Travelogue - Biking around in Colombia | Squat the Planet

Travelogue Biking around in Colombia

ali

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Hey all, you might remember me from my first bike tour in Canada or the US leg... After cycling south-east across Turtle Island, i bought a cheap plane ticket on a whim and flew from Miami to Panama City. I didn't really have much plans other than to learn Spanish and perhaps join a crew on a sailboat. That latter part of the plan fizzled when i discovered that a lot of so-called cruisers just hang out in the same place for months at a time, which isn't interesting to me, but i did end up learning Spanish to a degree i felt comfortable traveling solo outside of major tourist destinations.

I won't talk much about Panama because i mostly spent my time in cheap (<$25) hotels and hostels, and took buses around from town to town - nothing different from regular backpacking lifestyle. The country is quite pleasant and very easy to navigate if you came from the US because US dollar is legal tender, tons of US products are available in the shops, and US cuisine is all over the place. I found it frustrating to get to interesting areas, however, because the country has a very strong car culture. Very few people walk, and even fewer cycle. It feels like the best way to get around is to flag down cheap minibuses and jump out at the next town or village... but that takes you past all the jungle and wilderness and national parks that actually might be cool to visit, if you like the countryside. I mostly refused to take taxis because i don't like increasing a society's car-dependence, but that really limited the places i could go. It reminded me a lot of Namibia, in that sense.

Anyway, after a few months i got another cheap flight to Cartagena, in Colombia. I spent 2 nights there and immediately left town because i fucking hated it. It was massively touristy and everywhere i went i had people trying to get me to buy some tour or some trinkets or shit. I guess there are some old buildings there that might be interesting, but i don't care about that stuff - i lived in Europe for years... Seen one old town, you seen them all, imo. So i took the bus to Barranquilla - the next big town over - and started my next bike trip.

Barranquilla is an industrial city that has pretty much nothing to attract tourists. Which meant that it just felt like a normal, ordinary town where i could relax. It is situated at the mouth of the Rio Magdalena, which is the biggest river in Colombia. Of course the first thing i did was go out to see the river, which is out past some industrial districts.

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It's quite a hike in the hot weather, so i rented a bike and took it all the way up to the very end of the breakwater that stretches 5km out to sea.

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Along the breakwater there are people who have built settlements and they live out there, on the end of a path that gets increasingly rugged, until the point where it is just boulders rising out of the sea. (I had to put the bike on my shoulder and carry it the last km or so.) Some of them sell beer and fish to any tourist brave enough to hike up to the end, but most are just living their lives in shacks made of wood and corrugated iron, palm fronds and canvas. There is no electricity or plumbing. One guy up there introduced himself to me and showed me his contraption for fishing further out to sea, by attaching the line to a kite. I followed a horse-and-cart back down the path and resolved to bike a bit further the next day.

Next day i headed out to the beachside cliffs in the nearby town of Salgar.

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I had to pass a police checkpoint along the way... They seem to set them up from time to time, and often they check the IDs of passing motorists, but as a cyclist i have never been bothered. Another thing you'll find here (and in parts of Panama too) are locals who get dressed up in costumes and dance and drum on the side of the road, sometimes blocking traffic completely, in order to try get a donation. Once again, if you are on a bike, these guys pretty much ignore you. I guess they (rightfully) figure you don't have any extra money or shit worth stealing.

For the rest, riding in Colombia hasn't been too much different to riding in the US or Canada. Cars definitely drive more aggressively, and the vehicles belch a lot more smoke which is not fun to breathe... But the drivers seem to be more conscious of cyclists, because there are actually a reasonable amount of slow-moving vehicles on the roads - cyclists, streets vendors, horse-and-carts... Although, to be clear, these aren't cyclists like you'll see in the US. Most are kids with a large crate strapped on the back of their bike transporting produce from their fishing hole or farm to the village and back. Closer to town you will find trikes offering rides. Needless to say, the car (and motorbike) culture is very entrenched here too, but it feels like there is at least some level of cycling culture that exists alongside it, and that's what gave me the confidence to go fuck it, i'm buying a bike.

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Some of you have asked how much you need to spend on a bike to get it ready for touring. Well this setup cost me under $250. The bike was around $200, and the panniers were $50. All brand new. The bike is a Buffalo Charger, which is a slightly modified version of the Buffalo Bicycle, which is distributed to rural communities in Colombia and sub-Saharan Africa by World Bicycle Relief. The bikes are steel and hardy as fuck, designed to clatter across dirt roads from farm to village in rural Africa. There is no quick release anything, no lightweight gimmicks, everything is simple and fixable by anyone with a couple of basic tools. They also sell bikes to the general public, including this Charger model which has 6 gears instead of being a fixie like the model used in the plains and savanna. Most importantly for me, the bike comes with a rack and a lock and all the tools you need to dismantle and fix it.

Now, i gotta say, it is a whole different story going from a 15kg bike to a 20kg bike, and going from 24 gears down to 6. I've only climbed a few hills so far, and it is fucking brutal.

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The absolute worst. But... take breaks. Persevere. Eventually you still get there. And that's the whole point with bike touring... You don't need to do the Tour de fucking France. You just need to get on the bike and start going. On my first leg i rode about 70km through the desert to a town called Ciénaga.

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It was hot as hell and i thought i was going to die. I only had 3L of water with me and the only shade was under a cactus. But i figured only about 40km of that was without any service, and even on that stretch there were plenty of cars passing and the odd fisherman and rural person lounging around in the middle of nowhere. Next day i only went about 30km over the hill to Santa Marta. Yesterday i just did a quick loop over a different hill to a nearby fishing village and tourist epicenter. Because my bike isn't as lightweight, and because i am a little more careful about charging out into the wilderness than i was in a richer country, i have changed my pace. In Canada and the US i was covering 100km a day, sometimes more, and waking up in a new town literally every single day. Here i am just going from town to nearby town, not pushing myself to the limit, and i'm planning to take breaks along the way.

