This is my final post on my bike journey through this part of the world.. so as a favour (donations are welcome however… :o)* to my cycling readership, a number of whom I already know are interested in heading to Colombia, I’ve put together a page on the basic facts about riding in these countries. It is here, or you can see it in the pages menu over there in the right sidebar.

Have fun!

* note to self, figure out some way of making some ££ out of this…

Nope, not the Star Trek movie, rather just Bogota to Cornwall. My voyage home was less sci-fi, more black comedy…. The fun started benignly enough when trying to get my bike in a cab to get out to the airport. The cabs in Bogotá are similar to those in Quito… i.e small, yellow and Korean – so they have folding seats so I wasn’t expecting any trouble… how how wrong I was, in Bogotá they run on propane so have a dirty great tank in the trunk/boot*. Thankfully in my experience Bogotá cabbies have an excellent sense of humour, it was needed as our attempts to get the boxed bike wedged into the cab somehow all failed miserably… eventually we resigned ourselves to the fact that the bike was going to have to come out of the box and go in the cab in pieces, the box was stamped flat, folded up and jammed in while I went off in search of more packing tape to put the whole lot back together again at the airport. My driver was brilliant once there, there was a load of construction work going on so the normal arrivals drop off was blocked off, no problem, he parked right by the entrance and with one hand helped me repack the box, and with the other fended off the coppers keen to move us on. We laughed about the whole deal, best humoured cabbie I have ever met. He earned a large tip, and not just because I had  a bunch of Pesos to get rid of anyway…….

Check-in then… Iberia have a rather generous baggage allowance of 46kg(!!) but you have to book a bike separately (which I had done)… however despite the rather obvious fact that somehow Iberia had been happy to carry my bike from London the agent said “nope, sorry, you can’t take the bike” (or words to that effect in Spanish)… I was ready to dump the thing anyway (great excuse to build a new one for the next adventure, mine is well worn). I just looked sad and smiled wearily… the ploy worked, she and her colleague took pity.. spent 10 mins conferring and eventually simply said “OK, have a nice trip”. Sorted.

Chainsaws and cattle whips…. you know it would never have occurred to me that I wouldn’t be allowed either of those things in my handbaggage, just as well the enormous list of prohibited items at security was so comprehensive, you never know… I might one day have found myself travelling with a pick-axe “just in case”….

That should have been it right, nice and easy all the way home….? Nope. Just as the aircraft was boarding the airport police decided I looked particularly dodgy (I suppose), took my passport and dragged me off for gut x-rays just to see if I was carrying anything in there other than the remains of the chicken and mango salad I had for lunch… Even then the Colombian friendliness shone through.. they had a job to do but were most apologetic about it, nice smiles all round though with the flight about to leave my thoughts were elsewhere. It did leave a bit of a bad taste but in my mind it’s not a black mark against Colombia at all, rather just an unfortunate consequence of the state of western society that drives demand for drugs. I made my flight, just… they held it for me.

I really did figure that would be it… however Madrid wasn’t plain sailing either, once again a copper singled me out on disembarkation from the aircraft for a search… heck, I thought I looked pretty respectable… shaved, clean clothes etc etc. The final humiliation was when I wasn’t allowed on the flight to London.. problem with my passport apparently… you see it is a quite new one with validioty beyond 10 years because I filled my other one up and replaced well before it’s expiry date. My new one just has stamps in it from countries that folk expect to be a bit ‘dodgy’ on the narcotic front… India, Morocco, Ecuador, Colombia, Pakistan…. and the Morocco visa is so smudged it is illegible (not my fault, the ink just bled like that)…. Still, I got to London about 5pm Friday afternoon, and home here to Cornwall yesterday (Saturday) afternoon. Tired…

None of it seems real now, I am really not happy to be back, Colombia especially was a fantastic experience despite any potential risk of riding a bike in the rural south. In Villa de Leyva an old lady asked me what I thought of her country… I said “I love Colombia, I really do.” She said in reply “I love my country too….” This is something I noticed all over, Colombians are proud of their country. and justifiably so, it is beautiful, warm, welcoming and so tidy. The contrast with the general scruffiness in Ecuador was remarkable. Riding away from the border towards Pasto honestly did feel like I was in someone’s vast, lush, mountain garden. I have already made plans to head back that way….

p.s. in case you were wondering, or even if you weren’t…. my bike did make it home undamaged :o)

* delete as appropriate depending on which side of the Atlantic you reside.

This city has grown on me, when I first arrived I was pretty indifferent however given a few days to get under it’s skin and my perception has changed greatly.. it is a city of hidden treats…. beautiful 17th colonial mansions with gardens and courtyards hiding behind plain facades, rich in culture and history (many museums worth a visit) and full of colour and life…. and a heck of a lot of little yellow taxi cabs…

I must confess I am not really with it tonight having been through a bottle or two of vino tinto with friends so in the meantime here’s a couple of snaps to look at until such time as I’m motivated to write the promised page with my thoughts on the practicalities and so on of cycling in this part of the world… (I fly home in lesss than 24hrs so motivation is low right now…. I have better things to do, and I haven’t actually packed my bike yet either, though with all the materials sorted it will only take a few minutes… :o)

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My return to the UK is nigh so I have been occupied with packing my bike… as a result of this morning’s ’search’ I have some useful tips for you should you find yourself in Bogotá either needing to pack a bike, buy a bike or buy parts and cycling gear…

1. On the west side of Carrera 14, a couple of blocks north of Avenida Jimenez (Calle 13) there are a bunch of shops selling bubble plastic and corrugated cardboard off the roll.The rolls are very wide and prices per metre are cheap (around US$1) so it’s pretty economical whether you need to pack a bike or that piece of artwork you bought as a souvenir….. They also sell heavy duty packing tape.

2. Colombia’s biggest bikeshop (website http://www.ciclocross.com.co) is on Avenida Jimenez about 100m west of Carrera 14, on the south side of the street (Calle 13 No.16-63). It is close by a couple of smaller ‘local’ bikeshops but you can’t really miss it.. at time of writing it has a Trek sign outside and a bunch of tasty imported bikes (Orbea, Wilier etc) in the window. The manager is called Luis, super helpful guy. He sorted me out with a bloody great big cardboard box (“caja de carton” if you need to know) for my bike in return for an hour or so of chat about cycling in Colombia and the UK. This is the place to go as well if you want to buy a bike (I may do this on my next visit to Colombia), buy Colombian team kit or just about any parts you need… he has both Shimano and Campagnolo road and MTB kit.

This morning’s chat didn’t really help my state of mind about returning to the UK, it just sowed the seeds for another adventure possibility, one I had thought of before but talking about it with someone just makes it more real… cycling north and west from Bogotá to the Carribean coast at Cartegena and Santa Marta from where it is possible to cach a boat via the islands to Panama… and hence on through Central America… damn!

