There are few ways better to spend your day than hugging the hairpin curves of the Andes, bolting through the cloud and mist, with Animal Collective blasting through your headphones. Doesn't that sound deliciously dangerous?
In my brief experience of global gallivanting, I've learned that some modes of travel are superior to others. The optimal mode of transport involves a small motorcycle, a helmet, and hand that isn't afraid to grip the throttle as tight as it can.
This being said, my friend Cornelius and I decided to rent scooters in Medellin and take them for a brief spin through Colombia's coffee region. We rented them from an easygoing Austrian who asked for $600,000 (less than $300) for two bikes for the period of a week. The price was so low, in part because one bike was on its last leg in what had undoubtedly been a long and productive lifetime. In order to start, it demanded to be brutally kickstarted until it would finally sputter back into a bitter existence with an alarming hacking and spitting of the motor. This bike was to give us a great deal of trouble on our journey, but it possessed a wry sense of humor and valiant determination that ultimately earned our respect.
The first day, it broke down after only 3 hours of driving in the small town of Santa Barbara. We stayed for an hour in the main square, attempting to ease the stubborn machine back to life with the assistance of the entire village. It was a bike that presented us with many opportunities for meeting the locals and practicing our Spanish. Through its sudden bouts of narcolepsy, we learned that every town in Colombia possesses a vast and innummerable amount of unlicensed mechanics, all of who are eager to lend a helping hand.
After we had exhausted the entirety of town's mechanical knowledge, the bike started suddenly, and of its own accord, back to life. It then smiled fliratiously, winked, and said, "Let's go." And we were off.
Originally, we planned to take the bikes as far as Manizales, a city nestled on the outskirts of the coffee region of the Andes, but each day, the temptation of the open rode drove us further - through Santa Barbara to Santa Rosa de Cabal, past the smoggy resonance of Armenia and Pereira, up to the heart of the coffee region, Salento.
On our way to Salento, we encountered a terrifying lightening strom that rumbled and shrieked through the peaks of the Andes. The lightening awoke a biblical deluge, soaking us to the bone in scarcely five minutes of driving. The road was a long, wet ribbon of terror and each bolt of lightening forced my hand to twist the throttle tighter as the bike sped over the shimmering asphalt. I'm terrified of being struck by lightening, but ultimately, there are less eventful ways to die. A puddle of icy cold rain water accumulated in my lap as I squinted through the visor of my helmet. The conditions were worsened by my near complete inability to see the road. It was a tricky situation, because if I pulled my visor up too high, rain would hit my face in cold, biting pellets. Too low, and I couldn't see through the blurry, rain soaked plastic. The storm worsened with each second, and we were left with an ultimatum: either spend the night in the middle of nowhere or beat out the storm and drive as fast as possible to Salento.
And so, we drove on and arrived like two sad, wet cats, shivering from an icy cold that possessed our bodies like an uninvited guest.
I took what may have been one of the longest showers of my life, slowly rotating, like a rotisserrie chicken under the feeble stream of warm water.
There is a special place in my heart for Salento, a sleepy town of 5000 residents which caters to backpackers in their scope of familiar cuisine (finally, I enjoyed some spicy food and escaped, if only for a few days, the notorious blandness of Colombian cooking). The streets are lined with drowsy dogs, curled in the middle of the road in resilient slumber. The town residents spend their days peering out their windows, watching the minutiae of ordinary life pass by with an air of solemn perspicacity.
Originally, we had no intentions of going as far as Cali and we had been duly warned by our Austrian friend who had mumbled something along the lines of, "Don't take the bikes to Cali, it's too dangerous."
But the idea of danger became an oblique concept as soon as we saw the words "Cali 256 KM" towering over us on the freeway.
"It's so close!" I said, "Let's go!"
And away we went.
The road between Salento and Cali is a vast, and open, forged with wide, forgiving curves and surrounded on all sides by the preprosterous vastness of the Andes. It was a pleasant drive, careening along the coffee plantations and cornfields.
Cali is the Colombian city that is synonymous with one word - salsa. Every guidebook I've ever seen illustrates Cali with the picture of a woman decked in a vivid salsa gown, a gaping smile frozen on her face and and a bunch of fruit on her head. This is Cali, salsa city, the heat and attitude of all Colombia.
