Before I knew it, it just started. At eight o'clock we fired up the engines of our BMW machines and joined the Cali city traffic down the hill. After a few red lights, we had already tried our buddy system a few times and each of us knew how and when to wait for those left behind. The first part of our day's stage soon led up into the mountains and quite a bit of cornering began. That's why I didn't have that much opportunity to familiarize myself with the landscape, because I was fairly busy with the strange machine and the many very tight curves. But we quickly got used to each other.
After about two hours I thought we'd pull over, but it was down a narrow path to the river bank and then up onto a small cable ferry in one go. The five of us motorbikes were the only passengers and the ferry started immediately and was pushed along the wire rope to the other side by the force of the water alone. The descent was challenging as it was a steep climb up a muddy narrow track on the other side of the river. I made it, everyone else too and the most dangerous thing was just an indignant street dog who greeted us barking and who couldn't tell whether he wouldn't snap at us after all. This was followed by a longer section of gravel road, which we mostly drove while standing. Again and again we came through rain showers, but were sure from the light clouds in the sky above us that they would not last long. In the afternoon things looked different and the sky darkened in such a way that we pulled over and everyone except me put on at least part of their rain gear. Instead, I set out to know how the Andean rain would treat my motorcycle clothing and I can say that the rain here knows no end on the scale: If you think it's pouring rain and it doesn't go more worse, then five minutes later it rains even worse, and another five minutes later it rains even harder. When we finally got to Salento and I got off the bike, the water was running out of my sleeves. The good thing is you can only get really wet once and it's nothing I can't make up for after a few minutes in a hot shower.