Day 134
I left my hotel in Bogota at around seven o’clock in the morning, it was sunny and quite cool but at least it was not raining. I had just about reached the West side of the city when the traffic ground to a halt. For the next hour and a half I slowly filtered throught the stationary traffic trying to get on to the road to Medellin. Beacuse of the huge number of people in Colombia that use bikes as their everyday transport, even the filtering bikes were backed up for miles. Along with the other bikers I swapped lanes trying to get in to one that had a clear gap but every time one opened up all of the other bikers quickly filled up all of the available space between the lanes of stationry cars, buses, and lorries.
Eventually I got on to road number 50 signposted for Medellin and about a mile or so on to it I discovered the reason for the traffic jam, an accident between a lorry and a car at the entrance of a petrol station was blocking the nearside lane. Once clear of the traffic chaos I headed out of Bogota in the direction of Medellin. However after only about a couple of miles of riding I got flagged down by the pollice for a roadside check.
I got off of the bike and one of the cops told me to lift up my arms and he then patted me down obviously looking for a gun. Once satisfied that I was unarmed he then asked for documents which I then gave him. He asked me where I was going and I told him that I was going to Medellin and after a minute or so he returned my documents, shook my hand, and bade me a good journey.
As I previously mentioned Bogota is quite high up so I spent the next couple of hours descending the mountains. On occassions I had to ride through some clouds as I rode downhill but it was not particularly cold as the lower I got the warmer it became. The scenery was also very spectacular and I had to stop for an obligitory photo.
Most of the main roads in this part of Colombia are of the dual carriageway type and most of them are toll roads however, they are free for bikes as they all have a small narrow lane at the side of the toll stations allowing bikes to pass without going through the barriers. After a couple of hours of riding through scenery much like that of the Central Ammerican countires that I had previously ridden through, I reached a town by the name of Honda where I stopped for a coffee at a small bakery. I paid 5,000 Colombian pesos for two cups of coffee which just over 1 US Dollar.
By the time that I had finished my coffees and cigar it was around noon and it had become quite warm and sunny. I then rode on North on to road number 45 for a short distance where I turned off at the town of La Dorada and on to road number 56 again in the direction of Medellin. As I rode along this rode I saw a couple of hotels at the side of the road and I called in at one to enquire about the price.
The hotel was nice enough but nothing special and the woman at the reception told me that it was 160,000 pesos for the night. That’s about 36 USD. I decided to pass and I stopped a short distance later in the small town of Doradal for another coffee break. A quick searh on the phone and I found an entire apartment in the town for the night for 72,000, that’s about just over 16 USD. It even had secure parking for the bike which was a bonus.
Day 135
The next morning I got up at around seven o’clock and it was hammering it down with rain as it had done all through the night. As it was only just over one hundred miles from Doradal to Medellin and as I did not have to check out untill eleven o’clock I decided to wait until the rain had eased off. Once on the move at around ten thrity I stopped at a petrol station in the town to top up. Petrol is sold in Colombia in US gallons and it costs anywhere between 15,000 and 16,000 pesos a gallon and that works out at about at about 85 to 90 US Cents per liter.
The rain had stopped by this time and after riding for only about five miles or so in the direction of Medellin I encountered a huge queue of stationarly traffic, mostly lorries. Naturally I rode to the front of the queue where I found lots of other bikes parked at the head of the queue. I parked up and saw that there had been a landslide causing some trees to fall across the road, one of which had caused two lorries to slide off of the road and in to the roadside ditch. The second lorry was loaded with hay bales and one of the trees was resting on top of the hay bales. Naturally I took some photos of the carnage.
I then stood and watched as the workmen cut the trees with chainsaws to get them off of the lorry, then I watched the tow truck pull the nearest lorry out of the ditch. Then it was more cutting of trees and then a bulldozer cleared a path through the mud and cut trees so that the tow truck could get to the other lorry and pull it from the ditch. Once that was clear another three trees that were hanging over the road had to be felled and then all of the debris and soil that had washed down on to the road had to be cleared.
Eventually about three hours after I had parked up the road was re-opened and I was on my way. It was like the Whacky Races for the first couple of miles. Naturally a large queue had built up on the other side of the landslide so as all of the people riding bikes swarmed away as fast as they could inevitably they met bikers coming the other way who were trying to get to the front of their queue. It was carnage, luckily there were no collisions, only lots of near misses.
For about an hour afterwards on more than several occassions I rounded a bend or was approaching a bend only to be presented with a lorry being overtaken mid bend by another lorry obviously trying to make up the time lost due to the road closure.
I know that riding towards two large lorries side by side approahching me on the bike at speed and taking up almost the whole road is quite a dangerous situation. However as I now encounter such situations on a regular basis it just somehow seems normal to just move over to the nearside of the road and let them get on with it as they pass me.
Eventually at about four thirty in the afternoon I reached the city of Medellin which sits in a sort of a bowl created by a natural hollow in the mountains surrounding the city on all sides. The descent down in to the city was spectacular as the road that I was on snaked down the mountainside but just as I got down to the same level as the city a huge thunderstorm broke out and I got drenched again.
I eventually found my way to my hotel which was a very basic but clean place for around 10 USD a night and I got secure parking for the bike in a place directly across the road for just under 3 USD per night.
My plan is to stay in Medellin for about a week and then to move North to Cartagena on the Caribbean coast, therefore my next post will be one about my impressions of Medellin..