Ecuador and Colombia – much is said about them...
In retrospect, Ecuador is one of our favorite countries on the trip, as if it found a way to take the best from the West while keeping the spirit of South America. We crossed it from south to north in the center of the Andes. In Colombia, on the other hand, we had a feeling of insecurity and we just went through it.
Ecuador
April, 2018
In preparation for the trip, we read (and not in one place) that Ecuador reminds us of Peru – cows walk in the street and dust accumulates everywhere… so as Peruvian graduates we thought we would just pass it by and move on. On the other hand, Colombia, it was written in those articles, is the most beautiful country in South America, so we thought to focus on it. In reality, the exact opposite happened, we fell in love with Ecuador, while Colombia was a real disappointment and we just wanted to get through it.
Ecuador is a small country (in South American standard of course – its area is 10 times larger than the State of Israel), its economy is weak, and it was supposed to remain a third world country, but somehow it managed to preserve the good from South America and get rid of the not so good.
We crossed the country from south to north across the Andes mountains. We didn’t go down to the beaches (although it was said that they are amazing) nor did we sail to the Galapagos (you have to leave something for the next trip). One would have thought that after a month in Andes we would get tired of them, so no!
How can you tell if a country is progressive or a third world country – well there are many signs, for example if the vehicles are of the rickshaw type, the sidewalks do not exist and the dust dominates everything, the telephone wires and electricity look like grandma’s knitting bag, every street is a potential market, the drivers ignore everything laws, the number of policemen and citizens are similar, the bureaucracy celebrates… Peru for example meets all these signs. Ecuador, on the other hand, is not like that (despite what is written in the articles), there is still a South American atmosphere, the Andean landscapes, the colonial cities are well-kept, the people are nice, with service awareness (they still don’t speak English) and the driving… well, maybe we need to expand a little on driving in South America… Driving here, as in nature, assumes that priority should be given to the big ones, trucks and buses are the kings of the road and do what they want, and at the bottom of the list are the pedestrians. We, as bikers, are pretty much at the bottom of the food chain as if we don’t exist on the road. All this disappears in Ecuador, the driving is polite, and driving here is similar to a western country and even in Quito (the capital city) they will give you a way and you won’t hear a cacophony of sirens in the background all the time.
Add to that the views of the Andes, winding roads, well-maintained colonial city centers, nice people, and amazing beaches and you got a great country. So we really liked it and will come back here again.
Columbia
April, 2018
Then you reach the border with Colombia… The economic situation in Venezuela pushes many residents to look for work across the continent and Colombia is Venezuela’s gateway to the rest of the continent. The line at the border for Venezuelans is many hours long (we estimate that many hundreds of job seekers stood in front of us in line). On the Ecuador side we approached the policewoman at the head of the line, showed our passports and were admitted to the immigration offices without waiting in line, nice! On Colombia side the same queue, the same people (only much less organized line), this time a man approached us and offered to let us in for a certain sum of money (a bribe to the policeman for those who didn’t understand).
The only place in South America that we didn’t feel safe was Colombia and not because we read warnings (this is said about every country in the region), but on the first day at a restaurant at dinner they suggested that we hurry up to the hotel because it was getting dark and it was not safe to walk around the street, on the second day a car stopped next to us and said don’t walk around here in the area only in the center of the city, on the third day the owner of the hotel drew for us on the map areas that we should not go around and so on.
It’s not that Colombia doesn’t have the Andes with amazing views, and nice people who just want to talk to help, but…
Finally, here is a story about a road… Bogotá, the capital city of Colombia, is very large and inhabited by eight million people. Colombia is a relatively advanced country and its road system quality is quite reasonable, so nothing prepared us for the main road that leads from the south towards Bogotá. A two-lane road (one in each direction) that winds through the mountains in the beautiful Andean landscape, a trip that was supposed to be enjoyable throughout. But on this road, which is a main transportation way, thousands of trucks pass by a day and not just any trucks, huge semi-trailers that sometimes slow down to 5 km/h on the crazy uphills (and the same on the downhills). So far not bad, except that there are such sharp turns that trucks cannot take staying in their lane and move to the opposite lane to turn, which creates traffic jams. We would still manage with that too. But these trucks, which were probably not designed for the aforementioned specific road, tend to break down, along the way there were dozens of trucks stuck (always in the middle of the most difficult ascent or descent) and since the road is narrow and without curbs, they stand in the middle of the one-lane road and create huge traffic jams. We would have managed with that too, except that the highwaymen decided that the road needed to be repaired/cleaned/trimmed on this particular day (and certainly every day of the year) so that every few kilometers there is a barrier that blocks one lane (of the one that exists) and diverts the traffic to the opposite lane alternately. In this chaos we are riding a motorcycle for which going at five km/h is not its strongest point, but luckily the bike is strong enough to overtake a huge truck in the blink of an eye so that it only took us four hours to cover a distance of one hundred km.
Our motorcycle is now making its way through the air towards Panama City (there is no road connecting South America with Central) and we will join it in the air tomorrow. It took a whole day at customs to send it (especially since they took off every part of it to make sure we weren’t transporting drugs) and it’s not clear what awaits us on the Panamanian side.
HE 
