As I am writing this I am in a room at a hotel called Amoblados el Romance in Bogota, Colombia. I can't get internet or phone and I'm not completely sure what Amoblados means but I have some guesses. Amo means love but I think a better name would be Lusto el Sexo. This is clearly a pay by the hour place with local working girls in the area. How did we get here? how did today happen? Oh hell, I don't know, I'm gonna have to write this so I can figure it out.

And what all else is going on? We were in the middle of a country (Honduras) that is having a coup and we don't really know it till later. There were political rallies and stuff going on and the police were clearing the towns before dark but we didn't really think much about it, till we hear later that the previous prez has been sneaked out of the country in the middle of the night because he may die. Craziness, guess we really are here before the revolution's over.

30-Nov-2009

Nick is getting worried about getting back to Seattle in time to do his thing so it feels like the pressure is on to get the bikes to South America somewhere. We go through several gyrations of decision making to decide how best to handle things but in the end it mostly gets decided for us. We have a nice cruise getting lost in Panama City again to figure out how to get the bikes out of here. The boat thing is looking like a bad deal. Maybe a week, maybe more to get us and the bikes to Cartegena. So now our world is turned into a whirlwind. We go to the cargo place at the airport, make a deal, bikes going to Bogota, disassemble the bikes to some degree, windscreen off, rear view mirrors, etc., figure out what we need and don't and get that stuff together, say goodbye to the bikes, we'll see you on a new continent I hope. Deal with customs to exit the bikes, go to the passenger part of the airport to try to get us a flight to Bogata, not happening.

Soooo, the bikes are on their way and we are not. BTW, the we of this is now 3, we picked up a new friend named Terry that is riding by himself, so we've kinda hung out together to get the bikes shipped, etc. Anyway, I call Angie and say, "Necessito ayuda por favor", she didn't know what the hell I was saying but anyway she arranges flights for us tomorrow about noon. Thanks, Angie, we love you. We go to a hotel and kick back for a little while and crash.

1-Dec-2009

Headed for Bogota, Colombia. A new continent, a new country, very exciting. Now it's just about like normal international air travel. No big deal. Except for what we have to deal with when we get there. Nick has scheduled his flight back to Seattle for tomorrow. I am so sure things are going to be screwed up and we will never get these bikes out of customs today that I wait till the 3rd. Oh, I probably forgot that part. Since we are getting here and Nick is going back early, I am going to fly back home as well, only I'm going to fly out on the 3rd. So sorry people, you might have to see me again sooner than you thought. OK, back to the story, and how we found this high class hotel, the Amoblados el Romance. So, we get to Bogota, pretty much on time, get directions to the cargo terminal and walk over there to see about the bikes. They are there, yea!! But much paperwork must be done before we can touch them and the clock is ticking. We get paperwork from the shipper and we have to walk back to DIAN, a Customs place, to get that worked out. It starts out OK, but we had to get some copies made and it seemed like things just stopped then. Fortunately this woman named Blanca something took some pity on us and decided to take us on as a charity case. She is an importer/exporter and is evidently there all the time. I don't know what she imports or exports but didn't feel like that question was relevant to our current situation. Once we semi bridged the communications gap she immediately got the attention of the bureaucrats and got much attention focused on us and our bikes. Truly a great person and thank you Blanca for your help. I think we would still be there if it weren't for you. Try to keep in mind that none of these people I'm talking about speak English, even less than I speak Spanish, and I speak the most Spanish of the 3 of us. Scary, I know. We get done with Customs, and with a fresh pile of paperwork with many rubber stamps on them we head back to the shippers. It takes a while there but we finally get to lay our hands on our bikes again. They give us some space to put them back together and we go to work. Now I find out that the only box on my bike that didn't get damaged in the Nicaraguan adventure got badly damaged in shipping. These guys were good though and truly sorry and gathered up stuff that I asked for to try to get it bent back into shape. Don't forget the language barrier, every communications event, is like a circus act, with a lot of arm waving, pointing, trial and error, etc. I'm also missing some parts for my windscreen but manage to make it work. Soooo, bikes back together we get to leave the building by riding the bikes down a short hall to another short hall and down 2 flights of stairs. Cool, huh? So now, we, and the bikes are in a new country on a new continent . . . during the height of rush hour . . . in a large city . . . that we don't have a map for . . . with no directions that we could understand . . . and in need of gas. So we do what we do, just go. Cool, huh? This is truly the most insane driving I have ever been involved in. It takes everything we can do to stay together and not get hit. I take the lead and find a gas station. Someone there told us there was a hotel 2 clicks down this road. We drive and dodge and drive and dodge, no hotel, lots of insanity. We stop at this parking lot, with people everywhere and try to get someone to understand us. Some guy on a little motorcycle takes us on even though he doesn't speak a word of English. But through arm waving, pointing, and slaughtering the Spanish language he leads us to a hotel. These places don't look like hotels. I'd of never known this place was hotel. I find out later that that is the point. Anyway, the first place has rooms but won't take us. I didn't understand that, but maybe figured it out later. The next place, Amoblados el Romance, had rooms for us. Small rooms, hard beds, they don't give you a key, they open the door for you, serve a shot of wine as you come in, weird, I hadn't seen the name of the hotel yet. Our guy on the motorcycle is really trying hard to understand us but it is a struggle and we have some things to work out. The rooms, storage for the bikes, maybe some dinner. So we are working on this and several things start to dawn on us at once. Couples going to rooms, leaving a half hour later, our motorcycle friend is getting a cut of everything we do, the neighborhood is tough and the women dress pretty hot for place like this.

