Crossing Colombia

We crossed Colombia safely, despite the warnings, the stories, and the 3 sleepless nights I spent in Ecuador before reaching the border. I wasn't nervous, really; I just kept imagining a curvy desolate road through a turbulent jungle that would extend from Ipialis at the border along the sometimes guerrilla infested stretch of road to Cali.

Crossing Colombia was not a decision taken lightly. We were torn between the illusion of lush green tropical jungles, drums beating salsa rhythms drums and the call of the warm Carribbean waters and images of handing over the motorcycle keys to the Colombian guerrilla. We wrote to motorcycle shop owners in Bogotá, questioned the Colombians we met in Argentina, Ecuador and right up to the border with Colombia. We received strict guidelines, and from person to person, the rules never changed. Drive without stopping and not too fast, leave at 6am when the sun rises, get off the road by 3 pm, long before the sun sets, only travel the major highway and assure that there are always cars coming in the opposite direction. That morning we reached the border of Ecuador, and found ourselves in traffic. We were far from the only ones wanting to cross Colombia safely.

As soon as we crossed the border into Colombia, the road wound around a mountain, and down a canyon - a verdant abyss where it would be difficult for any guerrilla to hide. Enric was flipping out with delight as he could lean the motorcycle around bend after bend that ascended and descended valleys, traced the curves of streams and caught the mist of waterfalls. I had never seen so much flora in such little area. We could have forgotton all about the danger, but each time we wanted to pull over to take a picture, we remembered that we shouldn't. We didn't stop in the colorful towns that we passed, where we would have likeed to stop for a cold Coconut and chat with the locals who we observed meandering about as if everything were normal.

We traveled that road on May 1st - an auspicious day - a holiday. Colombian military were patrolling the highway so that locals would feel secure using the roads over the long weekend. As I watched their eyes follow our red bike down the road, I wondered what the guerrilla uniforms looked like and was glad that someone at least told us to expect to see a lot of men in camouflage along the way.

Not being able to stop and take a picture or to chat with a local is like being robbed of the chance to get to know a country. Colombia passes by like a series of pictures being flipped in front of our face. So as we ride on, we begin waving. To the guy on biccyle on the other side of the road. He waves back. To the roadside maitenance crew who zip past us in gropus of 5 on yellow scooters, to the men talking in the street, to the woman who looked up with amazement trying to identify what we are. It feels like we are in a one float parade.

Reaching Cali meant that we had crossed the only guerrilla controlled zone that we needed to and that we would be able to breathe a sigh of relief for the rest of the trip. Except that as we neared the city, the highway twisted into an impossible knot of traffic that brought us to a stop. A young boy on a scooter rode up aside us, looked long and slow up the shiny deposit over the panniers to the duffels on back, then shook his head and said, "Be careful." The hotel receptionist told us which streets not to walk down, because there is a problem greater than the guerrilla, and that is the thousands of poor young and old Colombians looking for a pocket to pick or a watch to steal. By the time we walk out into the Cali streets, neither the people nor the buildings nor the center square or the stretch of park that divides the city seem inviting. Until we found ourselves on 6th avenue - where the noise of honking buses and jostling bodies faded into the rustle of the leaves of the trees along the street, the familiar rhythm of young people walking and coffee cup clatter in cafés. The sun sets and sidewalk tables fill with conversation and laughter and salsa music flows into the streets. Cali is a real city after all, with real people who still have to live - crime or no crime, guerrilla or no, the music plays on.

Reaching the crystalline waters

When a Frenchman asked me what I had learned most on this trip I replied that we are so interdependant, and the more we recognize it the more that interdependance can be used to our advantage. That it what I realized when we crossed Colombia. We were motiviated by an image of swimming in the warm aquamarine waters of the Carribean, but completely doubtful as to how to get there and where to stop along the way.

Our ceaseless questions to every local of where to go and how to get there brought us first to Valle de Lleva and Barichara, perfectly restored colonial towns, and finally guided us to the coast. And if we hadn't asked those questions, that sometimes seemed stupid or ill-timed, we would not have made it to the Carribean, because we were trying to get there on a Saturday - customs was closed, and we were immigrating from Venezuela back to Colombia. It was barely 10am the temperature had risen to 40 degrees C (100 degrees F) and we were told that we would have to spend the weekend in a border town and return to the office on Monday. We couldn't believe our luck.

The only way to find a positive answer when there is none is to ask for it. So we stopped at the military control post at the outskirts of the town we were in, and asked where the customs official lived. I don't know what we were thinking; Perhaps we could rustle him out of bed.... They did not have an answer, but at least they pointed us to the police station down the road. We arrived at the police station at precisely at the same time as a whiite pickup with the words CUSTOMS written in giant bold letters on the side. This was a good sign, but the guy in the truck wasn't the customs officer. And he told us that the customs officer wasn't in that town either. She was in Santa Marta for the weekend - the very town on the Carribean coast where we hoped to be swimming that day. Her being where we wanted to be, seemed like a good sign, or was it just a tempting coincidence. The agent did have her cellular phone number. We flew to the telecom center full of hope, but found out that their phones could not be used to dial a cellular phone. It seemed that we would be stuck and sweaty in the middle of nowhere for the weekend. Until a guy walks past us on the street. I notice, as he stops to look at the bike, a cellphone bulging conspicuuously in his pocket. "Hey," I ask Enric in a loud voice, "Can a cell phone call a cell phone?" The guy's ears perk up. "I think so," Enric replies. "What do you need?" the guy asks. And that is how we finally contact the cellular phone of a very nice lady in Santa Marta who puts her mind to work on a Saturday and devises a way for the two of us and the motorcycle to make it legally to Santa Marta and beyond.

