Colombia - Medellin

Saturday midday I arrived in Medellin and heading into the centre of the city. I found a parking place for a couple of dollars an hour and walked the crazy busy markets for three hours, dodging traffic, checking out new faces, trying new tastes, including a banana with cheese and condensed milk, called banana con queso y leche. 

I’ve never seen so many clothes stores and stalls. This is clothes central. The city had a festive feel to it.

Medellin also has a reputation for beautiful women and not undeserved, but the ‘look’ of black straight waist length hair with blonde to grey streaks wore thin quite quickly. I was meeting a contact through facebook at a popular spot called Parque Lleras, the trendy nightspot of the city with bars and restaurants. I met with Sebastian and followed him to his house on the northern outskirts of the city.

 Sebastian and his family encompassed all that I have found wonderful about the people of Colombia. He invited me into his home, gave me a bed, cooked meals and told me all about his country and the area he lives in. 

He and his family spoke no English at all so it was a great practice for my Spanish. Sebastian has a small 220cc Bajaj motorcycle from India, a very popular make in Colombia. We rode out to Guatapé the next day, a two hour ride to the east, where there is an enormous hydro-electric dam; not just an open body of water but meandering through a myriad of headlands and islands. It was expansive to the far horizon, an incredible sight, and it provides much of the electricity to Colombia.

 Piedra Penol is a huge rock at the edge of the reservoir that stretches up to a height of 740 metres.

 It was quite a climb up the staircase built on the side and not one for the vertigo challenged or carrying motorcycle jackets. 

From the top the views are magnificent for 360 degrees. 

The township of Guatapé itself is very touristy with a range of stalls selling local handcrafts, with Indian and Chinese-made trinkets stamped with the local name, to fill the stalls. It was a very busy day, being Sunday, interestingly it was all Colombian families and young couples, seldom any other tourists. Colombians like their day spots and holiday destinations it seems. It was a day trip out from Medellin.

 The next day Sebastian’s father took me on a city tour. 

We took the metro train from one end of the city to the other and stopped to walk up to Cerro Nutibara, a hill not far from the centre of the city. 

Here there is a museum about the history of the city through the eyes of the five-generation photographic Duperley family.

A colourful lighthouse at the peak.

and a replica of a colonial town.

There are different trails to reach the summit including an interesting art trail with sculptures from different artists from across the globe. 

From the summit you can see the city in full. It’s very interesting.  The city lies in a valley between two parallel mountain ranges and runs length ways through the valley with urban expansion spreading across the hill faces like a terracotta carpet. 

There are about 5 million people in the greater area and the city has a feel of being very busy and crowded. Life is lived outside, there is not much privacy, with families gathering in the streets to eat, talk and play card games. It is a very communal life with lots of children, young pregnant women, small micro-businesses at every corner and at the entrance to many houses.The traffic is chaotic in places but the roads are good generally. Where they are bad there are roadworks making repairs. It is a very active place, very alive and lively. 

 For the first time on the roads I felt in danger from other motorcyclists. They buzz through the traffic with reckless abandon, oblivious to the dangers of their behaviour. They are so numerous that you can find yourself in a group of ten or more motorcycles moving through the lanes. They like to speed up from behind and sit in your blind spot and on a number of occasions I nearly knocked into them just moving across within my lane. I tend to sit in the centre of the lane when I’m riding to avoid being pushed around by cars, but these guys on bikes get up close and personal. There seems to be no malice in it, they are all smiles and thumbs up when we stop in a group at the front of the traffic lights, but their riding borders on insanity. Sebastian told me some crazy statistic like 500 motorcyclists die per year in Medellin alone, prompting the city to employ speed cameras in lots of places. Likewise the police are very active pulling vehicles over and are everywhere riding two-up in green on their Suzuki 650 singles or v-stroms.

 It was an interesting and again informative day with the 74 year old and one of the family had given him money to pay for me all day so I needed to pay for nothing. The family were all so kind and excited to talk with me and learn about my journey, family and country. I think they saw me as some sort of celebrity, asking if I was appearing on television. 
 I guess to me I am one of many riding a motorcycle around the globe but to Sebastian and his family I represent an almost impossible dream that inspires and sparks the imagination.

 They wanted me to stay so they could take me fishing and visit more places around their city. They are very proud of where they live and keen to show it off to visitors. However on day three I woke up and felt the need to keep going. I now know how time can really get away spending three nights in each place I visit. Central America took me a year because of this, so I really wanted to keep the momentum going. South America is such a big continent and I have some major wet seasons to avoid further east in the Guyanas, not to mention I wanted to see as much of Colombia as possible in the next couple of weeks before taking on Venezuela. Sebastian was disappointed, he was hoping I would be around for the weekend. However it was only Tuesday and I wanted to visit the town of Armenia during the week and stay in Cali next weekend so it was time to go. I realise I need to be more clear up front about the time I can spend with people. Particularly after my two months in Panama feeling a bit stranded, I have a new intensity about my travel, wanting to be on the road more days than not.