Like bike nuts everywhere Luis was keen to show me his new race machine, a rather tasty new carbon Wilier with Campagnolo Record kit and Mavic’s new R-Sys wheels…. looked fantastic and weighed around 6kg by the feel of it… so I suppose it’s a reminder that I do have spring and summer on my Storck (amongst others…) to look forward to when I get home……

Check this old truck out (it’s a Ford F350, vintage ?… I have no idea!). I came across it at the market this morning… It is in use as a daily workhorse but the owner is justifiably proud of it, we chatted briefly and I have his portrait with the truck on film, but I had to show you these snaps first…!

(nice…)

The market here is pretty low key compared to some , actually very pleasant. I was there early for a breakfast of coffee and empanadas before shooting my second to last roll of colour slide film.. I also sorted myself out with fruit and veg for the next couple of days, 2 dollars and I have as much as I can carry :o) Planning a BBQ tonight,the beef is being sorted, naturally, by an Argentinian chap who showed up last night.

As for the cycling… I am having trouble coming to terms with the fact that it is all finished… aside from thinking about packing the bike when I head back to Bogotá I am already thinking about my other planned two-wheeled adventures…. one idea involves coming back to Latin America for a long time… another involves riding my fixed gear with a really light load around southern India, and another is Cornwall (UK) to Cairo… across western and eastern Europe, the Middle East and so on… but probably not on a fixed gear :o)

p.s maybe I should say something about the road from Bogotá to Villa de Leyva… north to Tunja is not that interesting unless perhaps you could be bothered to fiddle around on some minor roads. From Tunja to Villa de Leyva is nice though (as is the countryside around), the Andes here are much drier in appearance than the south, and lower, Villa de Leyva is only at about 2000m. The climate here is my idea of pretty much perfect… little rain, usually sunny and around 24 degs or so in the daytime with nice cool evenings and nights…. ahhh. Returning to my foggy, damp little island (aka the UK) is going to be a somewhat depressing experience…

It’s the end of the line for me… I’m worn out, I think it was that intense week in the heat and killer final day to Bogotá that did it… but no matter, Villa de Leyva is the perfect place to rest tired legs before I fly home and start working to get the speed back into my legs for the race season. My flight is on Thursday next week so I have 4 nights of chill time here in Villa, then a couple of days back in Bogotá to scrounge some packing materials for my bike, and for the benefit of my cycling readers I’ll also put together a page of my recommendations and thoughts on cycling in this part of the world, Colombia especially.

OK, back to Villa de Leyva… this is a truly lovely place… mellow as (insert the most mellow thing you can think of here)… a place for wandering centuries old cobbled streets past beautiful old colonial buildings to the gentle notes of latin tunes floating out over the terracotta rooftops, nostrils tickled by the fruity perfume of fresh horseshit in the early morning warmth…! Very much a place for enjoying good coffee (mornings) or ice cold beer (afternoons!) on ancient sunblessed terraces….

Today I have nothing planned bar burning up my remaining film (more on that in a bit), wandering idly, drinking coffee and so on. Tomorrow is market day so that takes care of my morning… Sunday I may just climb the mountain behind the place I’m staying if I can find the energy. Actually, while I am on the topic, a recommendation for a place to stay here… Colombia Highlands (aka Casa Renacer), it’s a beautiful family home about 1km outside of town in it’s own gardens with use of a kitchen and lounge and so on. They have a small dorm room but in the interests of being a decadent slob I am spending a bit more, a whole US$19 for a beautiful suite.. polished floors, old wood beams, nice views front and back, a hammock on the terrace etc etc. Ace.

I’ve posted some snaps of Villa here that will give you some idea… more over the weekend. I am looking forward to processing my films on return to the the UK (45 of them.., and that is not an admission that I actually want to come home…). Maybe I am a luddite (I have old-fashioned thumbshifters on my bike too:o) but I still prefer my film-based Leica for this kind of thing… it is heavy but it is so small, the lenses are stunning, the whole thing is incredibly tough, works without batteries and doesn’t seem bothered by extremes of temperature. It is fantastically discreet for people photography, and most folk don’t know what it is… it’s not very stealable, based on experience everybody who sees it seems to think it is a 30 year old piece of junk… this is very good news for travel somewhere like this… I carry the body, 35mm f2 and 50mm f1.4 lenses plus a couple of 81-series filters in a rather grubby and now very scruffy small canvas shoulder bag for the ultimate in low profile camera kit.

OK, so what is Bogotá like then…. umm, it’s OK. Feels very European in fact, not particularly attractive apart from the Candelaria district which is the old colonial (and colourful) heart of the city, and is also where I’m staying. It is an interesting warren of narrow cobbled streets and some of the old colonial buildings really are beautiful. I guess if you really want to understand the place then you’ll have to visit, or read a guidebook perhaps, but the thing I am most enjoying right now is food, lots of it and all of it very good. Had some terrific pizza (yeh, I know… gourmet) last night at a place callad Andana Ma Non Tropo… they bake fantastic bread there too and to be able to have hot bread dipped in olive oil and balsamic after so many weeks of crap bread (El Maco excepted) was heaven.

Cycling in the city is fine, the air quality isn’t that good but even on a busy weekday morning (this morning in fact) provided one behaves as badly as everyone else then it is no problem, and is actually quite fun. Certainly not much worse than New York or Montreal and a lot better than Delhi or Quito. Navigation is easy too provided you know where you are with respect to the main arterial routes. There are some decent bikepaths in the northern part of the city too though somehow they never seem to point where you want to go….!

Anyway, enough of my ramblings, I am off to buy some normal clothes to wear.. in the meantime here are a couple of pics from La Candelaria. Apols for the lack of sun, the climate up here has been somewhat ‘damp’ recently…

p.s good art gallery here, I wasn’t expecting to find a raft of original works by Picasso, Salvador Dali, Renoir etc in Bogotá!

p.p.s by way of an excuse… the above pics are snapshots, I’ll put up a gallery of my film-based images when I get home :o)

p.p.s. I wasn’t going to say anything lest I appear a snob (hehe!) but sadly (as I found out on my arrival) there are one or two guesthouses in Bogotá populated by the type of ‘backpacker’ to whom travel means nights drinking and doing drugs followed by days watching TV, moaning there is nothing to do and drinking while talking about, and I quote, “drugs and whores”… Avoid at all costs if you value a nights sleep and are interested in where you are…

Hey, I arrived in Bogotá last night after a day of suffering to climb the two and half vertical kilometers up from the Valle de Rio Magdalena… in reality it was more like 3 kilometers of vertical to get over the mountains before descending into Bogota. Although only 98km it really hurt… 80km were uphill and my legs were really feeling the preceding 5 days on the bike.

My last update was from Neiva but too much has happened since then to stick in one post so I’ll write some separate posts for the days that have passed since Neiva and backdate them so they appear below. First though I think I will tell you about the last couple of days….

