Day 96 1/30/2022
Odometer 33,435 – 33,666. —- 231 Miles (10,966 Miles Total)
Quito, Ecuador – Pasto, Colombia
I got up pretty early after another bad night of sleep from the elevation. It’s just so damn hard to breathe all the time. I went down the street to Freddys house and paid him the $40 I owed him for storing my bike in his house. Freddy’s friends with the hostel owners so i’d rather give him money for storage then the parking lot since it’s so damn expensive here. I pulled the bike up in front of the hostel and loaded it up. When I tried to put the right side pannier on I hit the bike with it a bit and it tipped right over in front of the hostel. Great way to start the day, it made me laugh. I took a picture and put it right side up.
I rode over to Ecuador Freedom which is a rental company for adventure bikes who we got the helmet rental from and I dropped the helmet off at 8:30. The roads were surprisingly pretty dry but it was still cold with low clouds and fog everywhere. Once I got a bit out of the city it started to rain. I pretty much took the same exact route back to the border for the next 4 hours. I actually didn’t even remember half of it at all which was weird. I saw a couple on a Ecuador Freedom motorcycle rental and slipped them my card while we were riding.
We got caught at a light though. The guy driving was from Hungary and the woman on the back was from Poland. Once the light turned green I was gone. They were riding pretty slow. They might read this though so hi guys if you checked out the blog! A few miles up ahead I saw a guy on a motorcycle t-bone a car blowing a red light and I’m pretty sure he died. So many bike accidents I’ve seen on this trip it’s disturbing. The ride was pretty low-key until the border. I stopped at the same breakfast place I stopped at on the way to Quito. I drank the cup of coffee in a minute since I was quite cold. I was too lazy to put my winter gloves on.
Most of my ride I was contemplating what my options were once I got to the border to see how long of a Visa they would give me for my bike. I guess I’ll have to see what happens when I get there. The more I think about it the more I want to go home sooner and work a bit extra so maybe I can come down sooner at the end of the year. On my ride to the border I have been talking to a friend I made in Colombia that’s from New York but spends a lot of time down here. She told me t0 ask her boyfriend some questions about my visa issue I’ll be encountering. He told me he didn’t quite know much about it but all he told me was to make sure I have the SOAT insurance when I’m in Colombia or my bike will get impounded if I get pulled over and don’t have it. Well I made it a month without having it which was pretty lucky so I guess i’ll try to get it at the border today.
I pulled up to the border and closed out my visa at immigration and aduana fairly quickly on the Ecuador side which was nice. It’s very frustrating doing this, not speaking any Spanish and having them not speak any English. Once I got to the Colombia side I got checked in with a 90 day visa for myself and when I went to Aduana they said I had to upload a few things to their website but since I had no service the guy working around the window said he could upload it form his phone for $10 USD. Asshole. I gave him the 10 bucks and he uploaded it all from his phone. 20 Minutes later I was good to go with another 90 day visa.
As I was crossing the border a guy from ADVRIDER, which Is a forum, messaged me and told me his ordeal at the border two years ago. I ended up sending him a message on WhatsApp since his number was listed on his email. He ended up telling me he overstayed his visa two years ago and all he did was check out of immigration and skipped Aduana. When he got to the Ecuador side no one checked if he closed out his Visa for his motorcycle. Now that I think about it I had the same thing happen to me when I crossed over a week ago. They only checked my passport at immigration on the Ecuador side to make sure I closed out my personal visa from Colombia. So I think I might be in luck to just leave the 90 day visa for my bike, let it expire and then when I come back in November just do what he did.
An hour later someone else replied to my thread on the forum and said that it’s a $700 a month fine for overstaying the motorcycle visa. Well shit that sounds like a big fine to pay for 7 months. I’ll have to figure out what I’m going to do pretty soon when I get to Medellin. I also got motorcycle parking figured out in Bogota at my friend Daniella’s place.
I went into a SOAT office at the border after that was all done and they said they couldn’t give me insurance because my VIN number was having an issue in the system. Fuck it im not getting the SOAT insurance if they can’t even give it to me. I typed in Pasto in the GPS and rode in there booking a hostel to call it a night. The views from the border to Pasto were beautiful. I took the same road there on the way to the border but it was pouring out the whole time and low clouds so I couldn’t see much. This time it was raining just a bit with some clouds so I stopped for a few pictures at a huge waterfall. 15 Minutes down the road I realized I left my sunglasses on the back seat and didn’t put them on my face. I rode all the way back and somehow they were sitting on the side of the road unscratched. That just made my day since I already wrote them off on my way back to look for them. I pulled into Pasto at 3:30pm. nice and early so I can relax after that long cold ride. I brought my bags up 2198 flights of stairs and put my bike in a parking garage.
I went out looking for a supermarket to buy food but they had nothing and since it was Sunday most restaurants were closed. I found a little hole in the wall shop that served me soup and grilled chicken. I went back to the hostel and pulled an MRE out of my paneer bag and made a nice bag of lasagna. I’m gonna have to buy more of these for when I come back they’re super tasty. After I had dinner I just got lazy and watched a bunch of movies on my computer keeping my brain numb since i didn’t want to think about the Visa situation anymore. My brain was fried.
Whoopsies
Some high elevation riding all day
Cool valley south of Pasto
