Buenaventura & San Andrés

Now that I safely returned to the start point I decided to take it easy to not jeopardize the second stage of this trip. There was a thing I was still missing, so I decided to go take a look at the Pacific. I read and heard a lot about Buenaventura and that it was a place not worth going to but why not have a look by myself and get my own mind about it.

In Colombia you have a lot of fruit stands along the road, with different kinds of fruits, between Cali and Buenaventura, once go over the pass, it's all about pineapples, every single fruit stand around here has only pineapples to sell.

The road to Buenaventura is also under construction with new tunnels being built to improve the connection to the Pacific, in one of these tunnels, the truck in front of me stopped and as couldn't see much I waited for a while behind it, then as nothing was moving I decided to ride past it because I started to feel bad due the amount of carbon dioxide and other exhaust gases. This was quite a long tunnel and all trucks and cars in the queue kept their engines running while waiting, even when not knowing how long they'll have to wait for.

Buenaventura is indeed a place you don't need to visit, I couldn't even managed to get all the way to the water, the port at the end of the road is closed and as I tried to get around there where some guys trying to sell me stuff and running after me, so I did not felt very comfortable there either.

This is a tire art shop, it's amazing the stuff they make out of used tires.

In the evening I went to this live music bar with a couple Columbian friends.

The next day it was time for the second stage, fly to San Andres and do a Open Water diving certification do some snorkeling and relax. At the airport took a taxi to my hostel, not surprising they don't have taximeters here, it seams that touristic places are all like that in Colombia and they charge you accordingly, in my case 3 times more than the normal rate for the same distance. San Andrés was very disappointing as it is quite dirty, with a lot of buildings falling apart and some only partially constructed and then abandoned. The promenade around the center is partially an exception to that, where you've landscapes like this.

But once you leave the promenade you get to see things like this and a lot worse.

I had a very funny moment once at breakfast, this lizard jumped from the vegetation near the promenade and run to and then between the tables, everyone stood up very quickly, started shouting a some run hiding into the restaurant, very amusing.

I'm still waiting for a couple of pictures of the diving course, will post them at a later time, but for now this one trip is over :-( more to come later this year ;-)

Villa de Leiva

After all the excitement yesterday, I treated myself a little bit better by staying in a really nice Finca, where I received the warmest reception until now in this trip, it was like visiting family or very good friends, after not seeing them for a long time.

This overnight stay had breakfast included for a change and after that, I said goodbye and moved on to take a look at lake Tota, due to my previous experience and against my plans I decided not to ride around the lake.

Well it's nice but as a lake did not impress me much I turned around and continued to Villa de Leiva.

Now I had to make a decision about wether I'd ride to Popayan or strait back to Cali, spent a long way pondering what to do as I don't like to ride the same road twice on the same trip but as I got closer to Bogotá, I opted for the shortest path. Bogotá was, as expected, very hard to cross and while coming from the north it takes ages to get into it, getting out of it takes a lot longer and as I got out it was all about finding a place with WiFi to spend the night and plan the next days.
Along the way, between Fusagasuga and Girardot I had the worst experience of this trip, I got stopped by the police which was actually nothing new, in average I got stopped at least 3 times a day, but this guy, agent 009662 (that was the number on his west) started making false accusations, claiming that I should have the number of my plate on my helmet like others had, which is not true and asking if I understood what he was saying and that he would confiscate the bike and I could not continue my ride. Clearly trying to force me to bribe him but I stayed calm looking hat him, time was on my side. This was the only time I regretted to having used the most famous traveler Spanish phrase "No fumar espanol!" :-) After a while, realizing that I wouldn't bribe him, he gave my papers back I said that should put those numbers on my helmet in the next village I cross, so that he didn't had to admit his fault and trying to give me impression, he was being nice to me :-(
With this unplanned forced stop it was soon dawn and I looked for the next possibility to spend the night, normally, in this situation I check for lodging along my path in the GPS, if there are a couple of them at around the same distance, this means that I've a good change of find something according to my needs, mark one of them and follow the indications, looking around for possible places to spend the night. The second one I found was one of those typical Colombians, where the reception is in the Garage, a drive-in reception so to say. Asked for the price, they with and without AC, asked for WiFi and they said yes, done. I did froze almost all day driving above 2600 meters most of the time but some 50 kilometers before I crossed a mountain and descended to around 600 meters with the temperature climbing to 38 degrees, so I took the one with AC. Went into the room, one of those without windows, it's also quite common around here. Checked WiFi but got no signal, asked at the reception and the guy told me that he had already bought a repeater but it's not yet configured but should be very simple to configure he said. I thought about the kind of repeater that you plug into a power socket and then navigate to the website and enter or choose the SSID you want to repeat, enter it's password and you're done. He went inside and came back with a router, not exactly what I would classify as "easy to configure" for an end user but OK. He unpacked the all thing and started watching a video about how you can set the thing up. I had a look at the paper that came with the router but more than go to this address and login with this user and password was provided. Meanwhile I had asked if there was a restaurant in the neighborhood, he answer no but his father in law told me that he had bought a lot of meat for dinner and if I wanted, I could eat with them, nice :-)
After a couple of minutes watching the guy I decently took over while his mother in law brought me one of the best "Limonada natural" that I've drunk in Colombia and once I was done you should have seen his grateful face ;-) In the end I only had to pay for the room. Unfortunately for me, another guy came around and checked in on the room next to me, the AC was shared by both rooms, half was on my side the other on the other room and he had the part with the command and set the temperature to 18 degrees or less, much colder than I use to set it and normally, I turn it off to sleep, so I decided to change to a room without AC. The room had a fan and windows to the street that you could not close completely. If someone told that sleeping in a room to the street was that loud I would not believe it, it was extremely loud and very hot all night so I had not much sleep that night. The next day drove further to close the circle in Cali.

