Expedition South - Episode I - Colombia

So welcome to the first of what I hope to be many many more online episodes for Expedition South and hopefully the users and the fans will like this a little better than the blog itself so make sure to leave some comments. So in this episode, episode number one, we're going to start in Colombia and we're going to start in the capital city of Bogota which is a great city then we're going to head west to Ibague in the Salento region which is known as the coffee trail and then we're gonna head further south in the Cali known as the salsa capital of Colombia and we're gonna head further south into Pasto near the border with Ecuador and we're gonna have a chance to see Las Lajas as you can see there by the squiggly line which is an awesome awesome sanctuary. So starting off in Bogota, beautiful city, beautiful people and I can tell you everybody needs to visit Colombia at some point in their life. The best thing about this country is the people. Do not be deterred by what you hear on the news with the drugs and stuff it's pretty much non-existent for the average tourist unless you go to the jungle then you might have some issues but like I said the best part about this country are the people and just meeting somebody they'll take you out for a coffee or whatever it is just like this young lady invited me after just meeting her for a few seconds. So finally got back to Colombia and we got our bikes back here in Kawasaki and after a nice long visit with the family we're back and now we're gonna head to the end of the world. So it's amazing the stuff you find in the middle of Bogota well not in the middle but in Colombia. So welcome to the salt cathedral in Colombia. So I highly recommend everybody visit Colombia at some point in their life because it's very amazing. The best thing about this country my favorite thing is probably the people no matter where you go you always find people who who would greet you help you take you places by even asking and the best part is that they call you like my love or my king and they're very very nice and very loving towards anybody including tourists such as myself. It's really cool check it out. Guess what time it is? Desayuno time. So as much as I like Colombia it's a lot of traffic and a lot of pollution. Can't go away to ruin a country huh? Typical day driving in Colombia traffic truck on fire in the back and a boulder in the middle Can't say the day has to start off exciting. It's crazy. So David where uh where are we? Where are we? Yeah we're on the coffee route buddy here in Colombia. That's right yeah and here we are having a candelazo. First brew coffee. Yeah we just stopped down the street here at Juan Valdez's place so that gets some nice pictures of him his villa coffee plantation. So here we are in the valley of Cocora. The world's tallest palm trees in Colombia. So sometimes I like to try different camera angles and it turns out it's pretty cool and kind of gives you a different perspective of what it is to drive a motorcycle through all these amazing places and I hope you can get the feeling of what it is right away in the back but uh sometimes it doesn't quite turn out as you'd expect it to. I had quite a good laugh when I saw this back on the computer. So check this out this is how much I love the country of Colombia. Instead of paying a nice toll road there's a special little a special little uh area for motorcycles and it's free. So thank Colombia for not making us pay like Mexico did 200 or 300 dollars on toll roads. Thank you. Unfortunately traffic tends to be quite an issue with so many motorcycles. Also got a chance to spend some time viewing the beautiful outdoors of Colombia. And that's right welcome to Las Lajas which is uh what I consider to be a very very beautiful place. We're on the border from Colombia to Ecuador and welcome to what I call Dracula's house. Because I imagine this is what Dracula's house would look like if Dracula actually existed or might just might be my imagination. Did I mention that I hate borders because we have all these people that try to get money off you and there's lines and there's paperwork turning in and there's all these different variables that depend. You can go six hours on the border you can go I don't know an hour minimum but it's a pain in the ass either way. So here we are. Bikes. Immigration. Tijuana. Customs as they say in English. It's a big pain in the ass to cross the borders. Is it worth it? Yeah of course it's worth it. You got to do it. Well lucky for me the border crossing from Colombia to Ecuador it was not as bad as I made it sound. But I will say that it's much much easier than border crossings in Central America which take about four to five hours. This one took about an hour and all I did was just hand in some papers get my passport stamped and in I went to the next country which was pretty easy. So that was the end of episode one. I hope everybody enjoyed. Be sure to leave back some feedback. Let me know how you what you guys think about it and see if you guys want more. So stay tuned for the next episodes where you're going to check out some awesome awesome indigenous stuff like these blankets and we're also going to get a chance to visit the center of the world or the equator in Ecuador. So until then thanks for watching and be sure to visit ExpeditionSouth.com for more information, more videos, more pictures and anything else your little heart can desire. So until next time we'll see you then. Thanks again.