Cartegena

Landfall in Columbia was at Cartegena which is a colonial city on the North Coast.
Apparently the place was regularly attacked by pirates when it was used by the Spanish as the main port for shipping the treasures of the new world back to Spain. Francis Drake was one of the pirates that totally sacked the place back in the 16th century. The Spanish then spent two centuries building massive fortifications around the town and port. These walls and forts are still here (They are indeed massive!) and the old section of the town within the walls has been very well preserved. The town has become a major tourist destination in Columbia and with good reason; The architecture and atmosphere are wonderful. The old buildings with stone entryways and hidden courtyards with fountains and swimming pools are magnificent. The flower covered balconies throughout the old town make me seriously think about what it would be like to live here for a while.
The town is hot during the day but in the evening the place really comes alive with al-fresco dining everywhere (it is a bit full of tourists though). In short, I would have to say that it blows away my previous "best city experiences" on the trip (Oaxaca and San Christobal de Las Casas in Mexico).

After we arrived from the boat, we spent a day recovering from the days of sea-sickness induced starvation (ie just drinking and eating and making little moans of satisfaction).
Then the next day was spent getting the bikes off the boat and running again. This proved more difficult than hoped and Marie spent the morning taking her bike apart and putting it back together. Eventually her bike started up fine after we had towed it up and down the street for about a kilometer (I guess it still had its own version of sea-sickness to get over). The big seas and strong winds meant that the salt-water dousing were constant for the bikes and it was really hard on them

- Note to Motorbike Riders - Don´t take your bike to sea if you care about it!!

The amount of corrosion on all exposed metal surfaces and especially on any exposed electrical wiring and contacts was terrible. We had prep´ed the bikes as best we could and had sprayed all the sensitive bits with WD-40 but it seemed to make no difference at all. So each of us spent more or less a full day in Cartegena working over our bikes very thoroughly and trying to get rid of as much of the corrosion as possible.
So, now we have been in town for almost a week and the bikes are about ready to move. Ive got a few more touristy things to see here and then I´ll likely head East along the North coast. Then from looking at my map and some reading it looks like more or less a straight run South into Ecuador over about a week or so. I´m yet to ride around in the country and they say you need to be much more careful than in Central America, but we´ll just see how it goes.

Das Boot

Stahl Ratte - The name is German for "Steel Rat" and she was about a 40m long steel hulled (riveted) schooner (two masts with the rear mast being the larger one) built in Norway around the turn of the previous century. She usually travels using both engine and sail and has a top speed of only 8 knots (16Kmh) The engine was a big 50 year old diesel that ran at about 300rpm. This is so slow that you can clearly hear each piston fire (about ten per second).
The crew were a bunch of about seven Germans all of whom seemed very nice. The ship is run as a society and some of the crew are permanent (the captain has been there for 25 years) and others are just there on holiday like the 17 travelers they were ferrying to Columbia (to earn some money to help maintain the ship).

The Crossing
After we had lashed the bikes to the gunnels and made fast the luggage, we hove anchor and set course for the nearby San Blass islands – Yarr!
The islands are a bunch of idyllic little Caribbean islands covered in palm trees and surrounded by coral. There are tiny ones with a single palm tree up to larger ones with small villages and an airstrip. We anchored near a larger one for the night and settled in aboard. The next morning we did the customs requirements for leaving Panama and then headed further away to another island. There was quite a strong wind but the waves were smallish since we were inside a reef (apparently the second largest in the world after Australia’s barrier reef). We stayed there for about two days and enjoyed diving off the ship into the warm water and snorkeling around the nearest small island (about 20 palm trees).
Then it was time to head for Columbia. The captain gave us a mild warning that the waves outside the reef would be larger and that because the wind was strong and from dead ahead that it could be a slow passage.
Alas his words were something of an understatement. We spent the next three days in a living hell of constant motion sickness, bad water and near starvation. Two thirds of the people on board were constantly sea-sick (myself included) and while semi-functional were not able to keep any food down at all. I threw up at least six times and blew blood vessels in my eyes with the effort! I’ve spent months on ships traveling to and from the Antarctic in big seas but this was way worse (mostly because the ship is much smaller and gets tossed about much more). It was quite entertaining at night laying in a deck chair on the upper deck looking up and watching the masts “stir the starts” in between bouts of hanging my head over the railing and "feeding the fish"!
After six days the waters became calm again and we had arrived at the North coast of Columbia. We were pulling into the port town of Cartegena; one of South Americas most attractive and touristy cities.

