12pm, Saturday
We were almost ready to leave Bogota. Elizabeth and I had spent the majority of the past few hours trying to fit everything onto our bikes, and making it secure. I had several bungie cords and some elastic bungie netting. My first attempt was awful; it had way too much slack in it. My two bags would shift every time I moved the bike.
The secure parking attendant decided to help me out and basically strapped everything to the bike for me. Once he was done, everything was strapped so tightly that I couldn’t get into my bags to access anything. It was a minor inconvenience…certainly worth it if it meant that my luggage would be secure.
Good news: my bags wouldn’t move. Bad news? I couldn’t access anything during pit stops.
After he helped me, he helped Elizabeth strap some of her stuff onto her bike. We were somewhat concerned that we wouldn’t be able to replicate what he had done the following day, but that was a problem for later.
How did Josh handle his luggage? Through extensive pre-planning. He was able to fit all of his possessions into a small backpack that he carried on him. He didn’t need bungie cords. He didn’t need anything. Elizabeth and I were a bit jealous.
I had spent some time on Friday outfitting my bike with a cell phone holder (parts 1, 2, & 3) so I could view GPS as I drove. With everything packed, I pulled up my GPS and we hit the road. The plan was to stop at the first easy-to-access gas station that we came across.
12:15pm
We found a gas station with gasoline and pulled in. We immediately noticed that Elizabeth’s bike was leaking coolant. Coolant was dripping, hitting the engine and turning into steam. We then noticed that my bike was doing the same thing, if a little less quickly.
We looked at both bikes but didn’t notice anything immediately obvious about what was going on. Fortunately there was a mechanic at this gas station, so pulled our bikes out of the way and asked him to take a look at them. The mechanic came over, performed some kind of mojo, and told us that the caps marked “coolant” where we were supposed to add antifreeze were loose. He tightened them and it seemed to stop the leaking.
We took a couple of pictures and hit the road once more.
12:45pm
After the gas station, traffic is stop and go for the longest time. Once we escaped the stop and go traffic, Josh and I take a turn we’re supposed to take but Elizabeth misses it. Fortunately, we had a plan about what to do if we got separated. The idea is to stop and give the separated person a chance to find you. Josh spots Elizabeth as she drives by and we pull out to catch up with her.
12:55pm
We realize that the turn GPS told us to take was completely unnecessary. It had led us into a neighborhood with only one exit…the way we had come in. We eventually get back to the entrance and run into traffic that is at a standstill.
Fortunately, we are in Bogota on motorcycles. One of the core rules of driving there seems to be that if you can fit, you can put your vehicle anywhere you want. We carefully (and I cannot emphasize just how much checking and double-checking we did) made sure that the coast was clear and followed the deluge of other motorcycles that were pulling into the oncoming traffic lane.
This is not as dangerous as it sounds. We had plenty of visibility and could see all the (slow) traffic coming toward us. Every now and then there would be a big cargo truck and we would need to pull back into the right lane to wait for a moment until the coast was clear. We took most of our cues from the other motorcycles around us, and we stayed safe.
1:30pm
We finally escape Bogota.
The road to Honda is mostly downhill, and after about an hour of riding, we wind up stuck behind a series of huge trucks that are slowly moving down the mountain. We go from riding at around 70km/hr to 20 or 30 km/hr. It is excruciatingly slow. The solid yellow lines on the road, which mean no passing in America, stay solid.
We seemed to be the only ones that weren’t trying to pass these trucks. Motorcycles, cars, and even other large trucks would pass the slow-moving vehicles in the way.
After about 15 minutes of this, we decided to try passing the trucks when it was safe. The problem was that there were a lot of times where it wasn’t safe. There would be a blind curve, or another vehicle would decide to pass us while we weighed the safety of passing. Eventually, we would find an opening and go, but it was slow going. Once we passed one set of trucks, we’d get back up to speed and run into another series of slow-moving vehicles.
It was supposed to be a three-hour trip from our apartment in Bogota to the hotel in Honda. It took a lot longer than that.
5:30pm
We arrive in Honda!
We stayed at the Hotel y Parque Acuatico Agua Sol Alegria, which has an attached water park. It took at least 30 minutes to check in. I stayed with the bikes while Josh and Elizabeth got the details for the room. We unpacked our bikes, and Josh and I changed into our swim trunks and hopped into the pool. It felt AMAZING after sweating for five hours straight.
The hotel had an attached restaurant, where we had dinner. The food was decent, but overpriced for what it was.
Our hotel room had air conditioning, but it was entirely too cold. I woke up in the middle of the night and had a hard time getting back to sleep because I was too cold.
We all finally gave up on sleep around 6:30. We packed our bikes and had breakfast at the restaurant before hitting the road around 8am.
This time when we packed our bikes there was no helpful attendant to help us do it properly, so Elizabeth and I had to figure things out on our own. It helped immensely that we had already seen the right way to do it instead of having to figure it out from scratch.
Here’s a side profile showing how my bike was packed the previous day.
I had my big duffel bag on the bottom and my backpack on the top. While I was trying to go to sleep in the Honda hotel room, I had the brilliant idea to put my backpack into the little trunk on the back of the bike. The trunk is what is supposed to hold your helmet while you’re parked, but if my backpack would fit inside of the trunk, I would only need to make sure that my duffel bag was tightly secured to the bike…rather than securing both of my bags at once.
It took some doing, but it turns out that my backpack fit just about perfectly into the trunk. I took a look at the documentation for the trunk to make sure that it could hold the weight. Unfortunately the documentation said that the trunk was only rated to hold 6 pounds. My backpack easily weighed twice that, if not more. I took a look at how it was attached to the bike and felt safe enough taking the risk.
As I drove, though, I did keep checking my rearview mirrors to be sure the trunk was still attached.
Fortunately the increased weight didn’t change the way the bike handled.
11:30am
We stop at a gas station somewhere in the mountains of Colombia.
There’s not really much to say about this stop. It was one of several that we made on the way to Medellin. We’d pull over, have a quick snack, drink some water, and get back on the road.
The countryside was absolutely breathtaking, and I couldn’t take any pictures. I had my phone off in order to conserve the battery for later. Josh was leading the way since his phone would last the longest.
Because the roads were in the mountains, there were tons of curves (which were fun!) and tons of slow trucks (which were not fun). After our experience the previous day, we had decided that if it was a solitary truck, we would look for a safe place to pass, and then wait until all three of us had passed the trucks to get back to a normal highway speed. This served us pretty well, and we made great time on Sunday.
2:55pm
We arrive in Medellin.
We’re tired and grumpy and just want to rest. We check in to the hostel and find out that, contrary to what they had on their web site, they had no secure motorcycle parking. While Elizabeth worked on a project that was due by midnight, Josh and I spent several hours trying to find a safe place to park our bikes before dark.
7pm
After hours of walking around, Josh gets a lead on another hostel nearby, the Casa Kiwi Hostel. We talk to the staff and they talk to the owner, who agrees to let us park our bikes for the week in a tiny one-car garage that is attached to the hostel.
So…the bikes are secure and we have a place to sleep. All is well.