Wednesday – Medellin, Colombia
Well, I had planned on a sleep in, but it did not happen. Also once again I had issues with my SPOT not sending OK messages, it may just be a blockage, but it is strange it worked fine the first two times 😕 I decided to take it with me today as I would be out in the wide open and see what happens.
I was to phone Hellen between 10-11 to see if she wants to go to the Paise with me but when we talked there seemed to be a misunderstanding, her English is not good and my Spanish is basic to say the least. Needless to say, I decided to go there on my own as we could not make any sense with each other. I dropped my bike daks up to the repairer and took a taxi to the Puebleto Paise, now get this, a while back they destroyed all the old buildings in the town for renovation, so what they did was reproduce with old skills a small village and placed it on a hill in town, so that was where I was going, basically just for a look. I got there and paid the taxi off, although he was adamant I should have him wait, but no deal. There was a lot of touristy things to look at but no English interpretation, so all I did was take a few pictures, in the end I could have made the taxi wait and it would not have cost much at all, go figure 🙂
The views of the city were great and would be magnificent at night, but I had been advised it was dangerous up there after dark, so I will heed the advice 🙂
Once that was done, I actually managed to find a taxi who was free, most other people kept the taxi on standby, lucky me eh! I went back to the hostel first, to get my bike gear and then grabbed another cab and went downtown to the mall near the Suzuki shop. After a basic lunch, but nice tasting, I went and tried to pay for the bike as it was all finished and the cleanest I have ever seen it as I mentioned yesterday 🙂
So, more stupid dramas with the Mastercard, once again there was errors in communications to OZ, although Mario made a transaction using the same machine, so we knew that line was fine. This meant another traipse up to the mall and a BanColombia where I got a cash advance of a million over the counter, it is fun being a millionaire 😉 Then I could pay the bill, which was quite cheap for the work done. I had a new chain and two sprockets installed, a valve clearance check, repairs to my belly pan and a full clean, all for the measly sum of $350, which I thought was very reasonable, of course over here that was just a shade over $700,000 🙂 When I went to ride away, I had a small problem, fuel was low and it was stalling, but once the bike was vertical, it was fine. Then the next little issue, no clutch! It turns out the mechanics are not allowed to ride the bikes and mine had had the clutch adjuster removed for the sprocket replacement, so within ten minutes it was back out front and this time Mario rode it through the workshop to test it 🙂
Then I used my fuel canister to fuel up and headed back to the hostel. Thanks for your help Mario, I appreciate the work done and your help very much, your bloods worth bottling 🙂 I did some more blog stuff and had a small nanny nap before heading up to the Spider to show Al my bike and to pick up my repaired daks, done very well, cost $4 :). Al and myself discussed the uneven wear pattern on the front knobbies and came to the conclusion that is from too much hard braking through corners downhill that is doing it, not much I can do about that unless I use reverse gear 🙂
Of course once we had some interpretation going, it seems Hellen had asked me when we were going and I thought she said tomorrow, but of course I am leaving, never mind, plenty of other fish in the sea 🙂 I took the bike back and parked it before heading up for a burger and a few drinks, I really needed some sleep though and did not have many before heading away. Nice to meet you Albert and Hellen, Heidi and Lady. I expect pictures to be sent to me of the girls in togs having fun with baked beans and jelly wrestling in the bar as that was my suggestion which may increase the trade 😉 Once I was back at the hostel, it seems a party was happening, I was invited, and although I was tired, a free beer was hard to knock back when there are pretty chicas around 🙂 The chap on the right was doing magic tricks and was extremely good at it, the only magic trick I know is hide the sausage 😉 I was on the road tomorrow at last and really looking forward to it 🙂
One good thing that happened this evening was when I was moving my pictures from my camera XDcard to the computer I noticed that the cable was the same as my old camera. Now, it had been doing stupid things, one of them being when I turn it on, it says it is connecting to the PC, there is no other option, so I plugged the cable in and yippee, I finally got the pictures off the memory that I had taken in Mexico City 🙂 Now all I had to do was go back and edit that page and add the extra pictures, I will do that soon 🙂
Day 0 miles and 0 km
Trip – 44,040 miles and 70,876 km
Salud
TravellingStrom
WORLD 
TravellingStrom 