That big photo above? That’s my old HJC carbon fiber helmet at an elevation of 13,576 feet, and the gunk you see on it is ash. As in volcanic ash. We’ve written about Colombia’s Volcan Nevado del Ruiz before here on ExNotes. I’m writing about my ride there again because it seems the old girl has awakened again.
The view from afar. I would be a several hour ride and a monstrous elevation climb (but on amazing roads) to get to the Volcan Nevado del Ruiz.
Volcan Nevado del Ruiz is an active Colombian volcano 80 miles west of Bogotá. Starting in April of this year, it started acting up again. I say “again” because in 1985, Nevado del Ruiz erupted and killed 25,000 Colombians. That event was not only Colombia’s deadliest eruption…it was all of South America’s.
The National Park entrance. They turned us around a half hour after we arrived when the volcano started spewing ash.
I’ve been to the Volcan Nevado del Ruiz. I rode to the top on a motorcycle with good buddies Juan and Carlos. We were there in 2015, and a short while after we entered the Colombia’s Brisas National Park at the 4,138-meter summit, the park rangers told us we had to leave because the volcano was active. It had started spewing ash. It was snowing at that elevation, too. It made for a fine mess and exciting riding.
The ride up to the top of the Volcan Nevado del Ruiz was awesome. The roads were typical Andes Mountains Colombian switchbacks and we were in rare form. The day was beautiful at the lower elevations, but that was about to change as we continued our Andean ascent.
Ah, the Andes. The riding in Colombia is amazing.
On that ride, we were mounted on AKT Motos RS3 motorcycles. That’s the Colombian equivalent of CSC’s RX3, but with carburetors instead of fuel injectors. The fuel is a bit more flaky in Colombia, so AKT opted for carbs instead of injectors. People have asked if the carbs were problematic or if the bikes were slower than the US RX3. I couldn’t tell the difference.
Volcanic ash on my beautiful black AKT motorcycle.
Colombia has a pretty good deal for AKT making Zongshen motorcycles over there. If AKT brings in assembled bikes, they would have to pay a 30% import duty on them. If they components from Zongshen and then buy 15% of the bikes’ content in Colombia (thus encouraging Colombian manufacturing), AKT pays only a 2% import duty. Ah, if only our politicians were that smart.
Carlos and I at the park entrance. It was cold, wet, and gritty with the airborne volcanic ash mixing with the snow. This wasn’t a beer and burger run to Cook’s Corner!My Olympia motorcycle jacket, spotted with ash and my CSC pilot wings.
After running to the top of Volcan Nevado del Ruiz, we descended along dirt roads to a magnificent Colombian hotel just a few miles down the road, the Termales Del Ruiz. My buddy Juan knows how to organize a great ride, and I sure had an awesome time. The Termales Del Ruiz is at the end of that dirt road somewhere in the fog, and it’s at 3,500 meters above sea level (still pretty high). It has a thermal pool fed by water (heated by the volcano, I guess) and that water was hot! The air was bitter cold, but the water was nice. It was one of the best nights in Colombia, and that’s saying something. Every night was awesome.
So, back to the Volcan Nevado del Ruiz going live again: It’s really happening, and it wasn’t that many years ago that this same volcano killed 25,000 people in Colombia. Here’s a recent news story on what’s happening now:
Subscribed but not getting your ExNotes new post notifications? Check your email spam folder and tell your email provider we’re the real deal!
After zipping through the Andes Mountains in Colombia for a week on RS3 motorcycles with my good buddies Juan and Carlos (the RS3 is the carbureted version of the RX3), I spent a day in the AKT Motos plant. AKT Motos is the importer and assembler of Zongshen motorcycles in Colombia.
The AKT factory was impressive, and not just because of the fact that they make motorcycles there. I’ve been in and around factories for most of my life. There are good ones and there are bad ones. I can tell the difference as soon as I walk in just by looking at the people who work there and the condition of the facilities. The vibes were all good…AKT is a good place to work and the people there love what they do.
Here’s the AKT Moto assembly line:
Juan Carlos grabbed the photo below of yours truly with Enrique Vargas, AKT Moto’s General Manager.
Here’s a video showing the AKT Motos plant in action:
Enrique is a genuine nice guy and he’s the real deal. He rides a different AKT Motos motorcycle to work every day (in Medellin traffic, that’s no small feat), and he races motocross on the weekends. Enrique is the guy who invited me on the Colombia trip, and I had a wonderful time on that ride. You can read about the adventure in Moto Colombia, our book about the ride through Colombia. It was the ride of a lifetime, and the book makes a great gift.
