11.22.10 Sincelero to Medellin

11/22/10 Sincelejo to Medellin
We ended up staying only a day in Sincelejo because there was nothing really great going on aside from a cheap hotel that had air conditioning.
The next morning we woke up early to try to make it to Medellin. The locals were telling us that it was taking people nearly 14 hours to make it to Medellin on what is normally a 6 hour ride. They were saying this because the last 2 months it has been raining here in Colombia like cats and dogs and apparently the roads were flooded. My past experience is that people tend to exaggerate, so I figured that I would take the chance and ride down anyways and if it was as bad as they were saying that I would "simply" turn around.
On the way down you could see where there had been floods all around. The farms on both side of the roads looked like lakes and in some cases you could barely see the top of trees, at times it almost felt like I was riding on a snake like island.
The worse of the roads were closed in one lane and cars had to alternate to pass through but being on a motorcycle I could always move up to the front of the pack and the waiting time was minimal but you could see where it would definitely take hours to pass through if you were in a car or bus. The locals had been correct, this trip does seem like it would have taken 10 plus hours to do (in a car or bus).
About an hour before arriving to Medellin the roads were very windy steep and SUPER fun! I was definitely pushing the bike. Towards the end of the trip the bike started feeling warm so I kept an eye on the temperature gage to ensure that the bike would NOT over heat. Aside from pushing the bike, the other culprit for the bike heating up was that I added some Tank Panniers to the bike. The bags were originally designed for a 1200 GS, but I had seen another blog where a guy was using these bags on the exact same trip as my girlfriend and I on the exact same bike so I figure it was OK to add these bags to my bike. They were NOT.
By the time we got to our Hostel in Medellin and I parked the bike the bike started to leak out fuel from underneath. At first I thought that the fuel pump had gone out, because this is somewhat of a common problem that KTM 990 adventures have. But I did NOT want to assume this so I looked further into it and did some research on the web about what had happened. As it turns out, it ended up being Vapor lock. The combination of me pushing the bike, the bike not breathing well due to the tank panniers, the change in altitude and then topping off the fuel before the decent was the perfect recipe for this.
The next day I started the bike up and everything seemed to running completely fine. To confirm that I was correct and that Vapor lock was the only problem I ended up taking it to the local KTM Dealership in Medellin (Thank God there was one here!!). After explaining to them what had gone on they confirmed that I was correct. I will definitely move the tank panniers to the back of the bike to ensure that this NOT happen again.