(34) Salento to Bogota - The end of the Road

I’m writing my last post to the Rhodes on the Road blog on my flight home from Houston to Las Vegas. Our trip has officially come to an end. Neil is on his way back to Alaska and Paxson is with her family in California. The bikes are all crated and in the process of being shipped to me in Las Vegas so I can transport them to my home in Bullhead City, AZ.

It was a two day trip from where I left off on the last post in Salento back to Bogota. The first day was to a town called Melgar. There was some nice mountain riding at the beginning of the day, but then we started to come down out of the mountains and into Melgar which caused the heat to climb again. Things were going well on this day until we hit a major traffic jam in Ibague. After sitting still in town for a while baking in the sun we availed ourselves of the “motorcycle lane” and started to pass all the rest of the cars and trucks. Read motorcycle lane as using the right hand shoulder of the road or if that was too narrow just pulling out into the oncoming lane to pass. This was standard practice for motorcycles for the entirety of our trip. If a motorcycle could fit then that was a motorcycle lane.

In fits and starts we passed stopped vehicles for at least a couple of miles before finally getting to the front of the line and seeing the accident that had blocked the road. A semi truck had rear ended a car and there was a mixture of gas and oil on the road making it extremely slippery for those of us on two wheels. The police were on hand and were not letting anyone going our way past. Some cars were being allowed to pass going the other way though. We realized they were doing this so that the tow trucks could come up the hill and use the oncoming lane to pass the backup of vehicles on the other side of the accident.

All in all we spent about an hour stopped at the front of the backup of vehicles. As we waited more and more motorcycles crowded up to the front. As we waited the highway department had men on hand who got wheel barrows and got dirt from the sides of the road to spread on the gunk on the road to give some traction to people. Eventually the tow trucks got there and began to clear the truck and car from the road. All the motorcycles who were bunched up at the front were allowed to proceed all at once. The first few miles after that were a bit of mayhem as everyone sorted themselves out based on how fast they were traveling. The rest of the trip into Melgar went off without a hitch, however.

The next day (our last day of riding) into Bogota was a short one. We arrived at the same hotel we stayed at when we flew in from Cartegena at the airport because it was close to Cargo Riders, the shipping company we are using to get the bikes back to the US. That afternoon Neil and I pulled our clothes and a couple other minor items off the bikes and repacked the panniers to fit all our riding gear, including Paxson’s. They panniers will stay with the bikes and be shipped with them. So we only took what we need until the bikes are delivered, which is mainly our clothes.

Neil and I met the representative from Cargo Riders the next morning and followed him to their warehouse to drop the bikes off to be crated and then we walked back to the hotel. By the time we were at the hotel I had a message from the shippers saying that the bikes are too tall for the maximum height the crate is allowed to be. In order to get them under that maximum height they front wheel had to be taken off and crated along with the bike and panniers. This isn’t a big deal as far as shipping goes, but adds one more level of things for me to deal with when I pick the bikes up in Las Vegas. The bikes go via LATAM air freight from Bogota to Miami. Then they are transferred to a ground shipper to be trucked from Miami to Las Vegas. The total cost for crating and shipping turned out to be $3,800.

At this time I don’t know who will be doing the land section of the shipping. There are several hurdles I will need to clear once I know that. The first hurdle is whether or not I will be able to take possession of Neil’s bike. It is titled in his name. I don’t know if the shipper will release it to someone other than the vehicle’s owner. I’m listed as consignee for both bikes, but I won’t know for sure until the land shipper is identified and I contact them. If I cannot take possession of his bike then he will need to fly down and get it.

Hurdle number two is, what do I do with the bikes once they are released to me. I don’t know if the shipper will allow me to uncrate them at their location and if they will deal with disposing of all the crating material. I will need to bring tools with me so I can mount the front wheel back on the bike also. I have put a couple feelers out to local Kawasaki dealers to see if they will go pick the bikes up and uncrate them and get them ready to ride, for a fee of course. At this point I haven’t heard back from anyone. I know dealers do that work since all the new bikes they get for sale are crated and need to be uncrated and assembled to go on the showroom floor. I just don’t know if they will do that for other bikes.

Lastly, how do I get two motorcycles back to Bullhead city. Thankfully John came up with the best idea so far for this issue. I will try to rent a U Haul and trailer. Then I can just load both bikes on the trailer and drive them home. I’m really hopping this works out from the U Haul shop in Bullhead. I can’t make any reservations though until I know when they might arrive. You definitely get a feel for what folks in the logistics field do for a living on a trip like this!

