We left Bogotá to head north to Cartagena. If we were going to travel the length of South America it would be nice to start near the top. ‘Shortcut Susan’ would be quite happy to start south from Bogotá but I have principles about the inconsequential things in life.

So this is our route for the first four days – Bogotá, Villa de Leyva, Bucaramanga, Mompos to Cartagena.

A nice easy start to our adventure. Or so we thought!

Here’s us happy as Larry leaving our Bogotá hotel.

That’s Susan with her personal chauffeur for the next 18,000km or so. She’s a lucky woman! ‘Onward we go Bif’ she shouted in the intercom and tapped me on the shoulder. I released the clutch, accelerated and we were off. South America here we come!

Susan didn’t call her personal chauffeur James, Jeeves or any other stereotype chauffeur name. She called me ‘Bif’. That’s fine I thought, it’s a rather macho name and I quite took to it. It has a nice ring to it. Watch out South America here comes Bif with a Bike I thought. It was only a couple of days later she told me it stood for ‘Bast*rd in front’. We’ve now reverted back to Clif 🙂

Three hours after our happy start we had only travelled five measly miles. The traffic jams were astoundingly horrendous. In all honesty I must have made over a thousand start stops and essentially walked the bike out of Bogotá. It was completely exhausting.

Actually, Bogotá is the third most congested city in the world after Istanbul and Moscow. Kiev used to be third but I guess there’s not so much traffic there just now.

As soon as we cleared the jam we stopped at a service station.

Susan is still looking fresh but its all downhill from here as the heat and humidity took its toll. She doesn’t cope with the heat at the best of times but wrap her up in a goretex suit, gloves and a helmet, push the heat up to 36c and it’s meltdown.

A few hours later, as we reached Villa De Leyva and, at the end of our endurance, we realised it was a holiday weekend. The place was utterly and completely congested. To be fair, Columbia has 23 holiday weekends a year so it’s difficult to avoid them all.

Roads were closed, junctions were gridlocked and our satnav went into a spiral trying to find our hotel. Even open roads were thronging with pedestrians. To make matters worse for the bike the roads were paved with uneven boulders. Our route ahead:

We realised we had to turn around. Not an easy task on a heavy bike on such a surface. The balance is so so precarious. Luckily we had the assistance of a small girl for she walked in front of the bike, I braked, the front wheel turned on a cobble and we hit the ground. Thump!

Well to be correct it was more of a ninja like step off for me, a slow fall for the bike and a bit of a thump for Susan.

Thankfully we were only travelling 3-4 mph and as the bike fell I was able to step off. I tried to hold it up but when you know it’s going down you know it’s going down and a former pen pusher like me isn’t going to defy Mr Gravity.

Susan hit the ground. Thump. Her helmet bashed off the bloody big cobbles. Graze. Left leg was trapped under the bike. Wailing. At such a traumatic moment, I really couldn’t hear myself think with all the noise she was making over the intercom.

As I tried to stop the bike making an automatic emergency call, the onlookers lifted the bike and Susan. Thankfully the bike was okay and Susan was fine as well.

After such a long day, Susan had enough motorcycling and decided to walk the last few hundred metres to the hotel. ‘I’m walking Bif’ was the last words I heard as she marched off into the crowd.

With less weight on the bike and no Susan to tell me to go slow I managed to fly along the cobbles, used a few flat pavements and reached the hotel first. That will teach her to get off and walk!

After a quick check in and shower we headed out and my beer senses led me to a bar that sold pints! Pints of IPA in Colombia! Result.

Here’s a photo of Susan shortly thereafter to prove she was okay. Honestly I’m not holding her up.

And hear’s me back to being as happy as Larry.

All’s well that ends well for we all know what Chumbawamba said ……

So we arrived in Bogotá and stayed in a small hotel near the airport. Our first issue was getting the third member of our party out of customs – yes I’m talking about the bike. To assist we engaged ‘Cargorider’ – a local agency that sorts through the myriad of local customs forms and procedures.

