Tag: Magdalena River

AKT Motos in Colombia

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.

 

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Day 1: Adventure Riding the Andes!

Our Colombia adventure continues…a circumnavigation of the Colombian Andes on a 250cc motorcycle.  For those of you just joining in, I’m reposting a series of blogs I did for CSC Motorcycles describing my ride through the Andes Mountains in December 2015.  After spending the previous day tearing around Medellin and its surroundings, I had become acclimatized to the mile-high altitudes.  As the adventure continued, we would head even higher, all the way up to 14,000 feet, but that’s all coming later.   On this, my second day in Colombia, we headed into the Andes and then down to the Caribbean.  Our real journey had started, and here is that story.

Wow! I never thought I’d been typing this, but here I am. I just rode across the northernmost range of the Andes Mountains.  On an RX3.  Here they are: The Andes!

I took that shot from a cool little spot where we stopped for a typical Colombian breakfast…hot chocolate, scrambled eggs, and arrepa. More on that later…here’s a shot of the bikes at what has to be one of the coolest biker restaurants I’ve ever enjoyed.

And here’s another shot of my AKT Motos RS3 (the RS3 is the carbureted version of the RX3).

I liked that restaurant a lot. They painted it to match my jacket.
We rode about 370 miles yesterday, and about half of it was in the Andes. 370 miles may not seem like a lot, but picture riding Glendora Ridge for 6 or 8 hours. The Andes are a motorcycling paradise. The Andes Mountains.

Wow!

I guess you never know what you’re going to see in the Andes. This old goat was kind of cool…and I had to grab a shot.

We stopped to take a break and some of the local paramilitary/police guys came over to check out the bikes. The RX3 is a prestige motorcycle in Colombia (just like it is in the USA) and these boys wanted a closer look. They gladly consented to a photo. They are most definitely well armed. You see police and military units everywhere.

These next photos are from the saddle after we descended from the Andes. Good times, my friends.

These next photos are of young ladies who are gas station attendants. When they saw our 250cc RX3 motos, they wanted to know what it was like riding such huge motorcycles. That’s a bit different from what you might hear in the USA, I suppose.

It was a long day, and it ended in a town called Covenas, right on the Caribbean. We stopped for a few shots with the sea in the background.

Keep an eye on the blog, folks. I won’t be able to post every day, but I’ll do my best.

And that wrapped up the second day of my time in Colombia, and the first day of our ride through the Andes.  We’re going to make it a little easier to track this adventure for our blog readers.  You can get all of the good stuff from our Colombian ride here.  I’ll post the next blog from our Colombia adventure in a few days, so stay tuned!