We’re announcing a substantially reduced price on Moto Colombia. In fact, it’s as low as we can make it: $2.99. That’s the minimum Kindle will allow. I don’t know how much longer we’ll continue it (ah, there’s the impending doom sales close), but hey, as the man in the White House would say: C’mon, Man, it’s just $2.99.
What’s it all about? Here’s the blurb:
Ride beautiful Colombia with Joe Berk, Juan Carlos Posada Roa, and Carlos Mesa on Zongshen RX3 motorcycles. This is an adventure tour that has it all: Magnificent riding on dirt and asphalt, tight mountain twisties, elevations from sea level to nearly 14,000 feet, delightful Colombian cuisine, stunningly beautiful women, majestic churches, and more. It’s an 8-day circumnavigation of Colombia’s Andes Mountains, with stops in exotic places most people have never imagined. Visit the AKT Motos motorcycle assembly line and meet Enrique Vargas, the AKT General Manager. Cruise the mighty Magdalena River and ride into the clouds. Fight fog, freezing rain, and volcanic dust at the very edge of Volcan Nevado del Ruiz. Punch through a herd of cattle, visit a coffee plantation, chat with heavily armed-Colombian troopers, ride from the tropics to the sky, and learn how you can do the same!
Gee, I was gonna buy the RX3 and then I heard they were coming out with the RX4. Then I was gonna buy the RX4 and I heard they were coming out with a 400cc twin. Then I was gonna buy the 400cc twin and I heard they were coming out with a 650cc twin. Then I was gonna buy the 650 and I heard about this new 850cc Zongshen adventure bike.
I’m going to guess the above is a thought that has trickled through more than a few minds. It’s what I’m guessing occurs everytime Zongshen announces or leaks (I’m not sure what the appropriate word should be) that they have something newer, bigger, and better coming down the pike (like the RX850 you see above). Webster defines mayhem as “needless or willful damage or violence” (in a criminal context it’s the intentional mutilation or disfigurement of another human being) and Dictionary.com defines cannibalize as “to cut into; cause to become reduced; diminish.” Both words (i.e., cannibalize and mayhem) somehow seem relevant to Zongshen’s marketing practice of announcing new models just as (and sometimes even before) the preceding displacement model enters the marketplace. You’d think it would cannibalize sales of the models currently in showrooms, especially given our brainwashed belief that more displacement is always a good thing.
But what do I know? I sell one or two used motorcycles every decade or so, while Zongshen sells something like a million new motorcycles every year. I suspect companies selling Zongs both here and in other countries sell every bike they get (I know that’s the case with CSC, and I’ve seen it to be the case in Colombia). I once had a guy write to me who wanted to buy two RX3s so he and his wife could tour Colombia, but he couldn’t find a dealer in Colombia who wasn’t sold out. He wrote to me after reading Moto Colombia to ask if I could intervene with the AKT Motos general manager (I did, good buddy Enrique obliged, and that couple’s ride through magical Colombia went well).
My advice? Buy what you can get now. The 650 Zongshen hasn’t even hit the streets yet, so don’t wait for it or the RX850 you see above. If you want to have a lot of fun for a little money, any of the available Zongs will serve you well. I put a lot of miles on my RX3 and I got good money when I sold it 5 years later.
Oh, one more word I wanted to address, and it’s an adjective: Dormant. Webster defines it as being asleep or inactive. It is a word that is not in Zongshen’s dictionary.
Epic motorcycle rides on Zongshens, Harleys, KLRs, Enfields, and more? It’s all right 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!
I’ve enjoyed fantastic adventure rides on fantastic motorcycles in fantastic places. One of the best adventure touring motorcycles available at any price is the Zongshen RX3 (brought to the US by CSC Motorcycles), and one of my rides on this fantastic machine was in Colombia. Colombia was one of the greatest rides ever. Want a taste of that adventure? Hey, here’s one of the chapters from Moto Colombia on a ride at extreme elevation…a visit to an active volcano. We’re presenting it here in two blogs…one today and another tomorrow. Enjoy, my friends…
Day 7: Volcan Nevado del Ruiz
Breakfast in a delightful hotel, more mountain twisties, sweltering heat, freezing cold, fog that cut visibility down to 30 feet, dirt roads, riding at 13,576 feet, hot sulfur baths, a burbling volcano that killed 23,000 people in 1985, and volcanic dust in our eyes…it would all be in a day’s ride for us on this, our 7th day on the road in Colombia.