I didn't find the woman with the fruit on her head, but I did find the salsa dancing. Indeed, it would be hard to miss because salsa is everywhere. And even though Im the first to loudly decry how much I hate salsa because when I want to dance I simply don't have the patience for any rules or - God forbid - steps.
However, I'd give anything to master a form of dance other than the macarena. And so, I decided to commit myself to the dance floor with all the perseverence I could muster.
I believe I danced with half of Colombia that night. It took seven hours, one bottle of rum, a number of beers, and the blasting of a thousand horns until, at around 4 in the morning my partner enthusiastically exclaimed, "That´s it! You´re dancing salsa!"
And I was. I knew it. And so I danced, possessed with my new fire of salsa, heating up the dance floor. I would live in Cali forever. I would out salsa all the senoritas with the fruit on their heads. I was an anomoly, a gringa calienta! and I could dance salsa.
This illusion lasted only until the morning of the next day when I asked my friend, "Did you see the way I danced at the end of the night? Didn't it look like I had finally mastered salsa?" And he replied that I looked, frankly, ridiculous. "We were all laughing at you." he said. And so, all that remains of this story is a testament to the powers alcohol.
Driving in a foreign country always seems to evoke a kerfuffle of activity and confusion from the local police force, and, true to from, we were stopped once or twice a day by the police. They would wave us over officiously from the parked corner on the side of the road and press us, with furrowed brows for documentation. Their mannerisms would switch erratically between stringent professionalism and jovial curiosity. When we produced our passports, there would be more questions, but these would be friendly. "How long have you been traveling?", "How do you like Colombia?", and once, to me, "Do you like Colombian men?" and "Do you want to go to dinner?"
And then, after these brief, humane interactions, they would return to their roles of faceless authoritarians. They would search Cornelius (women cannot be searched by male officers in Colombia) with a discomfitting thourougness. It always seemed that they wished to detain us longer using whatever conversational pretext they could muster. Inevitably, they would wave their goodbyes and resume their bored postures alongisde the freeway, watcing with envy as we drove away into the wide, open road.
It was with great sadness that we returned our bikes. I'm hoping to see Ecuador by bike as well, but maybe graduating to something a little bit...faster.
In my brief experience of global gallivanting, I've learned that some modes of travel are superior to others. The optimal mode of transport involves a small motorcycle, a helmet, and hand that isn't afraid to grip the throttle as tight as it can.
This being said, my friend Cornelius and I decided to rent scooters in Medellin and take them for a brief spin through Colombia's coffee region. We rented them from an easygoing Austrian who asked for $600,000 (less than $300) for two bikes for the period of a week. The price was so low, in part because one bike was on its last leg in what had undoubtedly been a long and productive lifetime. In order to start, it demanded to be brutally kickstarted until it would finally sputter back into a bitter existence with an alarming hacking and spitting of the motor. This bike was to give us a great deal of trouble on our journey, but it possessed a wry sense of humor and valiant determination that ultimately earned our respect.
The first day, it broke down after only 3 hours of driving in the small town of Santa Barbara. We stayed for an hour in the main square, attempting to ease the stubborn machine back to life with the assistance of the entire village. It was a bike that presented us with many opportunities for meeting the locals and practicing our Spanish. Through its sudden bouts of narcolepsy, we learned that every town in Colombia possesses a vast and innummerable amount of unlicensed mechanics, all of who are eager to lend a helping hand.
After we had exhausted the entirety of town's mechanical knowledge, the bike started suddenly, and of its own accord, back to life. It then smiled fliratiously, winked, and said, "Let's go." And we were off.
Originally, we planned to take the bikes as far as Manizales, a city nestled on the outskirts of the coffee region of the Andes, but each day, the temptation of the open rode drove us further - through Santa Barbara to Santa Rosa de Cabal, past the smoggy resonance of Armenia and Pereira, up to the heart of the coffee region, Salento.