That photo at the top of this blog? It’s yours truly leaving the ferry that had carried us down the Magdalena River to Mompox, one of my favorite places in the world and unquestionably one of the more exotic spots I ever visited on a motorcycle. Here’s a video I did on that ferry ride with a few scenes in Mompox at night, and another riding through the Andes.
Our last day on the road in Colombia was just a few days before Christmas, and it was a fine ride down from the Volcan Nevado del Ruiz back home to La Ceja. It had been a grand adventure, and I had mixed emotions about it coming to an end. I was looking forward to going home, but I felt bad about wrapping up what had been one of the greatest rides of my life.
Posted on December 22, 2015
Yesterday was our last day on the road. It was yet another glorious day of adventure riding in Colombia.
The night we spent under the Volcan Nevado del Ruiz was freezing. It was the coldest night we experienced on this trip. I had on every layer of clothing I brought with me when we left. Juan told me not to worry, it would warm up as we descended. As always, his prediction was right on the money.
I had mixed emotions as we rolled out that morning. This ride has been one of the great ones, and I am always a little sad on the last day of a major ride because I know it is drawing to a close. But I am also eager to get home. This was a magnificent ride, and it was a physically demanding one. We experienced temperature extremes, from the humid and sultry tropics to the frigid alpine environment we were leaving. The riding was simultaneously exhilarating and terrifying. We road magnificent winding mountain roads, but at times the traffic (especially when we were passing the big 22-wheeled tractor trailer trucks) was unnerving. My neck was sore, most likely from the stress of this kind of riding. But it was grand, and riding Colombia is one of life’s grand adventures.
Juan knows all the good spots in Colombia, and he took us to this one where we could grab a few photos with the volcano steaming in the background.
I had to get a shot of the three of us with the bikes, using the D3300’s self-timer. If we look like three guys (the three amigos) who were having the ride of their lives, well, it’s because we were.
We rode on. We went through towns, we went through the twisties, and we passed more trucks. Another day in Colombia, another few hundred miles. At one point, Juan took us on a very sharp 150-degree right turn and we climbed what appeared to be a paved goat trail. Ah, another one of Juan’s short cuts, I thought. And then we stopped.
“This is Colombia’s major coffee-producing region, and we are on a coffee plantation,” he announced when we took our helmets off. Wow. I half expected Juan Valdez (you know, from the old coffee commercials) to appear, leading his burro laden with only the finest beans. It was amazing. I had never been on a coffee plantation (or even seen a coffee bean before it had been processed), and now here we were. On a coffee plantation. In Colombia. This has been a truly amazing ride.
That big stand of lighter yellowish-green plants you see just left of center in the above photograph is a bamboo grove. More amazing stuff.
These are coffee beans, folks. Real coffee beans.
The beans are picked by hand, Juan explained. It’s very labor-intensive, and these areas are struggling because the world-wide coffee commodities markets are down.
Juan picked a bean and showed me how to peel it open. You can take the inner bean and put it in your mouth like a lozenge (you don’t chew it). To my surprise, it was sweet. It didn’t have even a vague hint of coffee flavor.
As we were taking all of this in, two of Colombia’s finest rolled by.
Juan told me that the police officers in Colombia often ride two up. I had seen that a lot during the last 8 days. Frequently, the guy in back was carrying a large HK 7.62 assault rifle or an Uzi. Colombia is mostly safe today, but that is a fairly recent development.
Vintage cars are a big thing in Colombia. A little further down the road we saw this pristine US Army Jeep for sale. I thought of my good buddy San Marino Bill, who owns a similar restored military Jeep.
Here’s one last shot of yesterday’s ride…it’s the Cauca River valley.
The Andes Mountains enter Colombia from the south, and then split into three Andean ranges running roughly south to north. You can think of this as a fork with three tines. There’s an eastern range of the Andes, a central range, and a western range. The Cauca River (which we rode along for much of yesterday) runs between the western and central Andes. The Magdalena River runs between the central and eastern ranges.
Okay, enough geography…we rolled on toward Medellin (or Medda-jeen, as they say over here) and dropped Carlos off at his home. Juan and I rode on another 40 kilometers to La Ceja (or La Sayza, to pronounce it correctly) to Juan’s home, and folks, that was it. Our Colombian ride was over.
Like I said above, I always have mixed emotions when these rides end. It was indeed a grand adventure, and I don’t mind telling you that I mentally heard the theme from Raiders of the Lost Ark playing in my head more than a few times as we rode through this wonderful place.
In the next few days, I’ll post more impressions of the trip. In a word, our AKT Moto RX3s performed magnificently. The RX3 is a world-class motorcycle, and anyone who dismisses the bike as a serious adventure riding machine is just flat wrong. I’ve been riding for over 50 years, and this is the best motorcycle for serious world travel I’ve ever ridden. Zongshen hit a home run with the RX3.
