Colombia is a country with many geographic and logistical challenges. It borders with Panama on the north-west, with Venezuela for a large part of its eastern borders, with Brazil in the south-east and with both Peru and Ecuador in the south. The country has a long coast in the north with the Atlantic Ocean and another long coast in the west with the Pacific Ocean. Above an amateur drawing of the shape of the country in which its 43 million people are widely distributed. The only area with a low population is the south-east corner of the country in the region of the amazon river delta.
For our project we work in two of the northern provinces ("departamentos"): Bolivar with as capital the coastal city of Cartagena, and Antioquia with as capital the mountain city of Medellin. In past blogs I have shown photos of both cities. From Bogota it is an hour and half flight to Cartagena. In this city SENA has three training centers (see previous blog posts) and from here they organize delivery of training as well in the southern part of the province. Let me try to picture how this works from a logistic and travel perspective....
From Cartagena it is a 7 hour drive to the town of El Banco (which is located at the border of the provinces of Magdalena and Bolivar. When we visit our project target region we stay overnight in this town of El Banco and take the "chalupa" river boats to the municipality of Barranco de Loba.
It takes two hours in these river boats to Barranco and then another hour to one of the mining communities in that municipality called Minas de Santa Cruz.
I made a blog post about this community in February. There are people who work in Minas Santa Cruz and who go up and down to this community from El Banco every day in the river boat.
From El Banco we have to go 5 hours on another river boat to reach the second project target municipality of Santa Rosa del Sur. There are basically no roads in this huge delta of the mighty Magdalena river so the boats are the only option, unless you are independently wealthy and can charter small planes to fly you between the small airstrips of El Banco and Santa Rosa del Sur.
From Santa Rosa del Sur we take a river boat of 3 hours to reach the city of Barrancabermeja on the border of the provinces of Bolivar and Santander. If we only go to Santa Rosa del Sur, we can fly from Bogota to Barrancabermeja and then take the chalupa. Also in this area the roads are so bad that the chalupa is a better way to travel.
From Barrancabermeja it is a 3 hour drive over reasonable roads through a mountain range to the town of Puerto Berrio, where SENA has a regional mining & agriculture training center which also coordinates training program delivery in the two other project target municipalities of Remedios and Segovia. From Puerto Berrio you can take the road to those communities (about 5 hours). Puerto Berrio is about 3 hours driving from Medellin (a stunningly beautiful drive from the higher region of Puerto Berrio to the valley in which Medellin is located).
From Medellin there are three daily commercial flights with small planes to the airport of Otun from where it is just half an hour to both Segovia and Remedios. I have made blog posts about these mining communities in March. From Medellin there are also three daily flights to Cartagena and about 10 daily flights to Bogota.
This gives you a bit of an idea of what it takes to travel to our project communities in Colombia. At the end of August we will do a few of these visits again....
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