Trans Americas 2009 - The Blog

Yet another night of restless sleep, this damned cold has me so bunged up that I wake barely able to breathe, then struggle to get back to sleep. Once up and about, I do the usual jobs before heading down to the garage to take the bike to the BMW dealership where it will have the drive-shaft oil seal replaced and the oil and filter changed. Once again riding through the early-morning rush-hour traffic of Bogotá is like being in a video game, cars and scooters weaving this way and that, the little yellow taxis that outnumber the cars 5 to 1 like pinballs bouncing from lane to lane, but miraculously avoiding contact with anything else. They even managed to avoid contact with the group of 10 BMWs and 1 Suzuki that were making their way through the madness...

But the biggest surprise was waiting for us when we arrived at the dealership. I had been expecting a small-scale operation, with a few cars and bikes, and perhaps a small workshop with some grubby mechanics making use of some old hand-me-down tools. But no, this place was a palace. A huge building, modelled in the style of showcase BMW dealerships in Berlin or Mayfair, with a huge glass-front inside which were an M3, 7-series, X5 and several other high-end models. The car park where we put the bikes was underground, filled with Mini Cooper S works specials, more 3, 5 and 7-series and several X3 and X5s, all gleaming and new, the car park cleaner than most people's kitchens. At the back was the motorcycle workshop, a large clean room with a huge wall-mounted tool rack full of the specialist tools required to service BMW's full bike range, and 4 mechanics in BMW uniforms looking less like grease-monkeys than I do (although that's not much less, having been on the road for so long!).





We were shown round by Bernie, who runs the entire dealership and is just 32... he also speaks impeccable English and is a thoroughly nice chap, and clearly (and rightfully) proud of what he has created. The motorcycle workshop is a training centre for most of South America, so the bikes will be in very good hands, so after we'd told them what we wanted done, we went on a tour round the rest of the building. There's a very impressive motorcycle clothing department, which is trying to source a replacement pair of gloves as mine split in the torrential rain at David, and a small bike showroom (the R1200 GS Adventure selling for 61 million pesos – around $30,000 or £20,000!) and then the cars – the BMW M3 in the window an eye-watering 299,900,000 pesos... yes, that's nearly 300 million... which works out around £150,000... at those prices, no wonder the place was so impressive!

After the tour we ordered some taxis to take us back to the hotel, 4 of us cramming in one of the little yellow cabs to experience what it would be like to be inside a pinball during a particularly hectic game... The taxi drivers here could easily pass as London motorcycle couriers, even in their cars, they seem to have an ability to make them fit through gaps that are way too small, without at any stage hitting anything, and whilst travelling at speeds that in the UK would see them locked up without hope of parole for a long time... But we got back safely, and then Richard had the challenge of trying to get back out of the front of the cab he'd squeezed himself into...





I then spent the rest of the day doing very little, apart from trying (unsuccessfully) to find a cleaners that could get my bike suit cleaned and back to me in time, and searching for some cold & flu tablets that might help get rid of this damn bug I've caught. At one stage I did venture out with Ed & Lorriane, for a very nice cheesecake, but generally I just hung around in my room catching up on various jobs that needed doing.

At 5pm we gathered for yet another meeting, this time to run through what's happening tomorrow with the press-conference at the dealership where we're the star turn, and what we need to do to sort out our local insurance. Then we caught a cab down to Zona Rosa for dinner. And had another shock. This part of Bogotá is a complete surprise, being more like Covent Garden with posh restaurants and beautiful people thronging the streets than I'd expect to find anywhere in South America, let alone Columbia. It seems our preconceptions are once again wide of the mark... Here were literally thousands of young adults, both the men and women straight from the pages of Vogue or GQ (the proportion of stunningly beautiful women way higher than anywhere I've ever been), all out to have a good time, the restaurants and bars bursting with life. We went to the same restaurant that some of the group had been to the night before, and ate a genuinely excellent steak with 3-mushroom sauce, washed down with a superb bottle of Chilean red... very civilised indeed, even if the taxi ride there had not been...