So, anyway, there you have it. I need to make some phone calls but the sat phone needs a clear shot of the sky to work and these streets have gotten tougher by the minute as it gets later and later so I guess I will wait till morn. I did manage to climb out of my window onto a ledge that is across a 4 foot gap to try to make a call and managed to check my Vmail but that was about it. This is probably the least action this bed has seen for a while and at least the walls are thick enough I don't have to hear what is going on in the next room.

We did get an amazing amount of things done. And after reading some of the blogs, the concept of being able to get us and the bikes from being on the road in Panama to being on the road in Colombia in about 26 hours is amazing, that has not been done. Got our travel schedules worked out. Got the bikes stored in a secure place for the time we will be gone. Got fed, got a beer and managed not to get killed. All good things. There is nothing boring about this trip. We have no idea what the next 15 minutes will hold for us.

2-Dec-2009

I make a futile effort to find tires in Bogota, Ugh. Guess I will buy them in SL and bring them back with me, as well a some other things. Nick got out this morning to Seattle leaving me to get the bikes stored. So I take care of his. Terry is heading to Medellin today so I decide to ride with him for a while just to get away from this wonderful part of town. Still a lot of mountains but steeper than we have been used to. Beautiful though. We are an oddity here in these little towns and people like to come by and look at us while we are having lunch. Nothing dangerous though and it feels good to be out of the city. I rode about 75 miles with Terry and said goodbye and headed back to the city. That's the dangerous part, just driving in this place. I did get bumped once, but no damage. I am seriously ready to get out of Bogota, so far it is not my favorite place. But we still have to fly back here and spend another night probably. I am packed now. The bikes are stored and I'm ready to go or come back to Utah for a few days. I miss everyone there and it will be good to take a bit of a break. I may be back in the US before you read this as I still have no internet access. I seem to have lost my broken camera too, which is a shame cause there were some good pics on there. I will get one before I come back. Besides the neighborhood and the fact that the bed was not really made for sleeping, the Amoblados el Romance is gonna have to do for another night. At least it's clean with clean sheets and a lot of hot water. All of those things have certainly not been a given for this trip. Its also the first place we've stayed that had embossed towels. See you all soon.

Random Stuff. My daughter thinks I'm random so I had better try to live up to that.

As we get closer to tourist places:

1. The restaurants actually have names besides Comida(food).
2. The hotels actually have names besides hotel.
3. When really close you can actually recognize some of the names of the above.
4. There are recognizable breeds of dogs, instead of the medium sized mexican brown dogs that all breeds turn into if left to their own devices for a few generations.
5. The road kill becomes birds, cats and dogs, instead of Iguana's, Peccari, and Snakes(We're talking big scary ones).
6. There are more poor people(strange what all that foreign tourist money does for the locals)