Sunday is an election here in Colombia and the Canadian embassy has warned me not to travel because there may be violence and there likely will be government-imposed travel restrictions and a curfew. This is one of several embassy warnings i have received since arriving here. A previous warning said to stay clear of certain provinces because a paramilitary group had promised a week of action... Sure enough, that week they blew up a bridge in one of the towns that i would have to pass through if i want to do a circle route back from La Guajira. The country is far from a warzone, but there is still violence here and there and that's what i'm trying to get wise enough about that i can avoid it. Something you don't really have to worry about at all in Canada. You gotta read the paper here and chat to the locals about what's happening.

So far for overnighting, i've just been continuing my Panama habit of staying in cheap hotels and hostels. Accommodation is a bit cheaper here than it was in Panama, but you're still going to be out $15-20 if you want to have a private room. Still, that's comparable to paid campsites in the US, so i don't mind it too much. The food here is way cheaper. I'm not yet sure about stealth camping. In the part of the country where i am right now it's basically a desert, so there's not much shelter in the countryside, and in town any of the places you might expect homeless people to sleep, there are already informal settlements there. I'm sure it's totally doable to sleep rough here - there are obviously many local homeless people who do it - but it's not something i am quite ready to risk. Meanwhile i am still lugging around my fucking tent and sleeping bag from the previous bike tour, plus a hammock that i bought here as well for day trips/naps, so that's more damn weight to haul over the hills in 35C/95F temperatures with nary a cloud in the sky. Still got my fucking winter clothes too, although i suppose i'll need them if i ever get up to the Andes. But that's getting way ahead of myself.

Anyway, it's pretty awesome. I don't know how long i will be able to continue, or if i'll just give this up after a couple weeks, but like my other bike tour, i'm just open to heading out and seeing what happens. The important lesson is... bike touring is super easy to translate to another country. No need to get insurance or registration, no need to have a license, no need to deal with any cops or government bodies... Just get a bike, strap your stuff on, and go. Still a great way to travel.
 
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Matt Derrick

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fuck yeah, thanks for posting this, i love reading about your bike travels, especially outside of the USA. Are you going to continue south, or come back to the US?
 

ali

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In the last week or so i kept cycling slowly east toward Venezuela. I'm in a town called Riohacha now, which is on the edge of the desert peninsula of La Guajira. While i was hunkered down in Santa Marta waiting for the election to be over (there was a curfew, 36 hour liquor ban and quite a few cops on the streets) i took a day trip or two along gravel roads, just to see what they were like in Colombia.

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Similar to everywhere else, really. I also headed up into the mountains to get a bit of cooler air. Came across this cool river ford, more than knee-deep. Saw a few people wade through and - impressively - a dude rode his motorcycle through too.

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Heading east out of Santa Marta the highway climbs about 400m with Tayrona National Park on the left (north) before plunging back down to the Caribbean coast. It was a tough climb on a heavy bike with only 6 gears, but fortunately the shoulder was wide enough it was easy to pull over wherever i liked for a breather.

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The worst thing about biking in Colombia is that the trucks and buses aren't really emissions-tuned... You get massive lungfuls of diesel smoke and other putrid fossil fuel gases all the way. It's always refreshing when there is a break in the traffic and a bit of wind to blow some fresh air.

There are tons of hostels along this road, especially close to the east entrance of the park, and the crowd seems to be very backpacker-y. Lots of white people with dreads. I stopped at a town called Palomino, which this weekend is having a full moon party with psytrance, techno and so on. If you're looking to smoke weed, this whole area from Santa Marta to Palomino, you can basically trip over it by accident with how many hippies and surfers there are around the place. Personally i don't go for that, so i just had a few beers and lay awake till midnight as accordion music got blasted from every house around.

After Palomino it gets a bit less touristy, although there are still quite a few hostels. The small settlements along the highway get shabbier, till they're essentially just a bunch of shacks where if you're lucky people will sell hot food (chorizos, BBQ plantain with queso fresco, arepas) but otherwise just tons of fresh tropical fruits - cut and/or juiced if you want it - beer, chips and 2L Coke bottles filled with gasoline (probably smuggled in from Venezuela).

The last 30km or so to Riohacha is fucking hardcore. Just like when i crossed the Rocky Mountains and figured the prairies would be a piece of piss by comparison, i was so fucking wrong. The prevailing winds along the Caribbean coast of Colombia this time of year are easterlies, and they are very fucking strong. Like 40km/h. And the moment you get away from the hills, you feel that wind blowing straight into your face. Coupled with the fact it's a literal desert at that point, no shade worth a damn, it feels like you are cycling into a burning hot brick wall. It is hella brutal.

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I can recommend to stop in a small settlement called Camarones, which is right next to a flamingo sanctuary. If you go right out to the waterfront there are a few hostels but also just some local fishing families. They do tours out to see the flamingos on their canoes, but they also invited me to camp in their yard for a few days as well. Unfortunately at that point i had already spent the night elsewhere, but it seems like it'd be a sweet spot for shoestring travelers.

Bear in mind that in a lot of these towns there is zero water coming in from rivers off the mountains (and arguably even that water isn't fit to drink, even after filtering). Best thing to do is buy a 5L or 6L bag of water from a convenience store each day and use it to refill all your bottles.

