Saturday Mar. 17, 2007
It was raining, I was tired and I had just rolled into another small city looking for a hotel when a guy and his son pull up beside me in a car and start firing off questions about motos and hotels - in Spanish. After pulling over and talking for a bit I realized that he's the proud new owner of an 8-day old V-Strom 650, has family that own a few hotels in town and will come by the hotel in the morning on his bike to show me around.
Turns out that Fernando Reyes is the real thing - a true motorcycle brother who wanted to do anything possible to make sure I was safe, comfortable, and enjoying his city and country. He was one of those incredibly friendly Colombians I'd heard about from other people who've been here. After meeting the guys in Pereira and now Fernando, I changed my plans of leaving Colombia within the next few of days.
Popayan is a nice little city with some real character in the older areas. A few of the old buildings were beautifully restored, and the school has a detailed mural facade made up from millions of tiny square tiles. My hotel was on a quaint little street and was very comfortable.
Fernando invited me to ride north about 200 kms (124 mi) with him to the larger city of Cali on Thursday for the weekly big bike night. We rode through several tall sugar cane fields, passed a huge land-train full of them, and later, when we got to Cali I would have my first drink made from squeezed sugar cane. Mmmmm.
We arrived in Cali early so that he could show me some of the sights. There was an impressive sculpture in the center of a large traffic circle, a huge statue of Jesus on a hilltop that was blanketed in lights (impressive at night), an interesting bar front with US Presidents like Mt. Rushmore, and a very ornate church. We stopped into a modern mall full of high-end fashion stores for a break from the heat and I spotted a pair of designer rubber boots in one store.
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He introduced me to the guys at the small Suzuki Super Store who sell new Suzukis and accessories. It was here we gathered with some 50 other Suzuki owners around 9 pm before heading to an Esso gas station that was completely packed with other big bikes at 11pm. For some reason, I saw only 2 BMWs and a few other Japanese bikes. It seemed that Suzuki was the brand of choice around here. After a huge group ride through the city (breaking just about every imaginable traffic law in my country), we ended up spending the night at his nephew's apartment.
The next day, when we got back to Popayan my parking spot in the hotel's garage was filled by a tattered looking and unusual BMW GS850 with British plates. It belonged to be a young guy named Mike from England who was staying in the room next to mine. After shipping his bike to Buenos Aires, Mike spent the last year riding to Ushuaia and then north to here before finishing his loop of South America up to Venezuela and then back to Rio De Janeiro.
After talking to several people about Colombia and getting to know a few Colombians, I felt far more comfortable here than when I arrived. And after purchasing a new worldmap program that includes street level detail for most cities developed by another overlander (for use on Garmin GPSs), I also needed to buy a new GPS, which I thought would be easier in the larger cities of Colombia than further south. So I decided to head back north to see more of this interesting country before leaving.
I contacted Randy, who I'd met at the Bogota airport also trying to get his bike released from the cargo terminal. He lived in Cali and had just finished a 2 month trip on his new V-Strom 650 from Cali to Buenos Aires. He invited me to stay with him while I looked for a new GPS, and Mike said he'd meet me there in a few days.
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