While we absolutely loved our time in Cartagena, it was almost unbearably hot at times. And when we get hot, we usually head to the mountains in search of cooler air.

The Sierra Nevada Mountains offer a great place to cool off, hike, and enjoy the views.

However, we first headed over to Iguana 4×4 in Barranquilla to fix a missing piece of our leaf spring suspension (we’re not sure where it fell off, but I noticed it after unloading the truck from the shipping container).

Oops! Where’d that fall off? We’re not sure, but I suspect the Osa Peninsula. Luckily we could still drive, and I inflated the air bags a bit more to compensate.

Iguana 4×4 was amazing! They fabricated a new part for our suspension and got us back on the road quickly. They also had a ton of great information for travelers who are looking to explore the more remote areas of Colombia.  To top it off, the owners (Carlos and Hernando), spoke perfect english.

After fixing up our truck, we headed into the Sierra Nevada Mountains. These mountains are on the northern coast of Colombia and are the highest costal mountian range in the world! On clear days they offer views of the Caribbean. We also read about bird sanctuaries, coffee fincas, and great hiking.

Traveling into the Sierra Nevada Mountains was pretty easy up to a little town called Minca. However, after that the roads started to get messy. Soon, we found ourselves spending a lot of the time driving in 4-low as we plowed through the muddy roads.

This is one of the better sections of the “muddy” road. We couldn’t get out of the truck in the real muddy sections because it was so sloppy.

The drive up to the mountains was through dense jungle.

We spent several days exploring the area, both in our vehicle and on foot. We didn’t hike much through Central America, and we were trying to get back into shape for all the hiking in South America.

There are wide open spaces with lots of great hiking in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of Colombia.

Our first real hint of the grandeur of the South American mountains in the distance.

Erica paused for a photo next to a giant fern.

Not all of our hikes were great successes.  We started a day of hard hike gaining thousands of vertical feet hoping to get a glimpse of the Caribbean down below.

We started off in the jungle. The weather was crazy. It went from sunny to cloudy to rainy very suddenly.

And what was the payoff?  Well, I’m sure there is a good view here some times:

Oops. I wish this was an epic picture of the Sierra Nevada Mountains with the Caribbean below.

On the upside, we did get a pretty sunset the night of the hike, and we could almost see hints of the ocean below us:

Sometimes cloudy days lead to incredible sunsets. We enjoyed this view from the XPCamper as we ate dinner after a long day hiking. If it was clearer, you would be able to see the ocean from here.