Day 88 - Marko Round The World

Day 88 1/22/2022

Odometer 32,590 – 32,836 –— 246 Miles (10,136 Miles Total)

Medellín, Colombia – Cali, Colombia

Well I definitely got enough sleep in the last 36 hours. I got up quite early, packed up and loaded up the bike. I have an 8 hour ride ahead of me to Cali today and I’m expecting some rain with the forecast I’m seeing. It’s a bittersweet feeling leaving Medellin. I’m going to miss my routine I have of working out, seeing friends and hours of salsa lessons with Angie and Dani. It’s always a weird feeling after being somewhere for a little bit and getting comfortable. I almost forgot what this feeling was like.

I dressed up in all my gear today hoping the ride would be a bit chilly and it was for quite a while in the beginning. I headed up into the mountains for the first part of the ride and all the familiar smells of when I was a kid in Serbia was coming back to me with the smell of burning wood here. I even got a sniff of something that reminded me of my grandfather’s old 1980 Mercedes Benz 300SD. It put a smile on my face. It was drizzling for quite a while and the roads were slippery as hell. Thank god I had my ABS fixed in Medellin because I probably would have gone down a few times on this road the way I was riding. Or I would have slowed down after the first one. As soon as my tires touched the white lines on the side of the road or the yellow in the middle it was like hitting black ice. My rear tire would just kick out to the side and my ABS would engage instantly. I was super focused the whole ride while the road was wet.

I downloaded two Spanish audiobooks yesterday so I can start engaging with this more often now. Since salsa classes are officially underway it’s time to catch up on a lot of Spanish lessons. Focusing on the road while trying to learn Spanish might not be a good idea. I stopped at a little roadside restaurant and got a delicious order of grilled chicken with rice and the usual stuff. I wanted to stop more to take pictures but the amount of trucks on these roads holding up traffic was insane. If I stopped for pictures I would waste so much time trying to get in front of them again and on these slick wet roads it would slow me down so much. I hit a few spots of some major road work which held me up for about 30 minutes. I realized towards the end of my wait motorcycles were free to ride through the roadblock. So I followed some other guys on small bikes through the roadblock into oncoming traffic on a one lane road. It got pretty hairy at times but we saved a quick minute or two almost getting run off the road by 139887 huge trucks. Not doing that again!

I was about 2 hours north of Cali when passing a gas station and I saw a guy on the phone on an Africa Twin. I looked over about 100′ and there were about 10 of them parked in a parking lot. I said to myself I think I remember these guys from Panama. Right when I was leaving the cargo parking lot a group of guys from Mexico pulled in to ship to Colombia as well. They didn’t speak English and I didnt speak Spanish so the only thing we exchanged was that we were all going to Argentina. I made a U turn and holy shit I couldn’t believe it but it was them! I saw them 25 days ago in Panama and here they are. I was wondering where they were the whole time. They still couldn’t speak any English so they went into the restaurant and pulled out one guy they picked up along the way from California. He came out and was telling me about his adventures with the group. These guys were crashing left and right destroying their bikes and I was nearly crying laughing hearing about it all. They were sure having a good time and hung over as we were talking about it.

As we were chatting we saw two white guys getting fuel for KTM 790’s. They ended up coming over. They were from Boston down here renting bikes and had to get back to Cali for a covid test before one of them flew back to Boston in the AM. I decided to leave the big group after I got their contact info and jetted with the Boston guys. We were ripping through traffic and riding hard. There was a huge storm brewing up ahead so I threw my gloves on and zippered up my jacket. We were about 1.5 hours away from Cali at this point.

When this storm hit us, it hit us fucking hard! My water repellant on my shield wasn’t even working. I was doing maybe 30 and couldn’t see more than 20 feet ahead of me. I lost the guys on the KTM’s as soon as the rain hit. I turned my go pro on to record the rain blasting me which I was sure I would appreciate later. The rain was nice to cool me off since it was pretty hot most of the last few hours. My bags also still had mud all over them from the dirt road I took out of Cartagena so I was happy to have the mud get washed off. The rain lasted the whole ride into Cali.

I got to my hostel and my gear was soaked. I checked in and unloaded everything. I worked on the blog a lot and signed up for two hours of salsa lessons, did a small workout and then got right into the salsa class. The Cali style is much different than what I learned in Medellin. I’m not sure I liked it since it was brutally fast but I picked it up pretty quickly I think. I don’t think I’ll be taking another class down here. I’m sticking with my fav teachers in Medellin. After two hours of me sweating like an animal I was burnt. I walked into the old city to get some good Ramen and ice cream. I didn’t like the vibe of this place so I’m thankful I booked only one night because tomorrow I’m going to continue towards Ecuador.

I’m going to do part of a ten hour ride to a small town I have saved near the “Death Road” by the Ecuador border. I’m not going to book anything at all, I’ll just camp tomorrow or find somewhere to sleep along the way. Should be a fun time. I’ll have an extra day or two to explore the mountains since I’m skipping a day in Cali. I’m excited about tomorrow!

The guys from Mexico I found on the road.