I’ll write more about the minor technical distinctions between the AKT and CSC versions of this bike, my experiences with the Tourfella luggage (all good), and more in coming blogs. I’ll tell you a bit about the camera gear I used on this trip, too (a preview…the Nikon D3300 did an awesome job).
Today I’m visiting with the good folks from AKT Moto to personally thank them for the use of their motorcycle and to see their factory. It’s going to be fun.
More to come, my friends…stay tuned!
Get all of the blogs on Colombia here. If you want to read the book about this ride, pick up a copy of Moto Colombia!
On my 8th day in Colombia and 7th day on the road, we left the town of Honda and rode to the top of Volcan Nevado del Ruiz, which took us up to about 14,000 feet. It was the highest I’d ever ridden and I was surprised at how well the RS3 (the carbureted version of the RX3) was doing. But I’m getting ahead of myself…let’s get into the blog I wrote for CSC Motorcycles at the end of that fine day.
Posted on December 21, 2015
A delightful hotel, sweltering heat, more mountain twisties, freezing cold, fog that cut visibility down to 30 feet, dirt roads, riding at 13,576 feet, hot sulfur baths, and a burbling volcano that killed 23,000 people in 1985…all in a day’s ride for us.
The hotel first…it was the Epoque, a great little boutique hotel in Honda that was one of the coolest places (in one of the hottest cities) I’ve ever parked a motorcycle. It was arranged in a square around a small pool (which we enjoyed immensely the previous night). Here are a few shots of the courtyard, Juan and Carlos having breakfast, and an antique record player in the dining room…
From there, it was another trials ride following the boys from Medellin as we twisted, turned, climbed, and descended cobbleboulder streets in Honda. Juan took us to the first bridge to ever span the Magdalena River, where I grabbed this shot of a Colombian woman taking in the humid morning air of Honda…
Here’s the bridge. It has planks across the bottom as the road surface. It’s real Indiana Jones stuff….
We saw the Magdalena River museum, and stopped in to check it out. Folks, it was hot. I was soaking wet by now, drenched in sweat.
The museum was interesting and it had some bizarre art. This guy reminds me of a boss I had a couple of decades ago…
The Colombians used steamships on the Magdalena, just like we did on the Mississippi River.
We left Honda and started to climb. The temperatures dropped mercifully. We stopped in Fresno. Yep, Colombia has a Fresno, too.
That’s me in the town square. I’m the guy on the right.
Two young ladies in a small store in Fresno.
As we were sipping energy drinks, Juan pointed out our destination for that evening, the Volcan Nevado del Ruiz. It was showing a little steam, and I stuck an arrow in this picture so you could see it.
We continued our climb. The roads were magnificent.
The photo below shows my front tire, with chicken strips that are about as small as I’ve ever been able to make them. I was getting better at keeping up with the Colombian motorcycle community.
Our riding positions are Juan, me, and Carlos. Juan is amazing. I’m struggling to keep up in the twisties, and I know he’s dialed it back for me. He’ll ride through the corners (and the roads are all corners, folks) standing on the pegs. At one point, we were taking a set of curves at speeds way above those at which I would normally ride, with the bikes leaned over at an unimaginable angle, when I looked ahead and saw Juan. He was standing on the pegs, similarly leaned over, and while all this was going on, he was reaching back to check the latch on one of his saddlebags as if it was the most normal thing in the world to do. The guy is an incredible rider.
As we continued to climb, we entered the clouds. Literally. We left the pavement and got on a dirt road headed up to the volcano.
4,138 meters! That’s 13,576 feet, and it’s as high as you can go on a motorcycle anywhere in Colombia. Juan told me he once did this ride on a Yamaha DT100, carrying a passenger on the back!
That’s not dirt on my RX3, folks. It’s volcanic ash. This was not your typical motorcycle ride.
Yours truly, posing with Carlos, on the top of the world, on top of a volcano with indigestion. Wow. This volcano is the very same one that blew in 1985 and wiped out an entire community. It was like Pompeii, as the guys explained it to me. 23,000 people lost their lives in that event. And here we were, riding in conditions where I could barely see Juan’s tail light in front of me, on dirt roads, in bitter cold. Wow.
Here are a couple of shots showing my helmet and my jacket, dusted with Volcan Nevado del Ruiz ash.
We left the volcano, rode another 20 kilometers on this dirt road, and found our hotel in the middle of nowhere.
The hotel had hot springs, and they were awesome. I had a good soak, we had dinner, and that was the end of Day 7 on this epic journey.
Today is our last day. We’re finishing our great circumnavigation and headed back to Medellin. Much of our ride today will be on dirt. I’ll take a few shots and post about it tomorrow.
