The Adventure Has Finally Begun S21 EP4.

And eventually, Monday morning, early morning, we will go on the border. Today is our first real travel day direction Venezuelan border or from Columbia side, Cucuta. To continue climbing. See the fog. So luckily no traffic, good. The idea is to get out as soon as possible. I got the right track. I found something strange. It used to be easy to see everything on the map, especially the numbers of the road. Now I'm getting old. I need some time to find it. But anyway, the map is here to control me. I saw that we have to go direction Buga, Armenia and a few more towns. I can see them on the map. So I know that everything is alright. And after so many days here in Cali, waiting at that balcony, all the documents to be ready. I cannot even express now how wonderful I feel to move again, finally to start this long journey. You can see three GSS travelers, I guess because they don't look like locals. This is where you can pass on the highways check-ins. It's free for motorcycles. Alright, now you can see here under the bridge and left to Buga. So from here we should be perfectly fine just with the map. Of course I have my GPS on. In the case I need it, I can always activate it. But it's not going to be needed most of the time, so I can save the battery and concentrate on the road looking on the signs. You can see how the bikes look like with the luggage. The weight in each one of our saddlebags, I don't think it's more than 10 kilograms. So it is perfectly fine for these light motorcycles. Still on the same highway, but it changed a bit. It goes up, down, beautiful views, green everywhere. It's around 20 degrees, perfect for riding. You feel some shakes in the front wheel. Interesting. Let's have a stop here for a while look at this. Nice, huh? Nice atmosphere, I like it. Water tank, I guess collecting the rain water. Yeah, nice coffee on the road. We're gonna have tea. Muchas gracias senora, muchas gracias. Adios! This was really nice stop. Nice people, even though they don't have tea. We just saw some interesting things. Let's continue now. This is the first big town that we saw on the road so far. Not that big, but still town. 270 kilometers so far and I still have two marks here with the petrol, so we're gonna definitely have like 300-350 kilometers with one tank, which is 13.5 liters. Very good. Still on this highway. I guess after 50-60 kilometers more it will be double lane into the mountains. Should be way more interesting. I guess that these are the very poor neighborhoods. It's good that all of these roads are free for motorcyclists, otherwise every 50 kilometers we have to stop and pay. But yes, it's free for motorcycles. This now is Pereira, big town. All right, of course some traffic. I made a mistake, so now I have to correct it, but I don't know from where. So we got the right way. A little difficult, but right way. Full, maximum. Next to the petrol station, improvised garage with a lift, so after the petrol station you can go there. This guy will change your oil for no time and you're good to go. And I guess stations like that we can find many in Colombia. So nice. Right after Pereira we attack the mountain. Good. Very interesting loop, like a spiral. We go on a different level now. I see so green everywhere. Wonderful road. So far so good, but when I see the mountain over there and the fog on the top, I guess that it will be a heavy rain if we go to that direction, but more or less wonderful like this. We start climbing. Today is our first real travel day direction Venezuelan border or from Colombian side Cucuta. So now we just left a town named Manizales and heading east direction Bogota. We're not gonna go into Bogota, we're gonna go around it, but the road that we've got now, oh man, wonderful. We can see what it is. Perfect road condition, twisting like a crazy. Of course, 20 or 30 horsepower more will be lovely, but we don't have it, so we have what we have. We're gonna deal with what we have at the moment. So far we did like almost 300 kilometers and what is interesting that the motorcycles used for 300 kilometers less than nine liters. I cannot tell you exactly because everything here is in gallons, but around nine liters, so less than three liters per 100 kilometers. So they are very very economical and the price of the petrol here is around one dollar, so it's really easy and cheap to travel. The whole road from Cali to Cucuta is 1200 kilometers. The plan is to ride today as maximum as possible. Now is what it is 12 30 lunch time and we already have got like 300 kilometers, so the plan is to ride around 600 kilometers or half of this road and then stop for overnight and then on the next day continue. And eventually, Monday morning, early morning, we will go on the border. See, now you can see these Hondas in action. Actually, they are very stable for such small motorcycles with such thin tires. They are perfectly fine. Yeah, you