The Casa Belle Epoque was a great little boutique hotel in Honda. It was one of the coolest places (in one of the hottest cities) I’ve ever parked a motorcycle in front of (uh oh, I just ended a sentence with a preposition, but you get the idea). As always, I was up early, but the hotel staff was up even earlier and I enjoyed a cup of dark Colombian coffee after sleeping soundly through the night. My laundry was done, it was wrapped up nicely, and it was dry. That nice lady the night before was right; my laundry had dried. I was surprised and pleased.
Carlos and Juan enjoying a magnificent morning meal in the Casa Belle Epoque.
I used the time before Juan and Carlos came down to breakfast to examine some of the antiques in the hotel’s dining room and lobby. Antiques are a big thing in Colombia, I guess. I remembered the restaurant from a few days ago similarly adorned with old things. I thought about writing to Mike and Frank…perhaps they could do a Colombian Pickers episode.
An antique record player in the Casa Belle Epoque.
After breakfast, Juan, Carlos, and I walked over to where the bikes had been secured for the evening. We rang the bell at another massive gate and waited for the groundskeeper to come unlock it. I half expected to see that fellow from Romancing the Stone stick his face through the window and say, “Joan? Joan Wilder?”
Juan had an exploration of Honda in mind, and as always, I followed him with Carlos riding behind me. That was our standard riding formation, and we would cover about 2600 kilometers riding Colombia in that formation. Those two guys took good care of me.
I thought the roads in Zipaquira were steep (and they were), but Honda’s cobblestone streets took things to the next level. I couldn’t believe the streets we were navigating. You might think I am exaggerating, but I am not. I didn’t quite have to slip the clutch to get up the hills, but I was pretty close to doing that. The hills in Honda were strictly first gear affairs. Someone once told me in situations like this, you just look where you want to go. That’s what I did. On these streets and on those cobblestones, I wondered if we would have had enough traction to get up the hills if the streets had been wet. The roads were that steep.
We rode up a mountainside and arrived at a most interesting bridge. It was painted bright yellow and it had wooden planks for the road surface (and they were a good 300 feet above the Magdalena). This was real Indiana Jones stuff. Juan and Carlos told me the bridge was built by the San Francisco Bridge Company in 1898 and it was the first bridge in Colombia to span the Magdalena River. The photo ops were incredible with the bright yellow bridge, the bright blue sky, the verdant green of the mountains, and the river below us.
The first bridge across the Magdalena River, built by the San Francisco Bridge Company in 1898.
An older woman emerged from a stone house on our side of the bridge and she smiled when I pointed to my camera. She somehow reminded me of my grandmother. She was full of smiles until I put the camera up, and then I couldn’t get her to smile (my grandmother had the same uneasiness around a camera).
The bridgekeeper in Honda. This charming Colombian lady graciously consented to a photograph.
There were folks way below us digging in the banks of the Magdalena (I don’t know for what…perhaps some form of freshwater clams, or maybe gold or emeralds). I looked at those guys below the bridges, I thought of the Internet trolls who love to criticize the RX3 (you know, trolls hanging out under bridges), and I laughed. Those Internet morons would never experience the kind of riding we were doing. All they could do was criticize. We were out here living the adventure. I felt a brief tinge of pity for the Internet trolls, but it passed quickly.
From that vantage point above the Magdalena River, we could see distant ridges in the Andes on the horizon. They were capped with snow and the clouds were just above the peaks. Juan pointed to one where the cloud seemed to emanate from the top of a mountain. It was a good 80 miles away.
Volcan Nevado del Ruiz, visible on the horizon. It erupted and killed 23,000 Colombians in 1985. It was our destination that evening.
“That is Volcan Nevado del Ruiz,” Juan said, pointing at the peak touching the clouds. I returned a blank look. “It is the volcano we are riding to today,” Juan explained.
