Trans Americas 2009 - The Blog

Yesterday I washed my bike trousers in the shower in an attempt to stop them sticking to me, and this morning they're just about dry. It was a good job I brought them into the room as there was an almighty thunderstorm and torrential rain in the night. But the day dawned only slightly overcast and cooler than we're used to, but that's no bad thing as it's nice to be away from the humidity and not soaking with sweat all the time. After breakfast we were instructed to ride our motorcycles onto the football pitch, a patch of perfect green lawn, for another photo shoot, so a few of us duly did that, taking extra care on the slippery wet grass...





When we finally got going we split into 2 groups, one led by Mauricio the other by Kevin, with Carlos as ever playing sweeper and staying at the back. The kippers had gone off to do their own thing, preferring the straight road into Cali so they could claim to have visited all three of the cocaine triangle cities (Bogotá, Medellin and Cali). The rest of us much prefer riding in the mountains, which is exactly what we did. But first we stopped for fuel and to top up on water, and pulling into the petrol station Julia realised she had a puncture (her 2nd of the trip). Her brand new rear tyre had been victim to a very tough thorn, which caused a slow leak. Kevin leapt into action, first removing the offending thorn before making the hole rougher with a file-like tool, then inserting a rubber plug tightly into the hole and then re-inflating the tyre. In all it must have taken little more than 5 minutes...





When done, we set off again in the same groups as before, the faster guys riding with Mauricio as the road wound its way up into the mountains, another set of twisty bends to get us grooving... and grooving we were, for hour after hour, once again riding on fantastic roads surrounded by stunning scenery. All good things must come to an end, though, and this was no exception, as the road dropped down from the mountain and onto a flat plain, arrow straight for around 90 miles. After the excitement of the mountains it was a bit of a disappointment, but the road surface was good and there was little traffic, so we made good progress and I just sat back and enjoyed the ride, my mind wandering occasionally as my concentration wavered.

A couple of rest stops broke the day up, before we finally arrived on the outskirts of Popayan, and made our way into town and to the hotel. Another old monastery, the hotel was just a block away from the main plaza and had a large car park where we could line up the bikes, a swimming pool, an excellent restaurant and large rooms with balconies. They also had cold beer, which was most welcome.





By the time we'd got checked in and showered and had the first beer it was almost 6pm, and getting dark, so we strolled into town to look around. Popayan is known as the white city, a name it justly deserves as all the buildings in and around the main square are white, mostly old colonial buildings from when the Spanish were here.




After our stroll we went back to the hotel to eat in the restaurant, Carlos recommending it by saying that there were no other good restaurants in the town. The food was good, I had a weird corn soup that was a local recipe, followed by another local recipe for Franciscan Haddock which was delicious. We also had a couple of bottles of a rather good Argentinian Merlot to wash it down with.

On reflection, Carlos had been wrong, the roads today were not better than yesterday, but they were still pretty damn good. The sticker on my windscreen summing it up perfectly...