have to change a little bit more gears, but I honestly don't mind. Go like this, like this and going up. Continue climbing, see the fog. Nice, huh? It became cold here, probably around 10 degrees. I closed my ventilation, but we go even higher. So, I guess that on the top will be at least 3500, maybe 4000 meters, 3681 meters elevation. Perfect, perfect asphalt, look at this. We just discussed that on some places it is better even than Alps. We just crossed this mountain, 3600 meters, 670 meters, and going down on the other side. Another perfect view. This was excellent stop. It was very difficult to say to this lady that we want tea, so even the Google translator did not help us. So, finally, she came here and brought me some real peppermint tea from here. So, we got a real peppermint tea. Yes, yes, yes. Peppermint, mint, mint. Yes, very good. So, she got this real peppermint and we have a real... So, we have a real peppermint tea on this wonderful views here. We have some lunch and we are ready to continue. We still have like almost 300 kilometers to cover, so we have to be as efficient as possible, as usual. Muchas gracias. 20 to 2 and we've got 360 kilometers. We'll have like four hours daylight, so I hope that we'll be able to make it. We are very close to Bogota, but we are not going into the town. We go left before the town and take direction Kukuta and eventually find a place to sleep. This is a small town very close to Bogota. Very interesting place. This is the hotel that we found in last moment. The motorcycles are parked here. They have a security guard here and we park the motorcycles over there. And by the way, this is our room. This is the window of our room here. So, they are under our and hotel protection. And the hotel cost a little less than 20 dollars for both of us and we can order food for another five dollars each. So, we're gonna eat it here, which is good. This is the room. This is Paco working on the telephone. Two big beds. There is a bathroom with the light. Okay. It's not bad at all. See the shower? Good. Today we had 550 kilometers in exactly 13 hours. Exactly 13 hours. It looks like most of the days is going to be like that until we cross Brazil. Then we can slow down, but now we cannot afford because the raining season in Brazil will start at every moment and we want to be there before that. We have to improvise. Beef, not really good. Good to go. We just ordered it here in the hotel. Potatoes, beer, not really good, but we'll do the job. Good morning. It is six o'clock. Last night we slept like dead logs. The dinner was not good, but we had some dinner and as you already know the motorcycles were here, parked on this spot and early morning we had a big vehicle here, so we cannot move it out. Luckily, the guy from the hotel gave me the room number, so I woke up this person. He moved the car and we were ready to go. Today we have to reach Cucuta, which is like almost 500 kilometers away from here. So this will be our road going through the mountain. It should be beautiful road as yesterday or maybe even better because we might go to even higher. As I can see the peaks here 4000-5000 meters, so let's see. Adios! It's a bit chilly at the moment, probably around, I don't know, 10 degrees, maybe even less, so I have my rain gear on the top. We started with this highway, but even the highways are pleasure to ride here because they have beautiful views, curves here and there, so it's a big lake. Okay, this will be perfectly fine for us. We have croissants and tea and, of course, beautiful view. Have a look at this, looks like Switzerland. This is really nice. See this monument? There is a stairs and observation point on the end. Nice! Temperature drops a lot, it's very cold here, no heated grips, thick gloves, but it's all right, it will be for a short period of time. Became even colder now, I changed the gloves, probably below 10 degrees. We finally changed the road to a normal double lane. Highway was good, but it was too cold, but we gained some progress, 160 kilometers already and it is still quarter to nine. Very beautiful, very beautiful. Have a look now at this big truck. When it goes left, rear wheels are in the middle of the opposite line. When he goes right, the rear wheels are in the middle of the other line. No other options, they are too big for here. What a wonderful long curves with good visibility, very nice, and the mountain around. It's time to make a little break. Okay, okay, real pleasure to ride here, real pleasure. Over there is at least 4,500 meters, and the area we came was probably around 4,000. I didn't stop to check, I checked a little bit lower, was 3,000 meters, and now we are going down. It's getting hot again, so I removed the winter gloves and rain gear. Here is extremely, extremely hot, so big difference with the early mornings and now, even though it's like 11 o'clock, still not even lunchtime. All right, let's continue.