“We’re riding to a volcano?” I asked.
“Yes,” Juan answered. “Volcan Nevado del Ruiz. It erupted in 1985 and killed many people.”
I checked out what Juan told me later that evening after I could get an Internet connection. “Many” was something north of 23,000 people. They were all killed deader than Julius Caesar, and it all happened just 30 years ago. And we were riding our motorcycles to it. I thought about the bikers I knew in California who thought they had something to brag about because they rode to the Laughlin River Run. Right.
I looked at the distant peak again and took a photo. I was really too far away to see anything, but with Juan’s explanation I knew that what had appeared to be a mountain reaching into the clouds was actually a volcano belching steam. I’ve been to a lot of places on a motorcycle, but I’ve never ridden a motorcycle (or anything else, for that matter) up to an active volcano!
We left the bridge, rode a less than a mile, and stopped at a museum dedicated to the Magdalena River’s history. As I mentioned earlier, the Magdalena River is Colombia’s version of the Mississippi. It’s huge, and Colombia developed around it. This museum in Honda was exclusively about the river.
The Magdalena River Museum in Honda.
We spent an hour at the museum. We could have spent a day there. The Magdalena River and its surrounding areas were more like the Mississippi River and the United States than I would have imagined. The Magdalena flows through cotton and coffee plantations. It was Colombia’s primary trade route as the country developed. The Colombians used large steamboats of similar design to those used on our Mississippi River in the 1800s. It was another example of how Colombia’s history paralleled the history of the United States.
The Museo del Rio Magdalena had interesting displays about the river, the crops it transported, the steamboats, the indigenous populations along the river, the early explorers, and more. The museum also had an interesting photo exhibit consisting entirely of photos shot by students using pinhole cameras of their own construction. The photos were good and I enjoyed seeing them.
I especially liked a long painting along one wall depicting the Magdalena’s 1000-mile length, and notable things along the river. It gave me a much better feel for and appreciation of the magnificent country we had been riding through. Our museum visit was a very successful one. I enjoyed it. It was one of the high points of the trip for me.
One of the halls inside the Magdalena River Museum (note the mural on the left wall showing key points along the Magdalena’s 1000-mile length).
As I mentioned, we spent an hour at the museum, and when we left Honda was sweltering again. Juan looked at my clothes and laughed. I had been worried the previous night about my laundry having enough time to dry at the hotel. It was only 10:00 a.m. and I was already drenched in sweat. My clothes were soaked.
A pretty young lady, the museum curator, gave us a tour of the museum during our visit. She seemed cool and totally at ease with the heat and the humidity. I realized as I listened to her discuss the exhibits that she was used to living in the tropics, but I still wondered how she was able to get through the day without perspiring like me.
An old riverboat photo in the Magdalena River Museum.
I like history. I think I’m too old to go back to school now, but if ever went back to college for another degree, it would be for a degree in history. I like learning about how things developed, including countries, companies, and cultures. I thought that hour in the Museo del Rio Magdalena was one of the best hours I spent during my entire stay in Colombia.
The museum visit further reinforced a thought I had earlier when we visited Boyacá about the similarities between our US culture and the Colombian culture. Our American Revolution was for independence from the British. Colombia’s war of independence did the same with the Spanish. The British took our natural resources and taxed us without representation. The Spanish looted Colombia’s gold and emeralds. We in the US have a lot of things in common with the people of Colombia.
I don’t know if Juan planned our visit to the Museo del Rio Magdalena. He did a magnificent job planning our adventure tour, but I had the impression when we spotted this museum that he made an impromptu decision to visit it. Whether our stop was planned or accidental, if you ever get to Honda, you don’t want to miss this spot.
Colombian artwork in the Magdalena River Museum.
As we left the museum and pulled our gear on, the sweat was pouring off me and I was showing the effects of the heat. Carlos told me not to worry. We would be cool soon enough as we climbed back into the Andes’ higher altitudes.
I sure was more comfortable when we were on the bikes again. Let’s generate a breeze, I thought, and we did. Juan wanted to try a new way out of Honda, and it worked. Nobody needs a GPS as long as Juan is leading the pack.
