Monday – Cali, Colombia
Well, I felt a bit better internally, but the nose would not stop! I did some maintenance work on the bike, a few things needed attending to, mainly adjustments, tighten a few things etc before finding Mike and getting the location of the electronics area in town. Apparently from where this place is, it is OK to walk west, but don’t go east as it is too dangerous! I grabbed a cab which took a while as the traffic was horrendous and this was the Central area I was going to but eventually got there.
The place was enormous and had massive amounts of small booths, all selling the same thing by the looks. I have no idea why you would buy a phone or camera from one booth and not the one next door, because the prices are the same just about everywhere! Trying to find a waterproof camera was a bit of a chore, there were a number of waterproof, but not shock proof which I would prefer. Eventually I found one, the same model as I had lost, an Olympus 850SW, it was actually cheaper than the one I had bought in Medellin by 250,000, so that was a saving of $125 right there! But of course, this model is a few years old now and way overpriced, but there is nothing better!
But, they do not take credit card of course, so this meant I had to walk 5 blocks to a Bancolombia, lucky it was west and not east eh! I then had to go through the procedure of getting a cash advance again, this took longer here as they wished to confirm the credit card somewhere. Eventually though I had the cash and headed back. I looked at other booths along the way hoping for a better deal, and preferably a better colour, the only one these chaps had was PINK! In the end I had no choice and bought it anyway, but of course I also had to buy a micro XD card, because mine was lost too. So, once again I have a camera, hopefully the last one I need to buy on this trip, I change my tyres less than this! 😉 I took a cab back but had to return to the shop after one block as I realised they had forgotten to give me the battery, I had used mine to test the unit with, but after that I was good to go, through the markets and traffic ridden streets!
After putting the new battery on charge I went up to the repair shop to see how the saddle bags were going. They had not done what I asked, they had put plastic clips on the loops which could break against the metal crash bars, so they said come back in half an hour and they would put something else on. I did so, with the bike this time and they had put a different type of fitting on and we tried this for a while.
It was still not any good because as soon as pressure or weight was put on the clips, they slid loose. After more discussion, they went back in and turned the clips around and this seemed to work a whole lot better. It was still an hour later that I left, but for what effort they put in, it was still quite cheap, only $20 to repair all the scrape holes and make these new attachments. I forgot to take pictures of the finished product, I will do that tomorrow, but you can sort of see one of them here, where Mike and Laudy are posing with my bike 🙂
The rest of the evening was spent getting a plan of attack sorted for tomorrow’s travel, reading some blog stuff and chatting with Bo. He and Louise were heading the same way but at a different pace, this is their blog site
A quiet night, there was supposed to be a booze/party bus for $7.50 but it started late and finished early if you get my drift, so I did not bother, I wanted to ride again 🙂
Day 0 miles and 0 km
Trip – 44,342 miles and 71,362 km
Salud
TravellingStrom
WORLD 
TravellingStrom 