Riohacha itself is a pretty quiet seaside town with more hotels than people. I suspect it might've been a hip place for people to holiday before Cartagena and Santa Marta became trendier destinations. What that means is the beach downtown is pretty chill, though, it's not packed full of tourists and touts trying to sell you tours.

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I decided to take a take another cycling rest here and do a more traditional route up to a village called Cabo de la Vela, which is out in the desert of La Guajira. It's a village with no water, no plumbing, no electricity, but it's still a popular destination for adventure/eco tourists. There are a bunch of cool beaches and desert trails to walk, plus it is mega windy and a great spot for kite surfing. Lots of people just rent a hammock on the beach to sleep. To get there you need to take a regular car out to a chaotic market town called Uribia, then a jeep across the desert.

I was expecting it to be full out fucking sand dunes all the way, but it's not actually that bad. About half of it is pretty rough dirt/washboard roads, but there is a fair bit of traffic to and from the desert communities, so i don't think you'd get stranded out there. There are tons of goats wandering around the place, dudes on bicycles with several gallon jugs of water on the back, shacks with 2L bottles of gasoline for sale, jeeps carrying tourists, bigger trucks carrying locals, potable water truck, people on dirt bikes carrying coolers of fish, all kinds of stuff going back and forth. There's even a railroad that goes up to Puerto Bolívar from the Cerrejón coal mine further inland, but i only saw stopped oil cars on it so it's probably not worth waiting around to try catch out.

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When you get to Cabo it really feels like you're out in the middle of nowhere, although there are settlements even further out in the middle of nowhere like Punta Gallinas (northern-most point of South America). There were some guys who tried to offer me a lift up there, but they wanted more money than i was willing to spend, especially given i'd left my bike and half my gear back in Riohacha. I've noted this place down and hope to come back again some time. It's so awesome to just be out in the middle of the desert.

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But also with just enough traffic around that you know you won't die out there. The locals are all pretty friendly. Most of the people who live out there are Wayúu, an indigenous people who speak their own language and Spanish too. Some of them are pretty keen to teach you phrases, but i was a few beers down at that point so i forgot them already.

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Anywho, i'll probably take a day or two here in Riohacha since i spent about 5 hours hiking across the desert yesterday, then i'll be back on my bike and heading inland away from the Caribbean coast. I'll be sad to leave it behind, but i feel like it'll be interesting to see what the culture is like in the interior. Worst case i don't like it, then the desert of La Guajira and markets of Barranquilla are still waiting for me.
 
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ali

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fuck yeah, thanks for posting this, i love reading about your bike travels, especially outside of the USA. Are you going to continue south, or come back to the US?
I have 90 days visa-free in Colombia, and apparently you can extend it if you ask nicely. That gives me about 2 more months of travel here before i need to exit the country or talk to the cops about an extension. On a bike the best way to exit would be Ecuador and on to Peru, but the border area is pretty dangerous at the moment, and i'm not even sure if i can get this bike up into the Andes on my own power. (Of course that's a solvable problem, there's always guys with pickup trucks.) Part of it depends on how much money i have, another part is if i start getting sick of Latin America... I mean, who knows, right? If i had a plan, i wouldn't be having any fun. The reason i am able to enjoy myself is because i don't have any destination or timeline. I'll see what happens.
 
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Love it!

When I was in Colombia I couldn't believe how much pollution there was. In Bogota you almost never got to see the sun.

I'm definitely adding Palomino to my list of places to visit next time I'm in Colombia. Sounds like a cool place.

I can't imagine how hard biking across Colombia is, especially with all the mountains. I biked to a waterfall near Medellin and I ended up getting a bus ride back as it was uphill on the way back lol.
 

ali

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I suppose it's sort of redundant to say that Colombia isn't really all that mountainous outside of the mountain ranges. Much like with my bike tour in Canada and the US, i'm going out of my way to avoid hills and mountains, because they're no fun to cycle on, and in many cases i don't really find the effort worthwhile. If that means i miss out on seeing Bogotá and Medellín, oh well. But, if somehow i have the energy, who knows?

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The last week or two since i updated i got hit with a bad case of food poisoning, which left me holed up in the same place for 3 days, and cycling (and eating) pretty gingerly for the next couple. I should've known better than to get a ceviche miles away from the sea, but i kinda ate it in desperation because i was feeling so bloated from the incessantly bland meat-heavy meals that make up pretty much the entire cuisine of the country. It's not quite as bad food-wise as cycling through the prairies and the midwest, but it's pretty close.

Of course trying to eat something "fancy" ended up backfiring, so i think it's better to go back to the standard lunches. For people who've never been in Colombia before, the standard lunch is 10000 pesos (around $3), and you get a thick meat- and tuber-based soup (sancocho) to start, then you get a plate with white rice, plantain or yuca, beans or lentils, salad, and your choice of meat. The meat can be fried or grilled or sometimes baked (pollo guisado) or pulled (carne mechada). You get a drink too. It's a reasonably balanced meal, it's just so bland and (despite the salad) lacking in serious amounts of green vegetables. Not being able to eat well (not to mention having to eat meat in fucking everything) really does a number on my mood, so it's emotionally tough going.

The other thing that's made it tough, and perhaps what together with the blandness overdose caused me to take that dumb culinary risk, is the heat. Since i headed south of Riohacha it's been about 38C/100F all day every day. Once you get away from the coast, the wind dies down, so there's no breeze either... And lately it's been overcast/cloudy... It feels like all the oppressive heat just gets trapped in that valley, the one whose main city is Valledupar, home of vallenato music.

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Most of the route from Riohacha to Valledupar is essentially just more desert. I mean, there is a little bit of cattle, and a few very small sections with a splash of water where farmers are trying to grow cotton or other cash crops, but by and large it's a very arid and remote area. There are a few Wayuu settlements along the way, some stands on the side of the road with people selling gasoline and homemade chicha (a fermented corn drink with a flavor a bit like plant milks) but not really much else.