Our next destination was to be Fresno (yep, Colombia has a Fresno, too). The road between Honda and Fresno was great. You must be thinking by now that I’ve said that about every road we had ridden in Colombia. Yep, I did. And they were.
My motorcycle in Fresno. As Juan said, the traffic rules “are like suggestions to us.”
We arrived in Fresno and stopped for a break. The town followed the standard Colombian Andes Mountains formula: Steep up and down streets and a magnificent square in front of a majestic church. And Carlos had been right about the temperature. Even though it was midday and sunny, it had cooled considerably as we climbed into the mountains. Fresno was comfortable.
Fresno’s town square had an interesting exhibit with a statue of Juan Valdez and his mule, carrying only the finest Colombian coffee beans (as the commercials used to proclaim). Carlos took a photo of Mr. Valdez and me.
Juan Valdez and two jackasses in Fresno.Two young ladies in a Fresno corner store.
There were chairs and a table in front of a small store next to Fresno’s church. We bought soft drinks from two nice young ladies working there and we took seats at the table. It was relaxing sitting there, watching the good folks of Fresno go about their lives. A pretty girl pulled up on a motorcycle and parked on the sidewalk. I could get used to Fresno, I thought.
We left Fresno and stopped to refuel on the way out. The road continued to climb, the temperatures continued to drop, and the sun disappeared behind the clouds we were climbing into. It rained and little bit and then stopped. The roads dried, the sun remained hidden, and the twisties became even more glorious. I knew we were high up in the mountains. I didn’t know how high, but I knew we were way up there. I was surprised at how well the bikes were performing. Although the AKT version of the RX3 is carbureted, I couldn’t feel a drop in performance as the altitude increased (and our ride had taken us literally from sea level to over 13,000 feet).
There wasn’t any traffic (we had the road to ourselves) and Juan stepped up the pace. It was just a modest increase at first, and then he ratcheted it up. By this time I was comfortable on these twisting roads and comfortable with my heavily-laden RX3. I hung in there with Juan, with Carlos right on my tail. It just felt like the right thing to do, and it felt entirely natural.
To be continued…watch for tomorrow’s ExNotes blog. And if you want to read the entire story, get yourself a copy of Moto Colombia!
Our moto adventure book giveaway winner is none other than good buddy Trevor Summons, and that’s a hell of a coincidence. I actually know Trevor. We have quite a few folks following the ExNotes blog, and Trevor is one of those who signed up for automatic email notifications when we post a new blog. I first met Trevor when he did a story on CSC Motorcycles several years ago for the Daily Bulletin newspaper, and we’ve stayed in touch since.
Trevor and his Harley Heritage. Harleys have been featured a lot lately here on the ExNotes blog!
Trevor’s the real deal…he’s a columnist who writes the “Trevor’s Travels” feature, and he’s a Harley-Davidson rider. Trevor and his son (who lives in Japan) do a 3,000-mile moto camping trip every year. They’ve been to the Canadian border, Sturgis, Yellowstone twice, and southern Colorado. This past September Trevor and his son went up to northern Ontario (the one in Canada, not here in So Cal).
Trevor opted for a signed copy of Moto Colombia, and we’re getting together for lunch sometime in the next couple of weeks so I can give it to him. You can bet I’ll grab a photo or two when we do that.
You can order your own copy of Moto Colombia right here!
For those of you who didn’t win this time, don’t have a cow. We’re going to have a regular quarterly book give away, and the next contest starts today. We’ll announce the winner on April 1st, except it will be for real (that is to say, it won’t be an April Fools sort of thing). All you need to do to enter is be on our email list, and you can do that by adding your email address to the widget on this page!
So, about that photo at the top of our ExhaustNotes blog. We had a contest to see if anyone could identify the location (with a copy of Moto Colombia! as the prize), and after several weeks, our good buddy Patrick grabbed the brass ring. It’s Mompox in Colombia. It was a magic place we rode (and sailed) to on our second day in this wonderful country.
