The Americas 2013

Short run of just 100km to Barranquilla today and although short in distance it was long in time, not because roads were bad but because I got caught in a torrential rain storm just before getting into my destination.

The storm I rode into… 

Navigating the 10km’s of roads in Barranquilla to my hotel was like navigating a river system because the internal town roads haven’t been designed to accommodate the quantum of water that came down so the traffic backed up and were moving one by one through rivers of water that were rushing down the streets….It was an interesting experience!!

Barranquilla is another large industrial town and is developing rapidly as a result the industrial activity. Large office and residential skyscrapers have been and are currently being built. 2 interesting facts about Barranquilla is that it was the first city in South America to build an airport, and secondly, the second oldest airline in the world still in operation (today called Avianca) was started there,KLM being the oldest.

I am spending the night at the Hotel Sonesta Barranquilla which is new and a great business hotel.

On route to Barranquilla…

As mentioned yesterday, I elected to hang around Santa Marta today. I slept in a little, caught up on the hundreds of accumulated emails, wrote up the blog for the day, walked around and had a swim in the sea.

There could be worse places to kill time and its a damn site better than wadi halfa!!…

View from my hotel room balcony..

Tomorrow I take a short ride to a town further down the coast called Barranquilla where I will spend Friday night. I am avoiding getting to the "Colombian jewel in the crown”..Cartagena, because I will be there for 5 nights as it is waiting for the boat so would prefer to see what else is along the coastline before getting there.

When I drew the curtains this morning at 6am to savour my vista over the Colombian version of Sasolburg it was pouring buckets..literally, so only got out of Barrancabermerja at about 11:30 and 550km to do to get to Santa Marta on roads that are nothing like the N1. Its single lane for the entire national road barring maybe 5km’s in total and trucks rule the roost. Without exaggeration I must have passed over 500 trucks today which means that ones average speed is only about 80km/h at best and thankfully I am out of the mountains at the moment or that speed would halve. Needless to say, I don’t want to sound like a whiner because I am LOVING every moment of what I am doing and am super grateful for the privilege to be able to do a trip like this at all notwithstanding the minor discomforts and black face which I arrive at my destination with every day because of the diesel fumes!!

My 550km ride today…

Although I spent the entire day in the coastal plain / valley between the tail end of the Andes mountains where it is sweltering, the terrain remains awesomely beautiful and changes from forest to Jungle to Savannah to something EXACTLY like the Caprivi strip in Namibia and then lush coastal jungle as one approaches the Caribbean sea.

Lunch stop! The big girl looking sparkly clean after her service in Bogota..new tyres, brakes, the works!!

And…she turned 50,000 today!!

Today was the first time in my entire trip through South America where I was stopped by the police and at which time I was hammering down a long straight stretch devoid of trucks and doing about 160km/h! Expecting the worst, I put on my most charming Portospanglish and proceeded to tell them all about the trip, their beautiful country and how gorgeous the Colombian woman are…5 minutes of banter, passport and bike paper scrutinising and me pretending not to understand the bribe gestures they laughingly waved me on my way without any fines or bribe money!! Bonus!

The tail end of the Andes about 100km from Santa Marta…

I got into Santa Marta at sunset and made a beeline for a small, simple but cute looking beachfront hotel I found on booking.com called La Sierra which has turned out to be great. Beautiful sea views from my room and an Umhlanga Rocks type vibe but with a busy seaside promenade that goes on late into the night/morning.

10:30pm on an arbitrary Wednesday evening promenade activity including live music!!

I mentioned yesterday I would spend 2 nights if it was nice and I have decided that I will do so, not only because I am enjoying the slowed down pace of this leg but also because I am killing a little bit of time!

There are 2 ways of getting from Colombia into Panama in Central America. Fly or float! That’s it! There is no road connection because the 2 countries are separated by a jungle swampland called the Darien Gap that is impassable, inhabited by Guerrillas and the kinds of things that eat people brave enough to try and cross! The Panamanian government will purposefully not build a road to connect the 2 countries because they don’t want to create another route for drug smugglers to enter into central and north America, so what to do?!   I am of the opinion that flying the bike from one of the big Colombian cities to Panama city is a cheat to the “overland” concept and I have therefore (perhaps in a moment of madness) selected the “float” option, come hell or high water…no pun intended!! There is unfortunately also no commercial ferries, I assume for the same reasons as stated above although there have been a number of false starts at trying to get one up and running!

When researching the internet for boats that do this 4 night, 5 day crossing between Cartagena and one of the various small ports on the Caribbean Panamanian coast, and more specifically boats that can accommodate the bike, one encounters hundreds of horror stories..captains that are drug addicts and alcoholics, boats that capsize and sink (with bikes on board), overcrowding, running out of food and water by day 3, getting robbed in the middle of the sea and being dumped overboard etc etc etc…it almost makes for a comedy if it weren’t so bloody sad! Anyway, after hundreds of hours of research, I seem to have found what looks to be an ethical and above board operation with many independent reviews on various blogs about this small sailing company that consists of 5 or 6 boats called www.colombiapanamasailing.com and they are able to take me and bike and I have even been able to book a “king size bed”! (stay tuned!) The boat (the good Catamaran “Jacqueline”) is however only scheduled to leave Cartagena on the 25th which is the other reason for killing time! The last time I encountered something akin to this was in northern Sudan in 2010 although I would take the Colombian option ANYDAY!!! Famous last words??? Perhaps! I will keep you posted!!!