That said, it really wasn’t our first issue. Our first issue was Susan having altitude sickness. You see Bogotá is 8,612 feet above sea level and the air is noticeably thinner. I manned up but Susan felt sick with headaches and grumped at me a lot. To be honest I didn’t notice much of a difference 🙂 Happily it passed after a couple of days and she was back to her usual self.

Back to more important things – the bike! Everyone at Cargorider was very nice and helpful but that didn’t stop me from having to sit in the customs administration building with this view for 10 hours over 2 days.

Then it was over to the freight terminal where Susan relaxed as if she was sitting poolside whilst I did all the hard work.

Eventually the bike was out and back to the hotel where they had a nice caged entrance to keep it safe.

For the next couple of days we aclimitised and went on walking tours of the city. It’s such a lovely city and everyone was friendly. I even managed to get the local police to take Susan off my hands for a few hours whilst I went for a few quiet beers.

I was rather nervous taking this photo and talking to the ‘agentes de policia’ for I had in my possession a plastic bag of white powder! I know what you’re thinking – 4 days in and already Susan has driven me to some ‘cocaina’. Let me explain.

Susan uses milk subsititutes – you know the junk they mix with water and call it milk – oats, almonds, soya etc. In Colombia it’s hard to find that stuff in hotels and coffee shops so she has coffee ‘creamer’ in a plastic bag. I carry it in my man bag. I’m the ‘milk mule’.

However, we all know about police jumping to obvious conclusions based on flimsy evidence suported by a suspicious mind and a sixth sense for bad guys. Well I’m a white dude with a man bag on holiday in Colombia with a plastic bag of white powder. If it takes two days to get my bike out of customs I reckon I’m going to spend a month in jail whilst the milk powder is analysed! Keep your fingers crossed I don’t get searched!

Later that day, whilst on a walking tour, we experienced a 6.1 earthquake. The epicentre was about 100km away and all buildings were evacuated.

I recognised the same side to side wobbly feeling we had experienced in New Zealand a few years ago. You know the feeling – when you’re over a certain age, you’re in the pub drinking, you’ve been sitting too long and you decide to use the facilities. Legs are a bit shaky, you use the table for balance and within a few steps it’s all over. That’s just like a small earthquake. Susan said it was the first time the earth has moved for her in years!

On our final day in Bogotá we went on a food tour and sampled many local delights. Usual South American food stuff like strange fruit, empenadas, tamales etc. However, we also had the opportunity to try some Capivara, a delicacy in northern Colombia. What’s a Capivara you may ask? Well let me help your enquiring mind with a photo of a taxidermy model provided by the restaurant.

Yup that fella is a Capivara, the largest member of the rodent family. Essentially, the restaurant was offering us a bit of barbequed rat meat.

Most of the tour group wimped out and gave it a miss but Susan reckoned it couldn’t be any worse than my cooking so we both jumped right in. What did it taste like? A bit like pork with a slight fishy aftertaste. It was more of an eating experience than a pleasant mouthful.

Susan takes the lead in most of interactions with the locals as the vast majority of Colombians don’t speak any English. It’s a great benefit that Susan has been learning Spanish for the past year and she makes a good effort. Myself, I’m kind of a language nomad – whatever country I’m in I throw in a random phrases like merci or danke schon. I’m just one big language melting pot. I get caught up in the enthusiasm of everyone speaking a foreign language and don’t want to miss out. Comprende?

My biggest issue here is replacing gracias (Spanish) with grazie (Italian). I think I get away with it and they think I’m Italian. Unfortunately, Susan is now inadvertently copying me. I’m sure when we leave this hotel the staff will say ‘they were a nice Italian couple’ 🙂

So that’s a short summary of our time in lovely shoogly Bogotá. It’s not like the narcos movies and a lot has changed in the last 20 years. It may never be a city you feel a need to visit but Susan and I thoroughly enjoyed our time. Bogotá is ‘molto bene’!

Our path to Bogota was a 6am red eye flight from London with a connection at Madrid. The motorcycle was making its own way via airfreight. All very easy you may think for a couple of seasoned travellers like Susan and me. You would think so?

We had no checked luggage and our first issue was passing through the security gate boarding pass scanner. Using electronic boarding passes on our phones, we were rejected several times. Eventually, we accept the advice from the machine and contacted a British Airways assistant. She got on her computer, sorted out some visa questions and said we were good to go. Back to the scanner.

