January 1 saw us off on an early start from Medellin to Hacienda Napoles, the ranch of the infamous drug lord Pablo Escobar, thought to be in the top 10 richest people in the world at his death. Over the years this enormous ranch had been converted to a family attraction, with water slides, tourist trains and a zoo containing one very lethargic tiger from Africa! The remains of his ruined home were plastered with photos of the carnage that Pablo bought down on Medellin. Anyone who got in his way was executed, usually with a bomb, killing many innocent people.
We normally start and finish the day with a Peck hug!

As Colombia is world famous for its coffee, we turned around and went back over a huge mountain range to the coffee growing region and stayed in the gorgeous village Salento. It was a market day and a weekend, so VERY crowded!

The mountain riding was fantastic and the temperature at 1,500m perfect climate. One pass took us up to 3,500m and through dense cloud near the top. Pat told Kate: "If she wanted to soar with the Eagles, she must learn to fly in the clouds!" (Dad joke!)
We were happy to stop at this huge Octagon Restaurant and have a Menu del Dia and warm our bodies as the temp had dropped to 8 deg C. We really didnt expect to be so cold so close to the Equator!
Its now the last Sunday of the school holidays and most of Bogota's 9 million people are returning home. We pass long lines of traffic, sometimes 100 at a time, and passed over 2000 that day! Go Kate!
Not wanting to be anywhere near the city limits of Bogota we stay at Melgar about 100km West of Bogota. The next morning was very quiet on the highway until we reached the city limits. It then took us 2 hours to crawl the 3 km's to our Hotel in Bogota's normal traffic jam!
As promised, Andres from Adventures57 was at the Hotel waiting to pick up the rental bike.

Kate had done such a good job riding that there was no damage to the bike at all over 17 days and 3000km's. Colombia is notorious for its rain and violence and Kate experienced neither. We all cried at Kate's departure, but promised another adventure together next Christmas at a destination yet to be determined!
The next morning we hot tailed it out of Bogota chaos and headed for Cali. Our new Friends Andres and Sonja agreed to meet us in Cali for the long weekend. We caught taxi's around town as they are so cheap, had some great meals together and had some great laugh's with our twin bikes!

We then continued to head south towards Popayan, a beautiful white Colonial town that was having a local festival at the time. Within 5 minutes of our evening stroll there was a commotion up the street with a teenager running hard towards us with a number of people behind him yelling "thief". Pat joined the chase after him and the man running next to him grabbed the kid, threw him against the wall and put a gun to his head!! I wonder where that kid is now as we got the hell out of there!
That night was a huge celebration and people had flocked in from surrounding area. While walking up a long, crowded stone staircase to the main square the crowd closed in on us and we found ourselves separated by what appeared to be some rude and pushy people. Very different to the lovely, sweet and kind people we had met throughout Colombia. Within 3 seconds Pat could feel the fat hand of this fat lady in his pocket full of toilet paper. She had this "what are you talking about" look on her face when he was yelling "Thief - ladron" and poking his finger into her blubbery shoulder! She missed the hidden money pocket, but took enough toilet paper to last her a day or so!
It was a wonderful lush mountain ride the next day to Pasto. We stayed at San Antonio Boutique Hotel where they bought us hot chocolate and hot water bottles at bedtime as it was so cold... now thats a first!

Off to the Ecuador border crossing early the next day, very easy and very quick with customes only checking import papers and not even looking at the bike!
We were sad to leave Colombia as we loved EVERY moment in this wonderful country full of warm, loving people; amazing colonial towns; awesome mountain roads and scenery; but not the potholes and the trucks and traffic jams of the big cities! Colombia has been discovered and so have the beautiful women in Colombia... Miss Universe 2015 is ..... COLOMBIA!