Colombia VII: Between a RUNT and a Hard Place

If you want to drive in Colombia, in a Colombian vehicle, you must have a RUNT. This involves getting registered in a national database that manages driver information and driving history. Before the new bike could be put into Fran’s name, he needed to apply for a RUNT by visiting a Transit office, presenting his passport and fingerprint, and paying a fee. While at the Zona T store that first morning we made an appointment for Monday and were expecting a promised Enfield contact to assist us with the process. However, due to a behind the scenes conversation between the store staff and our friend, it somehow transpired that he now would be the one to accompany us. This we weren’t happy about as he’d already given up so much of his time but the deed was done and we never did find out what had happened to the original plan. It served as a reminder of how quickly events you think you’re in control of can change when you’re a stranger in a foreign land.

The Transit office was in a busy section of Bogotá that backed onto the mountains. It was on the second floor of a tall apartment building with a coffee shop and gym below. Guillermo was allowed in as translator but as there was already a sizeable queue, I had to stay outside. I didn’t mind, it was a relief to hand the paperwork over to someone else for a change. I spent a pleasantly idle morning hanging over the railings watching the clouds change over the dark and not-so-distant Andes while apartment owners came and went with their dogs and groceries, mostly cardboard flats of eggs. Inside it wasn’t going well. The computer system wouldn’t accept Fran’s passport number, or so we thought. Nobody seemed to really know what the problem was. After several hours, they were told to come back in an hour, but nothing had changed. A third and fruitless attempt took place the next morning and we were getting worried. By that afternoon Fran and Guillermo were so well-known that they didn’t even have to ask the security guard for permission to enter. Downstairs, the coffee shop boy knew my order by heart and I sat by the window in sick anticipation. No RUNT, no registration, no open road. But during that fourth audience the curse was somehow lifted. As though the previous attempts had never occurred, the computer accepted his application first time round and after a third payment of $5.17, Fran was registered. Now all he had to do was be a good boy, obey the Colombian traffic laws and never, ever cross the double yellow lines.

Wednesday was the day of the SOAT, an insurance we were well familiar with. There are so many traffic fatalities in Colombia each year that it’s mandatory for all vehicles to have cover for personal injury to people. Although we were the only customers at the counter in the SOAT office, we were sent to a plastic seat in the corner to make the payment by phone. Wouldn’t you know, the pay link wouldn’t work on ours. We had enough cash but they wouldn’t take it because it was after 4:00 PM and the bank was closed. (This was explained by the security guard on the door.) If Guillermo hadn’t stepped in and paid on his mobile, we would have been down there again the next day. Poor guy, helping us was turning into more than he’d bargained for. “No good deed goes unpunished” as they say.

Now the vehicle registration office could issue our license plate. It arrived at Royal Enfield on Friday afternoon. By the time we'd been handed the complete purchase, title and registration papers it was 5:00 PM and poor Fran was thrust into the mayhem outside.  It’s one thing to mosey into Bogotá after two years of driving south of the border but stepping off a plane into the frying pan was another matter altogether. Climbing onto a new, lower-powered bike for the first time with the flames of Friday evening rush hour licking at his heels….. well, it was nothing less than a trial by fire. He did live to tell the tale, but like Prometheus, had to repeat the experience again and again over the next several days, for when it comes to traffic, Bogotá is a law onto itself. There’s no margin for error, everybody wants to be in someone else’s space and it’s got to be the only place on earth where the buses split lanes. I wished I was on Pferdi, who was at least more noticeable, but to tell the truth, I could have been in a tank and still felt vulnerable. After a few days spent running errands and clocking-up some miles with unsettling excursions like driving 22k to an address that was in actuality only 4k away, it was time to get out and begin our test run.

Leaving the capital took just shy of two hours. The traffic was horrendous: multiple lanes of stopped cars, manic, unpredictable, motorcycle manoeuvres and smoke-belching trucks. Each driver was a mere clip away from a free pass to eternity. Hawkers in the median sold clothes, towels, ice cream and cellophaned-wrapped nuts. A poor soul lay comatose in the middle of it all under a dirty blue sheet. We still hadn’t figured out the bike’s navigation app so I was glued to the phone which was fractionally less frightening than watching what was going on around me.

At the edge of town the barrios covered the brown hillsides with faded pixels of pinks, greens and turquoises. There wasn’t a tree in sight. It was impossible to reconcile these huddled crumbling buildings with the red brick and glass apartments of leafy upmarket Bogotá. A series of cable cars were gliding across the patches of rubbish-strewn no man’s land, connecting these outlying communities to the buses into the city. Gradually Bogotá’s boundary bled into a new town whose steep side streets were unpaved, each doorstep opening to a mirror-image house narrowly separated by sand, stones and trash.

Climbing into the mountains we felt very small. They rose above in every direction, their full height hidden by low clouds. We were still in the running-in stage and restricted to 4,000 revs so couldn’t hit the hills running even if the traffic permitted. It didn’t. That said, the little Himalayan seemed to cope quite well. It was a two-lane road and we were sandwiched between a continuous stream of trucks, many of them tankers bearing “Peligro - Líquido Inflamable” signs. It took a long time to descend. At the bottom of the last hill we got pulled over at a police checkpoint. The cop was charming, even when he admonished Fran for not speaking Spanish. Always managing to get out of a fix, Fran explained sadly that he was  “Un Estúpido” so I as usual got stuck answering all the questions. At the end of a very pleasant encounter the two boys gave each other a fist bump and off we went, with me wondering really, am I needed at all?

East of Bogotá and the Andes lies the city of Villavicencio. It’s at the start of a great plain called the Llanos that stretches across eastern Colombia and Venezuela, and to the Amazon basin in the south.  We weren’t long out of the mountains when the savannah stretched before us, like Florida, but with more trees. It was very  green, a glittering emerald, with lush vegetation and white grazing cows. After the perfect spring weather in the capital, the heat and humidity were a shock. “Who left the bloody door closed and the heat on?!” The entire journey was less than 130k but took 4.5 hours. It had been a tough ride, the Himalayan’s seats were brutally hard and I’d been squirming since a hour out. Stopped at the lights in traffic as bad as Bogotá's, we got welcomed to Colombia by an old fellow on a scooter. Royal Enfield may be well-known here but with a brand new bike and in full gear, we stood out a mile. The local riders were wearing shorts and flip flops, with their novias (girlfriends) hanging off the back in off-the-shoulder blouses daintily eating ice cream. Helmets, it seemed, were optional. I guess this is where our SOAT money goes.

Out the far side of town, past a water park and abattoir, we found our hotel. It was a tropical oasis and we were the only guests.  After the preparations to leave Europe, the list of things to do in the US, and the uncertainty of becoming a vehicle owner in Colombia, we were tired. The next several days were spent mostly on the hammock. We took short drives and long coffee breaks, some of which came with plates of cheese. I remembered to order Tinto instead of coffee, but forgot to say “no sugar”, and we were already  sipping broth for breakfast. RUNT or no RUNT, it was good to be back.

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