Colombia was easily one of the two best motorcycle rides I’d ever done (the other was China). I rode with great guys while I was there…my good buddies Juan and Carlos. To get the full impact of that photo at the top of the blog, allow me to share with you an excerpt from Moto Colombia! telling a bit more about Mompox…
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Boarding the ferry to Mompox for the trip down the Magdalena River.
Finally, it was time to start loading the ferry. The guys directing this operation had the trucks turn around so they could back onto the ferry. These were big trucks, the angle down to the boat was steep, and there wasn’t all that much room on the boat. Juan told me they load the trucks first, then the cars, and then the bikes (we would be the last ones to get on the ferry).
When the first truck’s rear wheels rolled onto the port side of the ferry, the entire boat tilted. Guys with the shovels materialized and piled dirt on the now tilted-to-the-left ramp. The second truck fired up its diesel engine and slowly backed down the bank to load on the starboard side. The ferry leveled out. This was repeated until the loadmasters had two lanes of trucks on either side of the ferry, then the cars backed onto the ferry, and then it was time for us to ride our motorcycles onto the boat. I’m smiling as I type this, because I remember how exciting this all was. It was incredible fun.
Loading a ferry from the Magdalena’s muddy banks.
After the boat was loaded, I wanted to hop off and grab a photo, but there was a woman who was directing traffic who motioned for me to stay on the boat. She was perhaps 50 years old and she was stunning. Many of the Colombian women I met on this trip were stunning. I’ve heard people say Colombia has the most beautiful women in the world. They might be right.
The ride down the Magdalena River was magical. When I say “down” the Magdalena, it felt unnatural. We were heading downstream, but we were sailing north. I’ve never been on a river in the United States where you can do that. The Magdalena flows north to the Caribbean from deep within the upper reaches of Colombia’s Andes Mountains.
This entire region is an area laden with waterways. Mompox used to be on the Magdalena. The town is still in its original location, but at some point in the distant past the Magdalena changed its course. The main branch of the Magdalena took a turn on its way to the Caribbean to meet the sea at Barranquilla, and Mompox was left behind.
I shot a video on our ride to Mompox and I posted it on YouTube that evening. It was fun…
The ride was comfortable because it was cooler on the river and the ferry created its own breeze. When I panned around with the camera, to my great surprise Juan was on top of the pilot’s cabin. The whole thing added another dimension to this adventure that I really enjoyed, and we were only into our second day of an 8-day ride.
We arrived at the debarkation point, and as I knew from other ferry debarkations, getting off the boat can only be described as controlled chaos. The ride up the dirt bank at this end of our trip was even steeper, and traffic converged to a single lane on a steep uphill dirt slope. Juan was in front of me and we were all stopped.
There was a huge truck on my left (the top of its wheels were at eye level when I was on the bike), I was on dirt, there was a taxi crowding me on my right, and I was pointed uphill at a severe angle. Juan was able to get between the truck and the taxi and pull away. I slipped the clutch and eased up the hill, leaning the bike sharply to the right to keep my left pannier from touching the truck tires. As I did so, I felt my right pannier scraping along the taxi’s fender. Not good, I thought. I scraped along the taxi (it was motionless), I got past it, and we were gone. Surprisingly, the aluminum case was unmarked when I checked it later (it didn’t have a scratch). I don’t know how the taxi fared (no pun intended).
Juan’s rearward-facing photo, shot from the saddle of his motorcycle, as we maneuvered along a dirt road on the way to Mompox. Photo by Juan Carlos Posada Roa.
The next 10 miles or so were rough. The road was dirt, it was a bit gnarly in spots, and there was a lot of traffic. The sun was setting and I was a little uncomfortable. I don’t consider myself much of a dirt rider, and I especially don’t like riding on dirt in the dark. Juan and Carlos were unfazed by all of this; they are used to the roads. Juan even turned around on his bike to take pictures of Carlos and me while we were all moving.
When we entered Mompox it was already dark. Juan found the hotel quickly, we checked in, and Juan asked for a restaurant recommendation. I was picking up enough Spanish to know that he asked for a good pizza spot (¿Dónde hay un buen lugar para una pizza?). The nice young lady who checked us in recommended a place owned by an Austrian a block away.
Quite possibly the best pizza I have ever had.
