Route Information - Highway 45 - Bogota to Santa Marta
My wife and I are planning to arrive in Colombia early to mid November. We will be shipping our F800GS by air from Canada to Bogota to begin a 6 month ride in South America.
We plan to start with several weeks, at least, in Colombia and are in the process of planning a route. The route is taking shape as follows:
Bogota to Santa Marta via highway 45. Santa Marta to Cartagena along the Carribean coast. Cartegena to Medellin, Cali, Popayan, Pasto and final Tulcan via highway 25.
My question is:
I cannot find much information on the stretch of highway 45 from Bucaramanga to Santa Marta. It appears to be roughly 600 km. We would not normally plan to travel more than 200-300 km per day. We often spend 2 or 3 days per stop to ensure we have plenty of time to see the places we pass through and more importantly meet the people.
Is this stretch of highway paved or at least in reasonably good all weather condition?
Can anyone suggest the towns along the way we may want to stop at with rooms or reasonable hotels along the way.
And of course, is this stretch of highway considered to be safe for travel by tourists on their own?
Any advice and information on this part of the route and any other part of our proposed route would be greatly appreciated.
Last edited by BackroadExplorer; 27 Aug 2009 at 03:32.
|