Bogota

A Colombian holiday and my bike repairs in Cali resulted in me being one day overdue to meet my friend Brian, in Bogota.  So, I decided to do the ride from Cali to Bogota in one very long day.  Before I left, I asked a bunch of people how long the ride would take.  The answers I got ranged from “hmm, on that motorcycle, four hours” to “it will take you ten hours” and everything in between.  South American men seem to think my motorcycle is some sort of magical space time travel machine and I’ve learned to double their time estimates.  Again, I’ve found women to be much more reliable, as they seem to relate their estimated to actual experience and aren’t afraid to say they don’t know.  It turns out the ride took me about eight long hours of breaking pretty much every traffic law known in the western world.  In the beginning, it was a very nice freeway with 80 mph riding.  Then, hours of twisty mountain roads that eventually led me to Bogota.  Once I reached the city of 8 million people, I enjoyed looking for the Platypus Hostel in heavy rush hour traffic.  I even made a detour to a part of town where a concerned family suggested that I rapidly go in the other direction.  Something about peligroso aqui…

Bogota is a huge city, ringed by mountains.  Eight million of Colombia’s 40 million people live here.  Some areas are very rough, but on the other hand, there are neighborhoods in the north full of modern, upscale construction with restaurants, bars and clubs that rival anything in California.  The one thing that surprised me most about Bogota was the weather.  Again, I was expecting hot.  But, given the town’s 8,700 foot elevation, it was cold.  And very, very rainy, which wasn’t surprising given the lush green landscape.

I made it to the hostel well after dark.  My progress was greatly inhibited by a maze of one way streets, with most of the important ones seemingly blocked off because of the upcoming election.  After parking the bike and settling into the hostel, Brian and I went to the Zona Rosa; the towns nice nightlife area.  It was a busy night since the town would be alcohol free for the next couple of days, courtesy of the upcoming election.  Again, after spending so much time in undeveloped places, it was a bit of a culture shock to see cars, buildings and fashion that would have fit into any Californian club.

The next day, Brian and I left Bogota on a bus for the Salt Cathedral.  It’s located near the town of Zipaquira, which is a pleasant little colonial town.  The cathedral is an odd place.  It seemed to be part cathedral, part discotheque, and has been carved out of a mountain, as part of a working salt mine.  In any case, it was quite impressive.

The following day, Brian took off via airplane for Santa Marta, a town on the Caribbean coast of Colombia.  Not really wanting to leave town in the rain, I spent the day first on a pretty interesting bicycle tour, then after, drying out.  The bike tour took us through some interesting parts of town, including historical districts, a very British looking district built by British Petroleum long ago for its employees, a fruit stand full of amazing fruits that I have never tried before and finally, the red light district, which was quite…interesting, especially in the rain.

The next morning I was feeling a bit worn down, so I decided to stay one more day.  I visited Montserrat, a mountain peak on the fringe of the city, accessible via cable car, with a church on top.  The views were pretty amazing and helped put the city’s size into perspective.

After Montserrat, I joined a local to play a Colombian game called Tejo.  Basically, it’s like horseshoes, but with a steel disk.  Instead of a steel rod pounded into the ground, one throws the disk at a target placed in a large wooden box, full of clay, set at an angle.  To spice up the game, the four triangular boundaries of the target are made so that they explode if hit with the disk.  I’m not sure how the scoring works, but the locals were very excited when I threw the disk in the middle of the target.  Oh, plus, one does not pay for the game.  One buys (a lot of ) beer and plays gratis.  The crowd playing Tejo, as far as I could tell, was the unemployed, or under employed set who happens to like drinking beer at 10:00 a.m.  So, its a bit of a rough crowd, but the people were very friendly.

