This morning Paul headed back round to the Honda shop we had found yesterday, whilst I booked our hotel for another night and changed rooms, as our room was booked for tonight.

The staff at Honda Moto welcomed Paul with open arms, and were thrilled by our bike.  He explained what he needed doing, which was for the RotoPax fuel pack mount’s broken bolt to be drilled out, and a replacement supplied.  The lock was also a bit ground away, where the fuel canisters had hit the ground, so he also asked them to sort this out.

I spent the morning researching about the beautiful birds we’ve already seen, and those to look out for in the upcoming countries. The birds are such beautiful colours, it’s like someone has taken a paint palette, and let the birds flap their wings in the brightest colours, the one’s that would contrast the extensive green scenery and blue skies the most. Stunning.  This also applies to the beautiful flowers that grow abundantly along the roadsides.

Paul was told to come back at 12, when the mount would be ready for him. When you returned, the mechanic had removed the bolt, and put a new larger diameter bolt in, which sadly meant that the rest of the parts wouldn’t fit over it.  This meant another hours drilling and re-threading for the poor guy. Even so, once the job was completed, the boss of Honda Moto still told Paul ‘no charge’, one more example of the generosity of people in money and spirit, when you visit a foreign country.

Once Paul was back we headed for a quick scoot around town, with one eye toward the mountains over yonder, as we could already see the forecast rain up there, plus there was distinct rumblings of thunder. We managed to get a few photos, and pick up some essentials that we needed to replenish, before discovering a tiny Arepa shop.  You will remember that the Arepas are a type of corn bread. In this shop, the corn was ground into maize flour, combined with water and cooked in a clay oven.  They could then be split, and re-heated with ingredients inside them.  I chose cheese, and Paul had cheese and ham. They were delicious, a real treat for lunch.

After the Arepas, we headed a bit further into town, before the lightning began to accompany the thunder, and we turned tail, and rushed as quick as possible back to the hotel.

The weather looks better tomorrow, as we head for Pasto, our last stop before the Ecuadorian border, we can see the equator coming very close on the map now.

Yesterday was a good, but very long and busy day. We set off knowing that despite only having 160 miles to ride, the Google Maps time prediction for the journey was 6 hours.

It was raining when we left the hotel, and our trusty Maps.me navigation app kept trying to send us up one way streets the wrong way. We eventually found our way out of town after a good half an hour of trying. Columbia (or maybe all of South America??) don’t believe in signs, so it’s anyone’s guess sometimes, especially when we find ourselves swept along in the traffic again, thinking surely we just went down this road?

Once out of town, I breathed a sigh of relief, before realising that we were straight into the mountain roads. These roads were to take us through Armenia up to La Linea the highest point with an altitude of 3,265 metres (10,700 feet). They were busy in a way that neither of us had ever seen before. Nose to tail trucks everywhere. I have attached a link to a video here for those of you brave enough to have a look!  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tajFENoeBDg

We climbed up, up, up and up! Mainly in first gear, overtaking when it was safe, and being swarmed by the tiny motorbikes finding every which way they could to get past.  It was certainly entertaining, and absolutely stunning. The crossing of the mountains was a 45 mile drive and took us 3 hours! During this time, we saw a guy on a bungee being towed along by a truck, chicken, cows, goats at the side of the road, and were stopped by policeman twice, both times just wanting to have a look at the bike and sidecar. Thanks for making Paul do those tremendous hill starts guys!

The rest of the day went as smoothly as we could hope, until that is, we entered Cali, our destination city for the night.

We normally try to stay outside of cities, but this has proved a little more difficult so far in Colombia. However, no problem, we have the navigation app that I can read as we go along.  It was a good 20 miles from the motorway into the city, and once we arrived, I made a faux pas, telling Paul to turn right too early. That was it, we were into the swarming traffic again, ah, but no matter, we shall turn around, we thought.  Oh excellent! This seems a better route now, and it’s only 9 miles more along this straight road, with only 3 turns at the end………….. One and a half hours later, after being swamped by motorcycles, traffic converging from both sides of our road all at once, perhaps 20 sets of traffic lights, shouting, hollering, beeping, tooting, no left turns, oh and a flat battery on my phone, we finally found our B&B for the night.

A very good B&B it was too, Jorge and his family ran it, and could not do enough for us. It was lovely to chat with Jorge before we set off this morning. Jorge confirmed that yesterday was a special holy day (maybe the reason there was SO much traffic yesterday, perhaps) and that today is a national holiday. Breakfast this morning was the most wonderful omelette with an Arepa (a bread made of cooked maize flour), delicious.

Popayan was only a short 2 hour ride away, and very enjoyable it was too. Today we entered the Colombia of my dreams, the one I have only ever seen pictured on bags of fresh coffee before.  Any coffee enthusiast would be in their element here, there are coffee plantations everywhere, and sugar cane.  Stalls of fresh pineapples and oranges also line the road.

We had made a plan when we reached Popayan to visit a motorcycle shop and have the Rotopax fuel canister bracket repaired. Of course, we had not taken into account that today is a national holiday, so we shall try with that plan again in the morning.

We’re not too sad, as we’re staying in a restored monastery dating from 1570, and should be able to go out and explore tomorrow.

