May 20th, 2007, 9:30pm Bogota time
Medellin, Colombia
GPS: N06 14.724, W075 34.747

More beautiful scenery &amp; winding roads marked our way today, although it started out quite differently than it finished.  Apparently last night in Popoyon marked the end of our mountain journeys for about four hundred kilometres, and instead we found ourselves travelling across mostly flat plains, on awesomely paved four-lane divied highway.  We made amazing time, even though Dad insisted on stopping to take a picture when his odometer rolled over 10 000kms, and a wrong turn around Pereira that had us going 30kms out of our way before we realized we'd gone wrong.

The easy start was deceptive.  By 11:30am, we were about 300kms from Medellin, and quick mental calculation proved that at our current pace, we'd be in Medelling at about 2:30 or 3pm – hours and hours earlier than we'd planned, which was awesome.  However, it was not meant to be.  At 200kms from Medellin we left the awesome highway and got stuck in the back-and-forth extreme turning that marks the Colombian mountain highways.  We didn't get into Medellin until the sun set at about 6pm – speaking of which, today marks the first day on our trip with more than 12 hours of sunlight.

We managed to catch a pretty early start and were on the road by 6am.  That was ruined, however, when Rob misjudged a turn and ran into the ditch.  He's okay, he hurt his knee a little bit, and I don't think he even scratched his bike (he ran into grass and mud – he's really dirty) but his Givi sidecases both bit the dust and now have to be held on with ratchet straps.  

Today was a bad day for accidents – at 11am (right before we crossed 10 000kms) we were passed by these three supersport motorcycles racing down the highway.  We couldn't keep up with two of them, but one guy looked like a new rider – he'd pull ahead of Justin on the straightaways, but would fall behind when turns came up.  He was riding a Yamaha R1, which is quite a lot of motorcycle for a new rider, and sure enough, about half an hour later we passed him on the side of the road – he'd ridden his bike into the ditch, and pretty much destroyed it.  

We stopped and turned around to see if we could help.  Justin figures his crash cost that guy about $4000 in repairs (just for parts).  He seemed okay – shaken, and either his side or his leg hurt (he only spoke spanish, and we don't) so we gave him some bandages and water and got out of there just as the ambulance was arriving.  We passed his friends about twenty K down the road, headed back to their friend.

While stuck on the super winding roads in the mountains, about forty kilometres outside of Medellin we came upon another accident.  This one had shut the highway down in both directions for miles.  Apparently a semi had run over a small car in a sharp turn.  Lucky for us, we're on motorcycles, and skipped all the miles of backed-up traffic and moseyed on to the front of the line.  Fifteen minutes later, the semi trailer was pulling away, and we were moving again.

The mountain roads are a lot of fun – until it rains.  Then the roads get super slick.  Transit authorities in all the countries we've been through so far just seem to love speed bumps.  They're always painted bright yellow, and it's getting so that i'm hitting the breaks if i pass a tall person wearing a yellow shirt.  They're everywhere, and they come out of nowhere.  Anyways, I guess they only have to actually build a few speed bumps to get people used to them, 'cause often, now, i'm just riding over flat paint that looks from a distance as though it's a speed bump.  I guess that's mission accomplished for them, 'cause i'm smacking on the breaks, and they didn't even have to pay for a speed bump.  Anyways, those flat strips of paint are like skating rinks when they're wet.  It's rained on us every day since we entered Ecuador and crossed into Colombia – luckily, though, those showers are very localized and last only five minutes or so.

Medellin is huge.  I'm not even kidding.  It covered the land from horizon to horizon as we approached from the mountain.  We decided to try and make it through Medellin tonight and get a hotel on the far side so that we could just hop onto the freeway tomorrow morning and make good time right away.  We had a hard time actually finding a decent area of town – the major thoroughfare that we were on that seemed to be taking us all the way through Medellin suddenly ended as a tiny little street in the middle of a slum sub-city.  Nervous, we drove away and managed to find another road that took us where we wanted.

We couldn't find any hotels that looked as though they charged by the night instead of the hour, so we finally talked a taxi driver into leading us to a decent hotel.  He even spoke english, and brought us straight to this little hotel – not much to look at, but the rooms are clean, the beds are soft(ish), the water runs hot in the shower and he's letting us park our motorcycles in the hotel.  However, he turned out to be a pimp, as well, and kept trying to convince me that I needed a companion tonight.  Needless to say, I turned him down.

However, we're out of Colombian pesos, and it's Sunday night – banks are closed.  The rooms are 35,000 pesos each (1900:1 exchange ratio) so like $19 each.  The hotel guy won't give us a price in US dollars and insists on performing an exchange to Colombian pesos before paying the bill.  He's giving us a 1500:1 ratio, though, and this drives my Tight Bastard brothers up the wall.  They can't deal with it.  While Justin is outside chilling with the motorcycles, Rob and Sean are trying to negotiate prices with the hotel manager, I get stuck with carrying all of our luggage down to our rooms.  Twelve heavy pieces of luggage in thirty degree heat so humid it feels like rivers of sweat are coursing down my body.  Plus, Rob and I wrestle one bike into the courtyard where they're being parked, and get a second into the hallway outside the courtyard.

Every time I go up and find they still haven't paid for the rooms 'cause Justin and Rob want to save $15, I get madder and madder.  It's FIFTEEN DOLLARS for crying out loud!  Finally, just to end it and get us into our freaking rooms, I just hand the guy the $50 that he wanted so that I could get into the room that I wanted.  Justin then proceeded to get ticked at me (“It's the principle of the thing”) so I took the money back from the hotel manager and gave it to Justin.

Apparently that screwed up their whole negotiation scheme, and god Dad's hair all brushed backwards, 'cause now he's paying a 'stupid-tax' 'cause we don't speak the language.  About this time they start threatening to leave, so I started hauling all the baggage back up the stairs.  Anyways, I think they finally got the hotel manager guy to understand that they were mad 'cause of the exchange rate, and he could've just charged more to make his money instead of saying something like “I'm smart, I went to school, I deserve my tip”, which really got dad pissed – effectively calling us all stupid 'cause we don't speak Spanish.  

ANYWAYS, finally I just went and grabbed the money back from Justin and just paid it.  In an attempt to save $15, we didn't, and spent an hour or so arguing when I could have been sleeping.

Anyways, tomorrow marks our last day of riding in South America, and what we consider our halfway mark of the journey – the plane ride from Cartagena to Panama City.  We'll be over 11,000 kms by the time we hit Cartagena, and I'm hoping hoping hoping for an early start and fast roads so that I can find a seamstress to get my jacket repaired (some of the rips from my crash are getting bigger, flapping in the wind all the time) and some laundry done – I actually washed some underwear in the sink tonight, and it's drying on the fan right now.  Yucky.  

G'night,
Ryan Noble,
Medellin, Colombia