Finally had done with Cartegena and headed South into the heartland of Colombia. The first thing I noticed on this leg of the journey was that WD-40 when sprayed all over your bike to protect it from salt water and then used again to clean the bike up after the crossing, gets into your brake pads and you have very little in the way of stopping power after that! I knew this would happen so I wasn't surprised but it meant that I had to ride very carefully for the first little while. It took about an hour and a half before the brakes were back to normal :)
The next thing I noticed is that gas costs a lot here in Colombia! Its about $4 per gallon and that's more than anywhere South of the USA. I also found that using the lower octane rather than the premium is a bit hard on my bike. It runs OK (due to the electronic ignition and fuel injection) but is inclined to pre-ignite and makes unhappy sounds under heavy load at low revs - so I guess I´ll stick to the good stuff.
I was not sure what to expect from the traffic or from the local police road blocks (normal when entering a new country) but was pleasantly surprised on both fronts. There was more than the expected amount of city traffic but this was because the city was quite a bit larger than I initially figured. Once out of that though, the drivers here are very well behaved. Likewise, the police road blocks were no problem. There were quite a few of them but we only got stopped and asked for papers once. They were quite insistent that my insurance papers were no good here in Colombia and that I needed local auto insurance. To this, I just trotted out the old "nice, happy, friendly, but very stupid Gringo" persona. It was effective and eventually they gave up trying to explain and just let me go on down the road - "somebody elses problem"!
About half way through the days ride, we came across another little patch of roadside vendors much like the one in Nicaragua. The difference here was that the local commodity of interest was not "parrot on a stick" but rather "sloth on a stick". This was even sadder than the birds being for sale and I again had issues about stopping and taking pictures while I thought about the moral implications. Again I did not stop this time but decided I would stop next time. Later on there was another little area of parrot salesmen so I took some pictures of these this time.
After a good amount of riding (500km) we had had enough and randomly selected a hotel in a mid-sized town. It was quite a nice hotel and the room was very nice compared to where I had been staying in Cartegena. I was tired and figured I would sleep very well. Unfortunately the room was right on the main street and there were big trucks stopping and starting and roaring through town all night and I ended up getting almost no sleep at all - bummer. Forgot that lesson for a while there so the universe gave me a reminder I guess :)
- average day and a bad night.