I spent Saturday night in a tiny “nowhere place” called Boqueron at the start of the climb up out of the valley. I had planned to go further on Saturday but after 85km I cracked… the heat, a steep section of climbing and a sleepless night in Saldaña (see below) all conspired against my plan to make it as far as Fusa. Boqueron is one of those places that really exists only because trucks and buses need cafes and stuff to stop at… it’s just a scruffy little collection of cafes and a shop located on a bend in the road right by a river. Oddly enough there is a guesthouse there… with a swimming pool! The temptation was too much to resist. It seems that folk from the city retreat down here to spend a night by the pool with a BBQ. The couple that run the place really took me under their wing, enjoying the novelty of having a foreigner to stay and giving my Spanish a real stretch of a workout by telling me all about Colombian politics, the poor relationship with Venezuela and the involvement of the US in the politics of the area…… Leaving there yesterday morning was brilliant, I was invited into the family home for breakfast before setting off to face the long climb ahead. I know I probably shouldn’t say this but in any other circumstances the chap at the guesthouse would have looked the perfect pimp in his cowboy hat, sleeveless white top, big belt buckle, embroidered trousers and white leather cowboy boots….. In Colombia though, and especially Boqueron, it just looked fine…

The first couple of hours of climbing was fine, it was very steep but that meant I was able to get some altitude in the bank before the day got really hot. Approaching Fusa I joined a bunch of roadies from the local squad out for a sunday morning training ride, this was great fun and good for morale… especially when I realised that they hadn’t actually slowed their climbing down much to keep pace with me on my loaded bike. They escorted me for 10km or so before we went our separate ways.

From Fusa after a short descent the climbing became relentless, and very steep. The final 10km or so up were a real grovel despite stopping a couple of times along the way for food, water and coke… (the fizzy drink kind…), I’d lost my voice by midday…. The relief I felt when the road finally began it’s descent back down to Bogota at 2600m was incredible and I found my legs again for the final crazy 10km or so through the traffic into town…. Riding through the outskirts was an experience very much akin to fairground dodgems with buses, trucks, cars and motorcycles all juggling position on the road… quite the adrenalin rush. Maybe I have something wrong with me but I really enjoyed it…. I also enjoyed steaming past some of the local roadies on my loaded bike… :o) Once in the city proper the riding was dead easy with a good network of bike paths and only light sunday traffic in the city centre. Found my way to a hostal in the La Candelaria district with no problem at all… beyond a temporary inability to walk or stand properly thanks to fatigue. It was a long, hot stretch from San Agustin.

I am going to hang out here for a few days to recover then make a tour to the north before returning to catch my flight home. Although not the end of the journey I do feel rather flat today… the most exciting part of the adventure is over and I doubt I will experience quite the same level of welcome as I did in the less-travelled south…

Before I forget… police and army checkpoints… if you are reading this and planning a cycling visit to Colombia then you might like to know that I experienced no bother at all. The road from San Agustin especially was crawling with army and police performing vehicle checks… I was totally ignored at all of these, just riding through without stopping with just the occasional smile from the officers on duty. You will also see on the road south of Popayan sentry points located at all the strategic points on the highway… bridges and so on. Probably best not to take any photographs….

So back to Bogota then, first impressions are favourable… the usual colourful bustle, some nice ramshackle quarters tucked away amongst the more modern stuff, terrific graffiti… and city prices. Having got used to paying maybe 500 pesos for a coffee out in the countryside I’ve had one or two “f?&k me” moments in the coffee shops hereabouts… especially that 3500 peso cafe latte… but it was good coffee and heck, it’s still only one old English quid…

I’ll go for a wander tomorrow with my camera and show you some pics…

Saldaña was the hottest place I have experienced I think outside of the Australian outback… I arrived from Villavieja, after 90km, around 1pm and unable to cycle any further in the debilitating heat. A cruise through town revealed it to be pretty much deserted apart from the few residents visible in the bars, huddled under lazily spinning fans with cold beers… I found a place to stay without too much problem but for some odd reason the inside and outside of the hotel had been painted dark green… not the best choice for reflecting sunlight and keeping things cool.. the interior walls were acting like huge radiators and the plumbing was such that the first 30 secs of water out of the (cold) tap was scalding hot…..

At dusk the town came to life, people emerged into the relative cool of a mere 34degs C at sundown… a brassband also emerged and set up across the street (next to the pet shop called Kitty Chow)… what the occasion was I have no idea but the noise they produced would not have put even a playgroup band to shame…. to describe the cacophony as discordant doesn’t even come close…. But as usual everyone was awfully nice to me so maybe I shouldn’t say such things…. but if I am being critical then I have to say by now the standard fare of rice, beans and a tough bit of overcooked meat for lunch and dinner was also starting to get a little monotonous…. The other thing that occurred to me particularly in Saldaña, though true of most Colombian towns, is why are there so many pharmacies…? How can a small town support ten pharmacies all within a block of the centre? Are the people that sick, or perhaps it’s a case of why the people are so healthy…? Is it those hot and humid evenings, with sleep off the agenda then maybe the locals are particularly randy and the pharmacies survive on condom sales… whatever… I have no idea….

Things got exciting that night, not because of the guy next door playing loud music ’till the small hours but rather because of the almighty thunderstorm that cracked the sky apart around 2am… I can only recall one storm that intense in Northern Sumatra a few years ago… it was sufficient to flood the streets to a decent depth, cut the power and flood the hotel… that will teach me to be untidy: all my gear strewn on the floor suffered a soaking while I lay (sweating), unaware of the floodwaters, in the island of my bed listening to the storm raging outside… it was only when I got up and found myself paddling to the bathroom that I realised what had happened….

It was still raining (and nice and cool for a change) as I left at 7am for the final flat stage along the valley before the climb to Bogota…

It’s only 40km or so from Neiva to Villavieja so I didn’t leave Neiva’till 8am after a leisurely breakfast of bread, coffee and a jug of strwberry juice mixed with milk (yum). Finding the right road out of the city was easy, I mentioned to a truck driver at a stop light where I was headed and he yelled directions at me across the highway as the traffic slowly moved out of the city! The 40km was harder than I expected, it’s really hot out there and the landscape is kind of lumpy so it is a just a succession of short steep climbs and descents… I also had two flat tyres.. the first from a twisted piece of metal, the second when the patch on the first failed… both were out in the baked scrublands with no shade whatesover… the sweat was dripping off the end of my nose as I fixed the flats.

Villavieja is a nice little place, just a  very sleepy collection of cottages with a network of mostly dirt streets and lots of shade trees. It was when I stopped at a cafe in the village centre that I completely lost control of my day… A tip, if you vist Villavieja, your Spanish isn’t too bad and you want to make the most of the day then you could do a lot worse than track down a fellow called Nelson Martinez…. as it happened he found me over coffee…. Within minutes I was installed with a local family for the night, had been shown around the village and had lunch at his house… oh, and been taken to his friend’s house where he makes various edible and drinkable goodies out of cactus. The edible part was actually very delicious but I can’t say the ‘cactus wine’ was a particularly fine vintage…. unless perhaps talking of paintstripper.