The difference is that when you cross the border from La Guajira into Cesar, there is clearly a bit more money flying around. Like, La Guajira looks shabby everywhere, even the towns. There are obviously a lot of unemployed or informally employed people just selling stuff on the side of the road. The parties in the bars go late every night. The cars are from the early 1990s and stuck together with duct tape. Many towns have some obvious charity or NGO presence. But Cesar has actual ranches, where the ranchers can afford to put electric fences around their property, where there are private schools and gated communities dotted about the place, and where it seems more people have work to go to and don't drink all night during the week. It's still not super wealthy, but it feels a bit more like an area that is economically self-sustaining.

That said, it still take a couple days to get out of the arid zone and into an area with a bit more flora and fauna.

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Yesterday i finally got off the more rural highway i was on (49) and joined up with the 45 which is the main route south to Bogotá. Sadly, that also meant i rejoined a road with large trucks on it. For a week or two there were a few 3-axle coal trucks but otherwise it was mostly just 2-axle delivery trucks, small cars and motorbikes. It was a much more relaxing ride. But now big multi-axle oil trucks and trucks hauling containers are blasting past all the time. Most of the road rules here are just a suggestion. In the small towns that means people ride the wrong way up one way streets, don't stop for stop lights, and so on... But on the highway that means even on blind corners where there are no passing signs, these massive trucks try to pass each other. Not much more stressful than looking up and seeing two 18-wheelers coming straight towards you at 100km/h.

Fortunately the 45 highway has some sections of dual carriageway, so at least in those sections you won't be surprised by passing trucks heading straight for your little bike. On the other hand, dual carriageway kinda sucks because there is much less chance to get shade from trees overhanging the road. On the third hand, for those of you who like stealth camping, it does open up the possibility of sneaking into the undergrowth between the roads and trying to set up for the night.

Personally, i still haven't stealth camped here. I've talked to a few locals about it, and they say it would be fine to do in some places, but in other places absolutely not fine, due to bandits. Probably along the main highway would have less bandits, but there might be more cops to spoil your day. There are both police and military checkpoints intermittently along the roads - they hardly ever pull anyone over, but they're presumably keeping their eyes peeled for suspicious trucks, or just waiting for a call in case there is some rebel or paramilitary action nearby. There is probably a psychological effect too, where just by having some government-sponsored guys with automatic rifles standing on the side of the road it helps make the people feel safer. I was going to take a rural route a few days ago just to get a feel for what it's like out on the back roads, but due to my food poisoning and subsequently very fragile stomach i've been trying to stick to better surfaces for the time being.

Soon i hope to be able to meet up with the Río Magdalena and follow it south. I was originally going to try cut across to it earlier, but due to not taking the back roads it'll be easier to just wait a couple days till the highway gets close enough.

Still pretty much just making it up as i go along. I will say that the combination of a heavy bike and this really fucking hot temperature makes it point blank impossible for me to get more than about 60km per day. I find after 2-3 hours on the road i am just completely and utterly wiped out. 5-6 hours is the absolute limit. Doesn't matter how much water i drink or whether i try to fill up on calories... It's exhausting. I am hoping that when i get closer to the river and perhaps a bit higher into the hills it'll cool down a bit. Having cycled a lot in 30C temperatures and not had a problem, i think i can safely say that it makes a big fucking difference when the air temperature starts getting closer to body temperature level (~37C). It changes from just a bit of discomfort to something physically demanding, like you gotta watch for headaches and exhaustion. Throw food poisoning on the top, yeah fuck it man. I'm not gonna try be a hero and make a 100km run along a back road to some town in the middle of nowhere.

My technique is basically to not try to drink while on the bike. I bike around 30 minutes (or until i get thirsty) and then start looking for an overhanging tree. Then stop and drink a bunch of water (up to 500mL in one go) and stay paused to try cool down a bit before continuing. Any time i see a drink vendor on the side of the road, i stop and get a cup of whatever they have. Orange juice, watermelon juice, corozo juice... A cup is usually under 1500 pesos (50 cents). If you stick around sometimes you get a free refill. It's worth it for that ice cold refresher. Any time i pass a town or village i stop into a tienda and get a drink from the cooler. My personal preference here in Colombia is malta, which is a malt soda fortified with vitamin B that has about 100 calories in a bottle and isn't too sweet. It's not super fast to stop all over the place to drink, but i'd rather do that than end up half-dead in the middle of the road from heat stroke or something. By the end of the day i've gone through about 4L of water that i am carrying with me, plus probably another liter of drinks i had along the way. This is more water than i was drinking when traveling much further distances in Canada and the US, but yeah, i really think just those few degrees of increased temperatures makes a big impact.

Of course, i might just be sick or malnourished or physically exhausted.

Whatever. I'll keep going till i can't, or till i get bored.

The best thing is still waking up somewhere new each day. Being able to pull over on the side of the road and enjoy the view in places that cars can't stop and buses would never. Enjoying the landscape at a slow pace. Having time to myself to think and watch the world go by. Even when i'm having a shit time it's better than being stuck.

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ali

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Realized i didn't have a photo of what the dual carriageway looks like, so here we go.

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Today i had a short ride featuring one brutally steep climb of around 150m. It sucked a lot, but fortunately the temperature has stayed around 30C so i avoided the overheating/sunstroke effect. I'm in the main drainage of the Río Magdalena now, so i imagine it should be getting more jungly/mangrovey soon. We'll see.
 
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Nice to hear you're back at it! Somehow I missed getting notifications for a bit.