Four Bikes in a Dugout Canoe

Where were we?…
Ah yes on a river bank in the jungle.
There were in fact several other people there to meet us. They were specifically there to help us get the bikes over the next obstacle.
Waiting in the river was a large dugout canoe (probably the largest one I have seen) but there was no ramp that I could see. We had to get all four bikes into this canoe in order to get taken down stream and out into the bay where the larger boat was waiting for us. The technique employed here was simple brute force. That is to say we simply rode the bikes one at a time into the river alongside the canoe and then everyone took hold and heaved the bike up about 1.2m and into the air, over the side and down into the canoe. The only reason that this worked was because we had about ten people there to help with the “laying on of hands”.
So now that we had the bikes all loaded into one canoe and the gear and luggage all loaded into another one, we pushed off and headed down the jungle shrouded stream.
This was getting very “Indiana Jones” and then more so as the river sped up and we had some small rapids and tight bends to negotiate while ducking under draping vines and keeping an eye out for anacondas :) The skipper on the little outboard and his mate with the long pole were quite competent though and we successfully made it through the jungle river past a small village of thatched huts in a jungle clearing and out into the bay.

The bay was however not as smooth as I would have liked and there was quite a bit of chop out there. If this canoe went over, it was going to be quite expensive. Again, the crew knew what they were doing and we didnt capsize or sink and fairly quickly came alongside the big boat out in the bay. Getting the bikes up the 3m onto the deck of the ship was comparatively easy though as they just used two block-and-tackles suspended from the rigging and hauled them up one at a time :)

Full-Contact Off-Roading!

After the new years party, we had a day to get money, guide books, maps, and prep the bikes for Columbia. This was enough time but only just, and I was still feeling quite flustered and uncertain about the whole “going to Columbia” thing.
But, the sun went down as usual and it came up the next morning and we were off again.

Today we had to ride to where the boat was waiting for us. This meant riding from the Pacific side of Panama over to the Atlantic side, then along a highway for a bit and then down a 40Km dirt road. We were quite worried about this dirt road since we did not know how good or bad it would be and we couldn't’t seem to get any details. Eventually we were assured by the organizers (at the Hostel) that the track was in good condition and should be no problem. We were also told that the other travelers on the boat trip would be going in by 4WDs at the same time so we could follow them and they could assist us if needed.
So, at 6am we were outside the hostel with bikes and 4WDs and everyone ready.

The 4WDs started up and drove off before we even had our helmets on and that was pretty much the last we saw of them!
There were four of us on bikes and two had GPS so we were able to find our own way to the start of the dirt road (with a few questions asked of bystanders as usual). It only took about two hours to get here so things were going fine.
The dirt road however looked like it could get difficult as it had a high clay content and there were rain clouds in the area...

Soon enough we found that things were not quite as easy as we had hoped they would be!
The clay sections were quite wet in places and this gets really treacherous on a bike (and our bikes were all fully loaded and gassed up – max weight). Within the first 5km, we had all fallen off at least once and the trail was getting worse. The slippery clay just fills in all the lugs on our off-road tyres and we were left with nice smooth wheels to try to stick to the steep slimy trail.
It turned into the quintessential jungle trail riding that you see in your imagination.
My bike was the biggest and heaviest and least off-road-able and I dumped it in the mud at least a dozen times. Most of these were at less than walking pace and on steep down hills. The only way to try to get down these was to get yourself into one of the car wheel ruts, switch off the engine, and then use the clutch as a rear brake and the regular front brake. This way you can paddle with both feet and control each wheel individually. It didn’t really make much difference though since on anything but flat ground, the brakes just instantly lock up the wheels and then you try to ride the sliding bike down the bob-sled track using your feet to try to keep it upright. Usually sooner rather than later your foot slips and over you go! Then it would take two or three helpers to get the bike upright before you start the process all over again. It wasn’t long before we were all completely covered in mud and sweating buckets. That said, we were however all keeping very good spirits and laughing very hard each time someone took a spill. I particularly enjoyed the scene when I looked up to see Teryk’s head go bouncing down the trail – after a second look, it turned out that it was just his helmet.
So, some six hours later we arrived at a river bank in the middle of the jungle. All the bikes and bags and clothing was plastered in red clay mud. All the bikes had assorted “service issues” but we were alive and well and glad to be through it. My bike had the usual destroyed indicators and was belching huge plumes of oily smoke – For a while there I thought I had really damaged the engine and even seized it up at one point...

