Steep Hills and Mechanicals

Today’s update comes from Ibague, a city lying at just over 1000m on the South side of the Nevado del Ruiz national park. In our last post, we were heading West from Zipquira with the intention of crossing the Magdalena River and doing a counter-clockwise loop of the Nevado del Ruiz massif. However, it soon became clear that this wasn’t going to be an option due to the high risk of the volcano erupting and subsequent road closures, so we’ve had to re-jig our route, heading first South and then West to where we find ourselves now. In hindsight, if we’d paid more attention to the situation earlier, we might have planned a completely different route out of Bogotá. As it was, we still got some great riding in through an area that I hadn’t read much about, and which appears to be far off the usual beaten track; indeed, we haven’t seen another cycle tourer, or even a single gringo, since we left Bogotá!

Our first day out of Supata (still heading West at this point) was one of 3 parts: some very steep hills, some amazing interaction with the locals, and 1 huge descent down to the Rio Negro in Tobia.

As we topped out over the hill that it had taken us most of the morning to crest (10km in 3 hours), we felt the tell tale pitter patter of fat raindrops landing on our skin, followed by the first rumbling of thunder. The early afternoon thunderstorms were here! We quickly dove for shelter under a 2 level sugar cane drying structure just as the heavens opened. 10 minutes went by and the rain showed no signs of abating. The road at this point was already a river. 20 minutes went by and out came a man from the dilapidated looking finca next to our shelter. Uh oh, he’s going to ask us to piss off! Instead, he offered us a couple of bananas each each we spent the following half hour somewhat awkwardly (because our Spanish is shit) trying to make conversation until the worst of the rain had passed. It was just a lovely simple interaction, of the sort that you would only really get when cycle touring.

After a hearty almuerzo in Vergana, we were just about to leave the town when a car pulled up beside us, a man got out and, without any sort of preamble, offered to buy us whatever we wanted from the shop next door! It turned out that he, Tobias, was a keen cyclist and kept a bike workshop, as well as organising local races. He was very enthusiastic about our trip, saying that he wished he could do the same and could we please take him along too! The shop in question turned out to be run by his daughter, and she showed us a picture of Tobias with EF Pro Cycling’s Daniel Martinez, who comes from the town. Bicycles breaking down language barriers once again!

From Vergana, it was a 1200m dirt descent down to the Rio Negro and it’s raging, silty waters full of that black Andean soil.

We saw a sign for camping just outside the town of Tobia, walked through the open gates and started setting up our tent. No one was around and since we’ve only got mobile data and no actual minutes/texts, we couldn’t contact the phone number on the sign. Just as we were finishing up, over strode an angry looking man.

“What are you doing here?!”

…Errr…no entiendo

*Striding over to El*

“Do you speak better Spanish?!”

…Errr…

*Striding back to me*

“What made you think you could just pitch your tent?!”

I tried explaining that we saw the gates open and pitched up, expecting someone to come round later so that we would pay. The mention of payment seemed to calm him down and suddenly he was our best friend, recommending that we pitch underneath the main structure to avoid the rain and probable flooding. We chatted about our trip, both the countries we would go through as well as the details regarding our next few days’ route, and by the end of the evening, we were on good enough terms that he actually dropped back in when we were having dinner in order to chat some more. What a turnaround!

Overall, it was a day full of surprising and heat-warming human interactions, which put the tough start to the day into the shade. It was an especially memorable day for me since it was my 32nd birthday. When El and I first got together, we talked about spending both our 30th birthdays on the road. Well, it might be a couple of years late, but here we were, living our dreams, not just talking about them. I couldn’t have wished for a better day.

Despite Bernardo’s (the campsite owners) warnings, it stayed dry overnight and we had a fairly chill morning riding mostly paved roads to Villeta, where we took a day off. Not because it was anywhere special (a bit too hot and buggy if I’m honest), but because El had a lingering cold to shake and we needed a bit of time to properly plan our route now that we had deviated from our original plan.

The route we ended up taking almost directly south from Villeta was tough, 3500m of climbing in 80km tough. Although the tracks were of decent quality, the gradients, especially on the first day, were such that there were often long stretches of pushing required with our fully loaded bikes. The payoff were wide ranging views over the seemingly endless array of steep sided, verdant valleys and the most butterflies I think I’ve every seen.

After lunch in Quipille, we began another super long 1000+m dirt descent down to Apullo. I was enjoying the shallower gradients, taking the opportunity to let off the brakes a pick off a few motos when disaster struck: the Tailfin seatclamp slipped open and the whole rack and panniers rotated backwards and slammed into my rear derailleur. Now, confession time: I had been a bad cycle tourist and neglected to bring along a spare derailleur hanger, reasoning, in turns out falsely, that they were beefy things that were almost impossible to bend and in all my time of chucking the Stooge carelessly around, I’d never had an issue with it. Now staring at my hanger bent beyond all repair (or so I thought), I was deeply regretting that decision. At least it was still in one piece, so I could limp on with the 3 gears that worked until we got to Ibague and I could try and find a fix.

The Apullo to Ibague, there is not much to write home about. It is mostly tarmac, very hot since it crosses the Magdelena valley at 200m elevation (incidentally, the lowest we’ll be for months), and quite boring.

Although today’s rest day has been anything but restful, it has been reasonably successful on the bike repair front; the Colombian’s proving once again that there is nothing that can’t be achieved with a welding torch and a pair of pliers. And incredibly, all for £6 despite spending the best part of 2 hours in the bike shop and at the welders. It isn’t pretty, and I almost had a mental breakdown watching the guy doing it, but hopefully it’ll last for another couple of weeks until we can get spares shipped from the UK. On that front, Tailfin have been great, offering to use their worldwide logistics clout to get a replacement arch and some extra hangers (thanks Andy at Stooge!) to use as soon as possible. Colombia is by no means an easy place to get stuff posted to, so having a someone else sorting it out has been a huge help!

Next up on the agenda is the classic La Linea pass into the gringo-land of Salento. To make up for all that time on the beaten track, I’ve planned a return leg over the Cordillera Central through Paramo Chilli, about which I’ve found practically nothing about online, save a few tracks on Wikiloc. We shall see if it goes!