The next day, I left Bogota for Barichara, a small town near San Gil, a regional sports destination.  Along the way, I went through all kinds of roads, primarily in higher altitude climate zones.  It was quite wet and frequently rained on me.  Then, about a mile after filling up at a gas station, I noticed that the road was becoming very uneven.  But it wasn’t.  I had my first flat tire of the trip.  It was of course my rear tire, which is harder to change.  Plus, the only place to park was in a puddle, in front of a run down house.  As I got to work, it began pouring down rain.  Then, I gained an audience at the house.  After I was about a quarter finished, they invited me to work on their patio.  I finished up there and since I was unable to get the bead to seat equally around the rim, no matter how hard I tried, I was unhappily on my way.  With the tire mounted unevenly, it was a bit like riding on a paint shaker.  But, I had a feeling that either it would correct itself, or I’d stop at a tire repair shop in the next town and pay them $4 to fix the problem.   The tire did not fix itself and I was very happy to have a smooth ride again for $4.

Barichara is a great little Colonial town with cobble stone streets and white buildings.  One day I’d like to return to this area and spend some time doing some of the outdoor activities available there.  When I reached the town square and was looking into places to stay, a very friendly family from Medillin came up to me, interested in the bike.  They all spoke great English and we had a nice conversation, ending with an invitation to dinner.  I stowed my stuff in a nice hotel nearby, cleaned up and headed up the street to a great Italian meal.  It turns out that the man is an pilot for cargo airplanes.  Flying lots of flowers, etc., to the U.S. and other Latin locations.  His wife lived in the U.K. and has traveled to a lot of the places I’ve visited on my trip.  Their two kids went to an international school and I am envious of their language ability.  Again, I’m really finding the people of Colombia to be fantastically friendly.

The next morning, I downed a bunch of coffee and left Barichara on my way to Taganga, a little Caribbean beach town.  Brian had been there for two full days now and I needed to catch up.  However, it turns out that my planning was not very precise and I got another lesson in why I should wake up earlier on big travel days.

The ride from Barichara to Bucaramanga was full of more scenic, but twisty, curvy mountain riding and pretty slow.  After that, things straightened out and my speed picked up a bit.  But, about an hour north of Bucaramanga, I had my most upsetting experience of my trip so far.  Near a small town, the name of which I forget, I saw a line of stopped vehicles.  Thinking that this was another normal traffic stop for construction, I began riding towards the front of the line, which is normal practice in South America.  But, the line kept going, and going, and going.  There were hundreds of trucks, buses and cars.  I could tell that this wasn’t a normal construction traffic stop and as I finally got close to the town, I saw an unhappy crowd and a bunch of soldiers.  In the distance I saw a pile of charred metal.

A soldier let me know in no uncertain terms that I was not going any further forward.  A couple friendly locals helped direct me down a couple side streets and I was able to bypass the accident.  People were milling all about.  There was a big crowd and they seemed a bit upset.  Curious as to what was going on, I stopped and asked a teen-aged girl.  She told me that no, it was not an accident.  A car bomb had gone off and some number of people had been killed.  This was apparently somehow related to the recent election and courtesy of the FARC.  As soon as I made my way past the bomb site, I really began feeling uneasy.  Since all the traffic behind (and ahead) me was shut down, the road was wide open.  So, feeling that this might not be the best place for a gringo, I pinned the throttle at about 80 mph for the next two hours.  Seeing the aftermath of the car bomb, as well as a few other events in Colombia really made me aware of how much pain, violence and death the cocaine habits of the western world have caused.  It’s really a great tragedy and upset me quite a bit.  Don’t do blow.

With the car bomb behind me, I was making good progress and hoped to get to Taganga just after sunset.  Then, I noticed that the road started to get very squishy.  I had my second flat tire in two days.  It was the front tire, which was easier to change than the back, but still, it took me about an hour to swap out the tube.  Unfortunately, it was over 90′ and right at sunset when this happened.  So, I finished the job in a farm’s muddy driveway, sweating buckets, surrounded by mosquitoes and in the dark.  I was quite miserable.

Finally, at about 10:00 p.m., I made it to Taganga.  It was a very very long day.