Jan 3 rd, Medellin, Colombia to Popayan, Colombia – 800km on route 25

I couldn’t get to sleep the night before. I tossed and turned, it was hot. We were up at 5:30am and on the road by 6:00am.

Natty gave us some Red Bulls and frozen Arepas. I had thawed the arepas overnight so that I could cook them on the cylinder heads as they heated up during the day. Since my failed chorizo experiment I had scavenged a clothes hanger to hold foodstuffs more securely at speed.

My arepas obsession continues

I got us lost pretty thoroughly after we exited the city. It cost us about two hours. I was pissed at myself for my poor judgment. It was already going to be a long day and I just made it longer. The scenery was nice though.

Beautiful wrong turn

We got waived to the side of the road by the police outside of a sketchy city named Florida of all things. These guys were hilarious. They were making fun of each other and me non-stop. I gave them all NPF pins.

When we would get chances to talk to police and military we would ask if the road ahead was safe. They would always say that it was, so we continued.

We made it to Popayan with no other problems.

Cool cops in on the road in Colombia

Check out the National Parkinson Foundation pin on this guy

Jan 4 th, Popayan, Colombia to ????, Ecuador – 400km on route 25

We wanted to go from Popayan, Colombia to Quito, Ecuador. It didn’t happen that way.

The last few hundred kilometers in Colombia took us up into the magnificent Andes. The pictures don’t do the scenery justice, they never do.

Beautiful valleys

Isaac heading into a tunnel

This was a pit stop where they washed eighteen wheelers

Once we found the Colombian border it took us about 5 hours to get stamped out of the country. The holidays again slowed us down to a crawl. There were four windows open to stamp over five hundred people through! It sucked. We took turns in line.

Every once in awhile someone would get caught trying to cut in the gigantic line. When this happened every one in all the lines would start chanting “Cola” which means line in Spanish. Now when all five hundred people would do this it sounded pretty intimidating. Whoever got busted was banished to the back of the line. It was loud and would erupt at a moments notice but it was very good natured.

Isaac was in line and I was outside reading and watching our bikes. Two more BMW’s pulled along side with Colombian plates.

These guys were going to Quito and coming back this way the next day. They did not have time for this. They managed to get an audience with the director of this royally screwed up border and get themselves stamped out of Colombia.

After these guys were free to go they stayed for another hour or so to try and get us the same treatment. It didn’t work so they took off and said they would save us places in line at the Ecuadorian border.

If you look up the stairs you can see the outer edge of the crowd

To make a long story short even with the help of the Colombian bikers we paid $25 each and didn’t get through the Ecuadorian border until after 10pm. The Colombians wanted to continue on to Quito and asked if we wanted to come. We declined not seeing the point in killing ourselves riding in the dark until 2am.

We found a residencia in this cool little logging town. It was our only option. It was dark, cold, we were tired, and it was raining.

We woke the crazy woman who ran this place up at midnight