Leaving Bogota this morning looked straightforward on the map, but as Paul found out yesterday on his short journey back from the airport, the roads are severely congested.

We queued for the first 10 miles after leaving the hotel, before eventually making it to the Autopista (highway), and then we went in fits and starts, making our way through the outlying urban sprawl of Bogota.

The Autopista is a peaje, meaning a toll is due for using the road.  Motorbikes go free, however we do not fit into the special lane they have made for motorbikes, and have to go through the normal toll booth.  The first toll booth we reached, the lady working looked at us in horror, and began calling things across to other people, and using the telephone whilst asking us to wait. Paul told her we would pay a car price, but no, we must wait.  Somebody else came along with a camera, which they then both fiddled with for several minutes, before declaring ‘no functionar!’.  By this time, the trucks queued behind us were working up a head of steam, and the full serenade of tooting horns had begun in earnest.  Two more people came along, before eventually the bar was raised and we allowed through ‘libre’ free of charge.

This was great, until we were then immediately stopped by a transit policeman, who pulled us over and checked our papers, asking how much we had been charged.  When Paul told him nothing, he wanted to know why it was free for us, we had two seats? We were a little harassed by now, getting hot and bothered. Perhaps though, he was just interested in us, as after a glance at Paul’s driving licence he returned it to us, and we were off.

When checking out the weather last night, the forecast had shown 17 degrees celsius, so thinking I might be a little chilly, I wore my cardigan today. I kept thinking to myself, I’ll be glad of it soon, but when the temperature gauge reading rose to 31 degrees celsius, I began to wish I’d left it off. This was soon rectified when we stopped for some refreshing drinks,  whilst sitting in front of a whole barbequed pig, head intact in a roadside lechoneria. We rested a while there watching the very happy dogs mooching past us looking for scraps.

The scenery today has been different from that which we got used to in Central America, becoming mountainous, and extremely green.

I am still maintaining my role as navigator, using the app on my phone (maps.me) to find our way. The one disadvantage to this, we found today is that on occasion, it will take the shortest route to our destination.  The route cannot be changed, unlike with most GPS/Sat Nav units, so we found ourselves ending the day as we started it, riding through belching traffic, surrounded my motorcycles, trucks, cars and mopeds fighting for their positions in the busy town for the last 11 kilometres of our journey.  Despite all the twists and turns the route required us to make, we made it, with no errors, my shouting and hand signals paid off!

Yesterday was a day of flights, our bike left Panama City on a plane at 11am, and we left on a plane at 11.35am. The flight was smooth, efficient and despite only taking one hour ten minutes we got a free snack and drink!  This was using Copa Airlines, a Panamanian company.

Tocumen airport was modern and efficient, and a pleasure to use. El Dorado airport in Bogota was the same, modern and clean. The only hold up was having to queue for extranajeros (foreigners) immigration which took an hour and half, but resulted in a beautiful stamp each in our passports.

We are thrilled to be here, South America- the place of our dreams.  It really does seem unbelievable.

This morning we were up early again, as Paul could go back to the airport from our hotel (a very cheap and cheerful on what seems to be a pretty busy road in Bogota!). The offices open at 8am here.

First call of the day for Paul was to be for vehicle insurance, which we had been led to believe was required before being allowed the vehicle temporary import document. We had researched on the internet last night, and become thoroughly confused by the sheer amount of insurance offices, and then when trying to use the addresses being taken in a completely different direction on Google Maps than we were expecting.  However, we believed we had found one seven blocks away.

When Paul reached this office, it was shut or closed, and so he hailed a taxi and asked him if he knew where there was an insurance office nearer to the airport.  The taxi driver checked the internet but couldn’t find any, so Paul let him go.  After some reflection Paul hailed another cab, and went straight to the airport, for the Cargo terminal.  

Despite having an address, it still took a little time to find Air Cargo Pack’s office, mainly because it was a complete contrast to the office in Panama, being that it was super modern and huge, and full of staff. John, the boss, who we had met in Panama was there to greet Paul, which was nice.  John also said that he would sort out the vehicle insurance for Paul, and asked his daughter to call a company and buy some for us.

Paul was then sent with Luis, an employee of Air Cargo Pack to the Custom Office to have the vehicle temporary import document produced.  This office was incredibly busy and it took about 3 ½ hours to be processed, but having Luis with Paul made it easier.

I had remained at the hotel, and Paul sent me a text message to say he’d be on his way once they had figured out how to get the bike down, it was up high in the warehouse, with no ramp!  The answer was to put the bike back onto a lorry, and take it to another company who did have a ramp, allowing the bike to be taken off the lorry, loaded into the bay and then taken down the ramp.

The last couple of hurdles for the day, was to bear in mind there was only a whisper of petrol in the tank, and for Paul to try to negotiate his way back through the busy traffic to the hotel.Most roads have at least four lanes of traffic, which you cannot cross. He told me the digital fuel gauge (that tells you how many left miles left to ride) hit zero miles, and he wafted along, luckily finding a ‘retorno’, place to do a U-turn into the Texaco garage that he could see from afar. That was lucky, well until the pump attendant sent Paul off in the wrong direction, unable to find a way out for several miles, before trying a few right turns, and one more wrong turn before I finally saw him come into view through the huge plate glass windows at the hotel. Phew! Another day in these crazy Latin American countries!!