When OFF THE BEATEN PATH is NOT a Good Thing [Van Life South America]

All right, Kurt's already up and at them. Went looking for the tapirs. I am up pretty early for me, six, six o'clock, and I'm gonna head over here to the two little short trails I can check out, see if maybe I can find them. I really hope we find these guys. It was quite an ordeal to get out here to look for them, but to be honest, it's not looking good. Let's go see. No tapirs here, but what a beautiful place to come wake up at. All right, y'all, I've been up since 5 a.m. and I've been hiking up this trail hard for about an hour, fast as I can, trying to find the tapirs, but nature doesn't always deliver what you want. Nature does what nature wants. This morning, I did not spot a tapir. I can't lie and tell you I'm not disappointed. We came out hard to find them. Snow is excited. We were excited, but I gotta head back to the van. We need to get out of the road and head on to our next adventure. All right, we're leaving the end of the road campsite, and we did not see the tapirs, but there are more of them in South America, so we will continue to look for these things. They're very endangered, so to see one would have been a big deal. I'm not sure we'll bring the van up on another adventure like this, but we're gonna look for them. No, if you've got more of a four-by-four overlanding vehicle, we recommend this place. If you're in a van, we do not, but still maybe take a little tour out here or something and see if you get lucky to see them. Since we weren't able to show you one, we're going to insert a picture of one right here, because they're cool looking, I don't know, funny looking little creatures. But now we're going to see if we see anything else on this road on the way out, and then we're headed to our next destination. All right, we definitely just scraped the bottom. We don't hear anything else scraping. I think we're gonna take a peek and make sure nothing's hanging. It was a good little bump we went over there. What'd you think? Oh, just a little tiny scrape on the... I think it was those things over there for the... For steps? For the steps. All right. Okay, here we go, slow and steady. All right, that last bad section was the worst section. We remember that when we were coming in, so now it's just slow and steady to get out of the rest of this road. Then we're going to stop in that little town where we camped the other night and hope we can find a place for some breakfast. The only thing that would stop us now is if we saw some monos or a tapir, but we're pretty much out of the tapir area. So let's go have some breakfast, Kurt. What do you think? Yep, let's go eat. I'm hungry. Got up early, went for a hike, and now I'm starving. We've been driving for almost an hour on this road, starting to pass a few cars, a couple of horses. Hi, pretty boy. We made it back to town. Three and a half miles, one hour and 10 minutes, but here we are. Now let's see if we can find a place for some desayuno. So we're leaving this little mountain town of La Florida, which I have to admit was a little weird to be back in Florida, Kurt. But anyway, we're leaving this little town. It's an up-and-coming little local tourist destination. They've got some great restaurants, some cute little hostels, not a lot, but I think more stuff is coming. I think in a few years this will be a destination and it deserves it. It's a cool little town with a nice little atmosphere and really kind people and some great nature hikes. Now we didn't get to see the tapirs and we are a little bit disappointed, but it's not about, you know, seeing all these amazing stuff. It's more about the journey guys and that was an amazing ride out there. A really cool place to camp. Some of us did enjoy the ride more than others. This guy over here, I did get a bit nervous. It was a rough road, but I'm always excited we can get snow to out where this stuff is. I traipse out into the jungles and the crazy parts all the time, so we can get the van out there so she can see it. It does my heart good. Yeah, yeah, so I got to do some cool little hikes without hurting my knee too bad, so it worked out good. It was a good visit, a good town, but now we're headed to our next place and our destination is a pretty good drive away. We're going to try to make it today, but we may have to find a stop and point along the way, so let's see how this goes. We're probably, we've been showing you a lot of driving. We're doing some backtracking today. Probably not going to show you this drive unless we see something really cool, so we'll be back in a little bit. Incredibly steep climb up a winding road. Kind of a cut through. We're headed to Hardeen, but we've come through some country, beautiful countryside. Snow told you we decided not to film a lot of this just because a lot of it was backtracking. This is new area. It is pretty. It is stunning and amazing, but we've climbed up on these mountains and we're on these mountain ridges and you can just see out across through into the valleys and the different cities and it's just really gorgeous. We're coming up through coffee fields, banana fields, sugar fields, big huge fields of bamboo, so many different things and it's just green and lush and steep. All right guys, bad