The Andes

The Andes,

salento

After a weekend of resting my bones from cycling and using them for heavy farm work instead I left Salento in the same state I arrived but met many great people in the process and enjoyed the few days I spent in the Hostel. The volunteer quarters were home to some local artists, a lovely young couple who sold their art every week in the town.  There was a very chilled atmosphere at that place which I thoroughly enjoyed. I left to return to Calarca ,a very short afternoon of cycling through an empty back road, and take up the offer from my amigo Nando of a tour round Quindio district, the zona Cafeteria (the place where they do coffee and stuff). The next day we left for the tour, Beautiful empty country roads and a vista of rolling hills and coffee plantations. It was a great day up until we were about 40km short of arriving back at Nandos place. We got caught in one of the worst rain falls I can remember, the problem was that the last 40km were pretty much all downhill and it didn’t take long to discover that my brakes didn’t exactly do their job in the wet, that combined with the fact that the rain was so heavy we could hardly see anything for water in our eyes made a rather uncomfortable ride. We stopped in Armenia in a bike shop where I changed my brake pads for some all-weather ones and waited a while for the rain to stop (which it didn’t) in a state close to hyperthermia. But the climb back home warmed us up again despite the rain.

a quick bath on the side of the road

The next day was great, I set off early after being fed a ridiculously heavy breakfast and the day was pretty much all downhill, 110km. On the way I met another cycle tourist going the other way, there was a strip of  in between the two lanes so we stopped for an Exchange, he was coming from Chile, had a great rig which he had bodged together, using big oil containers for his front  panniers, cutting the tops off for lids. He was a juggler and tried to earn a bit of money here and there by busking at traffic lights, He had 6 clubs so we attempted to do some club passing in the middle of the road, I was a bit rusty so we were not good enough to impress anyone but it was a fun encounter none the less.

I arrived in a place called Buga, a very religious city with more churches then people I think, I treated myself to a hostel as my body had been complaining a lot that day, and was very glad I had made that decision because by pure chance I met another cyclist, who had come to the hostel just for a beer and some pizza, a French guy doing the whole hog right from Alaska down to Patagonia. Drank some beers, swapped some stories and planned to meet the next morning and continue on together, we have been travelling together for the past 4 days.

We had a short day from Buga to Cali only 50km or so and made big plans for the night, to discover the Salsa scene in Cali, we scoured the city for the cheapest hostel without finding anything cheaper than the first place we looked, but had a nice tour of the place in the process, after cooking an enormous pasta dinner in preparation for the next day which probably doubled my weight we both fell into food comers and our plans were over.

stole some bricks for the hell of it.

Our plans for an early start failed and we didn’t leave the city until almost 10 due to roadwork’s blocking the main route south which we meant we had to negotiate the backstreets as if trying to exit a ginormous maze. The day started off easy but become more physical as we began entering the andes.  But cycling is certainly more enjoyable with some company, toward the end of the day we were climbing a fair bit and began trying to catch the big lorries and steal from free kilometres, it was very fun and we have decided that its not cheating became its almost as difficult to keep hold of the trucks with all our weight than it is to pedal, but it ended in tears when Simon got to big for his boots and tried to grab one going a little bit too fast with tired arms and lost control, he was sent down and got some nasty grazes but incredibly lucky not to be hurt more than that. We stopped to tend to his injuries and ate some dinner at a roadside restaurant but Night time approached and were we still 15km of climbing away from a town so we started looking for a place to camp. After asking at a military base they declined us on the grounds that it was very dangerous (we are travelling a region of conflict with the FARC guerrillas), which we couldn’t really understand as there must have been 25 armed military to protect us. I guess they didn’t have much faith in themselves. We climbed another 2 km and spotted a nice looking farm up on the hill, I went to ask permission to camp on their land and after being very cautious of  at first they offered us an empty outhouse to camp out in, which was much appreciated as it rained most of the night. The old lady there was lovely and gave us a tour of their small coffee farm and talked lots about many things that neither of us really understood but it was very interesting none the less. We got off to an early start mainly thanks to the chicken house behind us housing a gang of very persistent cockerels who started their cock a doodle doing way before sunrise. We were very kindly treated to some breakfast and sent on our way.