My original plan was simply to cycle out to the desert on my bike, have a wander around the canyons and stuff and then cycle back for dinner… Nelson however had other ideas… what I was thinking when I agreed to a walking tour of the most interesting areas I have no idea… it turned into a sweltering hot 12km romp through bush and arid desert in the hottest part of the day and only making it back to the village at dusk, not ideal in the middle of a long week of cycling… To be fair though Nelson is a funny guy and does know the area incredibly well… and I did experience a lot more than if I had simply cycled out there, like sucking the honey out of wild honey combs pulled out of a dead tree. The desert is a beautiful area, very much a mini-version of Bryce Canyon in the US. Well worth a look if you are in the area. Mid-afternoon we stopped at farm for water and I got to meet a couple of the non-human residents, one of whom insisted on sharing my water…

That night was a toughie … the heat again… and a mattress more akin to a large sack of potatoes but hey ho, such is life on a bike! The family that looked after me though were wonderful. Leaving town in the morning was funny, at 8am folk were already installed in their chairs under the trees outside their houses where they would likely spend all the ensuing hours of daylight…

From Villavieja I had planned to take the road along the east side of the Rio Magdalena to the town of Natagaima, 50km north, where there is a bridge to get across back to the main Neiva – Bogota road. The Natagaima road though turned out to be a nightmare of roughstuff that I didn’t really fancy with an already knackered trailer and with no shade from the sun… I had asked directions from a chap in the village how to get to Natagaima… he thought I was crazy and said I should go to Aipe instead which is Villavieja´s twin on the opposite bank of the river… I knew there was no bridge so thought he meant I should go back to Neiva first (the nearest crossing point) but when I saw the road to Natagaima it occurred to me that there must be a way for people to get across the river… a footbridge perhaps… so I asked… there is no footbridge the chap said, but there is a man with a canoe…so I followed his directions to the river and sure enough there was a man with a canoe…

we stuffed the bike in and he ferried me across the wide river to Aipe where I was able to join the decent road north (after dragging the bike along a kilometre or so of overgrown footpath from the river bank. The looks on the locals faces when I emerged into Aipe were priceless.

Hey, with reference to my last post… it’s the same day and I already found cooler climes… a cafe with air-con :o)

The last couple of days have been pretty good going, but bloody hot – especially today. I arrived in Neiva having lost my voice from the stress of the ride.

Back to the beginning… I finally dragged myself away from San Agustin yesterday at 9am after a particularly leisurely breakfast… it was the mountains of oven fresh bread that scuppered any ideas of an early start. The ride, about 120km, to Garzon was nice, a few little climbs but mostly very pretty rolling countryside as I moved away from the higher mountains with a couple of spectacular red rock gorges and so on thrown in for good measure. It was getting warm though, I was already feeling it by the time I reached Pitalito just 37km from San Agustin, I lucked out there though with a cafe stop.. good coffee, really nice cheese bread (but not as good as El Maco) and free drinking water.

I’m trying to remember what was memorable in particular about yesterday, it was a very good day of riding but the heat this afternoon has addled my brain… ah yes, the guy on the motorbike… this was fun, I was cruising with a tailwind at around 40km/hr when a chap on a motorbike pulls alongside, says hello and we then proceeded to hold a conversation for the next few km until the road started to go uphill and I rapidly went backwards relative to him… Talking of uphill, some of those climbs were killers in the heat…

Approaching the town of Altamira after about 90km the sky went black up ahead and the mountains disappeared behind a veil of rain… the timing for lunch was perfect, I pulled into a cafe on the outskirts of Altamira just as the first drops started to fall. The storm lasted about as long as it takes me to eat a big plate of rice and beans so when I left the roads were wet but the edge had gone from the heat.. ideal for a leisurely cruise along the final 30km to Garzon.

Garzon then… nothing special, just the usual chaotic, colourful country town. It felt a bit odd riding in, they don’t ever see foreigners, especially ones on bikes pulling trailers.. every set of eyeballs followed me up the street… they were nice people though I decided once I’d got cleaned up in the pretty crappy (but clean and friendly..) pension I found and headed out in search of food.

Dinner last night was a hoot, the Spanish in Colombia seems to have a different pronounciation to that in Ecuador, I find it harder here to make myself understood… and there always seems to be more background noise in Colombia to mess things up further… The four girls working the restaurant I stopped in for dinner were a right bunch of comedians and had no qualms about taking the mick out of the silly gringo… but all in the nicest possible way, it was a fun evening.

I left Garzon this morning at 7am with an escort in the form of one of the local road racers out for an early morning training session which was cool. He turned off after a few km and I settled down for the ride to Neiva. The first half was quite hilly as the road skirted around the edge of the mountains before finally descending to the floor of the Magdalena River valley. I had some welcome cloud cover ’till around 10am, when I stopped for coffee and food in Hobo (pronounced “Obo”) not long after 11am the heat was already intense. As I sat in the shade of a roadside cafe I started wondering just how an earth I could face the final 50km to Neiva… I measured 38 degs C in the shade…

It was hard… this is the hottest place I have ridden for any sustained period I think, just as well water wasn’t an issue with plenty of little villages and so on – I drank 7 litres this morning. The final km into Neiva were mentally painful though, the road signage measures distances to city limits… and Neiva’s city limits are way out in the countryside so I had to deal with the crushing reality that the 1km to go sign for Neiva was still miles out in the countryside with another 12km to the town centre… in the hottest part of the day, hence the expected 113km was 125 in reality. I should qualify all my whinging tho, it was a great ride and the scenery was stupendous. I would not have swapped today for 4 hrs in an air-con bus…. and the pineapple milkshake at ride end could not have tasted more delicious… :o)

Neiva is nothing special… just a very noisy, chaotic Latin American town.. so quite OK really.

As for tonight, well I have a warm (very) hotel room, a cold shower with warm water coming out of it and, errm, some very crusty riding clothes… I will wash them tonight and wear them wet for a nice cool start tomorrow…. I know it won’t last though. I have another 3 or 4 days to go in this oven before I start climbing back up to Bogota. I might have to scale the distances back a bit, it only takes 5hrs but 125km a day on a loaded touring bike in this heat is quite hard work….

Tomorrow’s plan… well if I can find the right road out of town then a short ride of about 40km to Villaveija and the Tatacoa Desert.

’till next time…

It’s too hot (38 degs today) here in Neiva to write much, and I’m tired from the last 250km from San Agustin… I’ll tell you all about it with some nice pics once I reach cooler climes….

Sunday today, last day in this area so I did what any self respecting cyclist would do on a Sunday… go for a ride (enjoying the freedom my bike gives me), stop at a cafe for a brew (in this case a “tinto” – strong black coffee) and finish off with a big lunch. I wanted to go back to Isnos 25km back up the mountain to have a look around as it looked a colourful little place when I whistled (or rather dragged my weary legs) through on my way to San Agustin. I didn’t stop then because I wanted to reach San Agustin before dark. I was right, Isnos is a nice and very friendly little place, being Sunday the plaza in front of the church was packed with icecream sellers and juice vendors… and folk enjoying those nice things… The cafe was the usual Colombian story of being welcomed with open arms, it never gets boring though it does get hard work sometimes answering the inevitable questions (I shouldn’t complain, it’s brilliant really). This would be an OK village to spend a night, seemed to be a few pensions around the main plaza, the cafe owner said they don’t see many visitors, let alone foreigners because they all go straight through on the bus to San Agustin which is understandably the main draw because of the archeology.