Later, my friends.
You can read the earlier blogs from this great trip, and a few other moto adventures, here on our Epic Rides page!
The Colombia motoventure continues! This is Day 6 of my epic ride through Colombia’s Andes Mountains with good buddies Juan and Carlos, two great guys with whom I’ve stayed in contact ever since our Andean adventure. Without further ado, here we go!
Originally posted on December 20, 2015
Let me see if I can get this right: I’m a guy from California riding a Chinese motorcycle in Colombia headed to a town called Honda. Yep, that was yesterday’s ticket.
We left Villa de Leyva early in the morning, climbed higher into the Andes, and wow, was it ever cold. Juan Carlos stopped so we could grab a few photos..
As I was taking in the scenery, this Colombian SUV rolled into the scene…
We next stopped at the point where Colombia was born. The last battle of the Colombian war of independence (against Spain) occurred right here at this bridge in Boyaga…
The Colombian rebels defeated the Spanish regulars here, and at that point, Colombia was born. There are a lot of parallels between how Colombia came into being and our Revolutionary War.
Boyaga is actually pronounced “boy-jogga.” In Colombian Spanish, a y is pronounced like a j. So is a double l (as in ll). A montallanta (a tire repair place) is called a “monta-jonta.” Interesting.
Following Juan through these small towns was fascinating and taxing. We’re up in the Andes, and everything is steep. Juan is incredible…we climb these steep cobblestone streets, cut across some guy’s front lawn, grab a dirt road, pick up a new street, every once in a while (while still riding) he pulls up alongside a guy on horse or a tractor to confirm directions (Juan’s GPS, as he calls it), and we cut across the Colombian countryside. It’s amazing. Here’s a sampling of what it looks like, both in the dirt (and there is a lot of dirt riding) and through the small towns…
We hit a last stretch of twisties (a 50-mile stretch) and then we pulled over for a photo of the Magdalena River valley. Our destination (the town of Honda) is down there somewhere…
Honda is a another steep town. This street (that’s our hotel, the Epoque, on the left) is a typical super steep Colombian town road. The road is a one way road…I tried parking the bike facing down hill, but it was too steep. I thought I could just leave the bike in first gear and kill the ignition, but the street was so steep it pulled the bike through the compression stroke. That’s why the bikes are facing uphill. These are unusual riding conditions for me, but totally normal to the Colombians.
Today we’re headed to Santa Rosa de Cabal. You can read all about it in the next installment in this series!
You can read the earlier blogs in this series from Colombia here!
We’re up to Day 5 in Colombia from my December 2015 circumnavigation of the Andes Mountains. The riding was incredible, the scenery even more so. Juan and Carlos were amazing riders, as was every person I saw on a motorcycle in Colombia. Ah, enough of a prelude…here’s what I posted for CSC Motorcycles on December 19, 2015.
Actually, it’s pronounced “Via Da Layba.” I’m learning how to be a Colombian and how to speak like one. Colombian Spanish is different than Mexican Spanish. Much to my regret, I don’t speak either one. Someday.
Juan Carlos and Carlos told me they’re making me an honorary C0lombian because my riding has progressed significantly in the last few days. Folks, these two guys are the best riders I’ve ever ridden with, and for them to tell me that was quite a compliment. Every rider I know in the U.S. would be subpar compared to your typical Colombian motorcyclist. The way they carve corners and carve through heavy traffic on these mountain roads is a thing a beauty. They are the best riders I’ve ever seen, and the two guys I’m riding with are beyond incredible. But I digress…more on that later. The focus of this blog entry is Day 5, which was yesterday for me.
As you know from reading the blog, we stayed in Barichara. It’s an awesome little town and we stayed in an awesome little hotel. Getting there was an experience. We passed through a bunch of small towns up here in the Andes Mountains. In these small towns, everything is either uphill or downhill. The roads are either cobblestone or dirt. And when I say cobblestone, I’m not talking about little rocks. These are 6 to 12 inch boulders that are basically mashed together to form a street. The cobblestones (actually, cobbleboulders) throw the bike left and right and up and down, and this is all going on while riding up or down extremely steep hills. The RX3 is the perfect bike for this. I couldn’t imagine doing it on anything bigger or heavier.
We stayed at the Artepolis Hotel, and it was an experience. The guy in the room next to me was an Austrian photographer who came here just to photograph the place. It’s that stunning. Here’s the hotel the next morning (it was dark when we arrived the preceding evening, and we had to ride up a rough dirt road to get to the hotel).