We each ordered an Aguila (that’s a Colombian beer), and those first cold brews went down easy. So did the second one. This was our second night on the road and we were already comfortable with each other. We ordered a couple of pizzas; the recommendation had been a good one. The dinner was great. It was quite possibly the best pizza I’ve ever had.
The conversation that evening was relaxing and intellectually stimulating. Juan told me about Mompox and its historical significance to Colombia. He mentioned the Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel 100 Years of Solitude, written by the great Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I was embarrassed to admit to Juan and Carlos that I had not read it (a character flaw I corrected as soon as I returned to the United States). The novel was set in the mythical town of Macondo. Some people think that Marquez based his fictional town of Macondo on his own Colombian home town of Aracataca, the town where he was born. Others believe Macondo used Mompox as the novel’s inspiration. I am firmly in the second camp. While reading the novel after I returned to the US, I felt as if Marquez was describing the areas we rode through, and his descriptions of Macondo kept my mind drifting back to Mompox.
Carlos, me, and Juan having pizza, beer, and a literary discussion in Mompox.
When we finished dinner, I thought we would go back to the hotel and call it a night. I was tired. I told Juan and Carlos I wanted to post an entry on the blog I wrote for CSC Motorcycles.
“Joe,” Juan said, “your readers will wait.”
The way he said it made me realize he was right. The blog took a back seat to walking along the Mompox riverfront with Juan and Carlos that evening. I was glad I listened to Juan. I captured some of the best photos of my entire stay in Colombia while we were in Mompox.
The Santa Barbara Church in Mompox. It is a brilliantly-colored yellow and white structure. I had to put the D3300 on manual focus for these shots; there was not enough light for the camera to autofocus.The Church of San Francisco in Mompox. This church was a deep burgundy with white trim. It was striking in the evening.
Mompox, a place I had never heard of, is an absolute treasure. I’ve read a bit about it since my return, and it’s intriguing. Mompox looks pretty much like it did in Colombia’s colonial times. The place was founded in 1540, and in 1998 it was designated a World Heritage site. Mompox used to be a key trading center when the Magdalena River flowed by it, but when the river decided to take another route to the sea, time more or less forgot Mompox (exactly as described in 100 Years of Solitude, by the way, for the fictional town of Macondo).
Mompox was a big port for the Spanish while they were systematically looting Colombia’s gold and emeralds. Mompox’s inland location helped protect the soon-to-be-seaborne loot from Sir Francis Drake and his pirates, who were as busy stealing from the Spanish as the Spanish were stealing from the indigenous Colombians. I remember seeing the river front and imagining galleons so laden with treasure the tops of the boats were barely above the water line. I may be exaggerating, but not by much. Many of those Spanish galleons sunk in rough seas because they were so overloaded.
Homes along the river in Mompox. It would be awesome to live here.
That late night walk along the river was one I’ll remember forever. The place was an explosion of color and I was having a blast photographing it. There was a wall I used to stabilize the camera, and I shot at a low ISO to get great colors. I was lucky to be able to shoot this city at night; the colors were far more saturated than they would be if I shot in sunlight. It was 10:00 in the evening and the place was alive. People were walking along the river, small motorcycles with young couples were burbling along on the narrow streets, cafes were serving coffee, and salsa music drifted through the humid evening air. I remember thinking it was amazing I had never heard of this place before.
The money shot, taken along the riverfront in Mompox.
Juan told me that there are plans to build a bridge to Mompox. That would do away with the need for the ferry and the ride down the Magdalena River to get to this magical place. I’m not so sure that’s a good thing. Mompox and the journey to reach it are special. I am glad Juan included it in our itinerary.
Day 2 had been a good day. A great day, actually. Juan knew what he was doing when he planned this trip. I thought about our first two days. I wasn’t playing at being Indiana Jones on this ride; I was Indiana Jones. On a motorcycle, no less. I couldn’t wait to experience the coming days. I wondered: Had the trip’s high points peaked too soon? How could Juan have possibly planned this adventure with even better things awaiting our exploration?
Did you enjoy reading the above? Hey, I wrote a book about that ride, and you can order it here. I think you’ll like reading it, and I know I sure had fun writing it!