That bike looks solid. I'm definitely curious about the brakes.

Some sort of sealed disk brake?

I suppose i can look it up.

I found a few good stories recently thanks to an Atlas Obscura newsletter:

Annie Londonderry Barely Knew How to Ride a Bike When She Set Off Around the World - https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/annie-kopchovsky-londonderry-cyclist.

(First woman to cycle around the world)

And then

About Juliana Buhring, whose book about setting the women's round the world record i also read.
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And i started reading the French version of
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But haven't finished it.

They're both good but Buhring's was more novel. . . Not everyone is motivated to ( or capable of ) keep (ing) up 100+ mile days for days on end.
She had a pretty strong emotional reason.

Now that I'm in a super small country for 90 days my challenge is to go as slowly as possible. . . But still get some exercise. It's working out alright. I use strava to help motivate me to jog in the mornings.

Should keep my updates to my thread though i guess. Sorry to hear it's so hot there but sounds like you've figured out a way to survive alright. As long as it cools down enough to sleep at night while also avoiding mosquitos. . .
 

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Nice to see you here Colin! You always have some interesting recommendations to share. I am very slowly reading a different book about Colombia on this journey - Magdalena: River of Dreams by Wade Davis. It's by a Canadian botanist slash explorer and it's extremely sentimental, to the point i find it a little nauseating (i prefer grumpy and cynical travel writing), but the dude clearly knows a lot about the country and there are lots of little stories sprinkled through that you might not learn without going into a very deep wiki hole.

I am still not entirely sure what the brakes are on this bike. I suspect they are drum brakes, but i haven't opened everything up to see. One of the cool things is that the whole bike pretty much just fits together with standard hex bolts so theoretically you can dismantle the whole thing with the included spanner. I haven't been game to do it, though, because i am missing a screwdriver and pliers, which would be needed to deal with some of the cables. Also, you know, i'm just biking.

Here is the maintenance manual for the standard World Bicycle Relief buffalo bike. That version is a fixie with a coaster brake, so this one is a bit more complicated, but i guess most of the stuff is the same. It was cool to read through the manual, it explains a bunch about how bikes fit together that i didn't know because i've only ever ridden them, never maintained them.
 

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ali

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Back on the journey... after my last post, i eventually made it down to the Río Magdalena again in Barrancabermeja. Weirdly, the big town just has a little dock where fishermen unload their wares and a few pedestrian ferries linger to take folks to the other side.

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The river is still crazy wide there, like around 2km or more, and fast-flowing too. It's really an epic river, and it's sad to me that people who only visit the famous tourist cities of Colombia would totally miss it. I'm also surprised there doesn't seem to be any tourist boats going down it like the Yangtze, although i guess the problem really is that the "puertos" along the river don't really have the space to accommodate large boats. Here's a little barge crossing between La Sierra and Puerto Serviez that is pushed by a tug boat.

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I crossed the river at this point on a smaller ferry with a bunch of motorcyclists.

I have to say i really appreciate all the two-wheeled traffic on the roads in Colombia, it makes it feel like a much safer place to cycle than countries that are almost exclusively car culture.

IMG_20220403_095504.jpg


The other day i took a gravel road on the other side of the river from the highway for a bit of a change of pace. It was utter bliss to be cycling through rural areas with just the occasional farmer on a dirt bike - or a horse.

IMG_20220405_112905.jpg


When you've been riding the highways for days you forget how quiet and peaceful it can be without 18-wheelers and other internal combustion vehicles constantly screaming past you.

Unfortunately, along this road, disaster struck.

IMG_20220405_122747.jpg


This puddle - and several others like it - were much deeper than you would expect. I soaked my feet and my panniers and mud got into everything. I had to stop several times to dig out the clay from where it had gotten lodged in the bike. Then, when i thought it couldn't get any worse...

IMG_20220405_125719.jpg


This fucking shit. Electric fences on one side of the road, jungly brush on the other. I met a farmer and his kid in the middle of it all doing some maintenance of something i couldn't see. The kid laughed at my hubris for a) trying to get through it on a bicycle and b) not wearing rubber boots. But he also tried to lead me through the least boggy parts. Which is saying absolutely fucking nothing, because i went over my ankles walking through the mud and the bike sunk down even further, completely caking the derailleur, cassette, pedals, wheels, brakes, fucking everything.

I did my best to try clean stuff off with some pointy twigs, but i was wet and covered in gunk and being attacked by a million mosquitoes, and the bike was not doing any better. Front brake was fucked. Chain was rubbing against the derailleur. I just figured "fuck it" and kept cycling to the next village. Got the bike hosed down by a guy at a motorcycle repair place, then somehow found a hotel of sorts (there was no sign, reception or lobby, just an old lady who randomly took me up some stairs and gave me a room with clean sheets, a towel and a bar of soap). After i cleaned up a bit i tried to adjust the derailleur, but couldn't fix it.

IMG_20220405_165358.jpg


That's when the next day i took the ferry back across the river to the highway and cycled down to a larger town that had a bike shop. The brakes turned out to be a relatively easy fix - just pulling more tension on the cable - but the mechanic said that my rear cassette was bent and i needed a new chain too. To be honest, i think i could've done just with a new chain - or perhaps just removing one link from the existing chain - but since it only cost 60000 pesos (around $20) to get a new cassette and new chain, i figured why not?

Of course the mechanic hadn't tuned the derailleur right when i got back to pick the bike up, so i kept nagging him to twiddle the screws and adjust the tension till it finally switched between all six gears again, without skipping any gears, or having the chain fall off. It's still not shifting perfect, but i don't want to touch fucking anything now, given it took the professional over 30 minutes of futzing around just to get it kinda-sorta working.

