TRAVERSE 113
TRAVEL- COLOMBIA / ECUADOR
FRANCESCO CICCARELLO & SERENA BARONCINI
THE LAST ECUADORIAN SUNSET
Let ' s clarify a little. If you intend to travel the entire length of the American continents by land, you must immediately consider the problem of how to cross the Darien Gap, the strip of tropical jungle that connects Panama to Colombia, where there is eightyseven kilometres of missing road unless you want to cross it on foot. The Gap is where you will face gangs of drug traffickers who are much more dangerous than wild animals. The alternative is you must ship the motorcycle by ship or plane.
The stories of experienced motorcyclists, who faced the problem several years ago, speak of the Stharlatte, an old Dutch sailing vessel used for this purpose which, on an epic voyage through the San Blas islets, took adventurers from the capital Panama to Cartagena De Indias on the Caribbean coast of Colombia. Epic times and perhaps long gone.
Today you can ship your motorbike and wait 15 days on the opposite coast or fly it and go from Central to South America in just one day. As a third option, you can rely on the ferryman on duty but hearing the stories of the few who have done so, it is scary. So, to save time, we opt for the plane and found ourselves at the Bogota airport precariously balanced on our motorbike on a freight elevator that allowed us to exit the cargo area.
After months spent in the heat, the climate of early October surprised us; it was the rainy season and the 2650 metre altitude took away a bit of our oxygen. The metropolis of Bogota has many worlds within it; from the historic centre of Candelaria to the workers ' neighbourhoods passing through the residential neighbourhoods of Parque 93.
We visited Plaza de Bolivar from which the cobbled streets of the
TRAVERSE 113