The long, hard ride to Pareira

Brace yourself, folks. This one is a novel.

We set out…or try to

It was Saturday, February 20th, and Josh was still sleeping. Elizabeth and I were not thrilled. We had both gotten up early so we could hit the road by 7:30 or 8am and be in Salento by 4 or 5pm. It was by now around 9:30, and still no word from Josh.

I didn’t know which room he was staying in in the hostel, but Elizabeth did. She walked off, purpose in her stride, ready to pound on his dorm room and wake him up. She succeeded, and he came out 15 minute later, ready to try hitting the road.

But first he had to retrieve his bike from the garage we had parked our bikes at. It should have taken 5 minutes at the most but it took him more like 30 because the employee he spoke with didn’t have a record of the parking being completely paid for.

I wasn’t in the best of moods. I hate it when I feel like my time is being wasted, and if I had known that Josh wasn’t going to be ready when I was going to be ready, I could have slept in rather than waking up at 6am. We finally…finally got on the road around 11:30am. It wasn’t Josh’s fault, though. We talked about it later and found out that he had never agreed to get up to leave early. He didn’t know that we wanted to get going early, so he was surprised when Elizabeth woke him up. It was just miscommunication.

But then we had to get gas, so we set out in search of a gas station. By the time we finished getting gas, the city of Medellin was up and at ’em. The streets were crowded with cars and pedestrians, and it took forever to make it through the stop-and-go traffic. There was also a lot of construction, which all meant that the minutes kept creeping by as we tried to leave the city.

Stop and Go Traffic

Eventually we did leave Medellin behind, but we soon ran into more obstacles in the form of construction. Medellin is at the top of a mountain, and to be honest it seemed like the whole damn mountain was under construction. The road we were on was a two-lane highway, and every now and then one lane or the other would be closed, and traffic in one direction would be stopped so the other side could get through. Each time we had to stop for construction, it took about 15 or 20 minutes, and we had to stop several times.

At some point in the mid-afternoon, we stopped in a one-stoplight town (well, if they had stoplights it would have been a one stop-light town) for lunch.

The food we ordered turned out to be very traditional Colombian fare. Josh and Elizabeth got various types of chicken along with some beans and rice and (of course) french fries. I ordered a tilapia, not having any idea that they were going to give me THE WHOLE FISH instead of just a tilapia filet. I have no idea why I didn’t take a picture of it, but it was a great big fried whole fish.

Along with my entire tilapia was some rice and (of course) french fries. Have I mentioned that practically every meal in Colombia comes with french fries of some type? Because they do. I don’t mind it much, but it seems like such an odd quirk of Colombian cuisine.

Once we stopped, a man came along and placed huge pieces of cardboard on our motorcycle seats in order to soak up the rays of the sun so our bikes wouldn’t be so hot when we came back to them. We were expecting him to tell us that we owed him money when we were ready to leave. We were ready to argue with him, since we never asked him to do that for us, but he didn’t charge us anything.

The high point of our day

Shortly after returning to the road, Elizabeth spotted a hotel that had a lookout to take pictures from. We entered the hotel and ignored the signs that I’m pretty sure said “the lookout is for hotel guests only,” and took some pretty sweet pictures.

 

After about 15 minutes, we got back on the road and drove for a little while before encountering more stopped traffic. No big deal…we had done this before. We pulled around the stopped traffic and made it to the front of the line, only to find out that there was a really good reason for the stopped traffic.

Break time!

You can’t really tell in this picture, but there’s caution tape up, and a stopped truck behind it. At some point before we arrived, there had been an accident between a truck driver and a motorcycle rider. The motorcyclist lost 🙁

I heard that one person died, and I heard that two people died. I’m not entirely sure what the situation was, but the end result is that someone lost their life, and traffic was backed up for hours while the police cleared things up.

We were stopped for a good hour and a half. Because of the lane filtering in Colombia, more and more motorcycles kept arriving. By the time that traffic was allowed through, there were well over 100 motorcycles crowded into the space at the front. Traffic from cars and trucks was easily backed up for miles.

All three of us checked the maps on our phones. There was no way around the stopped traffic. This mountain road was literally the only road for dozens of miles. Going around the traffic would mean backtracking 45 minutes to an hour, and then losing the hour we had ridden since lunch in the process.

I saw a policeman walking toward the caution tape, so I slipped under and walked over to him to ask about the situation. I’m used to American police and their gung-ho “STAY BEHIND THE YELLOW TAPE, CITIZEN” attitude, so I was expecting him to be hostile to me. Instead, he smiled and said “Buenas tardes,” which means “good afternoon.” I was sort of shocked by his kindness and it took me a second to stutter out “buenas tardes” in response. I asked him how long he thought that the wait was going to be, and he said that it would probably be an hour more at the most. I thanked him and went back to my side of the caution tape.

I relayed the news to Josh and Elizabeth. Josh and I agreed that it would be best to just wait for the police to finish what they were doing. Elizabeth was in favor of going back to the town we had lunch in so we could take the alternate route. She didn’t want to be on the road after dark. We met some people who were planning to go back to that town, but Elizabeth opted not to go with them.

