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Published: April 30th 2016
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After having ridden a motorbike in South America I think that I have to get rid of all the bad habits that I've learned down there such as :
Double yellow lines are not painted on the road as decoration.
Speed limits are not a suggestion.
One way means one way and not anything else.
Overtaking in blind corners or going up hill, just before the crest.
Overtaking on the inside.
And lots more.
Unfortunately I've seen some nasty accidents in which the motorbike riders always catch the short straw, bodies lying under tarps, the other day i saw bus that had hit some poor person.
I saw the front wheel of the bike sticking under under the front of the bus, loads of cops and people milling about.
Having seen that you're careful for a while but soon slip back into the old habits.
Anyway Colombia, apart from it's mad vehicle drivers is a very beautiful country, the Andes are mighty and green and give a great riding experience.
The Colombians are nice and so far no problems.
I spent a couple of days in Quindio, the smallest
state in C., very nice country side and it's also where most of the coffee is grown, very touristic but with the advantage of good lodgings and lots of restaurants.
Not they have particularly good food, you don't go to Colombia for the food, Peru is the place
The final stop on this South American odyssey is Bogota, from where my bike will be shipped to Canada, you only get a 90 day visa here, with a 180 I would have left the bike here and come back in autumn and kept on going north.
The ride from Pereira to Bogota means that you have to cross the western Andes or as as it's called , La Linia, the line is amazing, enough curves to make you drool and a fantastic dramatic landscape, with very steep mountains.
This road is a main artery in Colombia and hence with lots of heavy traffic howling in first gear to get up and braking going down.
Luckily enough there was very little traffic this time, because you can get stuck behind a convoy of buses and lorries and there are not that many places to overtake.
In
these conditions is very nice to have a bike with plenty of power, the distance needed to overtake is very short, especially when traffic rules don't mean anything.
They are investing a lot of money improving the road, loads of tunnels and bridges, anything to flatten out the mountains.
Hopefully they'll keep the old road in good nick for future bikers to enjoy
Shipping a bike from Colombia involves many papers and documents and a zillion copies that have to be notarized, so you have to trek over to the nearest notary and get lots of stamps and also leave a finger print on most docs.
It took six hours to get everything sorted, 15 dollars worth of stamps and signatures.
Now the customs and the narcs will inspect the bike and if everything works out the bike will be in Calgary Sunday night.
I have to sit tight for 2 more days until everything is in order,
And my clients want me to come back to do the odd job so I'm in a bit of a hurry.
To sum this trip, as a whole, it's been very nice indeed with
some odd boring days thrown in, and which is my favourite country then?
My favourite country would have to be made up from various countries, all the beautiful colonial cities of Mexico, the fantastic mountain roads from Ecuador and Colombia, the great wines from Argentina and the food from Peru, Argentina and Mexico and of course all the nice people from all over, no country sticks out.
Next trip will be from Calgary to Dog knows where, i can only leave my bike 6 months in Canada so I'll either have to import it into Canada or ride it back to the US.
Fortunately enough I've found some people on the Adventure rider forum that have offered me a corner of their garages.
I can't make up my mind if Alaska is worth the trip or that I should just do the western states of the US and then either sell the bike or ship it home.
The jury is still out on that and will be for a few months yet.
So after three flights I got to Calgary 15 hours later and was met by Brenda who received with open arms and
6 star hospitality, it's wonderful when you know people like her and my other friends around planet earth.
Then it was just a matter of waiting until monday when the bike arrived in Calgary and take up to Brenda's and Stew's house and go home, back to see my family and back into the hamster wheel of work and normal life, poor me.
The thing was though that the lazy bastards at Air Canada couldn't be bothered to load my bike so it didn't arrive, which complicated things a bit.
So checking Air way Bill numbers and tracking I could see that my bike is on the plane today.
But it'll be tight, the woman at the Canadian customs obviously had a very bad hair day, when I asked her, with a big smile; if they could rush my bike through customs as I have a plane to catch.
No such luck. so we'll see how it works out, but then again Canada is a civilized country so somehow I'll make it, but the bike is uninsured so if I get stopped by the Mounties maybe my stay in Canada will be longer and it'll
be on the courtesy of Alberta's penal system, that would be fun, a week in jail or so.
A Catch 22 moment as well, the bike's title was in the top box and you can't open the crate without customs clearance and as the title was in the crate as well we couldn't get customs clearance........ So the the great dismay to the custom's officer we didn't ask permission but just thought outside the box to get inside.
After bit of gnashing of teeth they let me go.
All went well, the trusted KTM is now at Brenda and Stew's house, albeit in bad company, sundry BMWs and a Harley
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