Into FARC Territory

our nice paved road deteriorates

here we are high in the mountains between Bogota and Medellin

in Florencia - some of our constant companions

some slimy roads

into the mountains - guerrilla territory...coca and FARC

Okay here goes the unexpected adventure – we are leaving Bogota, Colombia after a couple of days and are heading to Medellin. We are tired of the slow trucks and buses and see a secondary road marked on our map that goes to Medellin and travels through the mountains. Great, we think – the trucks will stay on the relatively flat main roads and we can cruise the curvy mountain roads. So we head off to El Dorado where we spend the night. A nice little town with friendly people. The only odd thing is the airport that is marked on the map does not appear to be a commercial one, but one where noisy fighter jets are taking off quite regularly. Chris has to bump start his bike, but other than that, the takeoff was uneventful. According to our map and Felix’s GPS it is only about 150kms to Medellin so we expect to get there early. On the road and start to climb into the mountains – great riding, no traffic and winding roads. The roads gradually deteriorate from pavement with some gravel to downright rough, narrow, sharp rocky dirt roads winding through the mountains and the odd house along the road. Lori makes the offhand comment that she is expecting to see the coca fields any time now. When we stop for lunch in Naconsi, we are told that it is still 5 hours to Sonson. We are sure there is a mistake and they don’t know what they are talking about. Later, we stop for a quick break and realize that at the last stop Lori has left the camera on top of the bike when she took off, and it is no longer with us. Chris hops on the 250 and cruises back 8km to find the camera in the middle of the road, squashed by the only truck we had seen on the road.(this has been a very hard trip on cameras!) At this stop, a jeep comes past and tells us we are still 8 hours to Medellin – this is at 2:30 in the afternoon and that we will soon be in Florencia where we should stay as there are no towns for 4 hours between Florencia and Sonson. We arrive in Florencia and debate whether to push on and camp along the way or stay in Florencia. After some discussion, we head to the centro where there is a decent place to stay. While we are debating what to do we notice the town is full of army and police and an army helicopter lands at the centro and more army get out. Everyone looks a little surprised to see us. We get settled into the hotel and Felix goes for a 10km training run and Chris and Lori set off to explore the town. We are approached by the military commander who speaks decent English and he wants to see our passports and know what we are doing in this town and how we got here. Turns out that we are in the middle of FARC Guerrilla territory and now that we are here, the army wants to know our every move so they can ‘coordinate security for our activities’. (they are very upset that Felix has gone off running into the hills and we have no way to contact him). We explain that we are just planning on exploring the town, spending the night and heading to Sonson the next day.
They want us to check in with them before we leave in the morning and they are going to secure the road to Sonson before we travel on it (it is still 5 hours ride to Sonson). They are surprised that we managed to get through Naconsi without being stopped by the army and even more surprised that we hadn’t yet run into any trouble. We decide to return the 2 hours to Naconsi the next day and travel to Medellin by the main Bogota-Medellin highway.
The day and night spent in that town were amazing. They had literally never had any foreign tourists there and hardly any Colombians from elsewhere there either. All the kids in town and the adults gathered around talking to us and we couldn’t go anywhere without attracting a huge crowd of people. The kids were great – they were learning English in school so it was fun to talk to them and their English teacher and her brother met us later that night for coffee. She was telling us that 3 years earlier, the FARC had terrorized this village of 1,300 people. They would come out of the hills into the town and just take whatever they needed from the people. So now that the army and police are thick in the town, it is no longer a FARC stronghold, but they are still around in the mountains and it is dangerous to travel on the roads outside the town (especially for us).
The feeling in the town is of a place divided. Obviously there are still FARC supporters in town so not everyone appreciates the heavy police presence. It is so interesting to see how the conflict in Colombia has affected people in these remote mountain villages. People are super friendly but are very careful when talking about local politics. One of the locals that looked after the Florencia jungle reserve next to the village wanted to take us exploring in the mountains, obviously feeling that it was totally safe for us, but we decided we had already pushed our luck and would leave early the next day. It felt surprisingly sad to leave this little town and we had a large part of the village population standing outside waving us goodbye as we rolled down the road.

Colombia on the flip flop

Hola Colombia...back to the land where motos rule!! As usual we were welcomed into Colombia with an easy border crossing with super friendly officials and police. The immigration stamp was easy but to clear the moto’s we had to travel through a nightmare of traffic to the airport in Cucuita (a typical border town..messy, dusty, pothole ridden streets packed with smoking trucks) to the Aduana where friendly staff worked through their lunch break to get our papers completed. As our paperwork took a little longer than usual we only made it to the mountain town of Pamplona where we pushed our motos into a restaurant full of people (much to their delight!).

The mountain roads south of this city traverse some beautiful country-side and we love the ride into San Gil..our second stop in Colombia. This is a famous old city full of old colourful buildings and a fantastic riverside park full of ancient Ceiba trees that hold massive amounts of arboreal lichen that hang like ghosts from the branches and foliage.