Plenty of local folk out on bikes today, riding just for the hell of it which was really nice to see. It was so hot this morning, if it is this hot up here at 1700m I dread to think what the next few days will be like down in the valley… around 1000m lower…. It’s been lashing down with rain again this afternoon so temperatures are back to being just perfect as I write.
Coming back into San Agustin about midday I stopped by a funky little restaurant (El Fogon) I ate in yesterday, they have a couple of green parrots hopping around and the light inside is really nice thanks to a couple of rust-stained translucent panels in the corrugated steel roof. I parked my bike in the entrance hall and walked in red hot & dripping sweat all over the floor…… but the folk in there were really nice and showed me out the back through the kitchen where they had a big tank of water to freshen up while they sorted my lunch… the usual midday soup followed by a great plate of rice, beans and fried chicken with a couple of tall glasses of blackberry juice. My Spanish is not really up to being able to hold a proper deep and meaningful conversation (beyond bikes, travelling, home and stuff) so it was slightly embarassing when the 2 waitresses took a huge interest in me while I was trying to eat… we managed OK though I think….
Tomorrow then if I can drag myself away I will descend into the furnace of the Valle de Rio Magdalena…. but it would be so easy to stay another day in this town and just go riding in the hills again and enjoy this little community. I think Colombia will be different in 5 or 6 years time as the “gringo” trail extends it’s tentacles down into the south… of course, I could come back next year.

Bit nervous of how my trailer will hold up over the coming days… I have plenty of string and zip-ties however so we’ll manage somehow I imagine :o)

Oh yes, I passed the same chap today who gave me water the day I arrived, this time he was by the road with a big sack of potatoes… I waved, he waved, then pointed at the sack… I kept going thinking “shit, I hope he didn’t want me to carry those into town for him on my rack….” but he came past soon after on the back of a motorbike (with his sack) and another cheery wave so I guess no offence caused on my part….

The network of dirt roads around San Agustin is fantastic for exploring on a bike… so that is exactly what I have been doing this last couple of days. There are a number of archeological sites scattered around the hills… some of the statues are supposed to be 4000-6000 yrs old which is just amazing. You can read more here. Some of the ones that have been buried for all that time still have paint on, like this fella here:

The dirt roads are interesting for riding in themselves, aside from being a good workout (i.e very steep) the countryside with it’s little farms and shacks is very beautiful. As usual there are stories floating around about there being some risk associated with exploring alone but all I met were a few nice folk on horseback who pointed me to the interesting places. To be honest here I think is probably no bigger risk than anywhere else on the continent (though I wouldn’t say the same for example of the areas around the Ecuador border… Putamayo province for example is still in a state of “war” pretty much), possibly less risk from the point of view of simple robberies….. One day I imagine the tourists who frequent the north around Cartegana and Santa Marta will filter their way south. I cannot begrudge the locals the income that will bring but I just hope the folk who visit are as nice to the locals as the locals are to me……. for example I just walked around the corner after lunch and a guy on a motorbike pulls up and says “hello”, I’d never met him before but he says “hey, I saw you on your bicycle, are you travelling my country on a bicycle?”.. I said yes so he just says “cool, I wish you the best of luck and welcome to Colombia” and that was it, he drove off….!

We had a lot of very heavy rain yesterday afternon and overnight which has been a good think for the dirt tracks.. although a bit sticky the surface is better for riding, I’m amazed at home well the Panaracer tyres work off-road, even on the really steep grades on mud, rock or loose stuff. The carcass is very flexible so with lowered pressures they just seem to suck the ground.

Oh yes, with reference to my last post below I have my trailer back… it’s still badly knackered and I have to do something to the webbing this afternoon before i can load it up but the guy I left it with has put some steel rod in place of the carbon. It’s not ideal because it isn’t springy like the carbon so I will still have problems with rubbing unless I pack very carefully but considering where I am and the materials he had it’s brilliant. He only wanted $4 so I gave him $5 (hey, it’s all relative…….!) now I can get to Bogota (I hope). Just about 800km to go including detours I want to make, but if time i will make another small 400km or so loop to the north around Villa de Leyva or something, depends on the motivation when I get to Bogota which is by all accounts a fantastic city….

I also must mention the breakfast up at the Finca El Maco… being a cyclist I’m an embarrassingly breakfast-centric person, I look forward to it right after dinner the night before… my dreams are filled with porridge and dried fruit… (OK, maybe not that bad). But here I am having the best brekkies I have seen in S America (and better than anywhere else I have been in the world to be honest). Every morning there is a heap of oven-fresh soda bread and homemade strawberry jam, a big bowl of fruit (usually mango, papaya, apple, banana, strawberries) with granola and thick unsweetened yogurt from the farm. The milk for the excellent coffee is hot and also comes from the farm… The coffee really is brilliant and there’s always a huge pot of it…. heaven. Breakfast aside this is a good town for food, the main midday meal “comida corriente” seems of good quality all over town for just $2 or $3 and folk eat salad here… at last!!

final thought for the day… why is it that many young “backpackers” feel the need to look and behave like tw@ts… ? I’ll clarify, there aren’t many here but I saw plenty in Ecuador.. I just watched a gringo get off a bus… dressed in a fur coat and baggy shorts down around his knees, one of those tall multicoloured “top hats” you get at fairgrounds and scruffy dreads.. (nothing wrong with dreads, some look great but these just looked like a health hazard)… maybe I am a snob, but I have nothing against self expression but is it really any wonder that in the more touristed areas of South America most gringos are regarded as being stupid? It hasn’t happened in Colombia yet but certainly in parts of Ecudaor it has. I spent many many month on the road in my 20’s but strangely felt no need to behave like a w@nker…. OK, rant over :o)

Ooops, I trashed my trailer… the ride from Popayan was somewhat ‘intense’… If you are reading this and planning on coming down this way on a bike then the road from Popyan (or rather Coconuco) to San Agustin is something maybe you should really only attempt if you are 110% sure of your physical ability and the strength of your bicycle… (sorry if I sound smug, maybe I am…) it’s mountainbike (with decent suspension and without luggage…) territory really, and there is no real option for breaking the journey. If you must ride then there is a “long way round” of about 3 days that will bring you to Pitalito north east of San Agustin.

So back to the ride then.. I left Popayan around 10am Tuesday morning feeling very lazy with a plan to just trundle the steady 30km to Coconuco, the last place to be able to spend a night before heading over the mountains towards San Agustin. I was there by midday, it’s just a dusty one street town, but interesting because of it, in a beautiful setting with a narrow waterfall cascading down a cliff, must have been around 2000ft or so, behind the village. People were nice as usual though sometimes in such a place I feel a little guilty, some of the younger folk must hate being in such a place while I can sit there and think “yeah, this is nice” and then simply bugger off whenever I like….

I rolled out of Coconuco at 7am Wednesday morning just as the sun was rising over the mountains, the heat was pretty intense that early though the track climbed so steeply things cooled off pretty rapidly and it was rather pleasant to ride through the spray of a big waterfall by the roadside at one point.

