Colombia, Cargo and chimichangas

Feb 26 – Missed a plane fight for the first time in my life. Dropping the bikes off at the cargo airport for shipment took way longer and got to terminal 45 minutes before takeoff. Wouldn’t let us on, stuck in a no-name town at a hotel that dropped their price lower because we looked so bummed. No food no internet we waited 24 hours to get the flight the next day. 4 hours later we are in Bogota, the capital of Colombia. Taking the motorbike by air across the Darien Gap ended up costing about $300 more than taking a boat, but with about 80% of people shipping by boat having bad experiences, it was worth it. Anyway, we go to the cargo terminal in Colombia and wheel our bikes down a precarious ramp from the warehouse. We get into Bogota city by 7pm, we couldn’t even look at our maps before a cute college girl insisted leading us to where we wanted to go in her car. Spent the next 4 days mostly in a funky old bohemian part of town called La Candelaria.

Feb 28 – Bogota very cool, people super friendly, like ridiculously friendly. Got bed bug bites on ankles from the hostel. Itcheeeee
Police checked documents on way to a Bogota lookout, didn’t have all my gear with documents, he was going to impound the bike, luckily had copies taped on the inside of my sidecase and my Canadian passport. Just barely escaped a bribe on this one.

Mar 1 – Hard to leave, but decide to continue north with Justin to do a route to Northern Colombia and down the west coast.
Cool backcountry roads out of Bogota, passed an upturned soda truck. Made sure it wasn’t an upturned beer truck and continued on.
won a free tank of gas! went to pay and the receipt printed !!!!!!CLIENTE GANAR!!!!!!! yeah Justin was jealous. Have to change perception of how big of a country I’m in. Colombia is a behemoth compared to the tiny central american countries that took me 3 months to get through. Made it to San Gil by sunset, cool town with a large fountain in the plaza, streets are supersteep. I would guess about 40 degrees in some parts.

Mar 2
The plan – wake up, breakfast, coffee at Barrichara a colonial town 15 minutes down a sideroad, ride the 7 hours to Cucui by 5pm.
What happened – the most epic riding day of the trip so far.

Barrichara bigwig Henry introduced himself when we checking out the church, we wanted to get a shot of the town from the church belltower. Una problema: the priest’s assistant got drunk one night and lost the 300 year old key to the tower! Because its so ancient they need a blacksmith to make a new one, a locksmith can’t do it. Instead he showed us his friends 300 year old house voted as one of the nicest in Colombia and it truly was amazing. Open courtyards and furnishings that looked like they were bought out of a 300 year old designer catalog. We really needed to push on, but his hospitality was relentless and he showed us inside his beautiful house with so many interesting stories about where each thing came from. After accepting some lemonade we moved on, grateful to have experienced a little of colombian life instead of hostels, plazas and churches. It was 1pm by the time we got on the road, with apparently 7 hours to go we gunned it.

And when I say gunned it, from for the next 5 hours my right hand was aggressively on the throttle and my left hand was slapping the clutch, my eyes were focused on the terrain in front of me, and my brain was mindmelded to the bike. The route that we had plotted as lines on the map was rolling beneath our tires. It started as fast sharp twisty turns on asphalt through a dry valley for 20 minutes, into a tight lane way taking us to a middle of nowhere cobblestone town, from there we hit dirt, it led us into the mountains, through authentic colombian highlands. The roads were dirt, but sensible enough to really give it up mountain and down the other side. We only stopped for directions, and not enough evidently as we took an unnecessary hour detour. We’re used to getting looks from people as we go through towns, but when we rolled through these remote towns, it was not ‘heh look at those padded foreigners on big bikes carrying a surfboard’ it was looks of ‘how the HELL did they end up there?’, In the time it took to ask for directions we had 10 curious people standing around us.

