Crashing, Coffee, and Curfews. | Colombia Vlog EP5 | Mark Wallace

It appears my rear tire has a leak. I want to get to Manizales. We'll see if we can get it fixed. It was frightening and incredibly dangerous. We were driving opposite traffic. We were having to dive off the road to avoid being hit by big semi trucks. We're in Manizales. We're working and tomorrow morning we go to Cali to see some really cool friends of Eileen. First thing this morning we were headed to Cali but we came out to the garage. My back tire is totally flat. Nothing. Zero. It doesn't even register. That's not good. All right this tire is now full. It's 42 psi. I did find the culprit. There's a tiny little nail in there and so instead of pulling that out what I'm gonna do is leave it in until we get to Cali because it's effectively a bad tire plug that's in there. The risk is if I fix the tire because I've never done it on this tire with this kit I could destroy it and then we're stranded. It's better to just leave that in there get to a tire shop in Cali and then get it professionally done instead of risking messing everything up. It's about a four hour ride. I think we'll be just fine. We left the hotel pretty early in the morning and I really wanted to make sure I kept an eye on my rear tire pressure and sure enough before we even got through downtown I saw the pressure was dropping pretty rapidly and so we hopped over into a gas station and I refilled that back tire hoping that things would hold up until we got to Cali. Fortunately the second time I refilled that rear tire everything held up just fine. The nail that was in the tire didn't let any air escape and we were able to ride down to the mountains and into the valley and finally into Cali where Aileen's good friends awaited at Asturias their motorcycle shop and so she was able to reunite with Sori and Jorge and things were fantastic. Sori and Jorge are longtime adventure travelers and just wonderful people. Jorge took my motorcycle into the shop and immediately began repairing the back tire. Holy crap! After Jorge patched my rear tire he was then able to take Aileen's motorcycle into the workshop. Aileen's bike needed quite a bit of work. It needed a full service oil change, brake fluid change, the rear pannier needed to be remounted and so Jorge was able to take care of all of that and so once all of that work was finished I hopped on my motorcycle and headed to my hotel to be reunited with Aileen a couple of days later. Well Jorge fixed my tire and the next morning the patch wasn't working and so I thought his patch just didn't take so I took his patch out and put in a new one a different kind of plug and then that didn't work either. So it appears that my tire has either two punctures or maybe the bead is off or something so they're going to take the rear tire off and see if they can fix it. So this nail went in right here and then it came out right here so we were able to repair this. But where this was we you can't get a plug in there so unfortunately this is a brand new tire and it was ruined. All right Shifty has a brand new tire. It's all fixed up, brand new. We'll wear that in today and then Aileen's bike also had a full service. And Aileen. Everything's all new, everything's fixed up, now it's time for us to ride. We decided to take a day trip to the little town of Calimata. It's on a lake and we rode around the entire lake, Lake Calama and observed all of the wind surfers had a wonderful meal and really just took in the sights and had a wonderful ride that day. We also decided to stop into the little town of Derien and check out the little cathedral. It's a really wonderful yellow domed cathedral and to look out from the city to the lake. On the other side of the lake we found pastures with cattle and bamboo stands. It was really wonderful. The entire road was just lush and green. It was really an amazing ride. After taking in the sights we rode back down the mountain and into Cali. We were excited because my friend Laura and her friend Yvonne were waiting for us there that night where we were able to go out and have a nice meal and share a beverage. It's Monday and we're finally heading out from Cali to go to Filandia which is by Salento. It's where all the coffee plantations are and we've had a great week here in Cali. We've got to catch up with some friends and Aforius has been fantastic to us so they fixed up Aileen's motorcycle. They gave me a new, well I bought a new back tire that's all fixed. Aileen, lista? We are ready! Going to Filandia! Aileen's glove dropped to the ground and I thought I'd be nice and pick it up and when I bent over I realized my kickstand wasn't down. My bike goes over and so I grabbed onto my tank bag and when I did I snapped the strap so I have I've now ruined all the buckles on my tank bag. Ziplocs for the win! Just trying to be nice and crash my bike. The road to Filandia was really amazing. We were able to stop at the little roadside stands and enjoy some local fruit, talk to the locals and the roads were just open, not a lot of tourists and easy to ride. We found ourselves on top of a mountaintop in a really wonderful hotel and it was super peaceful and exactly what we needed after the busy city of Cali. We're in Finlandia now going for dinner with little friends. Are you ready Mark? Born ready! The next morning we left Filandia and headed toward Salento. It was a nice ride of about an hour and we were headed toward the Fincas. Those are the coffee plantations. We had booked a coffee tour at a local coffee plantation and we were looking forward to learning all about the process of picking and making coffee. We arrived at Finca El Caso Salento. It's a very small coffee plantation that allows you to take a coffee tour and learn about the entire