news for us. As we're coming along, this road turned into a gravel road. We have 45 kilometers to go. We're really at a decision point because this road is almost as rough as the road was in in the last episode back into that park chasing tapirs. This is totally nuts. I'm a little bit surprised that Google brought us this way. The Google Maps. You guys can see we are just bouncing everywhere in the van. The road is dirt and narrow. We don't have a good option and now we have a car. You can't go anymore. Wow, sorry guys, but this is just intense. So this is basically a logging road I think and you can, oh it looks like they're doing some road work. A road may, look at this. I don't think so either. Well, another surprise which is no surprise. A rough road, but I gotta get out and move this tree. So there's a tree in the road which had to have just fallen because we literally just passed a car that had to come through here. So it's a fairly big tree. You can see up here where they've just stripped all the trees out of the jungle. It looks like they've actually planted some back. Maybe there's some tree forest, but this is definitely treeland. You can see up here on the mountain in front of us it's just stripped of everything. All right, I feel a little bit like the engine that could. I think I can. I think I can. We are literally inching along this mountain. We are making very slow bouncy rocky progress. Manna is on the dash sort of trying to look for a place where she can wedge in and we got a long ways to go. I know sometimes you guys probably think we're a little bit dramatic. I assure you today is not one of those days. This is just a long intense crazy drive. I almost bet none of you have been on what's scheduled to be a two-hour drive like this. I imagine it's probably going to take us that double. So by the end our nerves will definitely be frayed. All right, even though this is a really bumpy narrow steep muddy road, not an ideal road that the google has brought us on, it is shorter than the alternative paved road which went like I don't know 50 miles around a big loop which we've already been on that road. It is covered in construction with and has the semis that can't make the hairpin turns. So we do think as long as we can make it through this road that this is a better route for today. We'll see when we get done. Who knows. So I wanted to get out and just show you guys what we're talking about. But if you can see this section right through here this is not untypical but these are 8 to 12 inch drops through here and it's muddy and mushy and bumpy and sometimes there's just this on one side so either way we're just rocking and rolling. You guys know we have a pretty heavy vehicle anyway. As we grovel and complain about the conditions of the road all of a sudden we come over the hill and somebody lives up here. So along here you can see a lot more deforestation and off to the right over here there's more little finca there. Looks like they're growing something covered maybe like tomatoes or something like that. Looks like vines of tomatoes. So if you don't think this road is scary I'm going to show you this. There's a lot of straight off drops and then along here we'll see washouts. Now you can see the road's pretty narrow through here but if you look right here this is a straight down wash. Look at this. I don't even want to walk on the edge. I'm going to come around here so you can see this. You guys see how that road is just almost completely washed out? Straight down and it's kind of washing under the road. This will go. This will go very very soon. I don't know how many more rains it can handle but this is dangerous. But we're about a third of the way through so we're going to keep going but we're always on the lookout for stuff like this. Wow super scary super dangerous. So if you can see on both sides of the road they've kind of cut a little bit of a drainage ditch and so what happens is all the water runs down through here. It runs through on each side of the road and so it just kind of keeps cutting over time and as it does that the road gets narrower and narrower and in places where they have to drop it and drain it down the mountain you get these washes and erosions. So there's places where those ditches get pretty deep and it gets a little scary especially when there's a drop off there. So we're going along this road and we've actually been able to pick up speed just a little bit not much. Snow's trying to make up some time. She's worried about getting caught out here in the rain but she says this right here is a pretty good road. So I guess it's all kind of relative but compared to some of the road we've been on yeah it's a great road now. Wow this is incredibly beautiful ride in places stunning that rock face that huge mountain you can see all the way back through the valley in there some of the really lush green grass that they use for cow pasture amazing views beautiful big trees tell you what I wish it wasn't such a tense drive. Okay guys 28 more kilometers to go we started with 45 so we're approaching the halfway point the road up here looks as curvy and crazy as it's been right now the GPS says we're going to get there at 2 41. We do not think that is right. We're hoping for four o'clock. This GPS is