This weekend I took a little trip up through the mountains to some mountain towns. I took a very small rocky dirt road up through some very remote mountains. There were a few houses here and there and some people herding cows but not much. The views were incredible though. The road ran up the spine of a mountain where you could see down into the valleys on both sides. After a long ride, I passed a river and wanted to go swimming. I pulled up and talked to the old man who owned the house next to the river. His name was Willy and he was blind in one eye but he was very friendly and let me go swimming there. He said he lived his whole life next to that river.

After that I headed up to a very scenic mountain town called Salento with very colorful buildings. I spent the night there and then headed up to the volcano the next day.

The road up to Nevado del Ruiz volcano is extremely winding and it takes several hours to ascend. About halfway up I had to stop and put on my sweatshirt and gloves because it was getting cold. When I started the trip I was at 400 feet, and at the top of the volcano I reached over 13,000 feet. Fortunately there’s a very nice hot spring river that runs out of the volcano that I got to warm up in.

In the course of ascending 13,000 feet you pass through quite a few different climates, and the strangest was at the top of the volcano was a desert. Very dry, no trees, and only cacti grow. You also get tired extremely quickly and walking about 100 feet left me winded.

The next day I headed back down the mountains to the base camp to get ready to head south.