Friday – Cali, Colombia
Well, the flue got a bit worse today, felt crappy and being woken early by digging outside my window did not help. I got up anyway and wrote another days blog for catch up and around 8, I walked up to the internet cafe to do some posts. It was closed and I was told by the next door shop it would open at 8.30, so I had time for breakfast 🙂 All the streets around here are full of brightly coloured buildings, very quaint.
After breakfast, the cafe had still not opened, so I went and packed and came back up to the square just on 9 and it was still closed, bummer!
I gave up and headed out as I reckon I could find an internet shop along the way. It was lovely country through here and I had to redo the twisties on the way out of the village back to the highway.
The next town was Armenia and I spotted an internet shop nearly right away and managed to get the laptop connected via a cable, a very short cable and was nearly sitting on the floor to upload, but I achieved my objective and caught up with the 3 posts, this took the best part of an hour and it was 11am by the time I rode away. I met a lady called Caroline here, she spoke excellent English with an American accent as she had spent time in Minnesota, nice to meet you 🙂 As you can see the bike gets a bit of attention wherever I am parked.
I had a nice ride for the next hour or so with some rolling hills and twisties before I spotted a large food mart in a small town which looked clean and well used. The food was quite cheap and filling, which is always a good thing 🙂
From here it was not far to Cali, through the cane fields and passing the longest trailers I had seen yet, cane hauling trucks with four bogeys!
After arriving in Cali, I used the GPS to navigate to the hostel, this hostel was owned by a fellow rider who had managed to marry a Colombian girl and got stuck here, by choice though 🙂 The navigation took some effort as this place is also full of one way streets, just as I get close I find I cannot turn here, I have to go three streets down before backtracking. I eventually found the correct intersection and a local chap pointed to the hostel just up on the next corner, so that was all good :).
I met up with Mike the owner and grabbed a room with a window and fan which was quite cheap. I noticed a good thing, he had a cabinet full of stickers, both of Colombia and Ecuador 🙂
I did some more blog stuff during the arvo before thinking of having a few beers, which I did so out front. A couple of Americans were also here and had rented some bikes from Mike, one of them a Vstrom which Chris rode, I think he is a convert 🙂
We had a few beers and this is when I learnt to not leave things lying around. At one stage I was the only one on the patio and went in for a leak, when I came back, some bastard had stolen my beer with my Horizons Unlimited stubby cooler 🙁 All the other beers were there, just mine missing, oh well, if that is all I lose, then that is a cheap loss, although annoying. We grabbed a bite to eat a bit later but the other two seemed to want to go have a sleep, then get up at 1am and hit the town! I have not done that for a long time and after the few beers I had drunk, plus the flu, I begged off and crashed out early.
Day 135 miles and 217 km
Trip – 44,342 miles and 71,362 km
Salud
TravellingStrom
WORLD 