It helped that the trails were near empty and we barely crossed other people on the road, bar a shepherd or two. At one point I came around a corner with a little too much heat, and came face to face with a lorry that occupied the entire track. Obviously I was eager to stop. Oops to eager, I lock the back wheel, it slides right, left and continues going left, this shaves off enough speed but now the bike is pointed 90 degrees to the right into a dirt wall. The bike takes quite a decent jolt from the front wheel hitting, as I bound clear and unhurt. A testament to its strength, I get the bike up and it starts again without hesitation. Happy to have provided a dinnertime story for the family in the truck, we power on. Winding up another mountain, taking as much of an inside line around corners as I can this time. We gain and rise kilometers of elevation all day. At one point we pop up out of a jungley twisty valley into a vast peru-like desert of cactuses and low sweeping hills. After 4 hours of exhilarating trail riding, we pop out onto a fresh tarmacy highway that our bikes adapt to seamlessly, and we make the last hour stretch alongside the rim of an enormous valley to a town that I can’t quite remember so we’ll call it Chimichangas. Locking in our room for $4 each for the night in a shack teetering on a cliff, we head down the road to a restaurant to feed our aching bodies. For another $4 we chow down on a soup entree, goat meat, rice, potato, salad, yukka, and a beer. A table of Colombian farmers with some of the best moustaches I’ve seen outside of Movember are a little perplexed by how we ended up there and share some banter. An awesome end to a ridiculousl cool day. One of those days that you couldn’t take for granted if you tried. Colombia, I’ve only known you for a week, but I love you.

Mar 3 – Made the final push to our goal Cucui. The roads were unpredictable as the terrain, and we gained a lot of elevation. We wound up the mountains edging enormous valleys. Cucui wasn’t that impressive, we asked how long it would take to do the mountain trail loop to Guican a neighbouring town and were told 5 hours. So we took the paved road instead and found a hostel there. We had a couple hours of daylight left so we stripped the bikes and headed up. The scenery turned amazing, the hillsides were full of goats, cows, wild horses, ducks and the vegetation was lush. The riding was also gnarly and we were surprised to find ourselves looking at snow-capped mountain peaks in no time; Not something I expected from Colombia. Making great time, we continued on the loop and ended up back in Cucui by sunset, so much for the 5 hours! The town had come alive in the 3 hours we’d been gone and had a beer on the plaza and watched the pleasant town life go by.

Mar 4 – Woke up, Justin and I didn’t speak much, we were feeling the effects of two huge riding days but didn’t know it yet. We were headed to Santa Martha, 2 days ride away. The first day, more of the same to get back to the highway and city of B’manga, the second day, a 600km straight and hot push to the coast and the town Santa Martha. The ride started smooth but it didn’t take long for the asphalt to dissappear. For the third day we found ourselves ripping up and down and along mountains one after another. When we popped into roughly paved towns that were 100km past the middle of nowhere to get a drink, our bikes and our dustfaced selves became quite a point of interest. Some will ask the usual questions and some will just stare, I don’t think they see a lot of people like us come through here. After lunch around 30 people in the restaurant, on the street, across the street watched me pack away my socks and undies I had tied to the back of my bike and ride away. The afternoon presented us with another 4 straight hours of gnarly bumpy trails. It was an adventure rider’s dream but for the third straight day it was taking its toll. Justin had taken a spill in the dusty madness and I lost it coming out of a corner. My concentration of a predator hawk two days before had dwindled into that of a mindless goldfish even dropping the bike on a simple u-turn. The constant barrage of messy roads requires a tensed body to navigate the bike through, and it was causing a sharp pain in my shoulder from the tension. Fatigue was affecting our riding but with only an hour to go we pushed on. At 4pm we spotted a black strip of asphalt snaking through the forest in the valley below us. Finally! We hit the asphalt and it felt like riding on butter, our bodies could finally relax, even if just a little. Just 30 minutes later we arrive in the thriving metro city of B’manga, covered in head to toe in dust and dirt.

Advertisement