While we waited, I reapplied some sunscreen and walked around the area a bit. I pulled out some potato chips from one of my saddlebags and sat down to eat them. I also pulled out some water from my saddlebag only to discover that the water was VERY hot. The temperature had to have been in the 80s or 90s (F). Eventually we saw the caution tape come down, and all the motorcyclists headed to their bikes so they could be on their way.

There was a huge exodus of motorcycles from both sides of the accident scene. We slowly made our way down the mountain and past even more construction. Eventually the less powerful motorcycles fell behind us and we were well on our way again.

Brake Time!

I should take a minute to talk about how our little group typically travels.

We have a navigator at the front, following GPS directions. The other two people are following at a healthy distance in a staggered formation. The person in the back is usually me, though I’m not entirely sure why. The person in the back is supposed to be the one with the most experience, and between the three of us I have spent the least amount of time riding.

Josh is usually in the front because his phone lasts the longest on a full charge.

Anyway, we were riding in our usual formation after the long stop. We were going down the mountain, and there were tons of curves. The pattern was usually three or four consecutive curves, then a straightaway, then three or four more curves. I rounded a corner and noticed a huge plume of dust in the center of my lane. After a split second the cloud of dust dissipated and I realized it was Josh! He had crashed!!!! As I passed, I saw him give a thumbs up, indicating that he was okay.

I hit my brakes and pulled over immediately. I was in such a hurry to stop that the bike choked and died before I was ready to stop, and I had so much momentum still that when the bike suddenly stopped I lost my balance and the bike fell over. I pulled my leg away at the last second and the bike fell on the ground. Fortunately I was mostly on the shoulder. Behind me, Elizabeth came to a stop and her bike fell over, too. It was chaos.

There were still a lot of motorcyclists around, and several people stopped to help us lift our bikes back up. As soon as my bike was upright, I walked back to where Josh was recovering from his crash. The trunk on the back of his bike had been ripped away from the force of the crash and his rear brake pedal had snapped off. Apparently as he was rounding the curve, he had been riding on the left side of the lane and a truck coming from the opposite direction had veered into his path. Josh swerved to avoid the truck (which was absolutely the right move) and discovered that he didn’t have enough room to stop before the curve ended. He braked as much as he could but crashed into the shoulder anyway.

He wound up spraining his ankle a bit, but overall he was fine and his bike was fine. After about ten minutes we got back on the road, shaken up but thankful everyone was okay.

By this point it was around 3 or 4, and we still had 3 hours to go before we arrived in Salento. It’s fall down here in the Southern Hemisphere, so sunset is around 7 or 8pm every night. It would be cutting things a little closer than any of us wanted, but Josh and I felt like it would still be daylight so there wouldn’t be a huge problem. Elizabeth disagreed with us…she didn’t like how close to dark it would be and wanted to stop a little more quickly than that. We didn’t really come to a consensus on the issue. My perspective was that Elizabeth could stop earlier if she really felt unsafe going further, but I didn’t say so out loud. That’s more miscommunication; I should have spoken up.

This wasn’t the right call. I had fallen victim to the sunk cost fallacy. Since we had already paid in full for the night at the hostel in Salento, come hell or high water I was going to get there. I didn’t want to lose out on the money we had already put down for the room. It turns out that we had only put down $8 for the room and I didn’t realize this at the time. I thought it was more like $30.

Still, though. As much bad luck as we were having, the right call would have been to stop early and get something on the way. What can I say? I got tunnel vision.

Wherein We Misplace Elizabeth

Around 6pm we arrived in the city of Pareira. It was sunset and daylight was fading. I was leading our group through Pareira, with the city of Salento plugged into my GPS. At some point on the way, Josh’s phone had died and Elizabeth had taken over. Her phone had been on for a while that day, so her phone was rapidly failing. She asked me to take the lead, and so I was at the front when we got to Pareira. Since Elizabeth had the actual address in her phone, I motioned for her to resume the lead. We pulled over at a gas station and she gave me the address since her phone battery was at around 20% and wouldn’t last much longer.

With the address plugged in, I pulled out and we all got back on the road. But then GPS told me to turn around. I pulled over at a gas station to get my bearings.

Josh told me multiple times while we were stopped that I was going the wrong way. I got kind of upset with him. His phone was off! How would he know if we were going the right direction or not? I angrily motioned for him to come over and look at my screen. He dutifully looked at it, but then told me that what he was actually trying to say was that my blinker was on in the wrong direction. I had misheard him because it’s really hard to hear with earplugs in and a motorcycle helmet on. It was embarrassing to misinterpret things so badly and I later apologized.

I saw an opening in the traffic and hurriedly pulled out onto the road. Josh and Elizabeth quickly followed.

Or at least, we thought Elizabeth did. We later found out that this was the point where we became separated.