The road from Coconuco to San Agustin is bad….. really bad. It is only 120km but it climbs more than 2500m and even a 4×4 takes many hours to make the journey. The road was/is the worst I ever ever toured on, worse than anything I saw in the Himalaya and certainly for any sustained stretch… let alone more than 100km. My max speed uphill was only 5-6km/hr and technically it was quite difficult because of the loose rocky surface & big holes. About an hour up the road a truck came past, the driver stopped and got out just to say “hello, welcome to Colombia, what was I doing?” and to shake my hand… This keeps happening, it’s fantastic for boosting spirits (not that they need it here).

The road climbed for another 40km but the gradient lessened after about 25km so I could reach the heady speeds of around 8 to 10km/hr on the still bloody awful track. I had climbed from the hot subtropical valley through more open terrain, to high altiplano and eventually as I moved further east into thick cloud forest. There was one collection of shacks (Paletara) about 35km from Coconuco, a pretty desolate place on the altiplano with a few “FARC” slogans scrawled around… the people were fine though. There was a little cafe so had some coffee and stale bread there and ate a packet of biscuits from my own supply.

The altiplano was great, I do get a kick out of being in remote, exposed places on my bike, scary but exciting at the same time. Despite being generally on the level the going was pretty tough because aside from the rough track there was s trong headwind plus of course the altitude (4300m I think) I was doing maybe 10-11km per hr max on this bit.

The cloud forest was the richest and most dense I have seen, an impenetrable wall each side of the track… sadly it lived up to it’s name and the weather came in thick cloudy, cold and wet… very wet! The rain turned the track to really mucky clay, very very slippery over the rocks and holes (some around 2 feet deep). It was like that for another 4hrs or so, as I started to descend, still couldn’t go faster than maybe 15km/hr max…. (but still faster than the few trucks I passed ), the time passed quickly enough as I was concentrating so hard on my line through the rocks and holes. The bike was fine (I had let tyres down to around 30psi to help with the surface) but just as I was thinking how tough the trailer was it broke…. At first it looked like just the one-inch webbing tensioning straps for the luggage mesh and supporting structure had snapped so kind of jury rigged a repair with wire and zip-ties. That was a messy job… everything was lagged in mud, and of course as is always the way it was still lashing down with rain…………… Noticed also the mesh that holds the bags had broken in a few places… but didn’t notice the real damage till after I arrived, somehow it all held together for the rest of the day (more on that in a mo).

The track continued to descend for about 4hrs, my arms and shoulders were killing me (glad I kept up with the pushups..) by the time I arrived at a village called Isnos after about 100km of suffering (but it was brilliant really… :o). The road was still bad heading into the village, I was riding at the same speed as a pickup with two guys sitting in the back so had a conversation with them while we were moving which was rather funny. Stopped briefly to check directions to San Agustin and one old guy insisted on squeezing the muscle on the back of my leg… “muy fuerte..!” Anywhere else I would have run a mile I think, it’s not something I normally go looking for… blokes squeezing my leg in the street but there you go…

From Isnos it stopped raining and got hot again, the final 20km or so of asphalt to San Agustin was pure heaven… and nearly all downhill (still… :o) except the last 5km were steep uphill from the Rio Magdalena… that really sucked – I was hungry, dehydrated etc etc. I stopped at a house by the road and the bloke and his wife came out to talk, gave me water and sent me on my way with cheery waves. I rolled into San Agustin after 10hrs on the bike (though 9hrs riding time), crusted with dirt and sweat. Felt great to have made it though, hence the smugness, everyone here has been kind of suprised I guess that I did it on a bike… (gawd I am such a master of understatement… that was another smug moment, sorry…)

Yesterday was meant to be my recovery day but in the end I spent much of my time running around… I took the trailer and bike down to the river to scrub so I could work on it…. I was lucky the trailer held out to get here, it is hard to describe but it has two tensioned struts each side of the wheel that connect to the webbing to support the load… when the webbing broke these were overstressed…. the moment I lifted the bags out they finally gave way… 2 thick carbon struts. I didn’t realise the struts were carbon as they are inside a webbing sleeve, they should have been spring stainless steel really though it was never meant for full-on mountain biking so it’s my fault. There is nothing I can do myself to fix it so I have left it with a mechanic here in town for a few days to see if he can do something with steel rod. It only needs to get me to Bogota really which is good road apparently. Found out also how crap my netmaking skills are when repaired the mesh with some good rope I bought here in town… shocking really for someone brought up by a fishing community…

Heard today there was some guerilla activity up there recently (not sure how accurate that is tho), but then how can you be a target on a bike if nobody knows you are there, and certainly nobody normal would expect a cyclist to be up there.

I will stay here a few days, I am staying at a lovely finca (El Maco) just outside of town and San Agustin is a great, friendly little place with loads of beautiful countryside around, as well as a decent smattering of pre-Colombian relics. It is some of these I have been wandering around this morning. There are more in the surrounding area so tomorrow I make a day trip on the bike I think. No rush to get to Bogota about 5 or 6 days riding away. The temperatures down in the Rio Magdalena valley reach 40 degs apparently, some of it is true desert (the Tatacoa) so I am excited by that but viewing it with some trepidation too. all good fun! Not worried by the trailer, I always figure something out, even if I have to rig the bags as slings over the top of the wheel and tie it all together with rope.

There is just one thing wrong with Colombia, the beer comes only in little bottles… and (Ok, two things then..) the people are so nice you will never want to leave.

Adios!!

p.s oh yes, I met another cyclist today.. yay! Spanish chap on his way south from Bogota, nice guy. He’s been on the road for 14 months…. ! He was planning on getting the bus to Popayan as his bike was much more of a dedicated road machine, probably sensible….. Anyway, you can meet him – his website is here.

Quite funny really, I put it down to Popayan being such a nice town (and possibly one too many beers with friends last night…)…. I suffered a catastrophic failure of motivation this morning and decided to stay another day. The town is transformed from Sunday’s sleepy state into a bustling hive of activity, kind of like the streets of New York with empanadas rather than hot dogs (though you can have a Perro Calientes if you want….). Brilliant fun.

 My decision to hang out here another day turned out to be a good one (pure luck…)…. this morning there was a huge rally with dancing, music, a procession etc of the people demonstrating against the years of violence at the hands of the guerilla organisations, of which FARC is just one. It seems the demonstration was country wide, I have never felt such emotion in a crowd and it was fantastic to be a part of it. Everyone is waving the national flag today and wearing t-shirts saying Colombia Soy Yo.” literally Colombia is me”.

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Other than that… well, I’ve been something of a cafe rat… found a place with great coffee and a nice atmosphere to park myself for a while, think about the next few days riding and watch life go by….. perfect. There is a little nagging thought tho that maybe I am getting lazy……………..

