May 19th, 2007
Popayan, Colombia
GPS: N02 26.997, W076 35.801
Distance Travelled: 640km
Hours in the saddle: 15

Colombia is now my favourite country.  The scenery is breathtaking.  We crossed into Colombia in the early afternoon today, and immediately started climbing winding roads through the mountains.  Sheer drops thousands of feet on one hand, and cliff faces all the way to the sky on the other.  A brilliant green that almost hurts the eyes, and across the valleys we could sometimes spot herds of animals grazing just yards from certain death.

The border crossing was the easiest we've had since our second day on the trail (crossing between argentina and chile, then back again in the same day).  We'd been warned about requiring reflective vests with our license plate number on them (indeed, everyone else here has them), but apparently we don't require them.  We were also told that we can't drive at night, but that's not a law – just common sense.  The roads are brutally winding, and apparently the large semi trucks are kept off the twistiest sections during the day, and are let loose at night.

While at the border, we ran into this fellow biker named Nico, who is originally from Ecuador but was on his way down from Vancouver – only he'd taken FIVE MONTHS to go that distance.  Having ridden almost the entire length of South America in ten days, I can certainly appreciate the greater experience taking a longer time to do it would bring.  In fact, during the long hours of silent conversation with myself on the ride, I've been planning just that vacation – the same trip i'm on right now, but taking six months to a year to get it done.

Despite the curviness of the road mandating a slower riding pace (almost constantly in second or third gear, we averaged only 50kms/hour for the entire day) we made good time even though we had to drive for an hour and a half in the dark to arrive in Popayan at about 8pm.  Justin actually managed to drive off the road while coming around a particularly sharp corner – but in a credit to his amazing motorcycle abilities, even though he jumped over the shoulder and into what some golf fans would call 'heavy rough', and what normal people would call 'trees', he didn't even drop his motorcycle, so he's still sitting at 0:0 in the pool.  Show-off.

We've received over the past few weeks/months some correspondence from a cyclist in Colombia, Tiberio – you may recall some posts he's made to our forums since we've started the trek.  I grabbed his cell number from his signature from one of his posts and attempted to call him when we arrived at the Colombia border, but no dice – either he'd typed it into his signature incorrectly, or I managed to screw it up when I was writing it down, but it sure wasn't Tiberio on the other end of the line.  Which really sucks, 'cause it would have been cool to meet him, as well as super duper handy to have a translator/local-person-who-knows-where-i-can-get-a-windshield guy around.

Anyways, you may remember about a week ago that I crashed my bike.  I jammed my hand into the ground really hard when I went down, and while it certainly doesn't hurt any more, I am lacking a lot of strength in my thumb and forefinger – I even have a hard time holding onto cutlery.  But typing isn't showing much of a problem, so that's all right.

I never thought that 'hot water' would be something I'd have to look for when searching for hotels, but it is.  The last three places we've stayed at have had no hot water.  It sucks waking up to a bracing cold shower in the morning when you've got aching muscles and just want to soak for a bit.  The beds at this particular hotel are also hard like rocks.  I'm writing this (well, I'm writing notes, actually) in the morning while Robbie searches for the keys that he lost – oh, yeah, I forgot.  More about that in a bit.  I had the worst sleep last night that i've had so far on this trip.

Anyways, Robbie is no longer allowed to touch keys of any kind for the rest of this trip.  I went to go unlock our motorcycles this morning, and could only find the spare keys for the locks, one of which was bent and wouldn't fit the lock.  Robbie'd had the keys last, but couldn't find them anywhere even after tearing all his luggage apart.  Again.  Fortunately, Justin was able to bend the key straight and got the bikes unlocked, shortly before Robbie discovered the missing keys in his bike jacket.  I believe this is the third time he's lost keys in his jacket.

Speaking of motorcycles, they're everywhere here.  Ecuador and Colombia are just crawling with little two-stroke bikes.  They're apparently the ideal family vehicle – we've seen five people on a single tiny motorcycle (two kids on front, parent, then kid, then parent on the back), and I've even seen a woman sitting side saddle on the back holding onto a newborn.  It's hard to describe how tiny these bikes are – they're easily 1/3 the size of our motorcycles, makes me feel like a bit of a land yacht in comparison.  However, we're much, much faster – on the highways, they stick to the shoulder.

Justin has declared himself impressed with the amount of tread left on our tires, and so we're skipping the tire swappage in Medellin.  He figures we'll be able to get ourselves some tires elsewhere – Nico mentioned that he bought a spare tire in Mexico, I believe, so Justin figures we'll do our change there, and save a bunch of money and time doing it.  Especially since we have to be in Cartagena in two days, and have 1200 or so kms to go to get there, all over these windy mountain passes.  Gonna be a hard couple days, that's for sure.

One thing that was super awesome cool today was crossing the equator.  Hey – did you know that 'ecuador' means 'equator', in Spanish?  What a coincidence, 'cause Ecuador is ON the equator.  We bought a DVD from the tour guide there, and got pictures taken all over the place.  On the horizon, though we couldn't see it 'cause it was shrouded in cloud, is apparently an extinct volcano with a glacier on it.  At that spot is the only place in the entire world where the eqatorial line crosses over snow.  I can believe it, though, after that mountain crossing in Ecuador that dropped down to two degrees C.  After this, we're never again in the southern hemisphere and will, in the next week or so, cross directly under the sun and will cease to chase it across the sky, and will have it at our backs, instead.

Toll booths continue to arrive periodically in our path.  Fortunately, in Colombia they are free for motorcycles as well as Ecuador.  They have these little paths off to the side with high brick walls that motorcycles are supposed to follow.  Rob had a problem with the first one, and dropped his bike.

Bike Standings:
1st place: Ryan: 3 slides, 3 drops
2nd place: Rob: 0 slides, 9 drops
3rd place: Sean: 1 slide, 6 drops
4th place: Justin: 0 slides, 0 drops 

Parking has been something surprisingly easy to find – most places have either a gated courtyard we park in, or actually let us bring the motorcycles into the hotel itself to lock them up.  The hotel here in Popayan had a separate room that looks like it used to be a night club, and it has fricking dragons on the ceiling.  Which is so cool that I took some pictures, and I'll do my darndest to upload them as soon as I can get on the interweb for more than a few minutes.

Ryan Noble,
Popayan, Colombia