life cycle of coffee from growing the seedlings to the coffee trees and watching things mature. The guide was phenomenal. He taught us about everything, about organic growing, the different kinds of trees, the different kinds of coffee beans and then we were able to get in there and pick some coffee ourselves. Once we had a few coffee beans in our baskets we used an old-fashioned coffee separator that takes the skins off the coffee beans and then we learned how those coffee beans were dried and roasted and then they showed us the proper way of making a good cup of coffee and then we tried that out ourselves. It was delicious and then we needed to make some decisions about our upcoming trip. All right we have some not bad news but not great news that we found out that Antioquia, how do you say it? Antioquia, the state, it's one of the biggest states in Colombia. There are quarantines starting the day after tomorrow and so we were going to go to Medellin and then stay for maybe a day or two and then head north to Cartagena but we can't. So as soon as we get there we'll be basically locked into the hotel for five days. Our plan was to go to Salento, have lunch and then go and camp in the Cucor Valley which is really one of the most beautiful places in Colombia. However, we have to get to Medellin tomorrow because of quarantine and so that means if we go and do the valley and do drone shots and hike and all that we have to camp in the valley tonight and then tomorrow because it's the only day we have to travel before the quarantine closes all the transit down. It's about an eight and a half nine hour ride from the valley to Medellin but there's going to be massive amounts of traffic and construction and so that is really realistically going to put us with stopping to get water and fuel and stuff about a 12-hour day optimistically which means we would be leaving at the crack of dawn to ride on very difficult roads. I think just common sense and safety is winning over the day and we don't really know how difficult it's going to be tomorrow with all the road closures and traffic and stuff so getting down the road today I think is a better option. We left the finca and really just enjoyed a day of riding off-road. All these little dirt paths around the fincas outside of Salento are really really fun to ride on and so we had a day where we just were able to enjoy the dirt and the scenery. Eventually the dirt ended and we rode through the town of Salento and then down the winding narrow roads finally back to the freeway where we rode back up the mountain into our final destination of Manizales. The following morning we realized that there had been heavy rains the night before. The pavement was very very slippery and we knew that we were going to be entering into the chaos of the construction but now things were probably going to be muddy. We found ourselves again in all of the traffic and construction the exact same road that we had ridden just a week earlier and as we rode on we realized that things were even more difficult than the last time we'd passed through. In the chaos of all of the traffic and construction Aileen and I got separated and after I made it through eventually all of the traffic I pulled over and Aileen was nowhere to be found. When we finally caught up I found out Aileen had crashed. But I don't know why god don't worry I'm a happy person. I was very lucky because it just was mud very slippery. Bikes will be up and even the climb pants work yeah even I don't feel anything. All right Aileen you had a crash. What happened? You should to see that. I was in a straight road with trucks and it got very slippery and the truck and I prefer to fall down to crash with the truck. Just in the protection of the jacket This here so I'm very glad about it. So the only thing that was hurt was your finger. And here it's so important to have good good stuff good gear. My head it's okay because I didn't hit my head but good helmet good jacket always good always. I think without boots it would have hurt your ass. Broke. You're all good. It's okay. Nothing wrong. It's just the heat here. Yeah okay. The protection it's the most important thing more than the motorcycle. It's really good. I'm very glad about climb. Very very very glad. Another important lesson for young riders or any rider really after any kind of an accident or fall down anything that gets your adrenaline going it's really important to stop and then take a break because right now Aileen is amped up like 10 cups of coffee. You can't in that area. And so we want to make sure everything's safe The decisions are good. So we're just taking a break. Yeah we're going to relax a little bit and then we'll go slow into Medellin. Thank you climb. Yeah we owe a big thanks to climb. We made it here to Medellin. How are you? I'm fine. I'm really fine. Okay we're very very thankful you have no injuries. Nothing happened. No nothing. Great. Well we did relax. We're here in our favorite hotel 61 Prado guest house. There's a hard quarantine here in Medellin and so we have four days where we can't leave the hotel. So we're just going to relax work on some videos and try to catch up on social media and things like that. On Monday hopefully we'll be able to leave Medellin and head north toward Cartagena and the beaches and all the wonderful things in northern Colombia. But what we don't know is what kind of quarantines or curfews and restrictions are going to be facing us in the coming weeks. Things are getting a little bit more difficult to travel here in Colombia and so we're just going to play it by ear and see what happens. We have about five more weeks in Colombia and then Colombia is kicking us out. So we'll just leave you with some wonderful shots of beautiful Medellin shot from the air.