How to maximize the “Oh-No” feeling.
In retrospect though it turns out that my bike just does not like to be upside down!
When it is, oil leaks from the engine into the air filter box (not a good design in my opinion). Then when the bike is put right side up (with the assistance of others), the oil in the air box gets drawn down through the carb and into the cylinders. This just means the bike blows smoke for a while. But, if the bike is upside down for a few minutes, quite a lot of oil leaks out. And then after righting and restarting it, if you stop the engine before that oil has all gone into the running engine, it continues to drain into the carb and down into one or other cylinder through an open valve. Then if you try to start it up, you get whats called hydraulic lock on that piston and it won’t even crank over.
This feels really bad since you think you have seized your engine and you are in the middle of a jungle track covered in mud with just about no options of getting the bike in or out for repairs. This feeling of “oh shit” can be further heightened by the gentle rain and the sounds of Howler monkeys enjoying your predicament very vocally from the nearby trees!
I have found that this particular situation is best alleviated by using the “engine brake” technique to roll your dead bike down the next treacherously slimy hill to a flat spot. You then find when you get there that the steady slow pressure of using the engine to brake the rear wheel has slowly pushed the excess oil out of the locked cylinder and into the exhaust. Only then are you fully able to accept and enjoy the gales of laughter coming from your friends. This is because you are at last able to start your engine but your bike is now doing a great impression of something between a space shuttle launch and a London Fog!
Ahh the lessons of life :)))

Christmas and New year in Latin America

I was wondering what Christmas and New Year would be like down here in Latin America compared to Canada and Australia etc. I figured it would be quite different since the people are far more "Catholic" and I´d heard lots about the Latin religious celebrations of Easter etc.
It turns out that the Christmas celebration is a very quiet and private affair!
On the day before Christmas in Honduras, you could tell something was up, since there were huge line-ups at the banks and lots of shopping activity (sounds familiar?). On Christmas day however, it was barely possible to tell it from any other normal day. All the shops were open and running as usual (I guess a holiday is a luxury the people cant afford) and it seemed that the celebrations were held at a very private and family level. This of course on reflections seems to be exactly what you would expect and very appropriate.

New year however was quite the opposite. I had just arrived in Panama City the day before and was invited to a village party by a rider friend who had been in the city for a few days and had got us invited along with him to the hostel owners family celebrations. I don´t think it is a religious event at all, but with the local fascination for fire-works (this seems to be fairly constant in Central America although I think strongest in Guatemala) we got quite a show.
The family house was on a street in a small town about 30min from the city. All the houses on the street had banded together for decorations and there were 15-20 arches of Christmas lights over the street and all the houses were lit up. There were a couple of large rented sound systems and everyone was celebrating on their front lawns. There were occasional setting-off of fire-works through the evening and a steady consumption of beer too. This had the expected result and one erstwhile very nice young Japanese rider who was with us (Shota) went a bit too far! - (this all ends OK, so keep reading!). He held the stick for quite a large rocket in his teeth and lit the fuse. His aim was of course just to launch the rocket in a novel way. However he got more than he bargained for and failed to release the stick at the critical moment. The rocket exhaust went right into his face and then while he was still holding it in his teeth reeling in a cloud of smoke, the head end of the rocket exploded with two deafeningly loud reports!
We had all watched this swift chain of events in one of those nightmare slow-motion, unable to do anything, horror shows! When the blasts went off I was already moving toward him and I ran into the cloud of smoke expecting to find the absolute worst...