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So I took the bloody bus and I wish I hadn’t. Buses make me miserable, a day on a bus is a ‘nothing day’ and as it happened the information I was given in Pasto wasn’t correct, I saw enough places to stay to have made the journey in 3 days…the last day would still have been a bugger though…. that was a long climb with no supplies at all along the way that I could see. The road was stunning however…. Anyway, lesson learned and I now have a better feel for what kind of ‘facilities’ if you like are available in the various villages. No more buses for me, aside from the misery of sitting in a seat for hours the hassle of actually getting the bike on a  bus here just ain’t worth it. It took a while to find the bus terminal in Pasto, bought a ticket being assured by the desk clerk that the bike would be no problem only to be told to forget it by the driver when the bus showed up… Refund was easy enough, bought a ticket from another company, lovely bus, great big luxury job… the company staff at the terminal were quite enthusiastic about the bike… “no problem”… except the bloody big bus had a luggage compartment the size of a rabbit hutch and a driver who eventually only agreed to take it in such bad grace I could have kicked him… and he reminded me of how pissed off he was at every opportunity…. in the end gave him a couple of dollars for his trouble to shut him up though he didn’t actually have to do anything, I took the wheels off, twisted the front guard round and the bars so I could slide it in the narrow luggage space above the transmission while he just stood behind me and whinged on about it… anyway, got it here with nothing more than a bent chainring and a broken front fender so nothing serious, but never again, not even if the flippin’ FARC start fighting round here again…. well, OK maybe then perhaps.

The high level of awareness of cycling around here is nice, it’s Sunday today, early this morning a few lycra-clad blokes could be seen heading out of town on a variety of bikes. There are some nice classic ’70s race frames around… steel Colnagos, Benottos etc… I wonder if I could trade my bike for one in Bogota before flying home… At the bus station the blokes were all over my bike and trailer… “what is it made of?”, “how many gears”, “how many flat tyres…?” all that sort of thing. Fun.

Popayan then….. this is a beautiful city, apparently second only to Cartageña, it is hard to describe, simply stunningly uniform colonial facades on every street, all in white, with the inevitable grand churches liberally scatttered around. It is a friendly town as you’d expect. I stopped in a  little hole in the wall cafe last night really in need of  a brew, the chap made me a mug of black tea (an unusual request here) with a drop of milk and was chuffed to bits when, in answer to his query, I said it was just like back home in England :o) I had my coffee there this morning as well…. I could really do with a green salad though… the fruit salads are great but vegetables just don’t seem to be on the menu anywhere… without exception it’s just fried chicken, fish, empanadas etc with papas frites or rice.

Tomorrow I’d like to head east into the mountains towards San Agustin, it is 2 days ride away over some big mountains but around the area there are scattered lots of relics (statues etc) of a pre-Colombian civilisation about which little is know. Sounds very much worth a visit and from there I think I can continue north east towards Neiva and Bogotá along the Magdelana river valley…. or I could loop back west to Silvia and Cali…. ummmm…! San Agustin area is/was known for guerilla activity but the reality is that  guy on a bike isn’t much of a target.. no value, no political connections etc etc. …..

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Anyway, other stuff… it is my sister’s birthday down in Rio tomorrow… so if you are reading Sal, Happy Birthday :o)

You know about Darwinism, survival of the fittest and all that… well I have a theory here in Colombia that something similar is going on among the canine population, except here it’s survival of the laziest…. You see unlike in Ecuador I have had no trouble at all with the local pooches… the only real factor in that difference I can see is the number of cyclists on the road here, aside from the “work bikes” cycling is also a major sport here. So the dogs have more bikes to chase than in Ecuador… ergo there must be more opportunities for the energetic animals to be flattened by trucks while running after their two-wheeled prey, thus leaving the lazy “couldn’t give a shit” dogs behind to give all the passing cyclists a stiff ignoring…. ah, whatever, I digress… how about the journey into Colombia so far then…?!

I left Ipiales yesterday morning around 8am, I won’t say too much about the ride that day except that it was the best day riding so far on this trip. the Andes here in Southern Colombia are breathtakingly beautiful, it is hard to imagine that such a place has been witness to so much violence. The only place I have seen that surpasses this place is the island of Flores just west of Timor. Flores was wilder and being lower in altitude “more tropical” but the patchwork of fields creeping up the rugged mountainsides here with trimmings of subtropical vegetation and waterfalls cascading down from the cloud forest are equally stunning.

The Pan Americana yesterday felt roughly equivalent in traffic terms to a quiet country road back home in Cornwall, though with a better surface and without the cowshit and tractors. One obvious difference to Ecuador its the tidiness of the villages and the highway, for sure they are a bit “frayed around the edges” as you’d expect but nothing like the outright scruffiness of Ecuador. I have no idea (yet) if the rest of the country is like this, maybe it’s the drug money that goes back into the local communities that makes the difference. Riding for the most part yesterday was like riding through a garden… birdsong and flowers. Every so often I would pass a colourful shack or cottage in the hills with mellow Latin tunes drifting out over the mountains to lift the spirits even further…brilliant.

My ride took me along 10km or so of rolling terrain, 40km downhill into a subtropical valley alongside a river, then predictably 40km steeply back up again… this was OK apart from the last couple of hours as I climbed back into cloud forest (cloudy and wet predictably…) so I had no views, it was cold and then lashed it down with rain for the remainder of the ride…

My standards for a place to sleep can go pretty low but the first two places I checked out here in Pasto were real fleapits… I might have considered 12 yrs ago when travelling on a budget of bugger all, but wet, filthy, tired and hungry after a climbing in the rain for so long all I could think about was hot water and a half decent bed… found one eventually, it’s a great place actually though for some reason the shower door opens inwards… so run the shower to warm it up, open the door to get in and water sprays everywhere… wonderful logic….

The people have been brilliant, though I do seem to be very much an object of curiosity this far south. It helps that the majority of the population are aware of cycling as a sport, and it also helps I think that there is no tourism all the way down here. I stopped in a small village for a coffee yesterday, the chap seemed so happy to see someone visiting his village and he was all over the bike….. Despite the friendliness I must admit I can’t help keeping a level of wariness here, especially out on the road. It is sad though how prejudices can affect people… if I was at home on my bike, stopped for whatever reason and a mean looking guy approached me in a black hoodie, dark glasses with hands in pockets I think I’d be a bit on edge… same thing here so when this happened while sitting having a bite out in the mountains I was ready for trouble… oh how wrong I was, he turned out to be just a friendly guy interested in what I was up to…. I think I’ll still be on edge a little though until I get a bit further north at least, say past Cali. The city folk here in Pasto are friendly, and I finally found a cafe that serves superb coffee… this is great news, Ecuador and Colombia are generally pretty dire on the coffee front despite the good stuff that finds it’s way out as export beans.