I arrived in Bogota late on Saturday night after an 18 hour flight and exhausted although looking forward to continuing the northward journey.

I spent much of Sunday resting, acclimatising, walking around Bogota and just generally getting my equipment ready to leave on Monday (yesterday) after collecting the bike from BMW however, after picking it up, getting to the hotel, checking the bike over, repairing the locking mechanism on one of the panniers and packing, it was now late morning and the heavens had opened so decided to spend an additional night in Bogota rather than spending the first day of riding getting soaked. This turned out to be a good idea because I awoke at 5:30am, got ready, had breakfast and left the hotel by 6:30 in fantastic weather although the traffic was already manic by then.

My 500km ride today..

What the ride looks like when you come off the mountains into the coastal plain.. 

Bogota is located at an altitude of about 2800m and today I was heading down into the coastal plain to a town called Barrancabermenja (pronounced Barranca-ber-meyer about a 500km ride from Bogota) so the first 150km was twisty hairpin bends to a town called Honda (nothing to do with the japs) and thereafter I was in a valley that makes up a part of the coastal plain although 1000km from the coast. The first thing one notices when entering the valley is the heat; Bogota has a climate of 12 to 25 all year round but once you are into the coastal plain the temps rocket to around 40C at midday so by the time I arrived in Barranca-ber-meyer 8 hours later I was drenched in perspiration.

Colombia continues to be beautiful and green, the towns quaint and the people super friendly!

A town called “Honda”..

How the locals spend their day.. 

I am spending the night at a little place called Hotel Millennium. Fancy name for a place that looks over the Colombian equivalent of Sasolburg’s primary plant which I only noticed when I got to my room, drew the curtains open and expecting to see lakes and flamingos!! Anyway, tomorrow, weather permitting, I head to Santa Marta on the Caribbean coast where I will spend the night, and maybe 2 if its nice.

Not lakes and flamingos, although “Barranca-ber-meyer” is a cute town..

I am currently riding this stretch alone and Jax will be meeting me in Cancun in Mexico in a few weeks so the alone time will no doubt be interesting.

When we woke up at 6:30 this morning Jax was feeling awful. She must have eaten something last night which contributed to a tummy bug that resulted in her being ill most of the night and exhausted in the morning. The bike is booked in for a service at BMW in Bogota on Tuesday morning however, Bogota is 450km away and locals say 12 hours to get there because of mountainous road conditions so one way or another the trip to Bogota had to happen today in case getting there wasn’t achievable in one day.

The decision was to leave Jax in Cali, to fly her to Bogota tomorrow and for me to make the ride to Bogota today as fast as possible on a light bike. The ride ended up taking 8 hours with no more than 30 minutes of stops for fuel and water however I did encounter a 10km traffic jam resulting from a truck broken down at the top of a very long mountain pass which took over an hour to snake through.

Colombia continued to divulge its beauty as the day progressed. This is a magnificent country and although this statement is beginning to sound awfully clichéd its only because there is so much to marvel at.

The last 5 weeks have been incredible. The journey from Santiago to Bogota has taken us from sea level to 4750m and back! 0 to 40 degrees, through mountains, deserts, forests, jungles, fascinating islands, the equator, ruins of ancient civilisations, old colonial towns, modern cities, hippie villages and all of the accompanying cultures, cuisines and personalities that these geographic changes influence. It has been a wonderful adventure of discovery which has resulted in a mixture of awe and exhaustion. We are both looking forward to going home in 2 days time to see family and friends!!

We return to Bogota on the 14th of April in order to continue the northward journey and the last few days of south America. Leg 2 has been a total of 8400km and a combined 17800km for both legs thus far. Notwithstanding the exhaustion I am looking forward to the next leg…Central America and Mexico, here we come.

Rui and Jax, Bogota, 24 March 2013.

Leg 1 in red. Leg 2 just completed in blue.

Today was supposed to be another short run. 360km from Pasto to Cali which we anticipated would only take about 5 hours although with the accumulated experience of these roads thus far one would think we would know better by now!! We left Pasto at 8:30 and got to Cali at 6pm which included an hours stop for lunch in order to get dried after getting caught in a torrential downpour!!

Beautiful Colombian countryside.

Colombia has a huge motorcycling culture. Not just small commuting bikes in the city but everything ranging from that to adventure and superbikes. They are everywhere and people and kids are all Bike crazy!!

Rory, an Irish chap travelling south from Canada down to Ushuaia that we met at lunch. Check out Rory’s blog of what he saw further north.

