Sue dropped me at Heathrow at 6:00 and 14 hours later I was in Bogota. Sadly the bike wasn’t, so I had a day to take in the sights and meet the rest of the team. Five others are starting in Bogota. The rest flew in from Panama with their bikes - you can’t ride from Panama into Colombia as the “Darian Gap” is impenetrable jungle.
Bogota is a modern city of 8 million (Colombia is 49 million in total) and is 8800 feet above sea level. It has all the usual problems. Huge wealth disparities, crime (there is armed security everywhere) and some of the worst traffic I’ve ever seen. 1 hour 15 minutes to go the mile or so from the centre to the hotel. We should have walked but the air is quite thin (well that’s my excuse, it could have been the beer and empenadas for lunch ....)
The next day it was off to the airport to clear the bike through customs. Our local fixer sorted the paperwork while we unboxed the bikes.
From this:
To this:
To this:
Six hours is the record for Bogota customs apparently. So a good start to the trip.
Bogota is a modern city of 8 million (Colombia is 49 million in total) and is 8800 feet above sea level. It has all the usual problems. Huge wealth disparities, crime (there is armed security everywhere) and some of the worst traffic I’ve ever seen. 1 hour 15 minutes to go the mile or so from the centre to the hotel. We should have walked but the air is quite thin (well that’s my excuse, it could have been the beer and empenadas for lunch ....)
The next day it was off to the airport to clear the bike through customs. Our local fixer sorted the paperwork while we unboxed the bikes.
From this:
To this:
To this:
Six hours is the record for Bogota customs apparently. So a good start to the trip.
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