Brian: We’d planned to head to Popayan, only 85 kilometres from here so we should do that easily in the hour or so of daylight left. The blokes at the ATM tell us the road’s bad, but it can’t be that bad. How wrong we are.
I battle one of the worst roads we’ve encountered in the five months we’ve been travelling. It’s cold. It’s dark. It’s raining. The conditions couldn’t be worse.
The holes in the road are big enough to swallow the bike. Every few kilometres road works turn a bad road into a slippery mud wallow. The bike slips one way and then the other. It’s taking every ounce of my concentration and strength to keep us upright.
A bus pulls in front of us so I follow him for a while, using him as a guide. He seems to know where the big holes are and I let him show the way. The plan nearly leads us to grief though when the bus stops suddenly and I almost drop the bike trying to pull up.
It’s a nightmare ride and takes us roughly three hours to travel less than 100 kilometres.
When we finally get to Popayan we’re shagged. It’s well after 8.00 pm and we need to find a hotel. Heading to a street where there should be hotels a small bike comes out of a side street and I have to brake hard and swerve to avoid him. I don’t know who’s in the wrong, but we would all have been worse off for the experience.
Trying to find a hotel isn’t so easy. A couple have no rooms and there’s one with a room but no parking for the bike. While Shirl’s explaining it to me, a woman appears at the door of the hotel with a little metal ramp that she puts in the gutter, alongside the kerb. She indicates that I should ride the bike in through the front door. It seems there is parking for the bike — in the foyer. It’s my time to be a stunt rider again.
Shirl helps them drag the pot plants to one side while I take the panniers off to make the bike a little narrower.
The doorway isn’t a problem but getting the bike past the reception desk is a bit tricky. There isn’t any daylight between the counter and the handlebars when I squeeze the bike through into the internal courtyard. It fits nicely next to the small fountain.
Shirley: Brian’s exhausted and crashes. I can’t sleep. Homesickness is causing me to feel miserable. Last time we travelled I got homesick after about eight months. We’ve only been on the road about five months and I’m really feeling it. Sometimes it’s like a physical pain. Hard days on the road, like today, make it worse. I find the poverty and the unloved and neglected animals hard to deal with.
•
Everything looks a lot better in the light of day. After some sleep and breakfast I’m ready to explore Popayan, an old colonial town similar to the more famous Cartagena that we won’t be able to visit.
There’s no road through the narrow piece of land that connects South and Central America, the Darien Gap. There’s a ship that runs from Cartagena to Panama City and we’ve been told it’s a great way to ship the bike and have a bit of a holiday at the same time. They lash the bikes onto the railing of the ship for the voyage. Unfortunately the timetable won’t get us to Central America in time for our dash to Texas so we have to fly the bike from Bogota to Panama City. We won’t get to the Caribbean coast and Cartagena.
Popayan is a delightful town with narrow streets and whitewashed buildings. The main square should be nicknamed bank square — on three sides are the headquarters of Columbia’s banks. On the fourth side is the cathedral — a massive domed church that was rebuilt, like most of the town, after the 1983 earthquake. Hundreds died in the cathedral when the dome crashed down during the Maundy Thursday quake. Popayan is a religious town and Easter week is one of its biggest celebrations. It’s like the entire town is being spruced up for Easter. There are painters everywhere daubing new whitewash on the buildings. Even our hotel is painting rooms and revarnishing the furniture.
Wandering the peaceful streets of this laid-back university town we feel safe.
•
Getting the bike out of the foyer creates a great deal of interest. The painters down tools and help shift pot plants so Brian can squeeze past the front desk. The ramp’s in position and the chemist comes from across the road to stop the traffic. I don’t know why we were concerned about coming to Columbia. These people are so friendly.
On the Pan American highway heading north we pass a police or military checkpoint every five kilometres or so. They take one hand off their high-powered firearms to give us the thumbs up as we go by. We feel very secure here.