And the story ends that day in the Carribean Sea. We swim in the water that really is as crystal blue as the image in the mind, drink one of those fruity drinks and make toasts to all the people around us who made it possible - and for realizing that there are few, if any really stupid questions in this world.

The road to Panama is not paved. We are waiting for wind and a sail.....

Colombia is sticking to us like a Tshirt on a sweaty body one not letting the other one go. We began crossing Colombia without a fixed plan of how we would get to Panama. The only certainty was that we would not go by road. The Darian Jungle has uprooted any attempts at connecting the Pan-American highway in Panama with its counter part in Colombia. We had flown the bike to Santiago to begin the trip, we intended not to fly again.

But there would be no ferry. We kept being told this by the other motorcycles we met along the road. We did not want to believe it, but neither our intense "internet searches" nor frequent queries to travel agents produced a ferry that traveled between Colombia and Panama.

Still, we found inspiration in rumors - the romantic sailboat cruise from Cartagena along the white sand beaches of the San Blas Islands ending in the Panamanian port of Colon - a Canadian had made the crossing with his BMW motorcycle aboard. It seemed too good to be true, but it was the rumor that led us to Cartagena de Indias looking for a way out of South America.

We were expected at the yacht club - thanks to the phone call I had made the day before our arrival, and the rampant gossip at the pier. "You are the ones that want to go to Panama!" were the cries as the motorcycle found audience at Club Nautico. We parked among sailboats and bicycles, and locals selling coffee.

Our celebrity status is as fleeting as the insipid marine breeze, the locals who greeted us with such enthusiasm had only knew of one boat that could take us to Panama. "You have to find Michael," and they return to their gossip. The 4 times divorced American grumbles that if we had called him a week earlier, he would have had room for the bike. But now he is full, and setting sail tomorrow. If you want, you can wait, he says. If not, I don't have any idea of how you will get to Panama. But he won't say when he can take us. He will be back in a week, maybe two, but he can't be sure. We look for other boats. The Colombian with the catamaran, and American John both shake their heads; they have too little room for the motorcycle. The club receptionist tells us that the boat Melody has taken a motorcycle before to Panama. Where is Melody now? In Panama, but no one knows when she is coming back.

Nothing is certain in Cartagena. We sit at the club for the afternoon, listening to the gossip and waiting for something to happen. Young dark skinned girls make boyfriends with old foreign sailors. The receptionist keeps walking by saying, "So you still haven't found anything." Locals come by selling coffee, mangos, and avocados the size of footballs. A Canadian couple waits for the customs official to immigrate their boat, the French is repairing his new catamaran, the Italian is waiting to take his boat out of the water so that he can fly back to Italy for the summer, a grumpy German ships chancellor yells at the Canadian couple because he is too stressed out over some other shipment.

There is a flipside to all of the nosiness and gossip of Cartagena as I discovered walking along the pier, killing time, seeking inspiration. A burly guy in a baseball hat walks by and says "Hello", as if I knew him. - "You are looking for a ride to Panama?" - "Yeah, where are you headed?" I ask. - "Oh, we want to go to Ibiza, Spain". "Oh," I can't find the relationship between Ibiza, Panama and why this guy is talking to me. Then he says, "We want to go to Ibiza, but we need money". Oh? That is how we met the frenchman Olivier and the Colombian crew of the iron hulled sailing ship "Tara" - and passage to Panama.

The big problem and the little guerrilla

We met a Frenchman who had invested in a piece of land in the Darian jungle. It was full of waterfalls, had two houses and a view of the Carribean. He hoped it would turn into a nice little hotel, but it is in the guerrilla controlled region, and the guerrilla are still there, so he is selling it for a mere $15,000. No one thinks that the guerrilla situation will disappear any time in the near future.

30000 people make up the entire Colombian guerrilla. The FARC have 15K, the ELN have 7K, and the Paramilitary force (the government´s illegal guerrilla attack squadron) count for another 8K. The guerrilla is little more than a clandestine group of militia - mostly made up of under 18 year old uneducated recruits who are woven throug hthe jungles that surround the drug laboratories.

"But the guerrilla aren't the major problem," we are told time and time again. "It is the government that we are told is doing everything with the money EXCEPT fighting the guerrilla and helping out the poor and uneducated population. Children don't go to school, because it costs money and their families do not have it. The guerrilla keep the tourists away, so that along the Carribean coast, there are too many women selling massages, hair wraps, fruit salads to few customers. We see men pushing carts of bananas and mangos, more than it seems can be consumed. And we see plenty of other business as well - prostitution, pickpockets. In Cartagena, we are approached by locals who want us to become part of their "money exchange" project. There is more counterfeit money in Colombia than anywhere else in the world.

As we sit in the lamplight of a cool fusion Asian Carribean restaurant in the colonial district of Cartagena, chatting with a Colombian about how beautiful the city is, how well restored the buildings and how expansive the restauration. It is laundered drug money that has cleaned up the city, we are told. And in the cleanliness of dirty money, elegant women buy emeralds, leather bags, or a scultpure from one of hundreds of vendors on the streets. "The thing is," he explains to us as he tries to stab a sushi with his chopsticks, "We (Colombians) are just too corrupt. You can't trust us." Us, he said. We empty our pockets of pesos to pay for overpriced sushi and to help the further beautification of this clean but dirty city.