Dodging roadblocks in Colombia

We had planned to head to Barichara, a two day drive from Cartagena. We headed out in Cartagena traffic and went to the only propane gas station on ioverlander but their propane was not working. They did let me fill up water for free and I filtered it. I still had a quarter tank of propane left, but it was supposed to be empty for the crossing.

We came across our first road block at Turbaco and the toll person told us it was blocked. We ended up taking a dirt side road to bypass the roadblock and felt pretty good about it. We stopped for lunch at a grill and had a steak and spaghetti and soup and a couple lemonades for $25.

lolWe continued on and hit another line of stopped trucks while on a bridge. Off in the distance I could see all the semi trucks on the highway bridge were not moving. I asked the truck behind us who had been there since 10 am and didn't know when the road block would clear. It could be today or in days. We sat around and after twenty minutes decided we would try to find another way around this town.

It would involve two more hours of driving at least. We turned around to the previous town and stopped to get groceries. We continued through the town down tiny dirt roads and then to a potholes road for an hour and back on to a good road and crossed the river and started heading back south but the sun was setting soon so we stopped at a rest area for the night.

There were a couple security guards there and an ambulance and EMS personnel and clean bathrooms. The kids road their scooters around until the mosquitoes started biting. We played uno. We reheated leftovers and ate them. One of the security guards gave me some advice for the roads ahead. The French man I met on Saturday sent me a Facebook Colombia page with a listing of the road closure and when they reopened. It turns out the road to Barichara had a landslide and is closed. Oh well. We decided if the road was no cleared tomorrow we would head south of Medellin which was 17 hours from our current position. We checked the Facebook page and the bridge we were on before was still blocked. Time will tell if we made the right decision.