Colombia is a notorious but, more importantly, a sadly misunderstood country about which we can readily cast some harsh stereotypes without knowing any specifics. On closer inspection, much of this turns out to be outdated, while other fragments of our knowledge are simply media prejudices. Two excellent conditions to visit Colombia yourself, to discover it up close on your own and to form your own opinion. Anyone who has ridden the Vuelta Colombiana round trip through Colombia will not only have experienced a challenging motorcycle adventure in the most diverse natural areas and climate zones, but will also be able to tell of the courteous friendliness and helpfulness of the people of Colombia that is second to none.
Kurze Pause auf der Schotterpiste durch die Tatacoa-Wüste
You can't get any closer than by motorbike. However, you have to be willing to compromise. In order not to get bogged down, it is important to mark out a route on which you can experience as much of the essence of the region between the Pacific, the Caribbean and the Andes as possible, without reeling off endless, empty and low-contrast asphalt kilometers. Colombia is twice the size of Spain or Kenya. Above all, it is diverse; with a millennia-long history that produced impressive cultural products long before the Spanish conquistadors. A country where you can
- look down at the clouds from the mile-high ridges of the Andes,
- let the sun burn that Bacardi feeling of the palm-fringed Caribbean beaches into your skin,
- gravel through mystical, misty rain forests and discover the stone death guards of ancient cultures that have long since disappeared or
- in bizarren Wüstenlandschaften offroad in die Sonne reiten kann.
Where almost everything is possible for motorcyclists in terms of driving fun, landscapes, road profile and technical requirements, balanced route planning plays a special role. Colombia is simply too big to simply drive lengthwise and wide in a manageable amount of time and still take away the many different impressions. Because in this Latin American country, too, one runs the risk of simply going with the flow and staying too long on the major asphalt national roads, while adventures left and right that have not been experienced, action-packed but unridden slopes and wonderful people whom one has never met, rush by. So you always have to get off the road - off-road. The following tour leads through the technically most challenging experience area of the Colombian Andes in a circuit. Tour is called Vuelta in Spanish. The name for this tour of Colombia - a Vuelta Colombiana - is therefore obvious.