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!

Venezuela

Hunting for anacondas and caiman, stick in hand, knee deep swamp water

Roraima tepuy landscape from our bush camp

The beautiful and extremely rare King Vulture (all the ugly black and turkey vultures are everywhere!)

The Gran Sabana of southern Venezuela is a vast area of open Savannah land covered in lush grass and palm trees

look what we found while walking around in the swamp - a 5m anaconda!!!

Playa Medina on the shores of the Caribbean Sea is claimed to be one of Venezuela's most beautiful and natural beaches

Pirhana fishing in Los Llanos was a lot of fun and the little biters tasted great for supper!

Venezuela has a lot of different ecosystems and the mountain vegetation adjacent the countries highest pass (3870m) is both beautiful and interesting.

Playa Grande near the pretty little seaside town of Pto. Colombia was a enjoyable break from our road trip across the crowded roads of Northern Venezuela.

High water levels in the middle of rainy season made for some impressive salto (waterfalls) in the Canima lagoon.

evening in the palm tree forests of the Caribbean coast

Lori with some of the locals and their catch from the sea

A first...numerous road killed Caiman in the Los Llanos wetlands.

Lori with a very cute Capybara (at least this one didn't bite like the others) who loved to have his belly scratched!

Salto Kama..just one of the many waterfalls (Saltos) that line the beautiful road through the Gran Sabana province of S Venezuela

After 55 km of rough dirt/mud road, a 20 minute boat ride and finally a 3 km walk we are at the base of the impressive Salto Aponwao! Definitely worth the mud, rain and biting bugs!

root strewn trail to Angel Falls

Angel Falls - highest waterfall in the world (976 m)

Red and Green Macaw...nature is beautiful!

alive and well in the jungles of Venezuela

Lori and the red rocks of Salto Kaui-Meru in the Gran Sabana
wet season rains have turned a lot of the roads into a mud bath

camping near Roraima (August 12th)

