In Bogota our friend Basil joined us for the next stretch of the journey – on his newly purchased Chinese dirt bike – an AKT TTR200. The little Chinese bike made us a bit nervous: how long would that thing last? would it spectacularly explode and let us stranded in the middle of nowhere? Buying the bike was easy, only the registration was a bit of a hassle, involving going back and forth to various offices because the officials muddled something up. That’s Latin America 🙂
From fresh and breezy Bogota at 3’000m the road south descended into the heat. Christmas was coming up so we decided to head out into the Tatacoa Desert. The trail leading out there was a great sandy ride, followed by camping out in the desert drinking whiskey and singing Xmas songs – well Kate at least. As soon as night fell, we could hear some thunder in the distance and soon after we where in the middle of a large thunderstome holding on to our tent from the inside. It rained heavily the whole night (yes in the desert!) and we where wondering how the riding conditions would be the next day. Early in the morning the rain finaly stoped and we started our muddy ride out of the dessert, which was a swamp by now. Whizzing passed the gigantic cacti while trying to keep the bike upright in the mud was so much fun – definitely a highlight of our journey in Colombia so far!
After the desert isolation we were looking for a nice boxing-day meal – but couldn’t find anything in town. We ended up being served luckwarm-mircrowaved chicken and a cold potato with mayonnaise. Really missing the turkey sandwiches here!
The Trampoline del Diabolo/del Muerte in the south of Colombia is renowned to be on of the most dangerous roads in the world. It turned out to be a rather easy ride with not much traffic. The lovely ride around twisty bends high up into the foggy mountains was followed by spending the night at Laguna de La Cocha and drinking Aguapanela con Queso. Which is basically sugar cane juice with cheese in it! It didn’t taste nice at all..Colombia has definitely not won on the food aspect – but the warm and friendly people, the amazing countryside and epic rides definitely make us want to come back one day!
