6 January 2017

Our decision to leave Medellín was very last minute, based on the fact that Lenin’s brother, Seled, was driving to get his family in La Paz, Santander, and he had just enough space in his car for me, Lenin, Churro, and our bikes. We folded down a back seat in his hatchback and stuffed in our bicycles, along with the trailer and all of our belongings, and joined Seled for the 8-9 hour drive. Within the first two hours we discovered that Churro gets car sick. While sitting on Lenin’s lap in the front passenger seat, he started to vomit. There wasn’t quite enough time to pull over, so he puked out the window, plastering the side of the car with half-digested dog food.

Churro despises his first ride in the trailer.

​It was very late when we arrived in La Paz, so we stayed in a hotel that night. The next morning, we took Churro on a test ride in the trailer from the town to one of Seled’s in-law’s houses, about 10 kilometers away. He hated it, and we had to zip the screen on to keep him from jumping out.

Lenin lies on the edge of this gaping hole, staring down into the abyss.

From the house, we got into the back of a pickup truck with Seled and his family and rode up to a giant hole in the ground, about 80 meters in diameter and 300 meters deep. Instead of riding back with the rest of the family, Lenin and I took Churro on a hike from the hole to where we were supposed to find a clear blue swimming hole. After a nice long hike in the wrong direction and back, we eventually made it to a river with a waterfall, but it got too difficult to walk along the river, and it was growing dark, so we turned back before we made it to the swimming hole. It was a long walk back into town, and we took turns carrying Churro the last few kilometers. Hopefully, he would still be worn out enough to relax in his trailer the next day.

Churro and me, towards the end of our hike out to the swimming hole that we never found