VIRTUAL BIKE RIDE IN SEARCH OF EXOTIC BIRD - Van Life Colombia

All right, one of the main reasons we came to this pretty little town, well one, because it's a pretty little town, but two, there is a bird here, uh, gallitos de la roca, or cock of the rock, and it is one of the most beautiful birds in the world, and you're supposed to stand a pretty good chance of seeing it here, and it pretty much is endemic to the Andes region, which is where we are. So we are about to hop on our bikes, ride over to a little forest reserve where these things are supposed to live sometimes. So let's go see if we can find this bird. Before we take these bikes down and go look for these really cool birds, we decided, and mainly because we get asked a lot about what these towns really look like when we're down here in Central and South America, and we pull our bikes out quite a bit and ride all through these little towns whenever we pull them out, and we don't always show it to you. So in today's video, we're literally going to just take you on this bike ride with us. You're going to get to see what we see while we're seeing it riding these bikes. So like I said, before we go find these really cool birds, we're going to head down to the town center of this cool little town, Jardim, because it is amazing. Now in our last video, we took you down here for some coffee. In this video, we're just going to ride through and kind of take a look at the culture of a town in the middle of Colombia, way down here in South America. Now one of the first things that you're going to notice when we're riding these streets is that we just left our hostel, and that's kind of on the just on the outskirts of the city center. Jardim is a fairly small town compared to a big American-sized city, but for a little mountain village, I would call this a big town. I would say there's probably 20 city blocks that you would call the city of Jardim. Now we're just on the outskirt of that, probably around block eight or nine, and we're headed down to the center. And now you can start to see the steeple of that really cool church sticking up over the top of these buildings as we drive down here. And if you didn't watch our last video, we tell you the story of this church, and it is amazing. It is beautiful. We show it to you, so make sure you've seen that. But as we ride around this town square, you're going to see that people from all over, and that's going to be the surrounding cities, come here because Jardim is a tourist destination. But you're also going to just see the locals, young people, middle-aged people, and my favorite part is how the older citizens of Jardim come down here to the city center, walk around these little markets, sit in these little brightly colored chairs, and drink their coffee. Now you'll see Kurt had to stop right there and kind of wait on me. That is not unusual. He likes to ride the bike a little bit faster than me, especially going down hills. I'm a bit of a chicken, and sometimes he's just got to stop and wait. But he's learned, and he knows, and he never gets too far out ahead. So see, if you look over there, these brightly colored buildings, there are the locals sitting out there having their coffee. Somewhere around lunchtime, it starts to change from coffee to beer. And the later you come down here, probably a little bit more lively it's going to get. Now we're going to turn off the square a little bit and kind of take you to the blocks of like block two and three getting away from the square. And you're going to see all these little stores, or tiendas as they're called down here. And what's cool is there's going to be a tienda to buy vegetables, a tienda to buy pet food, tiendas designed specifically just for hardware. And then up above it, you'll see most of these buildings, and they're so cool how brightly colored they are. But most of these buildings are two-story buildings. And the top level is actually where the family lives that runs the store underneath it. And I think that's pretty cool how that happens. Another cool thing you're going to see about Hardeen is almost every street is brightly painted, clean, colorful, flowers in the windows. The people in this town, you can see, take great pride in their community and their city. So we're going to ride on down through here. Another thing you'll notice in Hardeen that you will not see in all of these little towns is there are a lot of buses. And because that's that's kind of how the people from the outskirts get here. And when I say the outskirts, there's two things. Well, first you got to take a look at that bus to the left. That's how the locals get around. That thing's cool. If you were going to do a schoolie and renovate this old school bus down here in Columbia, that's what you'd have to get. It's one of those big souped up ones. But anyway, back to kind of what's going on here. The people in this town, you can tell, take great pride. And, oh look, more cafes. Cafes on every corner, guys. Coffee is something that matters here. Motos everywhere. You're also going to see some tuk-tuks, which are the small little three-wheel golf carts. And lots of off-road vehicles. But back to the buses. You're going to see a lot of the tour buses here. And those buses are coming in from the surrounding cities like Medellin. And that is how the people from the city come out here and probably take a day away from the hectic nature of the city. Or maybe even come for a few days and stay in these little bed and breakfasts. But on a Saturday or Sunday, all these chairs you're looking at right here, they would be full of people enjoying the coffee. And there's that church I was talking about earlier. It is just beautiful. First one is right here. All right, enough of the tour of an actual, true, unedited bike ride around the little city center. Back to going to find these birds. So we swung by the hostel, picked up the backpack loaded with all the camera gear. Uh-oh. You hear that? You got the cover for the backpack? You got the waterproof cover for the backpack? Okay, because that