8th of July - Medellin to San Martin - pushing the rope - 428km 7h31
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KTM completed the service on the same day and we prepared for leaving Medellin. While going out on the highway we saw (again) the poverty in harsh contradiction to the decadence in "El Poblado" one quarter in Medellin. In Colombia which is by far richer than Bolivia, the poverty is much worse and more obvious.
Here lost souls search in the garbage beside the autopista and the poor live in the dirt. In Bolivia - at least we got this impression - the poor still have their ties in their traditional family network and village communities. Hard work life with their cattle on the field in the mountains under tough climate conditions but still a smile on their rugged faces.
On the way out of Medellin we lost somewhere our way to Cartagena. Destiny?
Another client back at the KTM shop told us that the way via Puerto Berrio is much nicer though longer than the direct approach to Cartagena.
The day before I made some calculations and found out that instead of 640km direct approach this one would be more than 1.000km!
So; I decided against it but now we were exactly on this road. Ok, let's continue the detour.
Later we hit the main connection between Bogota and the coastal line...traffic, traffic, traffic and construction works. And breeding heat.
In the late afternoon, the moto didn't want to run anymore. I pushed the bike 300m into a gas station which was luckily there in the nowhere. The girl from the station phoned around for a mechanic in the next village and finally we got one.
Nice surrounding..:-)
The injector was blocked again. Like in Chile. Two hours later we got it fixed with compressed air from a truck.
Afterwards the mechanic showed us a nice hotel in San Martin, the next village. Lucky we!
« Back to journal
KTM completed the service on the same day and we prepared for leaving Medellin. While going out on the highway we saw (again) the poverty in harsh contradiction to the decadence in "El Poblado" one quarter in Medellin. In Colombia which is by far richer than Bolivia, the poverty is much worse and more obvious.
Here lost souls search in the garbage beside the autopista and the poor live in the dirt. In Bolivia - at least we got this impression - the poor still have their ties in their traditional family network and village communities. Hard work life with their cattle on the field in the mountains under tough climate conditions but still a smile on their rugged faces.
On the way out of Medellin we lost somewhere our way to Cartagena. Destiny?
Another client back at the KTM shop told us that the way via Puerto Berrio is much nicer though longer than the direct approach to Cartagena.
The day before I made some calculations and found out that instead of 640km direct approach this one would be more than 1.000km!
So; I decided against it but now we were exactly on this road. Ok, let's continue the detour.
Later we hit the main connection between Bogota and the coastal line...traffic, traffic, traffic and construction works. And breeding heat.
In the late afternoon, the moto didn't want to run anymore. I pushed the bike 300m into a gas station which was luckily there in the nowhere. The girl from the station phoned around for a mechanic in the next village and finally we got one.
Nice surrounding..:-)
The injector was blocked again. Like in Chile. Two hours later we got it fixed with compressed air from a truck.
Afterwards the mechanic showed us a nice hotel in San Martin, the next village. Lucky we!
