We get up and pack our bikes, planning to leave Medellin sometime after the morning rush hour for our short 2 hour ride to Guatapé. Traffic dies down nicely about 10, and off we go. We run in to lots of areas where roads are closed for construction, so navigating out of the city is a little tricky. Next, our GPS takes us right to the new 20 km long or so tunnel, which motorcycles aren’t allowed in, so we have to figure our way around that. All of this is par for the course inn Latin America, and adds to the adventure.
It takes me only a few minutes to get used to the South American way of motorcycle riding again. Chris, being originally from South Africa, and overall just a little bit crazy, seems to have no problem fitting in from the get go. We also used our heads though, and didn’t do the super crazy pass on an uphill, double yellow blind corner with a bus heading at you kinda stuff that we watched a few off the locals do.
A few miles from Guatapé, we stop at El Roca de Guatapé. A giant rock with over 800 steps built into a crack of it, to a viewpoint overlooking a beautiful, lake filled region. We don’t climb the rock, using the excuse we didn’t want to leave our bikes unattended for that long, but the real reason is that 812 steep steps just want going to happen. Andy at 20 wouldn’t do it, so why would he now.
At the base of the rock is still amazing views. Lots of tourist shops and restaurants. We grab a lunch (pretty awesome one for $5 ish) and take some pictures. Then we find out way into Guatapé.
We arrive at about 3, and follow our booking.com instructions by visiting a restaurant and asking for Marta. Marta arrives a few minutes later and then gets us to ride over to the apartment and meet her there. We are on the 3rd floor, in a beautiful building, right on the main square (parque principal). All of this for $32 a night.
After settling in, we cruise the town for a few hours sightseeing. This area is as beautiful as anywhere in the world. All the people we run in to are also genuinely friendly and happy to see you. Chris finds a cellular shop and buys a Colombian SIM card. Since losing his phone, he is now using my old phone (I brought an extra one in case I got robbed – decoy phone). He tries to use it, but keeps getting a spanish message and the call fails. We realize that he didn’t buy any long distance minutes, so we go back to the shop and buy more. Chris is now set up with a phone again.
I notice all these spots throughout the town with dog food and water bowls set up as feeding stations. They have little donation boxes on top of them too, so that you can donate to feed the street dogs. I watch the dogs all running around happy, stopping at the various bowls and snacking for a moment and then moving on. None of them seemed to eat too much, just a bite or two. You can tell a lot about a culture and it’s people by how they treat their dogs.
During the evening, we headed out to dinner, dodging Tuk-Tuks on the way. We find a nice place on the waterfront, but it is closing as we get there. In Medellin it seems dinner time started at 9pm, but Guatapé it ends by 9. We find a place in the town square, and although primarily just hamburgesas, it was cheap and both of us weren’t particularly hungry since our large lunch. We sat down on the sidewalk tables, only to be told by the waiter that he only served drinks, if we wanted food we had to go upstairs to this tiny little restaurant. We head upstairs, sit and are given a menu. We order our burgers and fries and ask for a coke. The lady who operates the restaurant informs us that she only serves food. Downstairs has all the beverages and we needed to go down there to get one. I ask if we can order the food and take it down and she says no, but we apparently can do the opposite and bring the drink up. Weird as it all seems, when in Colombia! We order the food and the lady, probably feeling sorry for us goes and gets us our drinks and brings them back upstairs. As an added bonus, the hamburger was really good. Not sure what the sauce was, but I think it was the same thing I had for salad dressing at lunch.
We end up back at our hotel, where we can watch the square from our deck, and chill out for the rest of the night.
Colombia Motorcycle Ride 