It was exciting and scary to finally be on the road. I had no time to ease into my trip because within 20 seconds of leaving my hotel I was pulling into traffic chaos. This is a pretty regular occurrence for me. While there appears to be no real rules there is some sort of flowing system which works and I’m finally getting the hang of it. It’s sort of like walking on the footpath in Melbourne CBD. Lots of people walking in different directions, going left, going right, coming in and out of buildings, turning corners and crossing busy roads. But not crashing into each other. And they’re not wearing safety gear. I accidently snapped a selfie when I was mounting my phone on the bike, You can just see my $450 prescription safety glasses the Australian taxpayers bought me. I only wore them twice in Antarctica but everyday over here, They’re perfect. Thankyou.

As I was on the south side of the city it only took me about 20 mins to get out onto the open road. That’s where all the speeding trucks and buses hang out. As I have mentioned before and probably will again you need to focus 100% all the time when you are on a motorbike over here. The first few times I crossed double lines I felt guilty and was worried about getting caught. Now, like all the other motorbikes, I don’t even notice what type of line it is. As long as I can get around the vehicle in front of me and back in again then it’s safe to pass.

The road between Cartagena and Medellin was pretty reasonable. Sometimes it was nice dual carriageway but other times the dual carriageway was funnelled onto your side or vice versa and often without warning. Other times it was simple a single lane in each direction and moving at a snail’s pace. I generally find google estimates that you can travel at about 50kms an hour in Colombia and that seems about right. Although it’s a bit quicker on a bike. There’s not really a lot of roads to choose from because of all the big mountains everywhere. A couple of hours into my ride I found a nice little town with a mini Sydney Harbour Bridge and had lunch there.

To be on the safe side, you know me, I had prebooked my accommodation for the first night in a city called Monteria. The Ayenda Hotel Alejandria was $25AUD a night and the reviews said it was a nice enough place but in a bad area. How wrong was that. It was slap bang in the middle of all the hardware stores and motorbike shops and mechanics and ironmongers. It was awesome. And tradie food on every corner. Perfect. The room was very small but nice. No window but safe bike parking which is one of my main priorities.

It was great walking around all the places around the hotel and checking stuff out and watching people create things from scratch. But I did tourist things too. Like many towns in Colombia, and I guess the world, Monteria was built along the river. The River Sinu is 415kms long and is Colombia’s third biggest river. It’s fast flowing and has these great little passenger ferries that get people and supplies across the river without motors. They are called Los Planchones or River Planks.  They are boats, which are about the size of a minibus, that are connected at the front by a pulley, to a cable that stretches from one riverbank to the other. The ferryman pushes the boat out into the river with a long pole and straight away the current tries to drag the boat down stream but it can’t because its tethered to the cable. He then pulls on the boats big rudder which forces the boat to move sideways while still facing upstream. It only takes a few minutes and costs a few pesos to get across. Such a cool idea but very difficult to photograph.

Upstream a bit I came across a sand and gravel yard on the side of the river. There were two types of long wooden boats bringing in the supplies. The smaller ones had a 3 man crew and no motor and the larger ones had more crew and an outboard on the back. I stayed and watched for a while but it didn’t seem appropriate to take photos so I just have one I took from the road. The boats were so full when they arrived, and sitting just above the waterline and the crew were busy bucketing out the water that was leaking in or washing over the top. They would then shovel out all the sand or gravel on to the shore where trucks would back up and another set of guys would manually fill the big tip trucks with shovels. Labour intensive and they guys were super fit. No gym for them at night.

There were a few statues and a church but who’s interested in that sort of stuff when there’s so much interesting technical stuff to watch.

The next day I headed towards Medellin and knew I would need to stop somewhere along the way as I didn’t want to arrive there early evening. I hadn’t done any research and just rode in the general direction. A few hours later I was starting to get a sore bum, stiff neck and sore shoulders, so I decided that the first decent looking hotel I come to after 3:00 pm would be where I would stay for the night.

At 3:01 this little roadside hotel restaurant popped up. They had a nice room with an amazing view but no window looking out over it. Except for a tiny hole in the bathroom wall for ventilation. Obviously, they think the view is normal and not amazing. It was lovely and clean and only $20AUD. The town of Valdivia was perched high on the hill behind it and overlooking my hotel. I sorted my stuff and went up for a walk. It was almost a hands and knees crawl up to the main street but well worth the climb. I thought I’d climbed through some time portal and found myself in a hillside village in Europe. It was so lovely.

There was one main street along the ridgeline which was dominated by this lovely church with an amazing domed roof. There were people sitting on the steps and people inside praying and the street was busy with locals doing local stuff. Lots of little cafés and shops. I think I was the only tourist there. I took a heap of photos and tried to avoid photographing any of the soldiers who seemed to be everywhere. Except for when I sat down for a beer and snapped a sneaky photo of their truck. I carefully head back down the hill to my accommodation. Making sure I didn’t slip as there was no way you could stop once you started rolling.

That night I decided just to have some fresh cake and a couple of beers for dinner. Next morning I had breakfast with my motorbike who’d spent the night safely inside the restaurant. The ladies in the kitchen were lovely and fried me up a couple of eggs which I ate as I watched all the trucks and buses pass the roadhouse. 15 minutes later I was on the road chasing them down and overtaking them one by one on the windy and windy road to Medellín.

I had prebooked my accommodation in Medellín in a different part of town to where I had stayed when I’d flown over there a month earlier. I think it’s a lot nicer to prebook the big cities as its hard enough just following a route through town without having to keep my eye out for somewhere to stay. Having been to Medellin before made it a lot easier to pre choose a place to stay and to get around once I was there. I had a list and was ready to go.

On a side note, spell check grammar always wants me to delete the word pretty. But I like being a pretty writer and I find it pretty funny.