Colombia

Wednesday 28th April 2010

Bogotá Airport

0 Miles

I woke up this morning feeling a little under the weather; it must have been something I ate. It’s 3pm and I’m waiting in Bogota airport for the flight to Panama at 6pm. The bikes should already be on their way. We will have two nights in Panama, so hopefully we will see the famous canal.





Tuesday 27th April 2010

Bogota

0 Miles

We arrived at the cargo terminal at 8am sharp to start the customs procedure. We were not amused that Nick and Caroline didn’t bother getting there till nearly 9am. Thing didn’t move very quickly at all. Paperwork was required for each bike and had to completed across the road at another office. This was taking too long so they decided to bring the paperwork back over to where the bikes were. The last part of the proceeding was a police inspection of the bikes which involved opening all our bags for the sniffer dog to inspect. We eventually left the airport at 3.30pm.

Shortly after arriving back at the hovel we went out for a few drinks and food. I think I might have had one too many.



Monday 26th April 2010

Ibague to Bogota

130 Miles

Total PanAm miles 9720

Ibague – shit hole, like so many of the towns we’ve stopped in. The hotel was ok but in a grim part of town. We left at 8 o’clock in the morning in the pouring rain and slowly made our way to Bogota. Luckily the weather cleared up during the morning. We arrived at Bogota at lunchtime. Another grim looking city. The traffic here is chaos, making it difficult to make progress and stay in a group. We were guided part of the way by a doctors car with flashing lights, not that it helped us much. With chaotic traffic and allot of road works it took ages to find the correct area of the airport. Eventually we found it and soon we were preparing our bikes for air freight.

With the first part of the paperwork sorted we waited to put our bikes in the loading bay, this involved riding up a wooden ramp which looked a bit tricky. Jason road quite a few of the bikes up the ramp because some people were not confident in their ability to do it themselves. Needless to say I rode my own bike up the ramp. The bikes were all weighed, mine weighed 300kg!

The bikes are almost sorted; we have to return to the airport cargo terminal in the morning for the customs inspection. We took a taxi to the hotel, when I say hotel I mean grotty dump. We might look for somewhere better tomorrow. I complained to Caroline about it and she said it looked nice on the internet – beware of the internet!