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Published: July 24th 2010
Well I made it to the coast. Its been a while since I last posted, but screw it ive been enjoying myself. I am writing this from a hammock on the beach in Atacames (a small town on the coast of Ecuador), sipping a pina colada under a palm tree, all with full access to WiFi! I love the 21st century.
I think I finally figured out how to embed pictures in this blog thing. If it worked, above should be my current view... Its cloudy currently, but thats actually a good think. I am still nursing the rather intense sunburn I managed to pick up the day before yesterday. Clouds are perfectly fine with me.
Anyway, thats a few posts in the future. Back to Bogata:
If you thought DMVs in the states are a pain in the ass, you have no idea. Colombia takes the whole thing to a rather extreme level. Turns out that country has some of the strictest regulations in the world when it comes to driving, especially when it comes to motorcycles. That being said though, all these regulations seem to boil down to additional fees that must be paid, without actually translating into tangible benefits for drivers (they drive like crazy people here...).
Let me explain, as this took me a good week before everything was finally taken care of. I went to the motorcycle center of Bogota (a good 5 blocks long! Ive never seen so many bikes in my life) to try and find a bike. After looking around and talking to several people, I finally decided that before actually purchasing anything, I should discuss regulations with someone who actually knows what they are talking about. I headed to the US embassy (half way across the city) to try and figure out what I needed.
The Embassy was entirely unhelpful, but I did find the number for the department of transportation of Colombia. After a rather lengthy conversation with one of the fastest spanish speakers I have ever heard (I eventually gave up and turned the phone over to a rather helpful old couple) I decided to head over the the department itself to get a more clear description. Turns out that a regular car license is not sufficient to drive a motorcycle. I think this is the same in the states, and if I had brought a license along I could probably have avoided the entire process.
Instead I spent the next two days getting medical tests, taking classes (actually just paying for them... no attendance required. I was told I was an excellent student...) and paying rather exorbitant sums for the license itself. And this was done entirely in Spanish! There are a lot of words rather essential to this process that are not part of a standard Spanish curriculum... Lets just say I know the word “firma” very (very) well at this point.
All told, I think I probably could have bribed my way through every police checkpoint and across every border in south America for about the same price! I was promised though that this will be all I need to drive anywhere I want in south america. This turned out be be a load of crap as soon as I got to Ecuador, but more on that later.
And thats not even including the stuff I needed for the motorcycle itself. Once I finally chose and received a bike (I ended up getting it from a mechanic that had to literally reconstruct the thing before I could use it... took several more days), I had to buy insurance for a year (required in Colombia), a rather large helmet (they have size regulations for different classes of bikes! Wtf), and get this truly awesome reflective vest with my plate number plastered all over the thing. I think a good 30 percent of what I spent on the bike was on this kind of crap... you know, stuff I can't actually get back when I sell the bike. What a money hole.
The vest confused me for a little while. I mean sure, it helps with visibility of motorcycles, but given the complete lack of driving law enforcement in south america, something like this seemed kind of out of place. I finally had someone who spoke English explain it to me a week or so later; apparently motorcycles have been the favored form of transportation for terrorist hit-men (kind of makes sense, as there is no faster way to move around a city than by motorcycle...). When you have your license plate number plastered across your back in large reflective letters, its a little harder to pull something like that off without consequence.
It has been rather satisfying every time I go through a police checkpoint though and they can find absolutely nothing wrong with me (and there have been several of those). Take that police, I'm freakin legit! No bribes for you this time! Yeah.
I ended up spending almost a week longer in Bogota than I intended, but it was all worth it when I finally got out on the road. I forgot how much I love driving a motorcycle around. That is for the next post though.
Since I finally figured out how to embed pictures (thanks photobucket), I thought I would include a few from around Bogota:
Some street in downtown Bogota.
I decided to go up this tram thing to the top of a mountain in Bogota. The view was rather excellent.
City views going up.
The view from the top. The light was kind of cool.
Some of that graffiti I mentioned.
The small streets of the Candelaria.
Some random church. I think Waldo lives here.
This guy had one of the roundest heads I have ever seen, and an inexplicable hatred of the dutch. That thing hes drinking out of use to be an ice bucket, until he decided it would better serve as an enormous screwdriver holder. Made that particular world cup game that much more interesting though...
Motorcycle central. This went on for several streets.
Me becoming poor. It is kind of cool to carry around over a million of anything though. I love this exchange rate (1,000,000 pesos is about $500). Hopefully i'll get most of that back eventually.
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doug eby
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modernism
So, you say you love the modern life...i would like to introduce you to a modern invention -- sunscreen. Turns out if you smear a bit of if on the skin, extreme sunburn is averted! Enjoy....