 So after the farewells and Sebastian’s mother being disappointed in me for not being Catholic, I took on the Medellin traffic again, heading south into the mountains. I found my way to the autopista, the main Pan American highway south and wondered about the riders before me who had come this direction to discover South America, and how many went straight through without deviation. I turned off to do a secondary road loop and was taken high into the mountains and the coffee country. 

The Andes are nowhere near their largest here but they are big and imposing compared to all but Guatemala in Central America. I love riding through the mountains. The cooler air was still not cold but refreshing and Ziggy loves a climb in cooler weather. By cooler, I mean mid 20s instead of low to mid 30s.

Colombia - South towards Medellin

Eventually I looped around to the Caribbean coast again, about 200kms south of Cartagena and stayed in a little town that only appeared as a name on my open source mapping, with no streets or buildings indicated. Arboletes is a bustling little town right on the edge of the Caribbean with a large central square full of vendors and mototaxis. 

I did a couple of loops around the town to the stares and a few thumbs up from the locals, looking for a hotel. There was a large waterfront hotel that was clearly aimed at the luxury tourist and didn’t appeal to me at all. I rode past another couple of smaller hotels that had no obvious parking and followed the coast out of town for a kilometre. There I found The Elephant Hotel on about 2 acres with a swimming pool and access to the beach. It had an interesting eclectic collection of large timber furniture including a long table made from a single piece of timber and a motorcycle model.

I walked into town and looked at the colourful and varied shops and bars lining the main street that was again crammed with motorcycles. I have a few sewing chores to do with my kit. The hammock has a hole in the side and one of the straps came off the side of my Airhawk seat cover, both needing needling. I was also looking for stickers and cloth patches but they seem to be non existant. I spoke with lots of locals in the shops and they were smiling, friendly engaging and tried really hard to help. The language is still difficult to understand with the local dialect but I met one woman who spoke English and she explained a couple of the local greetings that is typical for Colombia when you enter a shop.

I walked back to the square and spoke with the mototaxi guys. They knew who I was and remembered seeing Ziggy and knew where I was staying. These guys are connected! We had a talk and a few laughs and I shared photos on my iPhone of my family and Ziggy. They were all smiles and handshakes when I left. I ate at a local restaurant opposite the square and had a hearty soup and main course with zapotie juice for $4.

Then caught a mototaxi home.

I think the thing I like most about Colombia are the tollways. At each toll station – piaje – there is a lane on the right hand side that is specifically for motorcycles. If you are on two wheels you need not pay any toll. Oh Colombia, you are a forward thinking nation!

The ride along this part of the coast was great, a mixture of long straights and bends with small towns that each had their own unique character. 

There is a whole holiday just in this area with the road following the Caribbean coast into a large bay, the Gulf of Uraba the other side of which goes into the area of land adjoining Panama. At the bottom of the gulf on the shores of the cool-named town of Turbo, is the Bay of Colombia. 

All the stories of the Darien Gap with bandits and drug lords may have some truth, but I was told it has some of the most beautiful coastal areas in Colombia. There are a few islands off the coast and there are signs to some of them but I didn’t take the time to really explore. I found out more about this area later and access doesn’t appear on Google maps.

My next stop was a little town called Mutata. It was on the highway and not overly attractive but it was getting to that time of the day and it was starting to rain a little. I was just about to really start the mountain riding and I thought it best to start on a new day. I found a small hotel on the edge of town with very clean rooms on the first floor and no other guests, for $10. To me the first floor is above the ground floor whereas in the US the first floor is the ground floor. Confusing. After a comfortable night’s sleep I woke to rain. Heavy set in rain. Not the start to the mountain roads I was looking for. I decided to use the time to catch up on some writing and uploading photos. It was nice to have some motel time to myself. As much as I like hostels and staying with people, I love my time to myself just to have some quiet space.

As fortune would have it, I woke to clear blue skies and dry roads. I packed up early and headed south in the warm morning air. Soon I was into the mountains and taking some beautiful elevated views. 

The morning mist was still hanging in the heights and the colours varied as layer upon layer of mountain ranges opened up ahead of me.

The traffic was light and the temperature a comfortable 25C as Ziggy breathed fresh air into her mechanical lungs and purred through the landscape. Incredibly I get my best fuel economy riding in this type of country, mountain ups and downs with lots of bends. At one point my computer calculated 3.8L/100kms. Not everyone was having such a good day. 

It was a great days ride however fairly short as I stopped at Santafe de Antioquia, a recommended town to stop at as it was Friday afternoon and Medellin is a large city. I learnt in Central America that weekends are the best time to enter cities.

The hotels were a bit more pricey here, the first quote I had was over $100US for the night. I eventually found one for $20, a beautiful place with a spa and king size bed. I was the only one there from what I could tell. The town itself is a tourist destination for locals from Medellin. There is a large square with stalls, coffee shops, restaurants and bars. 

Once again there were lots of motorcycles and quite a crowd of people. I found something to eat and later went out to check out the bars, expecting a decent Friday night in the town. Bit of a disappointment. Collectively the six or so bars had ten couples and a few groups of guys and that was it. The streets had young guys racing their unlit motorcycles at crazy speeds around the neighbourhood but it seems the people that were around in the late afternoon were all having a quiet night. I was back in my hotel by eleven. So much for plans of a night out.