The ride I took three years ago through Colombia with good buddies Carlos and Juan was one of the best I’ve ever done…a solid week of riding in one of the most beautiful and best riding destinations on the planet. Roughly 20% of our journey was on dirt roads through rural Colombia and that was a lot of fun.
Juan shot the photo above, incredibly, while he was riding in front of us. We were mounted on AKT RS3 motorcycles, which is the same bike as the CSC RX3 except that it is carbureted instead of fuel injected. That’s me on the left in the above photo in the fluorescent green jacket; Carlos is on the right.
Those AKT 250s were great machines. What amazed me is that we rode from sea level up to 14,000 feet, and those carbureted bikes ran well at both elevations and everything in between.
Juan was amazing…he knew Colombia’s back roads well, and when he didn’t, he wasn’t afraid to use “Juan’s GPS.” That was his term for riding alongside somebody driving a tractor or riding a horse, flipping his visor up, and asking for directions (in Spanish, of course) while we were all still moving. The guy could turn around 180 degrees in his seat while he was riding and get things out of his tailbox or take photos (like the one above). I’m not anywhere near that limber.
One of the more interesting places we visited was a town called Barichara. It was amazing on many levels, not the least of which was an incredible cemetery. Bear in mind that I did this trip while I was writing the CSC blog (I think I wrote something like 2500 entries on that blog), so when you hear me say “This is Joe from CSC,” that was then and this is now.
I miss riding the exotic locales like Mexico, Canada, Colombia, China, and more. But when that happens, I hop into one of the moto adventure books and relive the adventure, and you can, too. You might get one of our books for free if you sign up for automatic email notifications on the ExNotes blog!
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