Nothing I’m going to write will be able to describe today’s adventure.  I may be able to share some factual experiences and some photos along the way, but I can’t come close to making it real.  I’ll do my best to provide some flavor.  I have to say, however, that it didn’t start off under the greatest circumstances for one of us.

We reconnect with our intrepid explorers after one of them had a night full of suffering…

Something I ate last night did not work for me.  I spent the entire night back and forth to the toilet and only slept from about 3:30 am till 5:30 am.  I tried to read, I watched Billions, I tossed and turned.  Sleep was impossible when I had to get up every 20 minutes.  This was not the restful night I needed before our big day.  But what could I do at 6:30 when it was time to get up but prepare for what was to come?!?  I took half a roll of toilet paper from the hotel because I was pretty certain I’d be enjoying the jungle for some quiet time to myself.  Gio even developed a hand signal that, in the case of emergency, translated to “I just shat my pants,” and then he’d know I needed to pull over.  I thought that seemed like a good precaution.  Mercifully, I didn’t need it.

For breakfast I had two sips of coffee (any water I drank just came flying out) and a couple risky nibbles of bread, and we packed up the bikes.  I had that awesome shaky, sweaty, weak, and totally dehydrated feeling, so I was obviously ready to go on one of the most demanding rides I’ve ever done.  Obviously.  Had I had a choice in what we were about to do, I may have considered taking a raincheck, but as it was, this was not an option.  We had dirt to ride.

Forgot this photo from last night. I realized I needed boots to move the moto on a super steep hill after showing and refused to put my stinky sweaty moto pants back on.

We took off under wonderful conditions . The first ten miles of cool mountain jungle air, smooth twisty roads, earthy green smells and no traffic momentarily took all of my ills away, and we were off.  The level of focus required didn’t allow for any whining about my poor tummy.  Speaking of focus, I proceeded to miss the dirt road turn off (in my defense, it looked more like a driveway), and that cost us 3 km in both directions, so we backtracked, but the detour was amazing riding, and as Gio said with a big grin through his big beard, “that was no mistake dude.”

The dirt started as it would continue all day – nice hard packed dirt, but super rocky and bumpy.  Just enough variation to the rocks to make it somewhat technical and require absolute concentration on our line.  The first challenge came when we had to cross a small stream.  No big deal except that the bed was all slate covered in MOSS.  The dreaded moss.  The ugly cousin of sand on big motos.  The stream popped up out of nowhere around a blind corner, so rather than do the smart thing and stop and make sure that there aren’t any deep parts and it was passable, I just let the momentum continue and went for it.  Not recommended.  About halfway through my back wheel started to slide out – this is more slippery than riding on most icy surfaces – try walking on it – and I thought for sure I was headed south.  So I had two choices, try and break and slow down in which case I can say with almost certainty, my front wheel would have slid under, and I would have gone down and probably bruised my spleen.  I took option 2 – just punch it a little bit right through that hole of unknown depth in front of me and come screaming out of the stream at a totally out of control speed.  Executed it perfectly AND missed the tree on the other side.  Somehow.  Still kinda surprised about that.  Gio saw what I did and took a different line but had the exact same result – slid all over the place (keep in mind we’re on 600 lb motorcycles) but made it to the other side.  Felt great to be vertical!

Getting started on our dirt day.

Currently MacGeyvering his music situation.

This dirt riding continued for about 60 km during which we saw hardly any cars (single digits for sure) and only passed a few motorcycles.  We pulled into several small towns that felt absolutely forgotten – by time, pavement, technology, everything.  Just what felt like ghosts walking the streets going about their peaceful lives.  Even to drive to the next town on these rocky dirt roads would take HOURS.  Each town had its main square with a pretty stone church in the middle, and not a lick of English.  It was fascinating to see them.

We must have ridding through a half dozen towns that only had dirt roads leading to them, and they all had a stone church in the middle.

Ok it’s hard to see this, but there are three cows in the photo, and one is in the middle of the road. Because Colombia.  You are never very far from a cow.

Neither of us managed to go down, but we each had a couple close calls – it was 3 hours of intense riding, and if you let up on focus for just a second you can take a turn too fast and get yourself into trouble.  We finally made it to the paved road, and that lasted for about 20km when there was another section of dirt.  No big deal.  We’ve been doing that all day.  Except that they had just laid the dreaded sand!!  And this was not construction sand like we’re used to.  It was more like fluffy brown cocaine (since Colombia is made mostly of cocaine as everyone knows), or rather baby powder, but brown of course.  I still can’t believe that neither of us went down – we both took some VERY wide turns, and I for one got very lucky to control it.  But we made it!

Our riding environment.  Followed the river Magdellena all day

Not sure what this is about.  Dirty as hell though…

What we’re riding next to for parts of the day.

Thank god this exists.

Really glad there’s a bridge…

More scenery.  Really hard to photo because of the constant overcast / fog.

Not sure if you can tell just how dirty he is.  I took the lead, so I dealt with oncoming traffic and turn management, but Gio took the dust, mostly to the face.

And wow!  Were we rewarded for finishing our dirt ride.  After some town who’s name I cannot remember, we hit the twistiest, curliest, curviest, downright raddest road I have ever riddent.  The pictures below don’t do it justice, and wow, was that fun to ride.  And perfectly smooth.  An absolute cap on an amazing day.  Look at those twisties!

One of the most amazing roads I have ever ridden. Maybe the most amazing.  See the switchbacks up close, but they continue on the other side of the river valley if you look closely.

This displays the line we road pretty well as an areal view.  TWISTY.