The next morning Juan and Carlos wanted to ride a bit and get some photos. They took me to the edge of a cliff and we got some great shots…here’s one of Carlos I especially like:
And here are a couple more:
We continued on a paved road to a little town called Guane, and along the way I spotted a couple of Colombian vultures perched in a tree not far from the road. I always wanted to get a decent shot of a vulture during my Baja travels, but my results have always been mediocre. I’m carrying my 70-300 Nikon lens on this trip, and I thought I would try for that vulture photo I’ve been wanting for years. The lighting was perfect and I think I did okay…
After photographing the vultures, I grabbed a couple of shots from the saddle on our way to Guane.
Guane is a beautiful little town with a magnificent church…I was working the little Nikon D3300 and its 18-55 lens as best I could. That camera is really doing a great job on this trip. I bought it because I wanted something light and small. You folks who are planning to ride to Baja with us in March might want to give the D3300 a look if you don’t already have a camera. It really adds a lot to the adventure if you can capture stuff like this.
In many Colombian towns, the taxi services use tuk-tuks. Tuk-tuks are little three wheel things that have two wheels in the back and one wheel up front. I’d seen them in Thailand, but encountering them again in Colombia was something I had not expected. The ones in Colombia are made by Bajaj, an Indian manufacturer (as in India, not Indian motorcycles). They’re powered by a little 200cc single, and I was surprised at it’s ability to haul Carlos, Juan, and me up and down the hills in Barichara (we took one to go to dinner in Barichara). Juan told me he tested one at Bajaj’s request a year or so ago and he was impressed with it.
The tuk-tuks are often customized with really cool paintwork, and so are some of the other commercial vehicles. Here’s the artwork on one such vehicle in Guane that caught my eye:
After our brief exploration of Guane, we rode back to Barichara. The guys had been telling me I had to see the cemetery, and they were right. It seemed weird to visit a cemetery for the artistry, but it was impressive…
After that we were back on the road, headed for Villa de Leyva. I had mentioned to Juan that I wanted to get photos of the police motorcycles in Colombia, and when he spotted a few motor officers in one of the many small towns we rode through, I checked another photo op off the list.
This first photo shows one of the more common Colombian police bikes, the Suzuki 200 single.
Here’s another bike the Colombian police use…the Suzuki V-Strom 650…
There’s a lot more to tell you about the Colombian police motorcycles, but that will come later. I’m seeing and learning so much I just can’t get it all into the blog. I’m thinking maybe another book is in order. We’ll see.
Juan found our hotel just outside of Villa de Leyva, we checked in, and then we rode into town. This is the town square…it’s the largest in all of Colombia.
If you’re really impressed with that last shot, so am I. I wish I could take credit for it. It was a photo for sale in one of the Villa de Leyva stores, and I shot a photo of that photo before they told me I couldn’t.
It was a good day. The next one would be even better.
And one last thing, folks. On that day in Barichara before we left, I did a video in their beautiful cemetery. This wasn’t in the original blog, but I thought I’d add it here.
One more thing…if you’d like to read the first several blogs from Colombia, you can do so here.
Continuing the Colombia adventure, this was my post for the CSC blog on the 18th of December in 2016. We were having a hell of a time and very nearly everywhere we went good buddies Juan and Carlos explained to me that we could not have ridden these roads just a few years ago due to the narcos and FARC instability in Colombia. It was an amazing trip and I was thoroughly enjoying myself.
More riding, another Andean crossing, a bit of rain, and we arrived in Barichara!
Barichara is an artist’s town, and it’s one of the most exclusive places in all of Colombia. It was another glorious day of mountain riding. I did not take too many photos on the ride to Barichara, mostly because of the rain, our late arrival, and I was enjoying our dinner too much that evening in Barichara to break out the Nikon. But I did get a few photos.
My lunch at a restaurant along the Chicamocha River…
One of my “from the saddle” shots of a hydroelectric dam on the Chicamocha River…
A couple of shots chasing Juan Carlos through a massive tunnel in the Andes Mountains…
A fine feathered friend at a fuel stop…
And finally, a shot after the rain ended of the Chicamocha valley…
I’m enjoying the AKT Moto RX3. It’s different in a few minor ways than the CSC bike, and they are both fantastic motorcycles. I’ll do a blog after I return home describing the differences.
I’m calling it a night, folks. More to follow…as always, stay tuned!
I’ll post a few more photos and another video or two from Barichara in the next installment of our Colombian trip travelogue. I wrote this blog before we went out that night, and I grabbed a lot more with my Nikon on our night out in Barichara. It was an impressive town. I’ve got to get back there one of these days.
More of the Colombia adventure and other epic rides are here!
