Taking a quick eight-day motorcycle trip to Colombia seemed like a good idea at the time. The timing was right as I had a hole in my travel schedule in early November. Colombia was on my target list ever since KR and I did our three-month South American motorcycle trip but never touched Colombia. And since I would be going on a tour, I’d get a chance to try a different kind of bike.
So, I booked RideAdv’s 8 Day Essential Colombia Adventure tour that starts in Cali and takes a northeast loop around central Colombia. Ricardo Congote’s EpiCo Moto Adventures ( EpiCo Moto) is the Colombian implementation partner. Ricardo and his team are in fact epic as you’ll see shortly.
I flew into Cali two days after returning from my UNIDO Kazakhstan/Vienna trip looking forward to getting back on a bike after Chuck & Fred’s Mini Adventure trip in July (see Chuck and Fred's Mini Motorcycle Adventure). Faithful readers of TRT will recall the trip ended with me limping along after a crash in a creek. Anyway, Cali is Colombia’s third largest city with a population of two million and it’s nestled amongst a small mountain range that turns into the Andes as one goes north. I liked the vibe of Cali almost immediately. Lots of trees, houses up and down hills, interesting buildings (modern not Colonial), and tons of two-wheel moto’s of all kinds. I got there a day early, so I was able to walk around the Santa Monica and Granada neighborhoods. Lots and lots of activity. I immediately put it on my list of places to come back to.
We gathered at Ricardo’s house in Cali’s Santa Monica neighborhood. Beautiful house, lovely wife, and lots of motorcycles. Maritza and Ricardo met in NYC while she was working at a NYC bank, and he was in the midst of a 15 year stint as an architect. Now they live in a great house, he rides motorcycles for a living, and Maritza works for another bank in NYC remotely. What more can a guy ask for?
The “we” in the group was my fellow tourist – Ritesh Reddy from Hyderabad, India. Ritesh is in real estate while also owning one of the early e-scooter stores in Hyderabad. He flew in from Austin where he was visiting relatives. He rides an Africa Twin back home. It seems that it would only be Ricardo, Ritesh and me on this tour, so we could go where we wanted at the speed we wanted.
We met Wednesday morning for our “Safety Briefing,” and we were on the road by 8:30AM.
Here’s how Day 1 unfolded in pictures.
This didn’t stop Ricardo. He took his bike across and then came back for mine. Here’s a video of what it was like.
Next up: I meet a nurse while in the mountains on Day 2
It seems you are evolving from arduous to treacherous in your adventures. Did I forget perilous? Gregg