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Colombia, long awaited stage |
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Sunday, 05 October 2008 |
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Crossing was easy The first impression is reassuring: we are not in Peru! We meet Adrienne and Betr with whom we have been in touch for a few weeks without ever meeting each other. We go and visit a church in Ipiales whilst waiting for the office of the insurance to open. The church is built on a bridge and the side of the mountain is used as a wall for the entire building: really impressive.
We are urged to hurry up to avoid staying too long in the Southern region. The VW combi of our German friends cannot keep up with the pace imposed by the invincible beetle. Despite waiting for them at the entrance of Pasto, we decide to carry on without them: we will reunite further North but it seems so far that their van is attracting a lot of attention at every police check.
We go to Popoyan the next day from where we will organise our visit to a national park but after a short visit to the tourist office we prefer heading North towards the coffee zone. We spend a night in Cali and then luck strikes! In Salento we are looking for a finca when we come across an eco-park. Despite the rain we follow the muddy track and discover a lovely well-maintained finca: that's where we learn we are the first guests ever of this place! Food is excellent and the welcome warm. The owner who lives in another city calls in to have a nice little chat with us. The next morning, Raul the finca manager, receives a phone call: Ricardo, an intrigued neighbour invites us for a meal.
What a surprise! Ricardo and Clemen is a couple that has decided to live on the edge of society but in harmony with nature. Ricardo is an electronician and one of his hobbies is to play at experimenting things… To my biggest surprise he goes away and comes back with a replica of Stern Meyer water fuel cell!!! For those who don't know, Stern Meyer is a guy who might have run his sand buggy on water electrolyzed on-board and thus producing on-demand hydrogen to be used in a conventional internal combustion engine! What a coincidence… Myer was allegedly poisoned but all his discoveries are available because they are patented. The graal for any alternative energy engineer is to manage to replicate the process of producing enough gas to feed an internal combustion engine by electrolysis of water from a low intensity current. Some indications are mysteriously missing from his patents and no-one has ever managed to obtain the same results: if somebody succeds please contact me as a matter of urgency!
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