the coffee factory

  we arrived in Popayan, it was great, all the roads were closed for cars and for some reason there were groups of people on the side of the road clapping and cheering and giving us support. We soon realised when 50 spandexed cyclists passed us at speeds so fast they were barely visible to the human eye that we had arrived during a national cycling race. We had lunch in Popayan which incidentally was a beautiful city; In the centre every building was as white as the average American supermodels front teeth. We also enjoyed the excessive amount of applause as we explored the city apparently full to the brim with budding cycling enthusiasts, it made us feel real special.

The afternoon was difficult, lots of climbing and the roads were as wholly as Swiss cheese. We finished the day with a very steep 8km climb up to a town called Rosas which unfortunately didn’t reflect the beauty of its name, it was a bit of a dump, we found a hospedaje (a cheap motel) for about £2 each, ate, and then I for one slept like little baby. These past few days I have noticed my body adapting to the task at hand, as if it’s coming to terms with what I am making it do and starting to give up complaining and just get on with it. Hills are becoming easier and I am starting not to notice the weight so much, saying that it has been far from easy, just slightly easier than it was at the start.

The next day started perfectly, 15km of downhill with a view that was so beautiful that it stole way to much of my attention and almost sent me flying in to the abyss. Followed by a short 6km steep climb, the rest of the day was pretty flat so we planned to smash some kilometres but by midday our flow was disrupted by a flat tyre on my back wheel, which was followed 200 metres later by another and then the realisation that my back tyre had worn itself a massive whole after only doing its job for 3 weeks (that’s what you get for spending £3 on a tyre) luckily I bought a spare in Popayan the previous day so changed it over, another 100 meters later  and my tyre was flat again, crappy glue patches I think, so I chucked on a fresh tube and that was enough to satisfy the greedy thing. Needless to say this ate us a good part of the afternoon. We arrived late afternoon is a town consisting of not much more than a gas station and a restaurant and decided to by some food and some beer and find a spot to camp. As we were organising our evening in the one store in town a guy rocked up on a fully loaded royal Enfield, with a ton of character.  A very British man named Harry with a British accent that made me sound American he was on a round the world trip trying to run his diesel engine on veg oil but apparently not having a whole load of success, he was on his fourth engine of the trip, It seems the veg oil isn’t great for the health of the engine. We invited him to join us in our camp in the field behind the hotel for a beer and swapped stories of our travels. He spent the night sat in a field next to some cow shit after paying for a nice comfortable room but it’s the company that counts.

camp

Robertos reserve

That brings us to today, Today we really started climbing, this morning I think we started around 500m and are now at about 2300m. The heat this morning was unbearable it must have been in the mid thirtys but as we started to climb higher and higher the climate started to change with the altitude, After having climbed about 50km a beaten up old jeep stopped and a friendly looking old man offered for us to stay at his ecological reserve located another 80km up the road, We knew that it would not be possible to get that far so he offered us a lift, which we quickly accepted due to the heat which by that time was started to wear me down as well as causing rust to form on my bike from the constant stream of sweat that was running off my nose. A lovely old man, Roberto, we somehow crammed ourselves along with our bikes and gear into the little jeep and enjoyed a very easy and comfortable 80km climb, this brought us up to 2300m where the climate is far more manageable. The views as we drove up the valley were stunning; we are well and truly in the Andes now, Roberto stopped at a few viewpoints to give us some lessons in geography, explained the lay of the land, how it was formed, and when, which I almost understood with my desperate but ever improving grasp of Spanish . I am writing to you now from Roberto’s reserve it is a research centre for reforestation and as far as I understand at the moment he is working on repopulating the forest with orchids. He dropped us here, told us to feel at home and left, so we have the use of this amazing place at our disposal, a kitchen full of food, warm beds and electricity. The extent of human kindness I have experienced on this trip so far has been really touching, we are now only a day away from the Ecuadorian border.