Hello Venezuela...August 8th near dark we cross into Venezuela and into the small town of Santa Ellena...a mining (small gold and silver mines everywhere) and tourist town. The food is good, rooms cheap and best of all we can trade off our American dollars on the black market for almost double the going bank rate! (2500 vs. 4000 Bolivares to the US dollar)
Felix is heading to Trinidad as we set out to explore the Gran Sabana...a huge Savannah like area dotted with palm trees and absolutely gorgeous in wet season. This entire area is a large park but indigenous people are allowed to live within the park boundaries. The most famous aspect of the Gran Sabana is its waterfalls (Saltos) and Table Mountains (Tepuys) and we set out to explore them via a series of dirt (mud in the wet season) roads. The scenery is great, riding somewhat challenging due to mud and we managed to find some really nice camping spots to get back into the hang of camping.
One really nice aspect of this park is that virtually everything is free...the indigenous people usually set up a small market that sells goods and crafts and I suppose they feel that it is in their best interests to get as many people into the park as possible to sell their products. We saw many waterfalls but one stands out in our memory as we had a very rough ride into a small village where we camped and survived a virtual deluge and an incredible number of biting varmints to then take a boat ride to Aponwao Falls which were in full flow. Very impressive indeed!
Aug 16th, after leaving the Gran Sabana via a road that led us through some of the best virgin rainforest we have seen we cruised into the large city of Ciudad Bolivia and booked a flight into Canaima in a Cessna 185 to visit Angel Falls...the highest waterfalls in the world at 978 meters. We spend a very relaxing and enjoyable 3 days camping at the falls and near Canaima and Angel Falls were definitely worth the visit. We also ended up walking through a large cave over which a huge waterfall dropped and this was insane! (It took a full 10 minutes to walk from one end to the other!) The noise, water flying everywhere was incredible and we actually enjoyed this part of the trip more than the 6 hr boat rides and or Angel Falls!
Aug 23rd, heading North we are starting to see some of the problems in Venezuela that people in Santa Ellena told us about: namely rising prices, incredible traffic problems, poverty, some garbage and people that are not so friendly! I took a wrong turn in a raging rain storm and we missed one of our trip objectives but eventually we worked our way to the Caribbean and onto Playa Medina and Puy Puy...both called the most beautiful beaches in Venezuela. Both were beautiful but Medina was packed with people and overnight camping was not allowed. Playa Puy Puy was empty and the 2 KM of white sand, palm tree lined beach is indeed gorgeous. The water was exquisite and I don’t think that either of us have ever spent so much time in the water doing nothing but relaxing. Our tent is set up right on the beach under some palm trees so all is good. We had a little excitement during the night when someone tried to rip us off but I saw a shadow pass the bikes and then a person looking into our tent from about 6 inches away. I kicked the guy in the face and yelled thief as he ran off. (too slow to blast him with my bear spray though..that would have been good!!)
We ended up spending an extra day here as the locals were protesting the bad state of repair that the road was in and had it blockaded for two days. No one could get in or out on the main road through to Caracas! Finally found another way around.
Crossing the north coast line of Venezuela was not a lot of fun on the MC’s. The only good (great!) thing about it is that as a MC rider you are expected (no OBLIGATED!) to get to the front of every traffic jam, blockage ASAP by whatever means available. Riding on sidewalks, through ditches, between and around vehicles, accidents etc. Is mandatory! At one traffic stop (for flood damage repair with heavy equipment) we stopped...several small kids (10 years old) started motioning us to proceed and would not stop until we pulled out, weaved between the cars etc and sure enough when we came to the dump trucks, hoes, backhoes we were waved through! Not too safe but one sure feels great passing hundreds of stalled vehicles and having every one give you the thumbs up or helping you to get around vehicles! (Don’t think that this would be classified as good MC etiquette in Canada!)
Aug 27th, riding though Caracas in the rain was kind of neat. A huge city with a massive Barrio (ghetto area) often referred to as one of the more dangerous cities in S America. No problem for us and amazingly no traffic jams despite numerous accidents! (Everyone here drives insanely slow when it rains and I couldn’t figure out why but with 2 cent/litre fuel every piece of oil leaking crap vehicle plies the streets and leaves lots of lubricant on the road surface...not good at all on a MC!) The city is accessed via a series of long tunnels that cut through the top of the mountains and Caracas itself lies in the valley bottom with the colorful barrios are perched precariously on the steep mountain sides. Yup...going into the Barrios would not be a good idea and although I wanted to take some photos (the barrios looked absolutely amazing on the steep, verdant green mountain sides) Lori gave me the big thumbs down when I stopped! Driving through the last long tunnel the junker in front of me quit right in the middle of this huge tunnel...don’t even want to think of the traffic jam that caused! After passing through what seemed like an endless series of cities packed with traffic and lacking traffic signs (oh what fun!!) we finally found the road to Puerto Colombia that runs through Henry Pettier Park. This narrow hairpin road is absolute death on a MC and by far the most dangerous road we have traveled on...slippery, single lane and plied by buses. But the scenery (when one can take their eyes off the road) is spectacular and ranges from jungle cloud forest to Caribbean beaches over its 50 km length. We spent several days in Pto Colombia and really enjoyed the beaches!
