December 8 - Salt on the wound

We spent most of this day planning the rest of our time in South America without the motorcycles. We were still smarting from yesterdays decision to stop the shipment in Miami and send the bikes back to California. Today, Colombia was having a national religious holiday where we could not find too many people that knew what the holiday was about. We had had some commuter problems and a Skype call to Don, information technology guru in Kathleen’s office, quickly resolved the problem.

After a walk to a shop for some more clothes we had a good pizza for lunch. We then went back to the hotel for some additional planning. We were sitting at the dining tables on the second floor when Kathleen got up to open a door on to a balcony. She let out a string of colorful metaphors and I went to look. Parked on a wide side walk were three KLR650’s all customized for a long haul! Just as we’d come terms with our decision. Salt was thrown on the wound! Dammit!!!

I went down immediately and saw the bikes had plates from British Colombia. I was quickly accosted by one of the riders. Straight away he began to speak to me in broken Spanish that he didn’t speak or understand Spanish.
I looked at him and said: Dude, I’m a gringo. For the next half hour we chatted and learned that they had gone around the Darien Gap – the road-less area between Panama and Colombia – by boat and landed in Cartagena. In Cartagena they bumped into a woman KLR650 rider heading south who was looking for people to ride with. However, she was going to stop in Bogota to fly to the U.S. for a week before continuing on.

The three Canadians were in Bogota to wait for another member of their group who was flying his bike in from Canada. Here’s where even more salt, and perhaps some vinegar, Tabasco, what have ya, was thrown on our proverbial wound. Their buddy was using Air Canada and paid about a quarter of what we did to ship his bike, with no hassles!! We discussed our plight with the boyz from Vancouver and they, too, had heard of this new hazardous cargo rule in the U.S. They all concluded that shipping by boat was the only means available to us for any future trips abroad with our bikes. Lessons learned.

We spent the rest of the day with me feverishly working to up-date the blog site while Kathleen researched places to visit and stay. That evening we talked with a guy named Richi who owned a couple hostels in Bucaramanga in north east Colombia. Richie had lived in San Francisco and Alaska for a number of years. He spent over an hour with us helping plan our adventures in Colombia.

We finished off the evening chatting with a couple of German guys who were on a quest to meet Colombian women of ample cup size. Y’know about the cup sizes don’t you . . . you Seinfeld fans will know what I’m on about. Anyway, the two Germans lightened up a rough day.