On our way to Salento, we encountered a terrifying lightening strom that rumbled and shrieked through the peaks of the Andes. The lightening awoke a biblical deluge, soaking us to the bone in scarcely five minutes of driving. The road was a long, wet ribbon of terror and each bolt of lightening forced my hand to twist the throttle tighter as the bike sped over the shimmering asphalt. I'm terrified of being struck by lightening, but ultimately, there are less eventful ways to die. A puddle of icy cold rain water accumulated in my lap as I squinted through the visor of my helmet. The conditions were worsened by my near complete inability to see the road. It was a tricky situation, because if I pulled my visor up too high, rain would hit my face in cold, biting pellets. Too low, and I couldn't see through the blurry, rain soaked plastic. The storm worsened with each second, and we were left with an ultimatum: either spend the night in the middle of nowhere or beat out the storm and drive as fast as possible to Salento.
And so, we drove on and arrived like two sad, wet cats, shivering from an icy cold that possessed our bodies like an uninvited guest.
I took what may have been one of the longest showers of my life, slowly rotating, like a rotisserrie chicken under the feeble stream of warm water.
The next time we saw storm clouds looming on the horizon, we equipped ourselves with garbage bags as we had seen the locals do. Perversely, it did not rain, and we drove for two hours in the weak sunlight with garbage bags billowing out behind us like capes of shame.
There is a special place in my heart for Salento, a sleepy town of 5000 residents which caters to backpackers in their scope of familiar cuisine (finally, I enjoyed some spicy food and escaped, if only for a few days, the notorious blandness of Colombian cooking). The streets are lined with drowsy dogs, curled in the middle of the road in resilient slumber. The town residents spend their days peering out their windows, watching the minutiae of ordinary life pass by with an air of solemn perspicacity.
But the idea of danger became an oblique concept as soon as we saw the words "Cali 256 KM" towering over us on the freeway.
"It's so close!" I said, "Let's go!"
And away we went.
The road between Salento and Cali is a vast, and open, forged with wide, forgiving curves and surrounded on all sides by the preprosterous vastness of the Andes. It was a pleasant drive, careening along the coffee plantations and cornfields.
Cali is the Colombian city that is synonymous with one word - salsa. Every guidebook I've ever seen illustrates Cali with the picture of a woman decked in a vivid salsa gown, a gaping smile frozen on her face and and a bunch of fruit on her head. This is Cali, salsa city, the heat and attitude of all Colombia.
I didn't find the woman with the fruit on her head, but I did find the salsa dancing. Indeed, it would be hard to miss because salsa is everywhere. And even though Im the first to loudly decry how much I hate salsa because when I want to dance I simply don't have the patience for any rules or - God forbid - steps.
However, I'd give anything to master a form of dance other than the macarena. And so, I decided to commit myself to the dance floor with all the perseverence I could muster.
I believe I danced with half of Colombia that night. It took seven hours, one bottle of rum, a number of beers, and the blasting of a thousand horns until, at around 4 in the morning my partner enthusiastically exclaimed, "That´s it! You´re dancing salsa!"
And I was. I knew it. And so I danced, possessed with my new fire of salsa, heating up the dance floor. I would live in Cali forever. I would out salsa all the senoritas with the fruit on their heads. I was an anomoly, a gringa calienta! and I could dance salsa.
This illusion lasted only until the morning of the next day when I asked my friend, "Did you see the way I danced at the end of the night? Didn't it look like I had finally mastered salsa?" And he replied that I looked, frankly, ridiculous. "We were all laughing at you." he said. And so, all that remains of this story is a testament to the powers alcohol.
Driving in a foreign country always seems to evoke a kerfuffle of activity and confusion from the local police force, and, true to from, we were stopped once or twice a day by the police. They would wave us over officiously from the parked corner on the side of the road and press us, with furrowed brows for documentation. Their mannerisms would switch erratically between stringent professionalism and jovial curiosity. When we produced our passports, there would be more questions, but these would be friendly. "How long have you been traveling?", "How do you like Colombia?", and once, to me, "Do you like Colombian men?" and "Do you want to go to dinner?"
And then, after these brief, humane interactions, they would return to their roles of faceless authoritarians. They would search Cornelius (women cannot be searched by male officers in Colombia) with a discomfitting thourougness. It always seemed that they wished to detain us longer using whatever conversational pretext they could muster. Inevitably, they would wave their goodbyes and resume their bored postures alongisde the freeway, watcing with envy as we drove away into the wide, open road.
It was with great sadness that we returned our bikes. I'm hoping to see Ecuador by bike as well, but maybe graduating to something a little bit...faster.
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