I suppose the moral of the story is not to try to drag your bike through a deep-ass fucking bog. I possibly would've been better off taking all the kit off the bike and wading knee-deep with the 20kg frame on my shoulder. But i think the actual moral of the story is that derailleurs fucking suck. I completely understand why the default buffalo bike is a fixie, because fixies are simpler and less fragile. I mean, this bike only has 6 gears and it comes with a derailleur guard and everything you can put to make it tougher, and it still gets busted up after a bit of mud. And then it takes half an hour of fucking twiddling screws to stop the chain falling off. Like, for fuck's sake. It almost makes me want to give the fuck up and just try touring on a fixie with a reversible wheel. Yes. I know i would utterly fail to climb even the tiniest hill that way. I would hate it. But the other day, dear lord, i fucking hated derailleurs. With a passion.

Anyway, all that aside... today i am just 30km short of the town of Honda, which is the point at which the Magdalena no longer becomes navigable. I think there are some rapids just south of town, then (judging by the map) it goes into a gorge or at least a deep valley, and it's time to head up into the motherfucking Andes. I very much doubt i will bother cycling all the way up the hill to Medellín or Bogotá, but perhaps i can follow as close to the river as possible and make it up to the Tatacoa desert. Because, fuck, if i see one more puddle on the road again it'll be too soon. I always knew i hated swamps and marshes and wetlands, but now i have even more reason. I'd rather be rationing my water and dying from heatstroke in a goddamn desert than having to suffer the insects and muck of a muddy bog.

But hey, you know. Still loving it.

IMG_20220405_095525.jpg
 
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ali

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Wow, my last post here was the mud puddle day... Okay, i got a bunch further in the two weeks since then.

My next notable stop on the journey was the town Honda, just south of which there are some rapids that make the river unnavigable (although a bit further south it's navigable again for a while). Turned out that Honda was a tourist town for holidaymakers from Bogotá, and so were the next few towns along the river too. Getting out of Honda was a bitch, because you have to climb a pretty steep hill. It's not a huge climb, maybe just 100m or so, but one lane was closed for construction, so i started pedaling up there and hit a brick wall about halfway. For some reason i had no lung capacity, maybe it was allergies or smog or something, but i sat there doubled over trying not to vomit while a bunch of trucks came down the single lane in the other direction. Then of course they pulled over to see if i was okay, and that only made it worse, because i was breathing in their diesel fumes, and the wet asphalt of the new road surface... Fucking brutal.

IMG_20220413_113232.jpg


Once i made it over the hill, it was pretty much back to the rolling hills and smooth valley riding like most of the rest of the Magdalena valley. I did start noticing way more road cyclists, though. The climb from Honda to Manizales is one of the world's most hardcore bike climbs, and no doubt the other Andes climbs are pretty serious too, so there were a lot of sporty types out there practicing. They're a totally different breed from a cycle tourer, on their carbon fiber frames and streamlined everything, but some of them kinda "get it", i think. One road cyclist pulled some cash out of his jersey and slowed down to hand it to me saying "so you can buy yourself some more water".

Sometime around this point, rainy season started.

IMG_20220412_104337.jpg


There had already been some overnight thunderstorms in the previous week or so, but this was the first time i got caught in the middle of one during the day. I got soaked, cycling along a section with barely a single tree. Then i got under this tree and it stopped. Good thing about biking in tropical climates... when the water comes down, just keep biking, couple hours later you'll be dry.

As i mentioned, the next couple of towns were all pretty much just tourist traps catering mainly to weekenders coming down from Bogotá to try find some warm weather. That meant that food and accommodation got pricier, and the roads got busier with people who didn't really know where they were going. (Funniest thing was being asked several times for directions, when i obviously wasn't a local and didn't know any more than they would if they bothered to open their phones and check their map apps...)

When i started getting a bit closer to Tatacoa, another bike tourer pulled up next to me and started to chat.

This was a bit of a pivotal moment on the tour for me, and it's one that really helped me to understand that for me travel is very much a solo experience. The guy said he was going to Tatacoa too, and suggested we ride together. I immediately started feeling anxiety because i couldn't think of anything worse than being stuck riding with someone else after ~8 months on the road across four countries and two continents, completely alone.

I was too polite to tell him to fuck off, though, so i talked a bit about my experience and listened to his. It was actually his first bike tour - he was coming down from Bogotá and planning to bike to Tatacoa and back over the Easter long weekend. He was cycling GEARLESS AND FEARLESS. Like, for real. He had a fairly cheap old mountain bike, and he was wearing cycle shorts and a thin shirt, cowboy hat, bicycle helmet, and had a single water bottle and a tiny drawstring bag tied onto the back. I assumed he had a hammock in there, but he said that actually he just stays in hospedajes along the way... But he also seemed like way more of a hippie than me, with braids in his hair and wistful talks about traveling in the mountains and swimming in rivers. He had actually just jumped out of a river when he saw me pass and quickly hopped on his bike to catch up. He said that immersing yourself in water is good for the spirit. I shrugged. I don't even remember the last time i put more than just my feet in the water, but it must be a decade ago or more.

He said there was a section of the ride coming up that it would be safer to travel together because it's a bit dangerous. He didn't explain why. Nobody ever fucking explains why a place is dangerous in Colombia, or Panama, or fucking the US or Canada either really. They just go "oh, it's dangerous, you better watch out". The difference is in English-speaking countries i can usually tell if someone is just being paranoid or ignorant, but when they're speaking a different language it's harder for me to tell if someone is speaking from a real depth of knowledge or because it's just some shit they heard from someone else. A lady at a roadside kiosk later on told me it was peligroso too, so i asked if there were bandidos and she said yes... But i later found out from someone else that the only thing down there was a crazy homeless guy who collected trash. So i missed out on riding through some old railroad tunnels, since that's the section people were worried about.