killing us. So what are your thoughts? I'm still focused on getting us out of here before it rains because we see all these washouts and I know I'm probably overreacting but I will feel better when we're on pavement and then I can look back and enjoy this ride a little bit more. So this is about the fourth or fifth maybe sixth maybe even more big washes we've come across you can see where the mountain just gave way right there piled up right there and they just push it out of the way and the leaves are still green on that tree so that's a on those trees so that's a recent washout yeah that's the second one we've seen with green trees still in it so and here's another spot up here and watch it there there's another spot all right guys we got to concentrate it's getting a little scary again this careful stomping the road this is all of course you guys can see fairly fresh green stuff that's just slid off there we've only got about an hour left and it's starting to rain and I wanted to tell you guys we weren't going to show you any of today's drive unless it became interesting and uh this is crazy interesting or crazy crazy so I am sorry you're getting a double or quadruple dose of driving videos but it's just what we've got going on right now and you guys are along for the ride not just to see the tourist stuff but for the whole journey the whole journey and that's what today is about but we hope that soon we will be at our campsite and it'll be a good campsite and then tomorrow we will be able to take you somewhere that does not involve just driving that's the plan guys all right good news we see a sign 19 kilometers to Hardeen 35 to Andes all right guys this is another crazy wash just steady through here snow steady through here steady through here it's good you're good you're good you're good you're good you're good all right we just hit bottom through that section right there but just from a sense of urgency we're going to keep on moving to get out of here we really don't want to be driving in this stuff at night so we got to keep moving all right guys we're at another really challenging spot right here so here's another slide you can see where the big old tree roots and stuff just came yeah yeah yeah came sliding down the mountain we got no choice but to go in here if you guys can see how much we're leaning right now oh whoa whoa whoa 12 kilometers left we're gonna make it snow i think we're gonna make it we can see civilization some beautiful views off to the left there stunning views stressful drive what a contrast great news as we come around the corner we can see the city or the pueblo of Hardeen in the valley the mountains with the sun kind of reflecting off them are absolutely beautiful we're kind of wrapping around some of the last mountain roads on our descent down into this beautiful city i hope it's worth it i think that's probably uh needs to be our new theme i hope it's worth it a moment of pause in silence and excitement i think we may have made it to an asphalt road doesn't look like the whole road is paved but there's definitely some asphalt on this road and now it's gone so there you go all right the road is paved and it has been paved for like 500 feet so i think we are on a legit paved road we have made it now to get to our campsite and settle in if it wasn't so late and i wasn't so tired i think i would get out and kiss this pavement but i'm not going to so we drop as we drop down into Hardeen this little city the streets are lined with the big giant banana plants so you can see the blue bags are all filled with big bunches of bananas these are actually giant banana trees banana rama good news we just got an announcement from our gps that we're a couple hundred meters from the hostel fingers crossed we fit everything's good snow did call and confirm ahead so a lot of times we don't know if it's going to be opened or if it's even going to be there this one is we feel confident we just gotta fit we just gotta fit so today the rolls are reversed kurt's not feeling super good right now so i'm gonna go in and work the magic she did the heavy duty driving which normally i do and she's gonna go check out the hostel get the details make sure we're good to go i see a little gate there it looks tight but i'm pretty sure we can make it work not positive yet we'll let snow check it out and see what the dealio is all right we made it to our camp it's a beautiful little hotel slash hostel we are parked in the driveway next to all of these beautiful flowers kids playing in the road a couple of minute walk from downtown jardin which is a tourist destination here in colombia so kurt was just beat like i was from this drive so he walked a block down the road to pick us up something to eat for supper because we totally just missed lunch with that crazy drive but then we're gonna chill and call it a night we'll see you guys in the morning see if we can't find something fun to do besides drive crazy roads well look at this she's got a beautiful garden down here what a beautiful place look at this view if you like this video be sure to subscribe to our channel and hit that notification bell so you guys know when we put out new videos and don't forget you can always follow 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