Tag: AKT Motos

Plata O Plomo: Filmed in Colombia

Susie and I are hanging out at home, getting out for our daily walk or two, and generally obeying our fearless, fiercely-partisan, and fear-mongering leaders as we wait for them to declare a CV19 victory.  We’ve been watching a lot of TV while under house arrest, and it’s a big deal when we find a series we haven’t seen before.  We had one such discovery last week with Narcos, a series on Netflix about the drug wars in Colombia.

Silver or Lead, Amigos y Amigas. Or in this case, a Model 625’s stainless steel and six full metal jacket .45 ACP rounds.  That hat is one of my favorites.

Somehow we missed Narcos the first time around, although I was vaguely aware of its existence from a hat I picked up at an International Association of Chiefs of Police convention in San Diego two or three years ago.  Good buddy and retired police chief Mike was going to the IACP convention and he invited me along as his official “Assistant to the Director.”  I was even issued an official laminated ID card, but Mike drew the line when I asked him if I would get a gun, too.  His answer was immediate and clear:  No.  That’s okay, I already had a gun.

Mike and I had a good time at the IACP show and we came home with a lot of swag.  One bit of that haul was a Narcos hat embroidered with the show’s tagline:  Plata O Plomo.  If your Spanish is a bit rusty, it means Silver or Lead, with the premise being (if you were a Colombian cop or politician) your choice was either a bribe or a bullet.

The Narcos Netflix series is the story of Pablo Escobar, the activities involved in taking him down, and the drug wars in Colombia.  From the first episode, I thought the scenery was stunning.   I mentioned to Sue that it looked exactly the way I remembered Colombia from my Andean adventure.  We started in Medellin’s Antioquia neighborhood (which, by the way, was Pablo Escobar’s old stomping grounds).   Sue checked it out on her cell phone and, sure enough, Narcos was indeed filmed in Colombia.

Riding with good buddy Carlos in Colombia.  That’s me in the green jacket.  Photo by good buddy Juan DeMotos.

We’ve been binge-watching Narcos and every scene brings back a memory for me.  Colombia is a magnificent place, and I loved every minute of that adventure.  I’m going to recreate that ride by posting some of the photos (the one above is but a sample) of one of the grandest adventures I’ve ever enjoyed.   I’ll post a series of blogs from our Colombia trip over the next two weeks.

Stay tuned, folks.  This is going to be good.

Colombia’s Economic Approach

Colombia has been one of the world’s major motorcycle markets for several years due to a combination of factors, but the primary ones were the end of their civil war and throttling the druggies.   When I rode in Colombia, many of the places we traveled through had been inaccessible until recently.   Colombia essentially opened up travel when the fighting and the drug running diminished.  This occurred in a country where the roads are mostly in the mountains and where there is little public transport.  People could suddenly travel freely and safely between communities, and that allowed the Colombian economy to boom.

The above led to a demand for cheap transportation, and motorcycles were the obvious answer.  Folks in Colombia like smaller bikes, and wow, did things ever take off.   Major motorcycle manufacturers from all over the world starting selling in Colombia, and the Colombian government saw an opportunity.   Basically, if you import a completely built up (known as a CBU) motorcycle, there’s a 30% import tariff.  But if you import a completely knocked down (CKD) bike in pieces, source something like 17% of the motorcycle’s content from Colombian manufacturers, and assemble the bike in Colombia, the tariff drops to around 3%.   I love that approach and I think it’s a real win-win situation.   Local jobs, lower tariffs, and great motorcycles made in the home country. I wish we had something like that here.

After our ride through Colombia, I had a tour of the AKT plant and their RS3 motorcycle assembly line, which essentially duplicates the Zongshen RX3 assembly line in Chongqing.   Take a look…

Riding the Andes…

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!

Get the entire Colombia adventure here:

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Juan in Colombia…

Good buddy Juan, who showed me a grand time riding in Colombia, recently posted this video.   I don’t speak Spanish, but I didn’t need to.  The riding scenes brought back fond memories of the Colombia adventure…

The video features a new AKT Motos bike.  AKT is a fine company; one of the four big ones manufacturing motorcycles in Colombia.  I know Enrique, the General Manager, and he was a most gracious host during our visit.   Good times.   I sure miss Colombia.