Because I wear earplugs while I ride my bike, I can’t have earbuds in to listen to directions like Josh and Elizabeth can. I’ve mounted a cell phone holder on my bike so I can visually see directions as I drive. It’s usually a good setup, unless it were to rain for some reason.

That day in Pareira, it decided to rain.

After about ten minutes of fighting through Pareira’s stop and go traffic, Josh pulls up next to me and says that he thinks we lost Elizabeth. I look behind me, and sure enough she’s nowhere to be found.

We have a Aprotocol in place for what to do if we get separated. Step one is to use our cell phones to contact each other. If the cell phone isn’t working, we’re supposed to use our walkie talkies to get in touch.

The first problem here is that Elizabeth’s phone was almost dead. By the time we realized she had been separated from us, there was a very real chance that her phone was completely dead. The other problem is that the walkie talkies only have a range of about a mile. We had traveled several miles between the time that Elizabeth disappeared and the time we realized it. The walkie talkies probably wouldn’t work…and it was starting to rain.

According to GPS we only had 45 minutes to go until we arrived in Salento and got to the hostel. I decided that it would be best if we get to where we were going and then send a message to Elizabeth so she would know where to go to join us once her phone got power again.

Gimme Shelter

Josh and I soldiered on and the rain steadily increased. It started with intermittent raindrops. A few minutes later the rain became a bit more prevalent, but nothing too unbearable. After about ten minutes of that, it began raining steadily. The raindrops would hit the exposed surface of my cell phone and cause the phone to think that it was being touched. The problem with this is that the GPS would just randomly close (WHILE I WAS NAVIGATING) because a raindrop hit the “exit navigation” button. This happened several times and tended to happen when we were going through one of Pareira’s seemingly hundreds of traffic circles.

I began to notice that the closer we got to the address for our hostel, the more I began to see landmarks we had already passed the first time through Pareira.

Then, two things happened.

1. I had the horrifying realization that the address I had gotten from Elizabeth for the hostel in Salento was probably wrong. Josh and I were probably traveling in the wrong direction.
2. The bottom fell out, and it started to rain HARD.

I realized that we probably weren’t going to make it to Salento, and I knew that I definitely didn’t want to drive in that kind of rain. As soon as the stoplight we were at turned green, I gunned the accelerator and pulled under the first shelter from the rain that I saw.

It was now close to 7pm. Josh was hungry and noticed that we weren’t too far from a hamburger shop called Rica Burger, or “Rich Burger.”

Since there was no way we’d be able to find Salento and our hostel before my battery died…and certainly not with the rain as bad as it was…we needed another plan. I talked with Josh about the need to find a place nearby and he agreed that we should just find a place in Pareira. I have some travel-oriented credit cards, and they have a type of concierge service associated with them. You can call, ask them to help you find things, and they’ll do their best to assist you. I called the number for one of them and asked the person I spoke with to find a cheap-ish hotel and to e-mail me the directions.

The idea was to find a place nearby. The guy at the credit card company came through and provided a recommendation. The only problem is that I didn’t know if it was a safe area. One thing that we have had to be extremely conscious about is whether or not the area we’re in at any given time is safe for non-natives like ourselves to be in. We’re taking bright shiny bikes everywhere we go, and that can make us a target to the wrong people.

Local Opinions

To find out if the area recommended to us was safe, I asked the staff at the hamburger shop.

I pulled up the address on Google Maps and asked them if the area I wanted to go was safe. They said that it wasn’t, but that they knew of a good place that would suit our needs. It was called the Kolibri Hostel.

I plugged in the address on GPS and waited for the rain to abate somewhat. Once it did, Josh and I set off on another 20 minute bike ride.

It was such rough going. Between the intermittent rain, the GPS constantly closing on me due to errant raindrops, and driving through some really sketchy neighborhoods, I was nervous and stressed out.

We finally arrived at what GPS said was the right address, but it was at the bottom of an extremely sharp hill. Here’s what it looks like, courtesy Google Maps.

Now imagine going down this extremely sharp hill at night after lots of rain. I was as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. I slowly drove down the street and didn’t see any obvious signs for a hostel. Josh and I got to the bottom of the hill, safely, and turned around because the road trailed off into what looked like a dead end. We had noticed some people hanging out near the end of the block, so we decided to park our bikes and ask them if they knew about the hostel.

I drove back up the hill and parked about 1/4 of the way up. I put the kickstand down on my bike and somehow lost my balance. I fell down, hard, and my bike fell on top of me.

For those of you keeping track at home, that’s twice I dropped my bike in one day.

The people who were hanging out nearby came to my rescue and helped me pick my bike up and navigate down the hill again. It turns out that they knew about the Kolibri…the place they were meeting was a garage that was actually owned by the Kolibri…and it was normally used to store motorcycles.

Josh and I stumbled into the Kolibri and asked for a room…any room. Not only did they have a room, but they had a private apartment that we could check into.

This entry has been long enough, so I’ll end things there for now.

Elizabeth is okay. Josh and I are okay. Saturday was just a hell of a day. It was tiring, exhausting, and somewhat maddening. We learned some important lessons that I’ll probably get into next time.