Wemotobike: Colombian Bike Quest

Motorcycle Diaries

Detlef and Marleen are searching high and low for manly 250cc motors in South America. Will they find their perfect bikes, or will they have to make do with the typical expensive, pimped, wheelied, well-travelled Colombian motorcycle? Follow their journey at www.wemotobike.com or join them on the road!

"Finally, we’ve arrived in Colombia! It wasn’t easy to get from Africa to South America. We hitched a ride on several flights and even managed to explore a transit airport in our home continent of Europe. But finally, Colombia.

We were welcomed by our Dutch friend Marijn. He’s been living in a small town in Colombia for over three years now, and was glad to see us and our Gringo faces again. He hustled us past the taxi rank and straight to the bike parking instead. Marleen jumped on the back of Marijns’ motorbike, and Detlef got a motorcycle taxi. From his position up front, Marijn told us to be aware of police. Apparently, on every Tuesday and Thursday it's illegal to ride your bike with a passenger. That day was Tuesday, so we had to use the sneakiest of avoidance tactics to avoid a fine.

Soon, we grew to understand why this weird law has been implemented. Besides Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam, we've never seen a city that is so full to the brim with motorbikes and, more significantly, illegal taxi-drivers. It's these illegal entrepreneurs, making money without the proper licence, who are being targeted. A few well-timed detours and tactical bursts of speed later brought us to Marijn's apartment. After sleeping in a tent in Kenya and flying for over 36 hours, our new “home-for-a-few-weeks” seemed like the grandest of princely palaces. And the best bit? Delicious Colombian food and cold cervezas were waiting for us. ¡Salud!"

"Now for our next quest: two second-hand Japanese 250cc motorbikes. With Marijn in tow, we started our search full of optimism. But after having visited almost every motor shop in town, that optimism turned to doubt. We only managed to find one second-hand 250cc bike: a worn-out old Honda Tornado. We handed out our phone number to some shop owners and hestors (an intermediary or fixer) and they promised to look out for us.

Disappointed, we headed home. Yet, in the evening our phone started ringing... and ringing. One hestor had taken the task to heart and managed to find us a grand total of five Yamaha XTZ 250s! We awoke to the new morning sun bathing a veritable collection of 250cc metal parked outside the apartment. The first was too expensive, the next too abused and would never been able to make it to Chile, and a third had a very optimistic speedometer. But sitting among these were two more bikes that we couldn’t fault. Negotiations unfolded and deals were made. The owners would take care of the paperwork and everything would be ready by tomorrow. That's what they said, and we believed it."

"Too good to be true? Of course. Two days went by with no paperwork, motorbikes, or owners. More calls gave us more information: one gentleman had used the term “owner” when he was actually selling the motorbike for his boss – a boss who wasn’t able to leave his house because of being on parole. Well, you can imagine we walked away from that deal in a hurry. More luck was had with the second bike. After agreeing to pay in cash, and cutting in a 1% fee for the hestor who had arranged the bikes being parked in front of our apartment, we finally closed a deal! We called our new born baby, Azul, which means blue in Spanish."

"Now to find a brother for Azul! We saw a shed-load of bikes, but somehow every bike had something wrong. Some didn’t have insurance (which is illegal), didn’t pay their taxes (also illegal), had driven more than 100,000km, and the most disappointing were the bikes that looked fine but drove bad thanks to over-zealous pimping. Our days were filled with waiting for owners to show up at the apartment, checking bikes and making test rides. Most owners who came to show their motorbike arrived or left us with full throttle, bouncing around a foot above the tarmac. Oh yes, you’re quite a man in Colombia if you can afford a motorbike larger then 180cc.

After over a week of searching for our second bike we decided it would be better to take some time off. We headed to Cartagena, one of the oldest cities in Colombia. It felt incredibly relaxing to be away from our bike quest, and to fill our days with things normal tourists care about. We enjoyed walking through the old-town, and eating empanadas on the street. After two days we wanted to go back into nature and pitched up our tent at Baru, one of Cartagena's beaches. The dirt track towards this beach was great fun on a motorbike. Rain had turned the dirt to mud and we had to cross flooded roads through water up to our knees. Fun!"

"Back at Marijn's apartment we decided to shake things up a bit. We figured out that Facebook is a great way to understand how much “love and care” an owner has for their motorbike. In this way we were able to eliminate some bikes we otherwise would have asked to see in the flesh. To us, even a whiff of a wheelie excluded that bike from our search! Our tactic worked and we managed to find several quality bikes. In the end we found a bike from a friendly Colombian policeman with a proud picture of him with his bike on the beach. Everything felt good: the bike was well-maintained, the owner was friendly and knowledgable about how to maintain the bike, and he was asking a reasonable price. A few days later we were able to officially welcome Monster to our family. His name owed to his green complexion and mandatory Monster Energy sticker. We decided to replace this sticker with the Arai logo, because we prefer to promote safe helmets instead of diabetes!"

"We couldn’t wait to take off, but we needed to bring Azul & Monster to a mechanic shop in order to fit our much-needed luggage racks. Both bikes got new oil filters and fresh Motul oil as well! The bikes were ready after just a morning in the workshop and we were so excited that we left the same day. Our destination? The north of Colombia. Roads were surprisingly good and we were able to ride until 8pm that night. When we weren’t able to find an official campsite there was nothing for it but to bush camp. As we rode into the bush and started setting up camp, we found it hard to get rid of thoughts about the FARC, Guerrilla and kidnapping horror stories. As soon as it got a little light we packed our stuff and started riding again.

Have you heard of the Lost City Trek? It’s a 4 day hike through the jungle leading towards an archaeological site that was only discovered 44 years ago. It was a beautiful hike, and thanks to our local guide we got to know a lot about the transformation of this area from guerrilla warfare and narco-trafficking to tourism. No need to worry next time we bush camp with Azul and Monster? Well..."