was thunder. The road's a little bit rougher out here. So there goes Kirk getting way ahead of me because he's Speedy Gonzales. And I'm going to go slow and alternate front and back brakes going down this hill. But if you look over to the left right here, that is looking out over the valley that when we're up at our hostel that the same valley we're looking out over. Now up here is where we're supposed to turn, but it's starting to look like Google Maps has done it to us again. This is definitely a normal thing that happens down here in South America, even a bit more than it did in Central America. Google Maps will have a pinpoint and it will give us directions to get there, but it's usually off by a thousand or two thousand feet. So what that means here is where it's telling us to turn, there's no road. So Kirk has decided we're just going to go around the block and see if there's a road over there that will get us to this pinpoint. Something we're definitely getting used to with the Google Maps. Sometimes it's not so bad, but sometimes it gets us on some wild and crazy roads. But let's see what happens this time. Maybe we'll still be able to find it. Another thing in these little towns, guys, is there's no stop signs. So we think that everyone, you know, that kind of lives here or is familiar with the area knows who's supposed to stop and who isn't. We don't know. There's one of those tuk-tuks I was talking about earlier. We clearly don't know, so you will see us stop at almost every intersection. All right, Kirk is definitely questioning the Google Map again while he's doing that. You can take a look inside these little buildings. It's just so perfect how these people have made this community work. I love it. And in the middle of everything, a gas station. Right there. All right, Kirk must have it figured out. We are moving on. This is definitely a dog-friendly town. You can see the little pups everywhere. Motos are definitely the preferred method of transportation. I think we might be headed in the right direction here. It definitely looks like, well, one thing the electric bikes do for sure, guys, they get the attention of the locals, especially the kids. They love these bikes. It's a lot of fun to let them get a look at them up close, too. But now we have encountered a bit of a problem. Back to my darn knee. Now, I'm sitting here thinking, if I gotta go down this hill, how am I gonna get back up? Luckily, Kirk probably knows exactly what I'm thinking, so he's gonna ride ahead, take a look, see what this road looks like. Hopefully, he's gonna come back in just a minute and tell me whether he thinks I'll be able to get back up this hill if I ride down it. The problem with the steep hill, guys, look at this beautiful bridge. Right over there, you're looking at the backside of our hostel up on that hill. So you can see how we get these amazing views from our hostel up there. But hopefully, Kirk comes back with good news because the problem is if I go down this hill, these bikes will not pull me back up such a steep hill. I can't, with my bum knee, pedal back up this hill. So the farther I go down it right now, if I can't get back up on the other side, I'm gonna have to push my bike up this hill. So that is why we'll stop right here. Looks pretty cool down there. Guys, we are on the countdown to get this fixed and I just can't wait. Kirk's coming back and it's not looking like such great news. He is definitely having to pedal quite a bit to get back up this hill and there's no way I'd be able to do that. So maybe I'll go back to the place and you do this. I can't. We can ask. We got all the camera gear gathered up, hopped on the bikes, took the five-minute bike ride down to where these birds are supposed to be and it was a really steep hill down. I went about halfway down and then we stopped and Kirk went a little farther down to check it out because it was steep enough that the electric bikes would not have pulled me back up the hill. And turns out the trail down to where the birds are is really steep too. So the knee has done it again. I had to turn around and come back and I had to convince Kirk to go ahead and go down there without me because these birds are too cool to miss because of my stupid knee. But one thing that's cool is when we went down that long bumpy road a few videos ago to try to find the tape here, that endangered animal, when we were driving down that road we saw one of these birds flying through the trees. We just weren't able to get the cameras out and get him in time. So I have seen one live and in person and now hopefully Kirk gets to see them again and capture them for you guys because it's an amazing bird. But I'm back at the hostel which is not a bad place to be. She's got these great outdoor chairs, flowers everywhere, the stream running next to me, a waterfall behind me, birds twerping. I opened the van back up for the kitties so it's not all bad guys. But man am I looking forward to getting this knee fixed where walking down a steep hill won't put me down for a week. But let's tune in to Kirk see if he finds them. So this place is absolutely stunning and it's for more than one reason. I got to tell you the star attraction, the Cock of the Rock, is a really gorgeous bird with the bright red head and the beautiful body. But I got to tell you there's also some big giant bamboos scattered in this forest. There's also a river down below so you can hear the roar of the river and there's multiple different birds. I saw matmats, guans and many other kinds of birds as well. Met some really cool travelers from France who are traveling by boat and so it's just been a really beautiful experience. So I've already told you guys I love bamboo. What I love about this stuff is you see these shoots right here sticking out of the ground? There's another one right there. That one's probably about three feet tall. That'll probably grow 20 foot in one year. Crazy huh? Beautiful place. Wow. 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. 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