On my way found this oversized transport being done at during daylight and blocking everyone.

They blocked the road for a couple hours in both directions, not even ambulances were allowed to pass, well there not even space for a bicycle anyway :-)

Barichara

After spending the night in Aguachica, I headed to Barichara, on the way there were some interesting mostly dry vegetation landscapes, first along narrow valleys and later climbing up mountains with impressive views.

Shortly after noon I reached Barichara, had a look around and searched for a place to spend the night.

Later on I had a try at grilled goat ribs in the first restaurant I found and despite being the only client, the food was fresh cooked and tasted deliciously.

In the morning I woke up to the sound of rain, enjoyed breakfast at a slower pace than usual looked at the map and saw two possible routes to my next destination at lake Tota. Entered Aquitania as target on the GPS and checked the fastest route, looked in the map and saw that it was the road that I wanted to avoid, then tried the shortest path, it was 90 kms shorter and looked like the road I wanted to ride but did not checked it completely against the map, just assumed it was what I thought and headed my way. Well, this assumption proved, later on, to be a huge mistake. My expectation was that the shortest path would give me an extra hour to enjoy my route. The max. speed in Colombia is mostly 60-80km/h and even ridding constantly at the max. allowed speed, I'd need at least around 1:15 for the extra 90kms. In the first 20-30kms the road was unexpectedly wide and new, then I passed a few construction areas where it constantly changed between new and old but had not much trouble maintaining a good pace and the landscape was really nice as well. Everything was just fine until I reached a construction site where the young lady that stopped me asked if I didn't knew that the road was closed. Well, how should I know that?

There were no signs at all point this out. Then she explained that I would have to wait until noon to pass, it was 10:30 at the time, so I took my helmet, jacket and gloves off, had a couple of small bananas I had bought along the way and enjoyed my time, this journey was not supposed to be that long after all, so I was still pretty relaxed. 12 o'clock passed and the girl got a little stressed, asking if she could let us pass, by this time there where a lot of trucks, motorcycles, cars and buses waiting, she even said, well, there this tourist here from abroad on a motorcycle can't I left him pass :-) but it didn't work, the other side had the first go and we had to wait another half an hour to get over. Shortly after this stop I crossed a small village and the road became smaller and once in a while unpaved which I really enjoyed because I always ride standing on unpaved ground and it's really nice to relax my back and stretch my legs.

After a while, tarmac disappeared completely, I looked down to the gps and saw the next turn in over 30 kms, by that time I understand that I'd still be on that kind of rocky ground for a while.

About 1 km to the turn the asphalt was back but as soon as I left the village the heavy rock unpaved track was back and now there over 90 kms to go.

With time and kms I realized that this was not the road I thought I would be ridding at the beginning, all the marks on the track where old and no one at sight while the track began to climb the mountain, 1.000 meters, 2.000 meters then 3.000 meters high, the temperature drops to 13 degrees. To you tell the truth, under normal situations this is the ground I love and most enjoy to ride but here, I started to think that if I'm unfortunate enough to get a flat tire, it will be end of the road for me and this trip. I'm in the middle of nowhere, if I get lucky some one would find me on the same day if not ...
On the motorcycle I'm ridding, BMW had this excellent idea of moving the valve sideways and there is no way you can use a tube on its rims, which on the other hand would be "easy" to find. Without a repair kit you're done and I didn't had one with me, I ride pass 3.500 meters and by this time I realize that I'm way over 340 kms since my last fuel stop, now everything comes together, with all the stress I actually forgot gas but there wasn't any change to refuel in the last 60 kms anyway, so I was still kinda happy not to have seen it before :-)

Finally I reached the top at around 3.700 meters, from now on I could save some gas by letting it roll for a while and 20 kms later I sighted a nice road down to my left.

Checked the next village on the gps and it was around another 20 kms, going downhill on this wide, newly build road made me think the worse was over and from now on and until Duitama it would be only asphalt, well, guess what, this new road that started from unpaved ground, ended just 4 kms later again in unpaved ground. This is something that you find a lot in Colombia, on a construction stretch of 50 kms for example, you'll have like 3 or 4 kms of excellent new asphalt every 10 kms or so, they start everywhere, it looks like 10 different enterprises, each doing a piece of 5kms. By the way this is one of the reasons why you should not ride at night in Colombia (well not only here ;-))

In the end this was the best drive ridding day so far and as nothing went wrong I don't regret not having checked the route on the gps against the map but it is a thing to have in consideration when selecting the shortest path in some countries ;-)