Back on the road we are heading into the far south of Venezuela into the huge Savannah /wetland complex known as Los Llanos (which is Venezuela’s equivalent of Brasil’s Pantanal). Some fantastic riding once we clear the large cities. Stopping in some of the small villages is one of the reasons we like to ride MC’s as people flock around you and all of us have a great laugh as we try to figure out what they are asking us in Spanish while they try to figure out what we are saying in Spanglish. (cross between Spanish and English...get it!!) By the time one leaves it feels like you have made a new group of friends!
Aug 29th, we ended up setting up our own multi-day trip into Los Llanos are rode out to the Rancho Grande where we had a great time taking a boat ride up one of the rivers (looking for wildlife), when piranha fishing (successfully I might add...they taste great!!), horseback riding (my sore butt) and hunting for Anacondas and Caimans.
No doubt about it, the hi-light of our Venezuela trip was capturing a 5 plus meter Anaconda! So to get this varmint one grabs a large stick and steps into swamp water that is knee keep, muddy and full of weeds. (Since I didn’t have running shoes I went bare-foot and Lori (along with a lot of other people) decided to let us do the hunting! One of the fellows on our group (Markus) is an absolute fanatic when it comes to snakes (has a boa as a pet) and within a minute of entering our swamp he found this snake! Three of us then spent several minutes trying to figure out where the head was (as it thrashed about) without getting bit (they can bite something vicious). Once we grabbed the head whatever fight he had in him was gone! (He had just fed on something so that helped a lot) Lori had no problem getting into the water and grabbing him by the head...pretty cool as this is definitely the largest live snake that we have ever seen and held. (I think a rock python we saw in Mozambique was larger but was a fresh road kill)
Sept 1st, back on the road we headed into the mountains and the tourist town of Merida where we relaxed for several days until Felix hooked back up with us. This is a pretty nice city and the weather (cool as we are up about 2000 m) suited us better than the heat of the coast. Hiked into a few lakes and explored town but never did get on the longest and highest cable car ride in the world as it was sold out days in advance.
It feels strange to be riding with someone again but Felix is good company and the ride from Merida to the Venezuela/Colombia border was interesting as the mountain scenery covered in virtual forests of cactus was an entirely different ecosystem from anything we have seen to date in Venezuela.
So what did we think of Venezuela?
-first of all never visit Venezuela in July, August or September as this is the kids summer vacation and the place is overrun with Venezuelan tourists (not all that many foreign tourists)
-Traffic is horrendous in most of the heavily populated north! This probably would never really affect one in the comfort of an air conditioned bus or rental vehicle but on a MC it made for some pretty rough times. - -- That cheap fuel really is a curse as the road infrastructure just is not up to the task of handling this traffic and no doubt maintenance of roads takes up dollars that probably could be spent better elsewhere. (Interesting to note that when president Hugo Chavez tried to raise fuel prices to 12cents/litre last year, there were full on strikes and riots! I can’t imagine what the traffic problems cost Venezuela in terms of dollars because of commercial trucking delays etc. (no railroads and few airports so everything has to go via truck!) and how much money per gallon the Venezuelan government loses when it sells gas for 2 cents a litre when the world market price is around 60 dollars a barrel!!! (what is strange is that despite strained relations with the US the US still buys most of Venezuela’s oil!)
-in general we would say that people are not as friendly in Venezuela as in any other S American country. I would say they are still more friendly that anywhere in N America! The friendliest people are the rich people from Caracas and those in the remote villages.
-Venezuela is now definitely one of the most expensive countries in S America...(outside of fuel which is insanely cheap...we put on a combined total of 10,000 km in Venezuela and it cost us just under 11 dollars US (black market conversion!)..with only Chile having room and food prices higher than Ven. (then again cost may be up because of tourist season)
-This is obviously a country in big trouble! People do not appear happy and we have never seen so much drinking in our life! The president (Hugo Chavez) is trying to socialize the country but despite huge oil revenue the economy is sliding down the tube as investor confidence in Venezuela is zero! Their currency is worth absolutely nothing outside of Venezuela and Chavez is planning on introducing a new currency next year. Chavez is riding the polls on the votes from the poor while the rich are in panic as the social reforms threaten to destroy their business (or at least that is the way they see it...and they are probably right) One thing that is sure noticeable is Mr. Chavez...his face decorates thousands upon thousands of bill boards all over the country. The cover of every newspaper has his smiling face on it and the TV stations have hours of Chavez politics on every day. We have heard that he is trying to pass legislation that will make him president for life and it looks like he has the support of the poor (app. 65% of the population lives below the poverty line while the rest are incredibly rich!). If the oil ever runs out or prices drop...goodbye Venezuela!
All in all...southern Venezuela is great but we can leave the North!