Arive in Columbia

They didn’t mind that I had a little fuel in the bike and they did not disconnect the battery or anything. I left the side cases and the top case on the bike. They had me take off the wind screen and the mirrors. Then they checked over the bike and made notes on any scratches that it had. This way I wouldn’t hold them accountable for damage that had occurred prior.

There aren’t any cheap hotels near the Panama Tecouman Airport so I shared a taxi back to Panama City with a couple of business men from Florida. The next day, I took a taxi back to the Cargo terminal and checked to make sure the bike was on it’s way. All was well so I went to the passenger terminal for my flight.

When I arrived in Bogata Columbia, I went to the Cargo terminal and got the packet of paperwork from the Girag Office. They sent me across the stret to the customs office. While there, I met an Equadorian person who was riding his KTM down from California. We hooked up and spent the rest of the customs process together. That worked out well as he had a guide. We had to go back to the original office, then back to the second office and then back to the original office. Quite a run around.

After all that we got our bikes and had to get them off the loading dock. The workers put some portable and steep steel stairs against the loading docks and put a plank on top of them. I wheeled the bike down while the workers steadied it. I’d thought about riding it, but decided not to bother. My new friend, however, rode the stairs very stylishly.