Anyway, back to the trip. Since the bikes needed to be dropped off for crating several days before clearing customs and being handed over to LATAM we had time to kill. So we decided to fly out to the town of Leticia on the Amazon River for three nights and two days. I hadn’t realized that Colombia had a border with the Amazon before. Leticia is located right on the border between Colombia and Brazil. Across the river is Peru. You are allowed to freely cross either of these borders without any immigration or passport controls. The only way out from any of the border towns is by boat or plane. You only need to go to immigration if you attempt to leave town by one of those means.

On our first day in town we chose to go to a botanical garden just outside of town. We had a guide take us on a short tour of medicinal plants that are found in the rain forest. That was all done in Spanish so Neil and Paxson had to interpret for me, but it was still pretty interesting. After that we decided to follow one of the marked paths, if you can call finding the yellow X’s painted on various trees in a rain forest marked, and go on a jungle hike. It was very fun trying to find our way through the rain forest this way. I can’t imagine how the early explorers did it if they didn’t have local native guides with them. Had it not been for the tree markings we could easily have gotten lost. In the end all was fine and it was just a nice afternoon hike though.

A nightly occurrence in Laticia is the local population of parakeets coming to roost in the trees of the town’s central park. Each night around sunset thousands of parakeets descend on town and roost in the trees for the night. There are enough of them that many of the tree limbs can be seen to bend under the weight of the birds sitting on them. The noise that all the birds make is amazing. It was loud enough that when walking to dinner near the park we had to almost shout at one another in order to be heard.

Our last day in Laticia was taken up with an hour long trip up the Amazon to Monkey Island. The island has several different monkey species on it, but the one we say were the small squirl monkeys. There are quite a few pictures of them in the gallery. It was a bit touristy but still a fun day. On the way back to Leticia we were able to spot several dolphins in the river as well. All in all it was a nice but quick intro to the Amazon basin.

On our last night in Leticia Neil and Paxson decided we should go to a restaurant that served grubs, as well as normal food. There was nothing for it but Neil decided he had to try them. The restaurant kept a few in a small glass terrarium so you can see them while still alive as well. Neither Paxson nor I were going to have anything to do with eating them! Neil ordered the appetizer, if that term can be applied to grilled bug grubs, and was served up a plate with three of them. He managed to eat all three of them and didn’t seem to be any worse for wear. That is until later that night when I got a text from him saying they didn’t sit well and he had thrown up. By the next morning he was still not feeling too well and threw up a couple more times before we had to pack up and head to the airport for our flight back to Bogota. Thankfully by the time we had to fly he was feeling better and didn’t have any more adverse affects. I think he will have sworn off grubs now though!

So back to Bogota we went and back to the same hotel we stayed in the prior two times in the city. Things were really winding down by this time. Neil and I spent the morning of Paxson’s last day in Colombia doing the paperwork to get our bikes cleared out of Colombia customs. Neil and Paxson went into the city to do some shopping and have dinner while I just stayed at the hotel. While at the hotel I got a text from Serge, the Canadian guy Neil and I met in Baja and then again in Belize. He was in town picking his bike up from the same company we were using after shipping it over from Panama. So he came over to the hotel and I had a couple of beers and lunch with him. He is going to spend a few weeks in Colombia then start heading south and see how things go. This was also Paxson’s last night in Colombia. Neil took her to the airport for her flight home and it was back to just the two of us for our last day in Colombia.

Our flights home didn’t leave until the middle of the night so I arranged a tour yesterday out to the Salt Cathedral. There is a working salt mine in a town about a hour north of Bogota. In one level of the mine that is no longer being worked a Catholic cathedral has been carved out of the rock underground. It’s very impressive. I’m glad we went and it gave us something to do on our last day.

Since the beginning of the trip Neil and I have talked about having a big splurge steak dinner to mark the end of the trip. The original plan was that the dinner would take place in Buenos Aires, but since Bogota is where the trip is ending we managed to find an Argeninian steak house there and had our final meal on the road last night. A good steak and bottle of wine seemed like the way for us to end our adventure together!

We’re both back in the US now making our way home. I don’t know if we will have the chance to go back and finish the parts of our trip that eluded us this time, but regardless it truly has been something that both of us will always remember and be glad we had the chance to make that particular dream come true. Thanks to all of you for following along. Who knows there may be more adventures to come as well.