To my huge relief I found Shota staggering around with a cartoon blackened face and singed hair repeatedly saying "I'm OK, I'm OK".
I held him still and had a close look and amazingly he was in fact completely OK! I checked skin, eyes and hearing, and it all worked and continued to work the next morning as well. This was something of a minor miracle to me, but the local mothers did not view it at all well and the "stupid immature gringos" were all grouped together and given a real "telling off" about taking silly risks and setting terrible examples for the local kids etc. This was of course quite appropriate but was applied a little too broadly - But what can you do? :))
So, Shota became the pariah for the night and the party was very subdued for a while (and there were no more fire-works! ... till later)
So, after a couple more hours, midnight approached and then the large (very large) pile of confiscated fire-works were deposited in the middle of the road (This happened at every house along the street) and then the "responsible adults" (just big children in grown up bodies really) went nuts and set off the most continuous and dazzling fire-works show that I have ever seen. It was all much smaller than the professional stuff of course but it was very close and completely surrounded the street and was happening across the entirety of central America all at once. It also went on for about 20 minutes! WOW :)))
After that everybody walked around shaking hands, and then there was more drinking, and then dancing in the streets, and then people started to slow down and there were people passed out around the place, and people trying to sleep on their motorbikes. Then I found a corner of a concrete floor and curled up with my head on my day-pack.
The next morning we got up quite early (who knows how) and were greeted in the street by the neighbours who were still going, and who offered us each a nice fresh cold beer to start off the new year, and which we diplomatically declined, and then we rode back to the hostel and got some real sleep.

A good night :)

The Chicky-Babe Effect

The Panama boarder went OK as well. It seems we have discovered a somewhat secret crossing technique that I have christened "the Chicky-Babe Effect".
What we do is we (Marie and I) roll up at the boarder where we are immediately surrounded by hoards of young men offering to help guide us through the customs and immigration processes. This of course costs money and is clearly what most folks on bikes do (hence the hoard of helpers). We shoo them away and after a while they figure out that we don't want them. Then I watch the bikes so we don't have to lock everything up and we send in the "Chicky Babe".
So far, Marie has had no problems and everyone in an official position is only too pleased to be able to assist her in getting through the circuitous problems. After she has completed the process, I get given the low down on where to go and what to do and while I'm doing it in efficient fashion, Marie takes a turn looking after the bikes.
Its worked every time so far (four boarders and more to come) :))

Climatic Whiplash

Continuing the run South…
We had ended up stuck in the capital of Costa Rica (San Jose) for the night since we didn’t manage to cover anywhere near the amount of ground we had planned for the day. The route we chose was along the PanAmerican highway and it winds its way along the mountainous spine of the isthmus. This makes for beautiful views and the roads are in excellent condition too. Unfortunately, there is just so much traffic on this route that it is very crowded. Compounding this are two more issues: First that the windy mountain road is only two lanes so passing is really tricky but not too bad for small maneuverable and fast machines like motorbikes. The second problem is that this route seems to take most of the truck traffic in the country (and there is a lot of it). The trucks barely fit in the lanes and are also very slow at climbing hills. The overall result is that this is a lethal combination of conditions (Literally for at least one truck driver that we saw!). Anyway, we survived the dangers but only covered half the distance. By the end of the day I felt that Costa Rica should probably be renamed to “Traffic Jam”.

We got a hotel (quite a nice one) and re-grouped and re-planned the route for the next day. The new route was still in the mountains for about 100Km and then went South to the coast and along the coast to get to Panama.
This turned out to be a good plan but also had its challenges. Initially the road climbed steeply up into the mountains again and the grey skys of San Jose turned into cloud then mist then rain and the temperatures fell from low 20 degC to less than 5degC, the winds rose to be really strong and gusty on the peaks, and the altitude rose to over 3300m. So we were wearing soaking wet riding gear in just above freezing temperatures with strong gusty winds and near zero visibility (real temperate cloud forest – it reminded me a lot of the West coast of Tasmania) – and of course the local version of daring drivers on the road.

After a couple of stops for full bladders and to allow Marie to rewarm her hands on the engine/exhaust, we headed down for the coast. We rapidly dropped to sea level (in about an hour) where conditions were very tropical. Wind was gone, humidity in the 90s, temp in the low 30degC…. But we still had periods of rain.
I really defy anyone to design clothing that can handle this range of conditions!
Anyway, with our bodies reeling from the dynamic conditions we made it to the Panama boarder and stopped for the night in a smallish town ready to cross the boarder the next morning.