I breezed through, scan, photo, in a competent confident manner and waited on Susan. Scan scan scan – she couldn’t get through. Even after some good advice and tut tutting from myself she still couldn’t get through. It was embarrassing for me and I rolled my eyes when the security guard beckoned her over to his computer.

He checked her boarding pass and I looked over his shoulder and I could see a page full of attempts to scan. I rolled my eyes again. ‘How many times have you scanned this?’ he asked. ‘Just a few’ she replied. Just a few? – the guy had obviously never seen so many attempts. Regardless, he sorted it and she was allowed through. Thank goodness. It was a bit too early for Susan to quit this adventure.

As we were about to board the plane at the gate and pass through the final security check I again brought up the boarding pass on my phone. Actually I had 2 passes – Susan’s and my own! You see I always download both passes to my phone and transfer Susan a copy.

As realisation was dawning on my face Susan was reading my thoughts telepathically. There was no denying it and I had to confess, ‘I think I’ve scanned myself through the first security barrier as you’. There were now two Susans about to board this plane! Susan was not amused!

I briefly considered trying the same again to make it all balance up. There’s some logic to it – 2 Susans through the Security Barrier and 2 Susans board the plane. Nice and neat.

Fortunately, I found some commonsense and, at the next barrier, I scanned my own boarding pass and it took my photo. Did it stop me and ask how I got through security to the boarding gate? Did it ask Susan why her photo had changed from a man to a woman? Of course it didn’t and we both walked smoothly onto the plane like the competent travellers we pretend to be 🙂

On the flight from Heathrow to Madrid we were flying business class on short haul. At 0645hrs Susan went right up in my estimation. She was the only passenger on the whole plane that ordered alcohol! ‘Coffee for me’ I asked followed by ‘Bloody Mary for me please’ from Susan! It may only have been one small miniature vodka but that deserves some holiday respect!

So when we landed at Madrid I’m going to lay the blame on Susan’s drinking for what happened next. We landed Terminal 1 and briefly looked at our boarding passes and read Bogota Terminal 4.

We didn’t pre-plan or discuss the transfer from T1 to T4 – we just took it all in our compacent stride. Or maybe I should say my complacent stride. Anyway I had to take charge because after all, Susan had been drinking. So I checked a digital board and it said Bogota T4. Honestly, I think it did. Who are you gonna believe ‘drinking Susan’ or ‘sober Clif’? I ask you?

We had a 2 hour window before the next flight and to get to T4 we had to pass through immigration and board a transit shuttle. Well the immigration queue was at least an hour and that was very optimistic. So I brought all my charm to play on a security guard and talked our way onto an express queue. I didn’t even have to deploy my trump card – my wife has recently had a hip operation and may need a wheelchair. Yes I know I am swinging it using the word ‘recently’ for February but who’s to know.

So we were through the express immigration in a jiffy, passports stamped and downstairs onto the rail shuttle. We were officially in Spain. As we were standing waiting on the shuttle departure ‘drinking Susan’ looked at the boarding passes I had. ‘I think we’re leaving from T1 and not T4’ she said without slurring even though she had been drinking.

Now by this time my confidence was shot because I, technically, may be still travelling as a Susan so when the real Susan called for us to jump off the train I did so without question, holding the doors open as they closed on us.

So there we were in Spain and needed to get back through immigration, to T1, and leave Spain. I approached a Border Guard, explained our predicament. He referred me to his handsome young sergeant and with professional ease we were escorted back out of Spain and our passport stamps cancelled. I’m currently writing to the Guinness Book of Records for consideration for an award for the shortest entry-exit to a country.

After the sergeant (handsome young man) got us through the border he asked to see our boarding passes. He said we needed to ask the Info Desk downstairs as to how to get to T4 for our Bogota flight. Even he was wrongly reading the boarding pass – it appears it’s an easy thing for a handsome guy to do!

After all that myself and drinking Susan settled into our 10 hour flight to Bogotá. By this time I needed a drink or two myself. Hola.