Brian: The ride to Salento from our overnight stop should be an easy three hours. I don’t know how, but somehow we end up in the hills, above the clouds, in the middle of road works and surrounded by homicidal truck drivers. My patience is wearing thin, especially when the GPS tells us to go down a dirt road that’s blocked. A lady at a shop nearby swipes her hand across her throat, indicating how bad that road is. Eventually, five hours after finding another road, we finally ride into the delightful mountain village of Salento.
The town square is the heart of the community. Gauchos walk around in their Cuban heeled boots, young children are pulled around the square on wooden ponies strapped to a flat wooden tray on wheels, and artisans sell handmade jewellery.
A couple of local bikers invite us to a BMW test ride day on the outskirts of town. We’re feted by them and it’s kinda nice. I get to talk bikes and Shirl gets to talk about life on the road with some of the girls. We love being together, but it’s nice to be with others, particularly for Shirl to get to talk to other women. I’m sure she gets bored with all the motorcycle chat.
The food here is incredible. For lunch I have a grilled trout served with a huge banana crisp, the size of the plate. It’s delicious. Shirl’s chicken and pork shashlik looks great. This is the best meal we’ve had for weeks.
Back at our comfortable guesthouse we spend the evening in the sitting room, sharing a bottle of wine and reading. Days like this are precious. Long days on the bike on difficult roads wear us out. We really need a break and this is the place.
We spend a couple of days at our lovely Casa Hotel Alto. We take a leaf out of Ian Moor’s book, spending time to chill sitting on the veranda overlooking the garden or sitting in the lounge room reading and sipping on a glass of Tinto Blanco — this is just perfect.
But all good things come to an end and it’s time to hit the road and head to Bogota to deal with the vagaries of customs and international freight.
•
More road works and more homicidal truck drivers, I’m getting used to this. But nothing prepares me for the truck on our side of the road when we come around a sharp bend.
Shirley: I don’t know how he does it. My heart skips a beat when I see the truck bearing down on us. For a split second I think this is the end. There doesn’t seem to be anywhere to go, but Brian manages to get us off the road, avoiding the truck, without riding into the ditch. If we were in a car it would have been a head-on. Brian, you’re doing a mighty job.
•
In Bogota we’re about to walk out of the hotel to find a restaurant when Ricardo, the concierge, comes up. He tells us not to go left when we go out the door, only right, and to head across the road to the restaurants, not the ones behind the hotel. His final advice is not to stay out after 9.00 pm. ‘It’s lonely’, he says.
It’s frenetic is how it feels. It’s busy with city workers, street sellers, buskers, beggars and resourceful people selling the use of mobile phones. They’re standing on the street corners with half a dozen mobile phones tied to a pole. You make a call and pay them for the privilege.
I feel a little vulnerable as we push through the crowd to find somewhere to eat. I’m pretty glad to get back to the hotel and curl up in bed and watch a bit of CNN. I just love the cable news shows.
•
It feels like any other big city in the daylight. We’ve got a lot to do today so we’re out and about early. First stop is the post office to send home a parcel of souvenirs. It’s a time consuming business. Each item has to be listed and sighted by t
he post office staff. There’re a number of forms to be filled in and we have to provide photocopies of our passports. They bring out the inkpad for Brian’s fingerprints to go on the paperwork. From here the parcel will go to the narcotics police before it leaves the country. I guess we should have expected this.
Next stop is the airline office to confirm our tickets to Panama. Done.
The gold museum is just around the corner. For two hours we wander around looking at some of the most exquisite ancient pieces found in tombs around Columbia. This stuff is amazing — nose rings, ear rings, chest plates, ornaments, funerary — not as exquisite as the Lord Sipan in Chiclayo, but beautiful none-the-less.
It’s time for a late lunch and we can’t go past Maccas. There are times you need comfort food.
