First week of riding in Colombia

I would like to shed some light on the motorcycle traveling. Jen does a marvelous job of writing on all the rest of our trip, but she does not talk about that big bike.

On August 20th, after 3 days at the Contacar, (shipyard with miles of containers), and at the Dian, (Customs), I finally drove the camper van out of the yard with the trailer attached behind. No one, unless you have been here, could imagine how nervous I was to drive in the total chaos of cars, trucks, motos, taxis, mototaxis, and all of them changing lane every 10 seconds. The only way that I know is to be aggressive and join the crowd with the trailer attached to the van. Everything went well for about 20 minutes until an idiot slightly touched the back of the trailer with his front wheel. I stopped and waited for about 1 minute until I got an opening in front of me, and went ahead, charging again. It took about 45 minutes to get out of Cartagena. ( Just to show the ratio of cars to motos...and imagine all of them mixed up in the small city streets…)

Then everything got easier because we were in the country. We stopped in Clemencia to visit with Victor Manuel Coneo, our friend from Cartagena. Check Jen's blog and you will know the rest.

I did not ride the first 150 km to Santa Marta. After the campground robbery: Jen's computer, iPhone, and my motorcycle rain gear, I decided that it was time to ride. Getting out of Rodadero, next to Santa Marta, was not a lot of fun: dirt roads with holes and rocks. My big bike is really hard to ride in rough terrain at slow speed, but I made it out after one close call…

Finally, I was on the road behind the van, and sometimes ahead of it, with so many trucks on the road. When you sit on the bike, you get very close to nature. In the van, you are remote from it. It was so luxurious, with so many exotic trees, fruit trees, and palm trees. 

Riding in 95 F is tiring.

 I did not want to take my jacket and pants off because I needed the protection in case of a fall. I was so happy that I purchased a Summer jacket when we were visiting Katie and Alex in Fort Myers.

The bike is comfortable and easy to handle on the highway but not at all in the little towns with the very narrow streets, and the motos and the cars, and the trucks, and the mules, all on very rough pavement or dirt.

At the end of the 3rd day, we stopped in a little town and asked the Policia to park the bike near theirs. The chief told me that he could not authorize me because it was a national law that nothing should interfere in case of emergency. The FARC is active in that region so you want to be as safe as possible. The police chief went with us and found us a hotel with a closed gate courtyard. He then took me back to the bike in the middle of the town. I offered him to ride my bike to the hotel while I got a ride with his assistant on the back of a police bike. I am sure that he will remember this forever. He was so happy. He was a big guy, young and strong. The Policia has super riding skills: they sure know how to handle a bike.

 I will not describe every riding day but there are 2 that I will remember for a long time. The first is riding through Bucaramanga on our way to Giron. So much traffic, and a traffic jam on top of that for around 1 hr.,and the heat! I was so scared that the bike would overheat. Giron is a very old city with cobble stones, and rocks and steep streets. Wow! Going downhill on super, super, super rough surface, I tipped over at a stop. I know that I should never turn the front wheel sideways when stopping on a downhill...One guy helped me out: good thing that my injury was only to my pride!

The best day of the ride was the next one through canyons and roads similar to the Ap Gap, but for about 80 kms. It was so much fun! I left the van behind, sprint through the twisties, waited for the van and repeated again. What a blast! My rear tire has had about 8,000 miles on highway. The center is very worn out but the sides are almost brand new. I was so proud of myself when I took a look at the tires after lunch, with another 50 km to go. The sides were all black, meaning that I was leaning my monster bike quite a bit. No touching the pavement with the stand….It might come! 

Later in the day, we stopped to visit a Colombian Parque. We took a very new lift, Poma cabins, to go to the other mountain, a little bit like the connector lift at Sugarbush. This lift shut down for 2 hrs, so we got back to our vehicles around 5:15 pm, and it got dark at 6:15 pm. Then, the traffic got extremely heavy with a multitude of  trucks on the road: 10 to 12 eighteen wheelers in a row, continuously. And the rain decided to come, and the temperature dropped a good 20 degrees. We were going about 5 to 10 m/p/h and stopping all the time. Jen was dead tired with Montezuma, and I was also really tired with Montezuma Jr…After 2 hrs of this atrocity of stop and go, and stalling the bike once with a trailer truck about 6” from my back wheel, and getting cold, we saw a truck stop that had rooms to rent. We pulled in, ate and went to bed.

In those twisty mountain roads, in every curve, the trucks go way into the other lane before getting into the turn itself. It means that when you are in the other lane, you must be way to the right of the road. It makes you go deep into the turn at the initiation. (Think skiing…)

 I finally put the trailer together to give a chance to Jen to recover. The next stretch of road was a good 10 hrs and the day after was another 12 hrs to Cali.

I will start riding again as soon as we get out of Cali.

I just heard that Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and Chile are easier to drive. We will see if I made a good choice to bring this Beast of a bike to South America. So far, after having almost crossed Colombia, I would have been better to ride a BMW GS 650 instead of a GS 1200. The key is to make sure that you have good skills on the dirt roads. This will improve your overall experience. I got a lot of practice ahead of me...