Columbia, Cali - Apparently there is more to Columbia

As Derrick was hinting towards, we were looking for options to get across the only missing portion of the pan-american, the dreaded Darien Gap.  Thanks to everyone who gave us ideas, helped a lot and gave us many contacts whom we could try.  Also a huge thanks to Mike and everyone at Casablanca Hostel (http://casablancahostel.wordpress.com/) in Cali, helped us out immensely, getting parts, directions, road tips, and of course looking into all of the flight info for us.  Would recommend it to all bikers, they have had numerous bikers through here over the years and is displayed on the wall.


Over the last few days, we have done a lot of maintenance on the bikes, valves, spark plugs, oil and air filters, chain and sprockets.  We also did some laundry and watched a lot of movies, well needed.We also took some time out of our busy schedule the last few days to do some sight seeing around Cali.  Went to a few of the larger churches (very beautiful and interesting), and the Museo del Oro (Gold Museum).







After emails and hunting down numerous captains and ships, we found Fritz the Cat (http://www.fritz-the-cat.com/v1/index.php?id=4&L=1), a 30´ catamaran that is sailing on the 14th and has room for the motorcycles on board.  We are choosing this option to allow for some better sights, but may delay us a little and may push back the arrival date by about a week.  But we figure this is well worth it since this saves us about 1000 US each.  We will all feel better once we get on the boat and are on our way out.  We get to go through the San Blas Islands and then arrive in Panama 5 days later.  Should be nice, the catamaran sways less in the ocean and apparently has an actual chef for breakfast lunch and dinner.

We met two other pretty awesome bikers, Adam on a DR650 from the UK (www.shortwayaround.com.uk), 5 years into his trip, just circling the world a couple times, no end planned yet.  Adam gave us lots of good tips from his experience thus far, and lots of ideas of how to make the bikes perfectly set up. And Yoshi on his 1200gs from Japan, who is 9 months into his 3 year trip.  We believe Yoshi the Japanese Che Guevara, so keep an eye on the news, we wouldn't be surprised if he was taking over Japan on the BMW in the next fews years.  These two gave us a lot of insight into the trip ahead and lots of good laughs over the last couple of days..

We are on our way out of Cali tomorrow morning and heading for Medellin.  Then from Medellin to Cartagena where we get on the boat.  Will update as soon as we can on our route to the Caribbean.