Breaking a golden rule.

Don’t leave a country until your bike has set off.
That’s a rule that I believe in, however…
The cargo plane for Girag has broken in Bogota. It’s a holiday weekend in Columbia.
No one works on Monday as the holiday runs over.
So, Tuesday would be our earliest departure for us and the bikes, however, they can fly them on Saturday.
We need to fly tomorrow, as our hotel accommodation will have exceeded its friendly discount rate of $70 per night and go back up to the $220 they have as card rate.

So, today we rode out of the city, slicing and weaving through the gridlock once more.
Bikes were delivered, paperwork done, bikes adapted for crating…mirrors off and battery detached.
Then back to town on a bus, which, as more people got on, got slower and slower, until it gave up and we had to swop buses.

It’s costing $900 for each bike and $300 for each rider..no alternatives that are viable. There’s an almost mythical Frenchman, with a boat, who seems to crop up in hushed conversations.

I’m looking at shipping some weight off the bike, back to Seattle. The digital hard drive video is working fine, so I’ll not need the tape camera and all the tapes and connectors. In all, I can shed 10 kilos, which may not seem like much, but is. Only problem is, it’s going to cost $200 to post using a courier service (all the same), I’ll check out the local post service, but they are, by all accounts a gamble.
But it’s time to get rid of anything I’ve not used yet, because likelihood is I wont be needing it.

So, in summary, today has been a bureaucratic day, making sure all the Is were dotted and Ts crossed, which is far better than having Is crossed and dotty Tea.

Just a side note about sharing…I was up until 2 am yesterday in the hotel lobby, working on pictures and video, because Javier got lucky!

additional. Panama old town is where you should go to sample photographer’s dream shoot. Just remember to have a fresh set of charged batteries in your camera…oooops. It’s where the Presidential palace is and the museums and very sophisticated nightlife. It’s also where Captain Morgan used his naval bombardment to capture the city, at the peak of pirate power (I bet he knows the Frenchman with the boat). The colonial squares are, Javier informs me, as good as those to be found in Cadiz’s restoration programme. The grand plazas, cathedral and national buildings, built as they are on a promontory, with the new cities lights, the Pacific and the small island retreats scattered in the dark waters being picked out by a few house lights as a backdrop, certainly make for a special ambiance, that the Porsche, Jaguar and limousine driving (or driven) beautiful people enjoy.