Anyway, back to my unexpected road dog... Because he was traveling so light and i was traveling so heavy, i knew i was slowing him down, and i told him so. He kept trying to get me to pull over at each creek to jump in the water, and i'm thinking to myself... what the fuck, no. Like, aside from the fact i didn't fucking want to go for a swim, he also read me as a man, which i am not, and i feel like it'd be more fucking peligroso to get half-naked at the side of the road with some hippie who i don't know who it is than to cycle alone, like i have been doing for months now. Eventually i told him i was tired and needed to check into a hotel at the next village, so i took the exit and let him keep going.

And the thing is... He probably was a legit, honest, sweet guy. He's probably not much different from a bunch of people here on StP, just looking for someone to hang out with on the road, enjoys getting dirty out in nature, all that stuff. And, yo, fuck, i fucking hated it. I do not want it sam i am. I do not want it on a bike, i do not want it on a hike, i do not want a damn road dog, i'd rather be back in the bog.

Talking with other people on my own terms when i am traveling, at a cafe or a bar or even occasionally a campsite, i can deal with that. But when i have to spend more than 10 minutes or half an hour... No. It just ruins the whole point of traveling for me. Especially traveling by bike, that medium where i get to feel completely alone and at peace for hours at a time. I always knew that i preferred to travel alone, just like i prefer to live alone, just like i prefer to do everything alone... But i didn't realize just how strongly i felt that way until i got dumped into a situation where i had a travel partner for an hour or two. It was the fucking worst.

Anyway, the next day instead of taking the old railroad tunnel down a gravel road to the Tatacoa desert, i took another ferry across the river and there i was.

IMG_20220416_133723.jpg


To be honest, Tatacoa is more like a badlands than a desert. There are some very dusty sections with cool multi-colored layers of dirt, but plants do still grow there. Unfortunately, it is also extremely fucking touristy. And fair enough, too. It's only a day's drive (or a few days bike ride) from Bogotá, and it's a super unique landscape for Colombia, and when you look out across the plains at the distant mountains it truly is a sight to behold. It's epic. But. When there are busloads of tourists and people hanging onto the backs of their dirt bike guides pulled over all over the place taking selfies, or heading out into countryside to balance a bunch of rocks on each other, next to the other 20,000 fucking stupid rock towers that everyone else built... Yo, that is not my fucking jam at all. I don't resent them for wanting to come out and see the scenery, but for me the scenery is only half of the enjoyment, the other half is the solitude. So if there's no solitude... yeah, sorry, i can't get lost there.

I was going to camp overnight there too, since there are a bunch of campsites. (Although many of those have permanent glamping tents and pods set up for the weekenders.) But i couldn't bring myself to do it. Even after cycling almost all the way up the Magdalena, specifically to get to Tatacoa, i couldn't get a single photo without other people in it, and i doubted my chances of being able to get the quiet nights i wanted.

So i just kept going. Instead of going down the main road direct to Neiva, i went further down the gravel road, way out to some tiny ass country town before looping back.

IMG_20220417_122924.jpg


It was totally worth it. Once you are out of the main Tatacoa tourist loop, the landscape isn't all that much different - there's just a bit more grass... And ironically a lot of cattle chewing away at the few scraps of shrubbery that exist, which is probably what created the Tatacoa desert/badlands in the first place. But it is epic. Epic views, and almost complete silence, except for the occasional passing ranch hand.

After getting through the countryside i eventually made it back to Neiva, in what was probably my longest leg of the whole journey - close to 100km, of which about half had been on gravel. My bike was fucked. The back hub that i had gotten replaced after dragging it through the mud had come loose and was clicking and clacking and changing gears was a pain in the ass. The 6-speed cassette the dude replaced it with was just a no-name brand and probably designed for a kids' bike. No big deal - it got me a good way further down the road - but it probably wasn't set up for hauling a bunch of gear up and down steep hills in heavy gravel.

But it didn't matter, because Neiva is a big city with lots of bike stores, and i found another guy who replaced the cassette with a higher quality 7-speed cassette (of which only 6 i could access) and tightened up the brakes too.

This was basically my turnaround point. I had reached Tatacoa, which meant i only really had three options. First, continue up the Magdalena into much more remote parts of the Andes and to the source of the river. Second, head back to Girardot or Honda and then climb the busier parts of the Andes to one of the big cities like Bogotá or Medellín. Third, fuck the fucking Andes and go back to the Caribbean coast.

Obviously i picked option three. I already hate hill climbing even on a bike that is better suited to it, and these Andes hill climbs are fucking ridiculous. Like i'm talking 2000m or 3000m up. And when you get up there, what's waiting for you? Cold ass fucking weather, that's what. I ain't busting my ass just to be freezing cold at the end of it. Might as well be back in Canada at that point.

So i asked my bike guy to dismantle the bike he just put back together and ship it back to Barranquilla. And then i took two buses back to Barranquilla, which in total took me about 30 hours. The bus ride sucked all ass, the air conditioning was dripping water on my head all night, the jackass who sat next to me was literally the only guy on the bus who refused to wear a facemask, no leg room, bla bla, you know the story, you've all ridden Greyhound.

