{"id":8624,"date":"2020-09-23T04:54:04","date_gmt":"2020-09-23T11:54:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/?p=8624"},"modified":"2020-09-23T04:54:04","modified_gmt":"2020-09-23T11:54:04","slug":"day-8-sweet-home-la-ceja","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/2020\/09\/23\/day-8-sweet-home-la-ceja\/","title":{"rendered":"Day 8: Sweet Home La Ceja!"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.\u00a0 It had been a grand adventure, and I had mixed emotions about it coming to an end.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

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Posted on December 22, 2015<\/p>\n

Yesterday was our last day on the road. It was yet another glorious day of adventure riding in Colombia.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s grand adventures.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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I had to get a shot of the three of us with the bikes, using the D3300\u2019s self-timer. If we look like three guys (the three amigos) who were having the ride of their lives, well, it\u2019s because we were.<\/p>\n

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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\u2019s short cuts, I thought. And then we stopped.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is Colombia\u2019s major coffee-producing region, and we are on a coffee plantation,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

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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.<\/p>\n

These are coffee beans, folks. Real coffee beans.<\/p>\n

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The beans are picked by hand, Juan explained. It\u2019s very labor-intensive, and these areas are struggling because the world-wide coffee commodities markets are down.<\/p>\n

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\u2019t chew it). To my surprise, it was sweet. It didn\u2019t have even a vague hint of coffee flavor.<\/p>\n

As we were taking all of this in, two of Colombia\u2019s finest rolled by.<\/p>\n

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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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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Here\u2019s one last shot of yesterday\u2019s ride\u2026it\u2019s the Cauca River valley.<\/p>\n

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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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Okay, enough geography\u2026we 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\u2019s home, and folks, that was it. Our Colombian ride was over.<\/p>\n

Like I said above, I always have mixed emotions when these rides end. It was indeed a grand adventure, and I don\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

In the next few days, I\u2019ll 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\u2019ve been riding for over 50 years, and this is the best motorcycle for serious world travel I\u2019ve ever ridden. Zongshen hit a home run with the RX3.<\/p>\n

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I\u2019ll 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\u2019ll tell you a bit about the camera gear I used on this trip, too (a preview\u2026the Nikon D3300 did an awesome job).<\/p>\n

Today I\u2019m visiting with the good folks from AKT Moto to personally thank them for the use of their motorcycle and to see their factory. It\u2019s going to be fun.<\/p>\n

More to come, my friends\u2026stay tuned!<\/p>\n

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Get all of the blogs on Colombia here<\/a>.\u00a0 If you want to read the book about this ride, pick up a copy of Moto Colombia<\/em><\/a>!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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.\u00a0 It had been a grand adventure, and I had mixed emotions about it coming to an end.\u00a0 I was looking forward to … Continue reading “Day 8: Sweet Home La Ceja!”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10113,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[654,369],"tags":[299,247,1194,1133,30],"class_list":["post-8624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-adventure-motorcycle-books","category-zongshen","tag-akt-motos","tag-colombia","tag-motorcycle-riding-in-colombia","tag-rs3","tag-rx3"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/151220_2751-900.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8624"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8624\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10131,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8624\/revisions\/10131"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}