Our Colombian adventure continues…this is the blog from the third day on the road in beautiful Colombia. It was a ride sponsored by CSC Motorcycles and AKT Motos (one of the largest motorcycle manufacturers in Colombia). Our destination was La Playa de Belem and it was awesome. Juan and Carlos were taking good care of me, proudly guiding me through their beautiful country, and I was loving every minute of it.
They tell me la playa means beach in Spanish, and Belem means Bethlehem. There was no beach, but I’m getting ahead of myself.
La Playa de Belem was our destination on the third day of our Colombian moto adventure, and it was indeed awesome. We did a cool 260 miles to get to the evening’s destination, and I have to tell you that 260 miles in Colombia is a long day. What I didn’t realize when we started in the morning is that a good 40 miles of it would be on dirt. And sand. And mud. And I’d even get a chance to play cowboy, except I was mounted on an RX3 instead of a horse.
No kidding, folks, those are cows, and they were on the road. This was something new to me. I mean, when you’re on a 250cc motorcycle, how do you make cows get out of the way? Even if you’re on a big bike, what’s the protocol? These questions were on my mind, when like always, Juan Carlos took the lead. Our bovine buddies just kind of moved aside to let him move through the herd. I wasn’t too sure about that, and then a guy on a little 100cc something-or-other did the same. In for a penny, in for a pound. As I got closer, the sea of cows parted, and I was through. Amazing stuff.
As was the case the day before, it was sweltering, so we stopped to get a juice drink. They have a lot of juices in Colombia, and I’ve been trying them all. I haven’t found one I didn’t like yet.
This little gal was fascinated by us. She let me take her picture.
What I missed getting a photo of were the dinosaurs. No kidding. I looked over at a tree and there were three or four iguanas that were huge. As in 2 1/2 or 3 feet long. They startled me. We ain’t in Kansas anymore, Toto. I jumped up and fumbled around putting the 70-300 lens on the D3300, but by the time I was ready the lizards were gone. Maybe I’ll see more of them again on this trip. Who knows? Things like that are incredible. I’m enjoying the hell out of this trip.
Ah, a few more “watching the world go by in Colombia” photos…all the gear, all the time.
After dodging and dicing through traffic (and there’s lots of traffic in these Colombian towns, and it’s mostly motorcycles), we finally hit a highway that ran straight. Yippee! We accelerated up to about 70 mph and cruised, and then Juan pulled over. What he pointed out to me was amazing. Ant hills. Not the little kind we are used to, but big monsters that are as hard as concrete. Check this stuff out, folks.
And then, much to my surprise, the animal signs started popping up.
Okay, that one was easy. Fox. I get it. I never saw a sign before warning about a fox crossing, but I can wrap my mind around that one.
What came next…well, that wasn’t so easy to surround with the old gray matter.
Anteaters. Wow. The image quality isn’t so great, but hey, we were zooming along and that one crept up on me. And how about this next one?
Okay, enough monkeying around. Back to the journey.
We entered the eastern arm of the Andes Mountains and started to climb. It was a two-lane road, and we rode it for a good 150 miles. It’s like the Angeles Crest Highway, but it goes on forever, and there were construction stops every 10 miles or so. These next few shots were taken at one of the construction stops. Juan Carlos told me we were very close to the Venezuelan border at this point.
A shot of Juan Carlos.
A Colombian taxi driver.
I’m seeing medium-sized trucks that are 60 years old nearly every day on these roads. The ’56 Ford seems to be especially popular.
Our next stop was in another Andean town at a cool little restaurant. This was our waiter.
I had chicken and mushrooms. It was awesome. I ate maybe half of it.
Carlos and Juan Carlos both ordered something in Spanish (naturally), and they were excited to get it. I thought it was beef, or maybe pork. Nope. It was pig stomach lining. Very tasty, according to them. They offered a taste, but I declined.
A word or two on the riding is in order, I guess, at this point. It is exhilarating and terrifying at the same time. In the cities and towns, it’s a free for all. It’s like one of the YouTube videos you see of city intersections with tons of scooters in Asia. Here, it’s scooters, motorcycles, cars, and trucks. There are few traffic lights, and Juan told me nobody pays attention to the stop signs or speed limits. “They are like suggestions,” he said.
I’m a big fan of the twisties, but in Colombia, they take on a new meaning. The national sport seems to be passing everyone you can everywhere you can. It’s tense. Juan Carlos and Carlos are totally used to it. I’m getting there, but it is unnerving. It’s also weird just how good every rider seems to be. I’m riding at my limits (not the bike’s limits, but mine) too often, and while I’m doing this taking a corner way faster than I ever would in the US, some Colombian will pass me on a 125cc Suzuki cruiser or something with his girlfriend on the back, leaned way over, like it was the most natural thing in the world. They look totally at ease doing it, too. These folks are natural riders, and they’re good.