Today then, there is a reason I have time to type this evening… a forced delay due to circumstance but things invariably go a bit pear-shaped regularly when travelling by bike… the plan today was to get to Popayan, I was going to bus it (thus giving me more time in the mountains north of Bogota) because it is nearly 300km away and the next safe stop with accomodation is 200km from here (in a village called El Bordo) according to the locals, and I must admit it looks a pretty empty stretch on the map. El Bordo is out of easy reach really in the mountains on a loaded tourer with legs tired from yesterday. The stretch from Pasto to Popayan has a rough reputation for being dangerous, especially after  dusk so I¡d rather not be out too late, have to think of my health you know… Anyway I couldn’t go today however the road was closed overnight by landslides after heavy rain. A bicycle could get through but nothing else, not today anyway. It’s not been such a bad thing really, aside from having time to appreciate Pasto with a clear head and on a nice day, this morning I cycled a 50km round trip up a lovely and quiet side road in the mountains to Laguna la Cocha. The lake is beautiful as is the surrounding cloud forest, this was nice to see as apparently it is an increasingly rare habitat… Much birdsong to be appreciated.

It is a lovely evening here, chilly but the low sun is breaking through the cloud again and allowing occasional glimpses of the volcano (yep, another one…) looming over the city. I didn’t appreciate Pasto much when I arrived in the rain yesterday but this evening I have decided it’s a nice place, friendly, bustling, colourful, good beer and the women are beautiful….. ahem.

Tomorrow then… ahhh, well with fresher legs and a good kip tonight I would like to tackle the distance to El Bordo, easy on a race bike… not so on a loaded tourer however it is supposed to be another stunning stretch of road. The only thing on my mind… a couple of punctures or running out of food could see me out on the highway after dark with no place to stay. It may well be that I could easily find a room closer than that in a village but I just don’t know, at least it is a risk I am not sure I will take until I get a better feel for how well the villages and so on can cater for overnight stays. Anywhere else I would happily go for it but down here… hmmm, not so sure. I will decide in the morning I think… though I know already what my family would say, and maybe it is time I actually listened to them.

Final thought then for now… fruit salad and icecream with cheese grated all over it… what an interesting combination… the locals seem to like it however. I guess they would think Marmite a foul concoction so I shall not judge…….

I arrived in Colombia this morning, my plans to arrive yesterday afternoon were scuppered by torrential rain… having left Quito in the rain, sat for 5 and half hours on a bus in the pouring rain (though the sun did come out briefly in the beautiful Chota Valley) I really could not be bothered to ride to the border, faff about there and then ride on to Ipiales…. was a good move I think, the 3 or 4 km from the bus station in Tulcan on flooded streets more akin to rivers was miserable enough, luckily the girl at the place I found to stay ($8) only laughed when I dripped water all over the floor, the counter and the registration book….! With no parking for the bike downstairs it had to go in my room… this was no mean feat as the room really wasn’t very big… but it did have a closet with a lift out shelf (though I am not sure if it was supposed to lift out…) so the bike drip-dried in there….

I had a bit of a downer day yesterday in Tulcan I must admit. Nothing nice happened all day, mainly becuase I wasn’t riding my bike… it was just a case of get to Quito bus station, sit on a bus for hours, get thoroughly bored and tired and then find a place to stay in the rain. The day didn’t start brilliantly, really had to stay awake in the Quito terminal…. was sized up up by a variety of brazen, thieving bastards while waiting for the bus to leave, though thankfully I didn’t have to run the gauntlet of the inside of the bus terminal having flagged down a bus on the road outside just arriving in the terminal with “Tulcan” in the window. Tulcan looked a pretty grim place, even without the rain I doubt it would have much going for it and like the locals I wouldn’t have been smiling either I think if I lived there…. was happy to go to bed last night and put that day behind me.

This morning then… I saddled up and rode to the border about 8km away in a “light English drizzle”…. (there is something very cool about crossing international borders ona bicycle I think) The border crossing itself is a bridge, I was a little surprised there is no barrier or forced direction to Ecuadorean immigration to get an exit visa, I could easily have not bothered but would only cause a lot of unpleasant problems later if I ever come back I suspect… (so if you are reading this and planning your own trip… before you cross the bridge head into the yellow building on the left and get your exit stamp, won’t take long). Colombian immigration took about an hour to get through, mainly becuase I think they were on coffee break judging by the complete absence of any officials. Was dead easy getting in, the chap looked at me and my bike, said I looked like a really nice guy* and could stay a couple of months and stamped my passport accordingly.

*actually he didn’t say that but he was thinking it, I could tell…

So that was it, now in hot sunshine I pedalled my way into Colombia and on to Ipiales… which is where I am now. I have treated myself tonight, there are plenty of the usual dives around to stay in but being something of a trading town there is one nice place to stay… nice enough to have a Mastercard sticker on the door that actually means something… … I’m feeling very extravagant at $30 for the night (but it does include brekkie) but I have a lovely room on the top floor with wicked views of the area (which is beautiful by the way, more in a mo…). My bike is locked in the broom cupboard by reception!

Now, I have seen words in the Lonely Planet that basically says Ipiales is a uninispiring dump. This is bollocks, it is a typically friendly, bustling, colourful little town that it is easy to feel at home in, and it has some great bread (better than Ecuador). I like the fact there is no sign of tourism whatsoever, in a way it feels like Laos 11 years ago when it was still a largely closed country… a visitor is unusual but the people are so polite so leave you completely alone unless you engage them first in which case they have, so far, been invariably friendly and ready to talk.

This afternoon I cycled out into the countryside nearby to the completely bonkers Santuario de las Lajas (this is a cathedral built into the side of a river gorge, took 43 years to build from 1916…), my snaps can’t do it justice, it’s just mad. Very beautiful, the walls (both stone and raw cliff face) are covered with plaques and so on.

The village there is pretty too, very peaceful, I sat there having tea with a local lady who was so friendly, felt completely at home. The countryside around here is stunningly beautiful, I am looking forward to my ride to Pasto tomorrow.

Oh yes, made my first faux pas for Colombia today, I stopped on the outskirts of Ipiales to take some photos and got talking to a chap about riding in Ecuador…. he asked me if I liked Quito so of course I said “no, not really…” without thinking a chap from Quito could be out here on the quiet outskirts of Ipiales…. but he looked at me a bit funny so I asked and he said “yes, he was from Quito…” Oops! I think I recovered the situation somewhat by explaining that it was the many tourists there I didn’t really like… it must have worked to a degree ‘cos he still shook my hand as I got back on my bike…..

Only problem so far… getting used to a new currency. Colombia is one of those countries where the basic unit of currency, the Peso in this case, will buy you less than half of bugger all… 3 digits, sometimes 4, are needed just to buy a coffee….

Anyway, I’m off in search of food. Again. Perhaps a 5 digit pizza or something….

Adios!

just as a postscript to my post below, this country is ace but Ecuadorian cities have a bit of a bad rap for crime, I was reading one of the national papers over lunch and there was a piece about how the police are trying to improve the security situation down in Guayaquil, which has a pretty bad rap. The figures were about double I think from what I remember of some of the worst US cities (though I would happily be corrected), for 2007 it was something like 450 killings, 250 rapes etc etc (actually not as bad as I expected…) and then my sister mailed from Rio where she is working at the moment and put all that into perspective by saying that something like 36,000 people died in Rio in 2005 from gunshots…. ouch.

Anyway, enough of those cheery thoughts, all being well I will be in Colombia this time tomorrow :o)