Brian: We have to lodge the bike with the air-freight company a couple of days before our flight. I’ve been emailing a contact in the US who’s liaising with Girag Air, the company that specialises in flying bikes from Columbia to Panama, for us. He says they’re expecting us. Finding the airport freight terminal is the first problem. We visit three buildings before the stress levels overcome me and I ring the company. We can only have a little fuel in the bike for it to be granted a dangerous goods certificate and at this rate I’m going to run out of petrol riding around from building to building.
The man at Girag Air tells me to bring the bike back tomorrow. No way. It’s only 10.00 am. We’re going to lodge the bike today. After much arguing he finally tells me where we can find the office. It’s not that far, so I make it without having to get extra fuel.
The girls in the office are very obliging but even with their help it takes two hours to fill out the paperwork. Now I can put the bike in the dock.
The dock is the perfect height for semi-trailers to back in and load. It’s not the perfect height for a motorcycle. The workers put a narrow ramp up for me. It’s only about a foot wide and the climb is really steep. I line up the bike and gun it. When I hit the top men run in all directions, getting out of my way. I manage to pull it up before I hit a very large crate.
Now we have to pay. The girls are closing the office for two hours for lunch. During that time we have to go to their bank ‘across the road’. I presume they’re talking about the road out the front which is an eight-lane highway. We walk about a kilometre to the pedestrian overpass and then back but can’t find the bank. There is a bank just outside the terminal building, but it’s not across the road and it’s not the brand of bank we’ve been told to go to.
We discover that in Columbia the Banco Popular will take deposits for all banks, when, out of desperation, we ask them for directions to the Occidental Bank. So across the road was actually across the car park. Ah, the exercise will do us good even though we’re footsore from walking in our bike boots.
Now we have to wait for the police to check the bike. The girls from the office take me to the police office but they aren’t there. An hour later we try again. This time the police are there but the girl from Girag hasn’t filled out the paperwork properly so the police won’t look at the bike. This is bloody frustrating.
At 6.00 pm we’re told to come back tomorrow.
Shirley: Brian is seething in the taxi all the way back to the hotel. He calms down a little when we have a cocktail and something to eat. Tomorrow everything will be fine.
•
We get a taxi back to Girag at 8.00 am. At 9.30 am they tell us the police have had a crisis and won’t be available for at least another half an hour to inspect the bike.
Brian decides to take matters into his own hands and heads off to the police. They’re very helpful and would love to check the bike but they still haven’t received the correct paperwork. He’s really mad now. The stress of being a policeman has given Brian high blood pressure. I’d hate to think how high it is at this moment.
I know how to calm him and distract him while we wait for the paperwork to be sorted — Angry Birds. I drag out my iPod and introduce him to this mind-numbing game. He gets into it and progresses through all levels while we wait. He doesn’t realise how much time has passed when, finally, around lunch time the bike is passed to fly to Panama.
We have ridden 22,199 kilometres in South America, through nine countries. We’ve got a month to get through Central America into the US to meet up with friends from Australia. It’s going to be a rush.
•
We have a day to fill in before our flight so we visit the Salt Cathedral, a massive place of worship carved inside the salt mines. The miners built these chapels in their own time and are proud of the fact none of them died building them. The same probably can’t be said for the workers in the mine itself.
The chapels are beautiful and so peaceful with piped music and mood lighting highlighting the Stations of the Cross. The altars are made from granite and other rocks from the mine. Some chapels have the tunnels from the working mine behind them — some going a couple of hundred metres into the mine. This is a feat of engineering.
We need lunch and head to a chicken shop. The man sitting opposite us is wearing a most unusual belt. There are bullets adorning it, just like a bandolier. On his hip is a huge handgun. We’re both gobsmacked. No one else pays him the slightest bit of attention.
It’s time to leave Columbia.
Brian: After spending a day and a half at Bogota airport trying to organise the bike we arrive at the passenger terminal convinced this will be a breeze.
