Odds and Ends - Colombia

November 7, 2010
Yesterday we had a day of riding that would rival anything in the Alps. After leaving our hotel in Yarmula – priced $11.00 for both and the first hot water shower in twelve days – we continued in the mountains and climbed to 9200+ feet. The roads were in good shape with lots of S-turns and switch backs. The speed was slow and we averaged about 25 mph for the entire day. We were competing with the trucks and buses for the mountain curves. There is little to no rail network in Colombia so all cargo transport is by truck. In the mountain passes they literally get down to crawl speed. We take any opportunity we have to pass them, but the easiest pass is at the toll booths. All of the national roads have tolls, but motorcycles are exempt. The toll plazas have a special narrow lane for the motorcycles to pass through – whoopee!

This region had lots of dairy farms and interestingly many of the dairymen we using cattle as pack animals to haul the milk cans to market. We have seen lots of pack animals.
We came out of the mountains north of Medellin and we surprised by a new six-lane highway that ran the 40 or so miles into Medellin. Medellin is a city of over 3 million inhabitants and we just wanted to get through. The road south of Medellin was much worse, but it did lead through the coffee plantation region. The Colombians are proud of their coffee. I am sure we saw Juan Valdez with his burro a dozen times. Most of the service stations in this region have fresh brewed coffee setting alongside the gas pumps and the coffee is free. In restaurants coffee is about twenty-five cents a cup.
At Pereira in the center of the coffee region we picked up a four-lane highway that ran to Cartago where we spent the night. At $60.00 for the night not as cheap as the night before, but this time we had hot water with pressure and air conditioning – so life was good.
In this region of the world – we are at about 02 degrees North latitude- the temperature is basically the same all year with the variations based on ones altitude and whether or not it is the rainy season.
Today we left Cartago on the same four-lane highway hoping it would take us to Cali. In fact the highway was extremely good and mostly four-lanes which by-passed most of the towns including the large city of Cali.
The region around Cali is dominated by sugar cane plantations.
By noon we had ridden close to 200 miles and thinking we may make it to Pasto near the Ecuadorian border. Not to be! Shortly after leaving Popayan and 120 miles from Pasto, we were back in the mountains and this time the riding was severe with landslides, super sharp curves and one cattle herd that nearly took both of us out in the middle of a blind hairpin curve. In the next three hours of riding we only covered about 50 miles, so we called it quits and we are still three hours from Pasto.

I want to share a little about what we have noticed about the population of Colombia. The region around Cartagena is much like the rest of the Caribbean region. The population is mixed bag of Spaniards, indigenous Indians and blacks with blacks being the dominate numbers. The farther south we rode the more the population shifted the Indians and Indian/Spanish mix. This held true until we were in the sugar cane region. This region is populated almost entirely by blacks. We are sure their ancestors were imported into this region as slaves to work the sugar plantations.
-One of my more interesting observations of the day was seeing a young lad tailgating a semi-truck down the mountain at about 30 miles an hour. The boy was only about three feet from the truck and he was texting on his cell phone.