We arrived in Giron (not a town I’d voluntarily spend time in) and had some decisions to make – the easy place to stay was Bucaramanga which appears to be just a big city and no one anywhere really had much to say about it, but we decided to take some time out of our long ride to Medellin tomorrow by continuing onto Barrancabermeja (say that 5 times fast – I honestly can’t even say it once).  This decision meant another 2 hours of riding, but what the hell – I only felt decent while we were riding.  Any time we stopped I felt like crap.  It didn’t help that I wasn’t drinking any water and had not peed since breakfast.

What you do when you pull into town with no place to stay.  Find a park bench and get online.

So, we soldier on and pound our way into Barrancabermeja.  Ugh.  Not my favorite city so far (more on that in a bit), and when we get to the hotel we were aiming for I went in and  Gio stayed with the bikes illegally stopped at the ramp to the parking garage that may or may not be correct.  To start off, I have to go through a fucking mall (like a mall from the 80’s when malls were a thing) and make my way up through a labyrinth to a non-lobby to an elevator a stifling-ass hot lobby.  I get the info about where to go and thankfully didn’t pay for a room and try to make my way back to Gio and the bikes.  Take the wrong elevator.  Walk out and am immediately lost.  Find another elevator.  Head back to the hotel lobby.  Sweat profusely.  Take the way they told me not to take and endure their “god gringos are dumb” looks.  Finally find the outside world. Walk back to Gio and book another hotel from our phones next to the bikes.  We bomb over there.

We arrive at our new hotel, and it’s fine.  (We did have to ride the wrong way down a super busy street, and I did clip a small food cart with my side case, but the lady just blew it off – it probably matched all the other dents and really was not a concern to her.  Won’t be the last time I clip something.  Yea, that’s foreshadowing.  Mrs. Bueller would be so proud of me.)  The lobby is fine.  We get our room, but the cleaning lady has to take us up to it.  As we exit to the 13th floor, we understand why we needed an escort – she leads us to some secret stairwell that leads us to the secret 14th floor.  The whole hotel is in varying arrays of construction, so the whole environment is just odd.  We get to my room, and it’s fine, it just looks like the room from somewhere in the Soviet Union in the late 70s.  And it smells like someone cooked, ate, and then vomited Indian food everywhere and didn’t clean it up.  Whatever.  I’m tired.  I smell terrible (not as bad as the room).  I need a shower and some water (I still have not peed today) and MAYBE some food?  Am I ready for that?

We get showered up and start to make our way downstairs and get a cab.  But as I go to Gio’s room he yells at me to come out onto the balcony and starts pointing 13 floors below while we watch some guy get arrested after possibly stabbing another guy.  Gio saw one of the guys kick over the other guy’s bike.  We’re not exactly sure the other guy got stabbed, but they were holding his arm up so he didn’t bleed all over.  And, the best part was watching the police and ambulance attempt to get on the scene while EVERY other car passed them and zipped around them.  Good stuff.

Ok, a little about this city.  The population is only just under 200,000, but it feels humongous because of the monstrous industrial complex that eats up the entire skyline.  I failed to get a photo of that part, which is a bummer, but you get a little taste with the photos below.  It’s the oil capital of the country, and the monstrous industrial complex is the oil refinery.  This is a working city, and that’s what it looks like.  Some cities are full of glamor and scenery, some are meccas for food and art, and some cities work so the other cities can exist.  This one works.  It’s not here for show – it’s here to get the job done.  The streets are madness and jammed with people everywhere.  And there are NO gringos here.  Like we’re getting a lot of looks.  In fact, NO ONE speaks a word of English including Andrea at the front desk.  (That will come into play shortly. More foreshadowing.)  It’s kinda cool to be in a place where there is so clearly zero tourist traffic and we’re absolute outsiders.

The view from our hotel room – not them most picturesque city.

Another view of the city.

Ok, you have to look closely, but the guy in blue behind the top white car is in handcuffs. Gio saw the whole thing, and we’re pretty certain he knifed another guy down there for kicking over his bike. Shit is not cool.

Celebrating an epic day.

So we go out to eat at a pretty good steak restaurant, but I elect to go safe and have chicken, but I can’t resist the deep fried pig thing the waiter recommended – might not have been the wisest of moves.  I’m starving, so I may have eaten a little too much, but I only paid for that mildly later.  I needed some calories.  And it was actually totally delicioso.

Our helper, Andrea. A true Jeffersons story of movin on up (except our improved rooms were lower, but still way better).

We make it back to the hotel, and Andrea is there trying to tell us something.  Something about our room and 4 people vs 2 or something?  We go back and forth, and she starts giggling out of frustration, because what can you do?  So she elicits help from 3 other guys there on some business trip or something, and the 6 of us all are talking into Google translate and unable to decipher what it’s spitting out – at all.  After about 10 minutes of hysterical laughing, hand gestures, shoulder shoulder shrugging, etc, we finally came to understand that the rooms we paid for were not the rooms we received, so they asked us to move.  I didn’t feel like moving our stuff, but what the hell, let’s see the new room.  It was like moving from the barn to the main house.  Gio got a full apartment with all new design and furnishings, and I got a studio with a balcony overlooking this breathtaking city.  I mean, it hardly mattered since we were just sleeping there, but by god it felt good the next morning to not worry about stepping in Indian food puke.

I slept the sleep of the dead with only a few minor speed bumps during the night, and we were able to recover from our epic day.  And we were an hour closer to Medellin than we’d planned so our next day would only be about 6 hours of riding instead of 7.  Not a lot of ours at home.  Here, that’s a lot of riding.

Tomorrow off to Medellin.  For now, here’s where we’re at.

Ok, I realized that it doesn’t LOOK like we rode that far, but we rode from 8am until about 4 with very limited stops at a pretty high level of intensity.  After having my insides ripped out.