However we will always remember San Gil as the village in which the Hondog 650 burnt up...and on September 11th to boot!!! It seems that my “not so trusty” Acerbis headlight shorted out and burnt the entire wiring harness up (another irony is the fact that the bike coasted to a stop in a ball of smoke and open fire in the battery, fuse area...right in front of a motorcycle shop!) to which the local mechanics said “3 days minimum to install new wires (no hope of getting stock parts). After pushing the bike back to our hostel Felix and I set to work and some 10 hours, 10 feet of new wire, 2 rolls of electrical tape and mucho sore fingers we have IGNITION! (A little “hay-wire” as I have to touch 2 wires together to get the bike fired up)

BACK ON THE ROAD...and into the old colonial town of Villa de Leyva...playground of the rich and famous from Bogota and the oldest village in Colombia. This place is way too organized and clean to be in S America but its charms grew on us over the 3 nights we spent is little village.

Next stop is Zipaquira which is ``home`` to the famous Salt Cathedral...a cathedral that holds 8400 people and is built in a solid mountain of salt. (Actually was an old salt mine at one time) The cathedral was nothing like what we expected (we thought that there was a huge hole in the mountain in which a massive cathedral was constructed)...the mountain is the cathedral and all of the crosses, places to sit and worship are carved out of the mountain..so in effect you do not see an actual cathedral (or building of any sort)...just the interior of a cathedral. Pictures can never do this place justice as its main attraction is its sheer size...crosses are over 20 meters in height etc.

downtown Bogota

Onto Bogota...capital of Colombia and home to over 8 million souls and 3 very lost motorcyclists. A big thank you to Felix who literally ordered a poor motorcyclist to show us the way to our hostel (only after I got us lost and yelled at by police for breaking every traffic rule known to man) (any other place in Colombia this is not only acceptable but EXPECTED of all motorcyclists!

We hiked up the famous mountain...Monseratt (which we hiked up the famous mountain...Monseratt (which ironically is now on fire), wandered all over town and tried to find some moto parts for the Hondogs.

Cathedral Primada-Santafe de Bogota in downtown Bogota. In the 1990's M19 guerrillas assassinated 80 federal judges in this building. Needless to say security is tight around here!

Lori and I enjoyed Bogota despite the fact that I was attacked when a thief tried to steal my camera. I ended up losing some skin but got a few good kicks in (and he slugged me a few times) before Lori jumped in (you go girl!!!) and the thief finally ran off. The only piss-off to me was that at least 20 people watched us slug it out and no one made a single move to help! Good bye Bogota!

We are now crossing Colombia from east to west through a series of mountain ranges and Felix has discovered a backroad to Medellin that we want to take...he figured about a day to cover the 120 kms but after arriving in the mountain village of Florencia after a day of riding and realizing that it was another 10 hrs to Medellin via rough dirt road and the army saying that they would have to supply an escort to protect us through FARC territory, we decided enough was enough and headed back to the main road. )more about this in separate blog entry...

a beautiful old cathedral in Medellin

barrios

A beautiful young girl in the barrio area of Santo Domingo in Medellin, Colombia. We could not believe how friendly these poor people were. This gal's father invited us into his house and gave us all the ripe fruit off a small fruit tree he had growing in his yard. The people of Colombia were definitely the hi-light of our month long stay in this friendly country!

Medellin was a revelation...this is no ordinary S American city...it is full of money and I have never seen so many BMWs (some Ferraris, lots of Porsche) and fancy places to eat and party in my life! We paid a visit to one of the Barrio`s (ghetto`s) and found the people surprisingly friendly! Lori`s computer broke down (hard drive problems) and she managed to get a new hard drive installed and purchased a new camera to replace the ONE SHE DROPPED AND HAD RUN OVER! (so its not only me!!!)

even the army and police were friendly!

From Medellin we headed north to Cartagena via roads that we travelled back in April. Some gorgeous scenery, rain and a huge military build-up about 150 km south of Cartagena. I was really surprised to see a Blackhawk helicopter circle above us but have learnt that the US has supplied Colombia with 5 of these choppers for the `war on drugs``.

Lori and Felix enjoying an evening drink on the walls that surround the old city of Cartagena

old town Cartagena is a beautiful classy place

It felt like coming back home to roll into Cartagena (didn`t stop me from getting temporarily lost though!) and we spent a couple of enjoyable days relaxing and exploring with Felix.

one of the many Caribbean beaches in Colombia's Tayrona National Park

bats, bats, everywhere!!

However having seen its charms during our previous visit we abandoned the motos and jumped a bus for a ride through the bustling industrial city of Barranquilla to the remote beaches of Tayrona National Park...touted as containing the most beautiful of Colombia`s Caribbean beaches. Walking through jungle and down a series of beaches for a couple of hours is a great way to enjoy a park and best of all there are places to stay along the way. We spent three days exploring (beaches and ruins), swimming, relaxing and sleeping in hammocks (all are great except that last one...hammocks and my back just don`t get along!). We enjoyed this part of Colombia the most and some of our best memories are the huge thunder and rain storms at night laying in our hammocks under a grass hut.

laid back lifestyle in the small fishing village of Taganga

Next stop is the fishing village of Taganga...a neat run-down looking village on the Caribbean..poor for sure but the very best fruit smoothies we have ever tasted! (and about 20 different flavours..a huge glass for under a dollar)
Back in Cartagena we had a day of rest before we tackled the job of loading the motos on a rubber raft and then loading them onto the 100 foot Stahlratte (Steel Rat to us!). Felix sure breathed a sigh of relief to see his BMW on board and not at the bottom of the chuck!

small town Colombian greyhound bus

ready for the rain

better, bigger and cheaper than Canadian fruit markets

Any stop anywhere in Colombia...the people are so friendly and just want to talk and meet you!