We get called up to the check in counter only to be told that we can’t get on the plane because we don’t have a ticket out of Panama. Of course we don’t. We have a motorcycle in Panama and will be riding out of the country.
The very pleasant young lady behind the counter is adamant. The fact we have a motorcycle in the freight terminal, and probably on this very flight, accounts for nothing. We still have to have a plane ticket out of the country. It is something to do with travelling on Australian passports.
Oh, you’ve got to be kidding. I’m angry. I get pissed off. I shout. I cajole. I demand to see the supervisor. The supervisor tells me she’s rung Panama and they tell her we may be refused entry to the country if we don’t have a ticket to leave.
No matter what I say they will not budge. Shirl goes and buys two tickets from Panama City back to Bogota. I hit the roof when she tells me they cost $800 until I find out they’re fully refundable.
‘Thank you, Sir. That’s perfect.’
With our boarding passes we get through security. It’s only 11.00 am but we go straight to the bar.
How appropriate — it’s April Fool’s Day.
Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras & el Salvador
1 – 14 April 2012
Brian: The immigration officer at Panama City airport doesn’t ask when or how we’re leaving the country. There’s no question about a ticket out of the country. All that stress and aggravation in Bogota was for nothing.
Rather than the third degree, they give us a free emergency medical treatment card covering our first 30 days in Panama. It’s a nice touch, giving us a number where we can get medical help and advice in English.
•
We’ve battled plenty of borders with our very average Spanish. When Rae, our taxi driver who speaks English, offers to help us through the customs process for a few extra dollars we readily agree. It turns out to be money well spent.
The airport freight area is a jumble of small buildings and warehouses with no signs. Without Rae’s help it would have taken ages to find the customs and freight offices, let alone get the paperwork done. The bike is brought out and I try to start it. It won’t kick over. I can’t believe the battery is flat after just a couple of days. There’s no option but to try and push start it. I get a run up on the driveway and the bloody thing overbalances. Next thing I know it’s lying on its side and Shirl is running towards me, panicking.
The bike is fine and I’m fine, but a little mystified. I didn’t need to disconnect the battery for the flight
. Then it dawns on me. I put the kill switch on when I lodged it at Bogota. It’s something I rarely do. How embarrassing. A flick of the switch and it starts first time and we’re on our way to the petrol station. Just as we leave the airport the sky turns black and down comes the rain — a typical tropical downpour. No point in stopping to put the wets on as we’re soaked to the skin in a couple of minutes. It’s not so bad, we dry off pretty quickly riding in the warm air.
On the way back to the hotel the bike begins to run rough, like it’s about to stall. I can’t work out what’s wrong with it. I stop at a Honda dealer who can’t help, but he tells us where to find the local BMW dealer. They can’t help now but will be able to in the morning. I nurse the bike back to the hotel, convinced we have a major problem that’s going to cost a fortune to repair.
•
Shirl’s keen to organise a refund on the airlines tickets we had to buy to get out of Columbia. The airline is very helpful, up to a point. They’ll rush the refund through for us in three months. I can’t imagine how long it’d take if they didn’t rush it through!
Shirley: It’s a black day. I’d planned to talk to our friends Ian, Sylvia and Phil this morning. They’re meeting us in Texas in a month and we want to make some final plans. I can’t wait to see them.
Instead of a happy conversation it’s a sad one. Phil gives us the devastating news that her wonderful dog, Gypsy had to be put down this morning. Gypsy is like one of our family — she spends so much time with us when Phil is working. We both cry while we talk to Ian and Phil. This is the worst news.
I cry on the bike on the way to BMW. I cry at BMW. I cry while we have breakfast — bloody hell, I feel so miserable and such a long way from home. I know Brian feels it too, but he does ask that I stop crying in public — people will think he’s been beating me. I’ll try.
The good news is that the bike is running badly because one of the spark plugs has worked loose. Instead of a massive bill it cost us just $13.91. This is probably the cheapest bill we’ll ever get from BMW.
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