Bogota, Columbia – April 1

We climbed Montserrat this morning to get the birds-eye-view of the City.  We didn’t really “climb” the mountain as many penitent locals were doing – we rode the funicular up, and took the cable car down.  There is a monastery and church atop the mountain, and the walk from the funicular to the peak includes statues depicting the stations of the cross.  Semana Santa and Easter are a big deal for the devout here, so we didn’t want to linger as tourists and interfere with the ceremonies.

Montserrat with the Iglesia just visible atop. The funicular. The tram was built in the 1920’s, and includes an 800' foot long tunnel. Bogota from above.  Around the grounds… Descent via cable car.

We wandered La Candelaria for the rest of the day, looking at the old colonial architecture and streetlife.  At the Plaza de Bolivar, the National Congress has been adorned with giant ants by Colombian artist Rafael Gomez Barros.  The ants are meant to symbolize the people displaced by the continuing armed conflict between the government, FARC, and right-wing paramilitary groups. The eastern edge of the square is defined by the Primate Catedral, built between 1807 and 1823. Along the northern edge is the Palace of Justice, built in the early 1990’s after the original building was destroyed in a 1985 battle between government troops and a guerrilla group known as M-19, in which more than 100 people died including 11 Supreme Court Magistrates.The western edge of the square houses a French style building known as the Liévano building which is the seat for Bogota’s Mayor.We grabbed dinner at "La Mona Pizza" – delicious thin crust pizza with roast peppers, grilled chicken, and ricotta cheese – and some “magnificent” artwork!

La Mesa to Bogota – March 31

We were on the road by 6:30am and covered the 60km’s to El Dorado Aeropuerte by 8:30am despite rush hour traffic and a bit more rain.  We’ve been warned that organizing the bike shipment will take at least 6 hours with administrative paperwork, customs paperwork, policia paperwork, security inspections, customs inspections and clearances, and finally narcotics inspection – se we are prepared for a lot of waiting around.
There is an added pressure as the administration staff and customs staff are leaving at 2pm for the holidays.  If we don’t get our paperwork done before then, the bikes may not fly until next Monday.
It took until 5:30pm to get everything settled, including some last minute scrambling by our shipping agent Nicolas Landinez, but we are set for the bikes to fly out tomorrow morning at 4am.

We took a cab into centro Bogota to find a Hotel from where we can explore La Candelaria tomorrow.

Palmira to La Mesa – March 30

Another long ride to accomplish today as we continue to try to get to Bogota for the 31st, in order to ship the bikes to Panama.  There is a new imperative, as the Colombian and Panamanian customs are closed for the Easter holidays from April 1st to April 5th.  That was a bit of bad news as it means we will not be back on the road in Panama until next Monday at the earliest.  If we can get the bikes on there way to Panama tomorrow, we’ll at least make the best of the time and spend a couple days exploring in each of Bogota and Panama City.

We covered ground well for the first part of the days ride.  The road to Bugalagrande was mostly divided highway with minimum two lanes in each direction.  Beyond there, however, we were into very steep mountain terrain with many tight and steep switchbacks.  What should have been a fun ride was made very challenging, first due to the incredible volume of trucks on the road (it’s the only significant road to Bogota from Cali), and secondly by a fairly constant rain.

The trucks have so much difficulty on the hairpins, they often require the oncoming lane in order to negotiate the corner, and coupled with the incredible grade they move at a snails pace of 10 to 15 kmh developing long lines of traffic behind them.  We were able to benefit a lot from the acceleration and nimbleness of the motos in combination  with our headset radios to keep each other informed about oncoming traffic – and with patience were able to get clear of the congested sections.  It was a tough ride for many though, as we saw one bus on it’s side in a curve, two cars in a collision in another spot, and Petra had an oncoming motorcyclist drop his bike and slide across her path in a switchback!
We stopped in Armenia at a beautiful road side cafe (with wifi!) and enjoyed an excellent cafe tinto and snack – this section of road is known as the “coffee highway”.  We knew that lunch was unlikely to be on the agenda due to our pace and distance to cover.
The  rain eased between Armenia and Ibague, but was steady again from Ibague to Girardot where we left the main highway (unintentionally at first) and headed for La Mesa.  Traffic dissipated to almost nothing, so we soon realized something was up – but after checking the GPS and maps we figured since the road was dry and less populated we would make better time, and we would be coming into Bogota from the north right past the airport where we need to be for 9am.
At La Mesa we had only 60km to reach Bogota, so we stopped for the night knowing that we could easily reach the airport on time with an early start the next day.