trying to thumb our first ride in Colombia. This was my first proactive attempt at hitchhiking and so I was as excited as a kitten with its tail when he pulled over and waved us in. It´s harder than I thought to lift 18kg of everything you own over a ten foot gate on the back of a truck whilst clinging on with the other arm, twice. But our massive bags eventually relented and fell heavily the other side onto some covered cargo. By the time we settled into his cab the 30 degree heat, two days without showers and excitement of it all had brought my armpits to a boil.

"You don´t smell too bad." Alex assured us, with that same smile.

Camino De Santiago in Photos: Part 5: New Friends and Gift Economies on the Way

The day after my ankle gave in, I went outside to give it a test run round the block. It didn't feel any better, I had developed a strange lump and I was worried. I spoke to Timo and his friends, some German pilgrams we had met the night before who were outside. They said that they had all started getting this type of pain coupled with a strange lump in different places on there legs. 

They said it was due to the weight of the bags.

We want to hear from you! Plus some updates to the site and a big thank you.

As we begin scaling back the use of money in our lives there are many (big and scary and little and scary) questions that present themselves. We have started addressing these questions ourselves and you can expect to read our thoughts and answers soon.  But we also want to hear from you. We want you to ask us questions and tell us what you think.

The process, we reckon, will be good and grounding for us; it will allow us to address some issues that perhaps we have overlooked whilst laying things out a little more clearly for you.

We would love for this blog to become more interactive, and it's more fun for us, too, if we hear from you.

You can ask a question directly in the comments section of this blog, via Twitter or Facebook, or by sending a pigeon.