We arrived in La Playa de Belem about an hour before sunset, and immediately split for a one of many Colombian national parks. It was kind of like Bryce. I grabbed a few shots there, including one of my AKT RX3.
Getting in was interesting. We had to ride a pretty rough dirt road that had a stream running down it because it had been raining. The RX3 took it in stride.
So, back to the Bethlehem thing (as I said at the start of this blog, Belem means Bethlehem in Spanish). La Playa de Belem is a beautiful little town dominated by the town square and a magnificent church (like many little towns in Colombia), and it turns out we arrived at a special time. The Colombians start celebrating Christmas nine days before Christmas, and this was that day. The town was buzzing. We hung out and watched kids singing at an outdoor service, we saw fireworks, we watched the service in the church, and then we got to see the vaca loca. I recorded it, so I won’t tell you the vaca loca story now, but if this Internet connection holds I’ll upload the video and tell you about it later.
Two more quick photos in La Playa de Belem, a video, and that’s all for now.
There’s lots more coming, folks. You probably already know this, but I’ll say it anyway: I’m having fun.
If you want to catch up on the Colombia ride, or explore any of the other exotic rides we’ve had, click on over to our Epic Rides page!
The Colombia adventure continues. For those of you just joining us, this is a series of blogs I wrote four years ago for CSC Motorcycles when I was rode an AKT Moto RS3 (the carbureted Colombian version of the RX3) through the Andes Mountains. Day 2 of that ride was absolutely awesome, ending with a visit to an enchanted town after a ferry ride down the Magdalena River.
Our second day on the road in Colombia started in Coveñas, and the humidity was oppressive. It was going to get worse as the day went on. We’re in the tropics, not too far from the equator, and hot and humid is the normal way of things here. On the plus side, you don’t care if it rains because you’re already drenched. It actually helps because it’s cooling.
Anyway, back to the morning in Coveñas. We ate in the hotel, and while we were waiting for breakfast, this dude was selling some kind of yams or roots, and Juan Carlos pointed out the scale he was using. It’s about as crude a scale as I’ve ever seen, but it’s sound technically, and it sure makes for an interesting photo.
Here’s a typical Colombian breakfast: Scrambled eggs with tomatoes and onions, bread, and a corn or flour tortilla with cheese (that’s called arrepo). The Colombians are big on cheeses, with different regions producing unique cheeses. It’s quite good.
The guys pointed out this car as we packed the bikes. This probably didn’t end well for the passenger, who most likely was not wearing a seat belt. The riding in Colombia is glorious, but it is stressful. Juan and Carlos said when they ride anywhere else (other than Colombia), it makes them sleepy because there’s only scenery. In Colombia, there’s scenery, but you have to watch out for everyone else. It’s intense. In a country full of twisties, people pass on blind corners routinely. I guess the theory is you pray a lot. People think nothing of passing if the oncoming traffic has room to move over, or if the oncoming traffic is a motorcycle. It’s weird, but you kind of get used to it. But it is intense (just like the heat and the humidity).
When we got on the road after breakfast, we only went maybe a mile when Carlos had a flat tire. Watching the guy repair it was interesting, and so was hanging out watching the world go by in Colombia.
And here are some of those watching the world go by in Colombia photos.
Here’s a photo of our RX3s somewhere on the road, headed to the ferry that would take us to Mompos, a remote town 45 minutes down the Magdalena River.
This church was across the street and just down the road from the ferry loading spot.
I only grabbed a few photos while we were boarding the ferry. The heat and humidity were getting to me at this point. It was about 4:00 in the in the afternoon, and it was sweltering.
Once we were underway, it got a little cooler on the river. You probably saw my video of that ride.
We arrived in Mompos and it was impressive. It’s the oldest town in Colombia, and to say it is off the beaten path would be an understatement. We had dinner in a restaurant run by an Austrian, where I had the best pizza I’ve ever had in my life.
After dinner, we chatted with the owner for a bit, and then we walked along the river front…I grabbed a bunch of photos there.
Folks, that’s about it for now. I’m a day behind in keeping you up to date on this trip, but Internet connectivity is dicey in these remote locations. As always, more to follow, if not today, then in a day or two (or three). Stay tuned.
If you’d like to see our earlier blogs in Colombia, please click here.
My ride through Colombia started on 13 December 2015 (it’s hard to believe it was more than 4 years ago; it feels like it was last year). What started this trip down memory lane for me was the Netflix TV series Narcos, and yeah, Susie and I binge-watched the first two seasons (which culminated in the Colombian forces taking down Pablo Escobar). It was an awesome series, filmed in Colombia, and the scenery took me back to that awesome adventure ride with my good buddies Juan and Carlos. Like I said in the last blog, I wanted to treat you to the blogs I wrote for CSC when I was on that trip, and this was the first one I did upon my arrival in Colombia.