Its Friday and we aimed to leave Quito by 7am in order to miss the traffic. No such Luck! It took us an hour to get to the outskirts of the city and the entire days ride thereafter was twisty mountain roads.

We only had 380km to do to get to Pasto in Colombia where we are spending the night but the road conditions, border crossing and rest stops made this a 9 hour journey. We also crossed the Equator just north of Quito. This was a milestone because the last time I did this on a bike was back in 2010 in northern Kenya.

Ecuador 2013 on the left, Kenya 2010 on the right.

S 00’00.000’!!!

The border crossing into Colombia was a frenetic tangle of traffic and people. That said, the process of getting out of Ecuador and into Colombia was smooth and without any hitches. The Colombian immigration and customs officials are super friendly and think this stems from the fact that the Colombians are trying to boost tourism because its been affected for such a long time because of the Farc.

Frenetic border crossing..

The Colombian countryside continues to be beautiful and mountainous. Countless waterfalls and jaw dropping vistas consistently reveal themselves around each bend. Pasto is a small town with an equally small historic centre. Cute but unremarkable relative to some of the other south American towns or cities. Colombians are however super friendly…the ones we have met thus far anyway.

We spent the day in Quito to explore and see the sights. The historic centre of Quito is a Unesco registered site and after a day spent on the city’s red bus one can see why. It was mentioned that the beauty of the city is attributable to the historic poverty. Because the Ecuadorian government didn’t have the money to tear down the old buildings and rebuild, the newer parts of the city simply contributed to urban sprawl and what used to be the old poverty ridden areas are now considered the historic centre and a lot of the properties have been carefully renovated making the area unique and beautiful.

Quito is built high up in the Andes at an altitude of 2800m. Although it is only 50km south of the Equator and one would think the temperatures would be sweltering, many of the main cities near the equator around here are built at high altitudes, I assume to escape the heat. The year round temperatures are between 11 and 22C and seldom change.

Tomorrow we leave Ecuador and head into Colombia, our final country for the 2nd leg of the Americas trip. Our time in Ecuador has been amazing. This country is incredibly diverse including the Galapagos islands and my only regret is that we don’t have enough time to stay longer to explore other parts of it. In 2001 Ecuador adopted the US dollar as its primary currency in order to curb inflation and boost its economy. One of the side effects of this is that Ecuador has become an expensive country to visit although fuel is cheap. Quito and Ecuador in general is definitely worth visiting. It is a magnificently beautiful country…countryside and towns!

The presidential office in the middle of the historic centre.

Today was essentially a day that was all about travel. Although the Galapagos lies only 600 miles off the Ecuadorian coast it is an exercise in multiple boats, taxis and buses to get to and from airport to Hotel so its not unusual for a trip from Quito to the Galapagos to take a full 10 to 12 hours from when you wake to when you arrive at your final destination even though the flight is only 2 to 3.5 hours dependant on the airline you use.

We got to our hotel in Quito at 17h30 and we are spending the night at the same Plaza Grande hotel where we stayed this past Saturday evening. Dinner was at a little Pizzeria here in the historic centre of the city.

View over Plaza Grande..

Tomorrow we are staying on in Quito in order to walk around and explore this beautiful city.

After breakfast today we made a last minute decision to get onto one of the small charter flights that fly between Isabella and Santa Cruz (where the main airport is) to go spend one night there to get a small feel for the place and also to avoid the 6am, 2 hour boat ride from Isabella to Santa Cruz tomorrow morning. The 2 hour boat ride here on Sunday was awful! Not only was it choppy, long and hot but there was poor ventilation on the boat and an overwhelming smell of fuel, the concoction of which made for some serious nausea and a generally unpleasant experience which we elected to avoid experiencing again.

25 minute flight from Isabella to Santa Cruz gave us an awesome opportunity to see these volcanic islands from the sky…SO beautiful!

Isla Isabella has been amazing! The small hotel where we stayed (casa de la marita), the white beaches and warm water, the iguanas and birds, the incredible dive of yesterday, the quaintness of the town and the warmth of the people there have made it a beautiful and memorable experience albeit it a short one. Although a visit to the Galapagos is something that should be on everybody’s bucket list, it is an expensive destination because most things on the islands have to be brought in from the mainland. This aside, the fauna, flora and wildlife make for an incredible and unique experience that isn’t comparable with anything else in the world and for that alone it is worth making the logistically challenging journey to get here.

We are spending the evening at a small hotel called the Royal Palm that is inland on Santa Cruz and very different from the beach/sea experience of the last 2 nights. Although this is “nice” in a quiet and relaxing kind of way, there is limited activity and vista and therefore glad that this hotel wasn’t our choice for the 3 night stay. If you are visiting the Galapagos, a beach/sea experience is a MUST, and Puerto Villamil on Isla Isabella is THE place regardless of the hotel choice of which there must be 8 or so.

Pelican swallowing fishes!

We are both feeling like this is definitely a place to come back to in the future and are grateful for the opportunity to have experienced this short time in this unique paradise. Tomorrow we head back to Quito for 2 nights and then press onto Colombia.