Now i am back in Barranquilla waiting for my bike to arrive. I might try to do a few shorter rides back down here on the Caribbean coast, but i am thinking pretty seriously about leaving Colombia in the next week or two. The best thing about staying down here is accommodation and food is cheap, but i feel like emotionally i am over Latin America. I've learnt a lot about the history of colonization and the drug trade and US meddling. I feel like i've gotten a decent insight into at least how the rural and working class people of the region live their lives and how they think and feel about stuff. It's a nice enough place down here, but it doesn't feel like somewhere i could settle for while... not the same way i felt when i visited China, for example. I can't put my finger on why exactly. But either way, i do need to find somewhere to settle for a bit, in order to earn some more money to fund my next sabbatical/adventure.

I dunno, i'm still trying to figure it all out. I'm in a weird spot, emotionally, right now. I don't know what to do with myself. I'm feeling a revulsion at the idea of going back to Canada, but also i'm not inspired to go anywhere else in Latin America right now. And if work is looming... sigh, i don't know. Still, no fucking regrets. This ride wasn't quite as interesting as my journey across Turtle Island, but i still had a blast.

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ali

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I wanted to do a quick summary post about this journey, since i have now kinda sorta gotten to the end of the biking portion.

Firstly i think i can safely say that Colombia is a good country to bike tour in. Almost every small town has a bicycle mechanic, and the towns that don't have bicycle specialist, they will always have someone who knows how to work on mopeds and light motorcycles, which is better than nothing. Although there aren't all that many cyclists on the roads in remoter areas, there are lots of cyclists in both the big cities and small villages, and drivers are used to driving relatively safely around us. Yes, the air quality is fairly poor due to the fumes coming out of the motorcycles and trucks, but that's a problem you could solve with an N95 mask.

As far as camping goes, i didn't even set up my tent once on the whole trip. I found that most of the legal camping areas were super touristy and the kind of place i am not interested in going, and for stealth camping along the Río Magdalena there are the same problems as in the US midwest and southeast - there is a lot of privately owned farm and ranch land that might be sketchy to set up on, but when you get out of the farmland, it's quite thick jungle and swamp that would be difficult or at least very uncomfortable to camp in. I'm quite sure you could find an abandoned building or sneak under a bridge or something if you were an expert, but i found a lot of places where it seemed like you might be able to pull over, there were either people already there or signs of people who had been there recently. Colombia has almost the same urbanization rate as US/Canada (over 80%) but in the rural areas it does seem like more people use the space than in US/Canada, it's not like as soon as you get to the edge of town it's totally desolate and abandoned.

But not being able to camp is not really a problem, because outside of the tourist areas you can find cheap hotels or hospedajes with a private room and shower for around 25000 pesos a night, which is about $8 Canadian ($6 US). In larger towns you might have to fork out 50000 pesos, but that's still cheaper than a lot of paid campsites in the US and Canada. You can eat out for around 10000 per day (standard lunch) and make do with fruit, peanuts, oats and the usual stuff outside of that. There are enough towns and villages dotted around that it would be easy to do a credit card tour - i was carrying a tent and sleeping bag and hammock around across the whole country, but i didn't need it. Could've traveled way lighter and basically just had clothes and water with me, if i wanted. Even water outside of La Guajira and a few other areas you could just stop to drink at tiendas (shops) along the way if you wanted. Although, it is WAY more cost effective to buy a 5L or 6L bag of water than to buy 1L bottles one at a time. You can't drink the tap water in most places, so you will need to do this, unless you are enough in the mountains where there are quebradas (creeks) coming down the cliffs to collect and filter. Still reckon it's a bit questionable to filter river water here, though - there are still plenty of towns that dump untreated sewage.

In short, Colombia for biking, i recommend it. Way less difficult than i thought it was going to be. I also learned a bit more about bikes and i have some more opinions about what makes a good touring bike now, but i think i might make a separate thread for that.
 

Colinleath

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Somehow I missed reading your last travelogues on my last visit. . . Very well done. You might like J. Maarten Troost in the genre of cynical travel writers. Though maybe that's not quite the right flavor. I bet some Australians might have the tone you like.

Lol re: the bog. . .

Got me to dig out photos from two of my mud encounters.

They happened when going out dirt roads in Serbia (2013) and then Spain (2016), getting rained on in the night and then trying to get back out and the mud was so sticky that bikes would no longer roll! My partner in Spain snapped her rear derailleur and hangar. . . But fortunately a town with a bike mechanic wasn't that far of a walk away.


CAM00989.jpg

Serbia


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Spain


After the serbia situation i got powerwashed down by a guy at an autoshop, me and the bike.

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I doubt that was good for the parts but it got the mud off.

Here's my gf's bike being fixed (Spain)

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Definitely curious what you figure out next.

I like the story about realizing how much you like traveling alone.

I can't say i prefer it, but I definitely do it most of the time and it is fun. . . But I continue to hope for somewhat compatible company at some point and in some form.

I'm actually looking for a place i might want to settle down to make a long term relationship more likely.

My newest relationship experiment is with a woman happy to video call and to welcome me back to Tel Aviv should i ever go (she says). . . A sort of portable girlfriend in a phone lol. . . Leaves a fair amount to be desired, but nicer for me than no one at all. She has no desire to travel it appears. But likes to sort of vicariously do so.

Nice to see your update. I may get to mine about the past three months eventually. . .

Though now it's paradise time (so far) in southern Europe so it's nice just to be wandering around. . . I bet I'll manage to relax somewhere and try getting the writing done though--we'll see.

Definitely a bit odd or a trick that that hippie traveler read you as male.

I sort of agree with his jump in the water philosophy. But I also like how it's been 10 years since you got more than your feet wet. Everyone's different! And I've been a bit lazy about it myself recently-- I actually carry a waterproof mp3 player so I can listen to audiobooks as i swim.


On that note, I've been listening to _a fine balance_ recently (as I ride). Very well done. Don Quixote- caliber.
 

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