Day 69 1/3/2022
Odometer 31,381 – 31,780 ——– 399 Miles (9078 Miles Total)
San Gil, Colombia – Santa Marta, Colombia VIA THE HOTTEST ROAD ON PLANET EARTH.
The plan today was to ride 6.5 hours to Aguachica. The hostel owner told me the road from there to Santa Marta is weird, which was another 7 hours I think. He also said it’s pretty sketchy so I should sleep in Aguachica and then make a straight run for Santa Marta the next day. I packed my stuff up pretty early and hit the road. I stopped for breakfast pretty early in the ride. GPS said I was going to get to Aguachica at 2:36pm so I can take my time getting there. I worked on my bike for a bit while I was waiting for my breakfast to come out.
Back on the road and I was a bit annoyed. It seems I was climbing a big mountain uphill and there were sooooo many trucks I just couldn’t even stop to take pictures because all my hard work passing these trucks and cars would go to waste if I stopped. The toll booths here are awesome. Motorcycles get to pass in a small motorcycle lane to the right and it’s free for us. That makes me happy since there’s a bunch of toll booths with huge lines we all get to skip riding on the grass on the side of the road! It’s like a free for all for the most part with bikes here which is my type of riding! I rode through the grand canyon of Colombia which is why I took this route. The view was absolutely breathtaking as I came around a corner and saw the view I’ve been waiting for. I feel like I’m back in the alps in Europe. This was the best ride I’ve taken on this trip so far with the views. I stopped a few times to take pictures and videos of the views. I drove down into the valley at one point and then back up the other side. About an hour later it went to a boring straight highway and the temps hit 100 degrees. Well shit that turned bad pretty quickly. I wish I could ride some lovely roads for a whole day but that might be asking too much.
I was on a highway for the next few hours passing tons of trucks and other traffic. There was no shade the whole ride and it was consistently 100 degrees. The heat was terrible and I was wearing my full winter black riding gear. I got near Aguachica at 1pm and decided I would go right for Santa Marta. I typed in the city on my phone and it said the arrival time was 8pm. Shit 8 more hours of riding? I’ll take it. This is what I’m built for. I can probably knock another hour or two off that time knowing me. I stopped at a bridge on the ride at about 2:30pm and literally rolled off the side of the bridge a few feet down into a river where other people were swimming. They all gave me a funny look. Some white guy pulls over, strips down to his underwear and rolls off a bridge into a river…they must think i’m crazy! hah
I laid in the water for 5 minutes and climbed back out, put my clothes on and kept riding. I stopped for water at one point and bought two cold bottles. One went into my stomach and the other went into my jacket to cool me down. I got back on the road a bit cooler now. About 20 minutes down the road I see two bikes with a lot of gear on them. I get closer and one of the license plates isn’t yellow which is Colombia’s plate color. I get closer and it’s a Washington state plate! Shit!!! I haven’t seen another traveler in months. I pull up next to him and throw him a fist bump and pull up ahead and point to the back of my bike to show him my plates. He was so excited too! He opened up his shield on his helmet and pointed up ahead and yelled out florida! I passed two cars and saw another big bike but it had Colombia plates. I ride next to them for a few minutes and on my phone I spell out my email address and show them my phone. The girl on the back takes a picture of my phone and I wait for the email. I bet they were going to Santa Marta as well. I rode next to them for a bit and then gave them a salute and took off. They were riding much slower than me.
I was doing really well with time. About 20 minutes later the couple on the BMW sent me a message on IG and we planned to meet up for dinner. I was excited to hang out with some other riders. I ended up getting to Santa Marta at about 5:30pm. I can’t believe I shaved 2.5 hours off my time. I impressed myself and I didnt even have to ride at night time. I followed the GPS to the hostel on google maps and it brought me maybe 20 minutes away from the coast which was weird since on Hostelworld it showed the hostel was right near the water. It was the wrong address. So in the 100 degree heat I had to find the place with all this traffic from hell on google maps going back and forth between the maps on the hostel world. Every time I googled the hostel name it brought me to the first place I was shown to go. I was starting to lose my patience. After 45 minutes in traffic and going the wrong way down one way streets and riding down streets where I wasnt allowed to drive I got to the hostel. I was covered in sweat and couldn’t wait to jump in the pool at the hostel.
I waited at the front desk for about 20 minutes before the receptionist had a second to talk to me. She asked me if I booked a reservation and when. I told her I booked it this morning for 3 nights. She started to beat around the bush and said they were all sold out. I said yeah that’s cool i’m not asking for three nights I already booked three nights this morning and paid a deposit on Hostelworld. She then told me they had a mistake with the website and were all sold out. You gotta be fucking kidding me. I said it would have been nice to get a phone call telling me this 12 hours ago. I opened up Hostelworld and every hostel in the city was sold out now. I was pissed. She pointed me to another hostel down the block that wasn’t on Hostelworld. I packed my bike after unloading it all and drove two blocks down.
Well shit now I’m 100% in the ghetto and this place is pretty bad. I go into the office and wait 20 minutes before anyone will even talk to me. I just want to know if they have room so I can make other plans. The only other available hostel in the hostel world app was $132 a night. I had to figure something out fast as it was dark now. I finally was spoken to and they had a room for $10. Amazing. I thought to myself, give me one night and I’m never coming back to this city. Me and about 6 other French people were here from the first hostel and we were all annoyed. Once we all paid and checked in they showed us our room. Imagine a small room, and I mean small. There were 4 bunk bed footprints in the room. Each bunk bed was stacked 4 beds high. We barely had any room to walk to our bunk beds let alone we had no place to put our backlogs and luggage. So now we’re all crammed in there barely with any room to walk between everyone’s luggage. There’s no AC, it’s dark in the whole hostel to the point where we need flashlights to see anything in our bags. There’s no outlets to charge anything and this just straight up sucks. I unload all my stuff in the room and go take a shower. Next thing you know half the hostel sees each other naked with the curtains blowing up in the wind since all the showers are in the same room. Were all laughing.
I got in touch with the guy who I met on the road this afternoon and I was going to walk to his hostel and get food before I was meeting with them for dinner. I was starving. I walked down 2-3 blocks to the not so sketchy area and walked down to the water. I got two little sticks of meat and potatoes from a guy on the side of the road and bought two bags of mangoes that were already cut up. There were some gorgeous women hitting on me while I was walking and I wasnt sure if they were prostitutes or normal people. Either way I felt like an asshole for ignoring them all. I hope they were prostitutes and I wasnt just being an asshole to normal people. I finally met up with the couple and we went out for a nice dinner. He was originally from Spain and lived in Miami for 30 years, his girlfriend was a local in Bucaramanga, Colombia. We chatted for about an hour and then split up. I got back to my hostel which I’m happy I didn’t get mugged on the walk back. I booked a hostel for a night in Minca which was about 45 minutes away in the mountains. I heard they have waterfalls, rivers and hikes. Sign me the hell up right now. I couldn’t wait to get out of this city and the heat. I worked on my blog for a bit at the hostel and I was surprised the WIFI even worked. I made sure I had my hostel booked and crawled into bed to go to sleep.
Grand Canyon of Colombia
Breakfast
How i shared my email address with the other riders i saw. They sent me the picture later on!
100.4F. Hot as hell