There are no straight roads in Medellin, there are more motorcycles than cars, the weather is awesome, and the cuisine is incredible. If that doesn’t sound like heaven to you, well, you need to rethink your concept of fun. Colombia, folks! On an RX3! What an adventure!
So today is Day 1, we put a couple of hundred miles on the AKT Moto RX3 motorcycles, and we haven’t even started our journey yet (it officially begins tomorrow). My good buddies Juan Carlos and Carlos (there are a lot of guys named Carlos over here) set today aside just to let me get used to riding in Colombia.
Here’s a shot of me with my two moto buddies in a village somewhere in the mountains surrounding Medellin.
Back to the RX3 designation…AKT Moto is one of Zongshen’s largest customers, and they sell a carbureted version of our favorite motorcycle called the RS3. It’s a cool bike. Here’s a shot of mine…it’s the one I’ll put 2500 miles on here in Colombia in the next week or so.
And that village? It’s actually called Mesopotamia. Folks, I can’t make up stuff this good!
Motorcycling in Colombia is substantially different than what we’re used to. For starters, there’s the prevalence of motorcycles. I’m not exaggerating. I saw far more motorcycles today than cars. It seems to be the national pastime. There were thousand (maybe tens of thousands) of riders in the hills this morning.
More interesting facts:
Motorcycling is predominantly a social activity here in Colombia. We must have stopped at 4 or 5 coffee houses and restaurants today. The pattern is you ride for 45 minutes or so, and then stop for coffee. Hey, is this what café racing is all about? Juan Carlos knows everybody at these coffee stops, and they all know him. Juan Carlos founded the only motorcycle magazine in Colombia (DeMotos), and he’s an icon over here. Any you know what? Some of these guys recognized me! Juan Carlos ran a feature story in his magazine on our Western America Adventure Ride, and these guys were all familiar with it.
The bikes are predominantly in the 100cc to 150cc range, and these folks are all happy with that. Small bikes rule over here. We saw people dragging their pegs on these things having as much or more fun as we do on the big bikes in the US. Nah, scratch that…they were having more fun!
I asked about freeways and the guys laughed at me. They pointed to the winding set of twisties just outside the restaurant and told me, “that is our freeway.” These are my kind of people!
There are elite riders over here on Triumphs, Ducatis, BMWs, and MotoGuzzis. There are lots of large Yamahas over here, too (or, is they say in Colombia, Jamahas). They’re not arrogant. We had coffee with a bunch of them, and they were all great guys. The photo below is a typical roadside restaurant, and they all looked like this. What a place!
The food is awesome. Here’s a shot of my lunch at that restaurant above. The dish is called Capresse Buenaventura.
Ah, let’s see, a few more photos from some of the little villages we rode through today.
Juan Carlos picked up his cousin Heronimo (you gotta love their names!) and he rode with us in the afternoon.
After I took that shot above and Juan Carlos and Heronimo pulled out, I saw a cool police bike painted in fluorescent safety yellow (or is it a green?). I always wondered what a bike would like painted in that color.
Bikes are both sporting propositions and utilitarian vehicles down here. I saw bikes carrying all kinds of cargo (no photos, but I’ll get some of those later), and I saw a few bikes that had to be 20 or 30 years old and were still doing hard time.
One of the guys I met at one of our coffee stops is a retired US Army Colonel named Miles. I liked the guy immediately…he’s a dead ringer for Lee Marvin and he even sounds a little like him. Talk about stories…this guy has been everywhere and when he retired, he decided to hang his hat in Colombia. Here are a couple of photos of my new buddy Miles…the first one with the guys listening to him in Mesopotamia, and a shot at yet another coffee stop. I sure drank a lot of coffee today!
Well, I think that’s enough blogging for Day 1. We’re rolling out at 4:30 tomorrow, and I want to get a good night’s sleep. The altitude bothered me a bit yesterday and I didn’t sleep too well, but I think I’m used to it now. The plan tomorrow is to put 300 miles on the bikes, and like I said, there are no straight roads in Colombia. We’re climbing up over another mountain range and headed for the coast. It’s going to be fun!
So there you have it. The above was my first day in Colombia, and it was sort of a “get acquainted” bit of tearing up the roads around Medellin. The real journey, our romp through the Andes Mountains, would start the next day. Stay tuned, folks. There’s a lot more to this story.
If you’d like to see the entire Colombia ride, just click here!
, our book about the ride through Colombia. It was the ride of a lifetime, and the book makes a great gift.
