Equator to Botoga
Added on Wednesday, May 12th, 2010 by Carole Nash Editor
Equator to Botoga
It was good to be on the equator again and to be at my usual hacienda when I pass through Ecuador. The next day I rode with the riders up and higher along the shoulders of the Andes, which are a constant presence. By noon we were all at the Ecuadorian Colombian border, a friendly and efficient frontier, well, more so than some African countries I’ve entered. The paperwork took 15 minutes a rider but that still meant over four hours from start to finish and I knew we would not make our scheduled hotel stop in Popayan. I told Erik and Roy to look after the riders to Pasto, a town somewhat nearer and that I would ride ahead and find a new hotel.
The next day the first 100kms were ridden in soft warm rain. The mountains were so intense that canyons sunk down to the centre of the earth, bottomless almost, and the tops pierced the clouds. The route wound and dipped, curved and dropped then climbed and did it all again.
150 kms before Popayan the mountains receded along with the rain, the surface dried and the curves were feminine and curvaceous. Up down and around about, it was all so lovely. Colombia had turned jungle and black. The girls were so svelvt and sexy and the men wore gentle kind smiles. Flame Boyante flowed into the road along with tree ferns and Yuka. Next to restaurants made entirely of bamboo, yellow, red and orange flowers of Bird of Paradise lined the edges of neatly kept lawns. 160 kms from Pasto the rain stopped and I sat in one of these charming restaurants in the Valle de Patias. Clive and Rob rode past me as I enjoyed a cafe con leche quickly followed by Erik in the support truck.
After Popayan the route straightened and on the Cali road it became completely without any bends, bisecting massive plantations of sugarcane in what has become an agricultural hinterland. The air is full of music calling from small houses and cafes and once again I am riding along. I like my clients but I have to admit to preferring my own company. Any biker would say the time because as soon as we put on that helmet we are alone with our thoughts.
In time the light began to fade and as I approached Armenia on the way to that nights destination at Ibagues, it began to rain once again. This time I was in the epicentre of a storm, electric flashed waking up an otherwise moribund sky. The rain was so think it made it hard to ride and the road began once again to wind and climb. The last 50 kms took an eternity. The pass was extreme and climbed into the cloud base and then on the other side I plunged through the mist and into the small city and my hotel.
It was already like some repetitive chant, but once again we got up early, had our breakfast and after some small briefing from myself, we would set off once again on the road. Being still so close to the equator, you could almost tell the time at the point when day broke. Again it was also raining, hard. A storm had blown in strongly once again and the road had become a river. Trucks and buses slowed and it reminded me how much harder the journey would have been had the forecasted weather held true. For weeks a thick band of rain had fallen over northern parts of South America and for one wet hour we were brandishing ourselves to the heavens, watery warriors wanting to be dry when suddenly the rain stopped as quickly as it had begun.
That afternoon we were sorting out the paperwork with the air freighting company which was progressing incredibly quickly. I had scheduled up to a week to fly our bikes and ourselves from Bogota to Panama but it looked like we’d accomplish this in half that time. If we were 8 days behind on our least optimistic schedule, it looked now as if we would claw back three days. The custom declarations for the bikes was processed faultlessly and pending a final police inspection the following morning they would all fly within two days of our arrival. I spoke to the boss of the handling agents in Panama City, Jorge, and he said that the bikes would be through customs in an hour, perhaps as early as nine in the morning on Thursday. If, however this was to be true, then we really would make up three of the five days lost in Buenos Aires along with the two days delayed because of Jon’s fall and other small mishaps.
I grabbed a taxi with Caroline and Erik and when we got to the hostel, there was an air of general discontent. It is strange but whenever I explain why we have to resort, very occasionally, to basic accommodation, it’s accepted superficially but is not liked. I have always refused purchasing high cost city centre accommodation as it represents poor value for money and spend more extravagantly outside of seriously urban areas. I have had many a conversation with riders on my projects and the discussion goes like this:
Me - ‘there will some fantastic hotels that slope down to the sea with superb amenities and just occasionally there will be low grade hotels with clean sheets and hot water, can you cope with that?’
The rider - ‘Ah no problem Nick, just give me a bench to lie on and something to cover me and I’ll sleep anywhere pal’. ‘Ah,’ I think to myself, ‘this poor deluded fellow doesn’t know himself as well as he thinks he does.’ Because when it happens I get a slightly different reaction.
I admit to being disheartened sometimes by some riders on my expeditions. After four nights of superb over-nighting, I economise by purchasing rooms that are appreciably of lesser quality. City centre locations out here are either cheap or expensive and all we needed was a clean bed for the night and a hot shower. I was waiting for that mind shift and it began to dawn on me that this would take longer than I thought. Still, as an expeditionary group they were worth the wait. The general riding skills were of a very high standard and their ability to find end of day locations was unexpectedly excellent. Sure there was little interaction with local people but again, much of the day was spent riding and the evening was needed for recovery. I saw projects like this as a stepping stone towards real self discovery and was looking forward to seeing if that might happen.
That night I was quiet. The riders were responding to the lodgings negatively. The idea that this was a journey for adventure and not tourists was not being accepted by everyone. The following morning we all had to go back to the airport to sort out more custom finalities. Although the arrangement was to be there at eight in the morning, Caroline and I were 26 minutes late and everyone thought we had been screwing and didn’t give a damn about the clients…well, that particular morning we were up at six, I was on the phone to my freighters in the UK. Treicy St John in Colon was preparing to expedite my back-up vehicle out of customs but money transfer issues had arisen. Payment by cash, credit card or bank transfer was forbidden so I needed to get Will at Trans Global in Southampton to clarify the situation. Treicy said that we would have to get a bus from Panama City to Colon to sign papers with her and that meant flying out that night. Meanwhile I had also called the freighting airline at the airport to initiate the next phase of the transfer of bikes from South to Central America. I called Erik to ask Aviatur, a company selling passenger places, to hold on to what were effectively $10 000’s worth of tickets, which if that morning police investigation proved difficult I would lose the lot and have to re-book.
I sent several emails to Tony at my US freighters in Grand Prarie, Texas discussing sending bikes from Newark to the UK earlier than planned. Some riders were tiring, some had sudden pressing personal problems and that had to be accommodated. On the way to the airport the traffic was slow and when we arrived the mood from the riders was thick with blackness. It made me feel I had treacle on my boots. One rider thought our lateness not acceptable at which point Caroline exploded and said exactly what she thought, “How dare you,” she said. Quite.
I am more forgiving than she but in her capacity as a senior partner in her own practice administering to over 26 000 patients, she told me a lot of them are recidivists and child-like. I like my clients, really, and try and understand their frustrations. I understand things they don’t because I know the ways of peoples in faraway places and not everyone does. Dr Taylor, in her professional capacity has known people sign for a project like this without really knowing who they are.
Meanwhile as the riders kicked their heels doing what real travellers have to do, wait, I dashed over to the ticket seller by cab. The offices were very posh, like a bubble in a poor neighbourhood, and were protected at the lovely glass front door by a man with a pump action shot gun. Inside one of the many offices, manned by attractive, polite and obviously intelligent people, Erik and I sat and also did what travellers do, and waited. Everywhere there was carpet, even up the side of their desks. We decided that when the girls in nice floral dresses and men in white shirts and ties went completely mad, they would not hurt themselves as they banged their heads on something soft.
