Day 245 - 249: Medellin to Salento
It felt great to be back on the road today. A lot of climbing in the first half of the day. But what comes up must come down… The downhills on the far side were of the almost off road, and uncomfortably variety causing burning in the forearms from gripping the brake so tightly.
Colombian people have been very nice so far. A couple of bike people asked me about my trip when having lunch at the top of a big climb and gave some safety recommendations for further south. Another motorbiker with good English rode alongside me for a couple of minutes and exchanged pleasantries. Apparently there was a big motorbike convention type thing in Medellin explaining all the bikes I have been seeing. That night I spent in La Pintada.
The next morning I set off with goals of Pereira but this was quite naive. Colombia is proving to be hillier than I thought. Today was another day of about 1300 meters of climbing.
I have switched to meters for height since I got my new Garmin so I am still getting used to that. Meters count up so much slower than feet…
Colombia is also quite green. I guess it is from all the rain. I haven’t really gotten chafed since starting this trip. But that changed over the last 2 days. I think it is the constant rain. Chafing is such a pain. In the arse. Literally.
At about 5pm, and still having quite a bit of climbing to do, I noticed a truck stop type place and decided to stay there for the night.
The aim for the next day was a cool little town that I had picked out a few days ago. I hadn’t realized how much elevation gain there would be. After the previous 2 days of 1300ish meters, today would be 2000+ meters over just 70ish kms. So a day of constant climbing and the 2nd highest elevation gain of the trip.
I decided to set out early, was convinced to get breakfast at the hotel, then a large group of local cyclists landed. When I went to pay for my breakfast, they had already paid for it. So I got caught talking to them for quite a while. It was after 9am when I started cycling.
There were cyclists passing me all day today. Colombia so far has been incredibly cycle friendly with many cyclists, wide roads, big shoulders, and respectful drivers.
One of those cyclists that pulled alongside me when struggling up a hill, started a convo. We couldn’t communicate much due to lack of Spanish but she gave me the tastiest little jelly things. I later found out they are called Bocadillos.
The rain today was of the Irish kind. Light but of the constant, drizzly and miserable.
Towards the end of the day, I find myself cycling through a nature reserve which, even given the shit weather, was incredible. The only problem was it was getting dark and had 5km of 10+% grade climb. So spent the last half hour cycling in the dark on steep rural roads.
I made it to Salento out of breath, knackered and found a cool cheap hostel and decided that I would stay 2 nights to give myself a rest after 3 big climbing days.
I met a couple of backpackers, an English guy called Cris and a French guy called Sebastian at the hostel the first night. Went for dinner together and then played Cris at chess for the evening. We were quite evenly matched so had some good games.
The rest of the day was restful. Wrote the Medellin journal entry here. Also due to doing some yoga now, my Garmin activities download scripts broke. Well, not broken but we were downloading yoga activities as well as cycle activities which I didn’t want so patched my automation to fix this.
Then spent the evening playing Chess with Cris again. Cris had done a ton of research for Ecuador so I stole some of his ideas on places to go. I wasn’t going to do this work, but will happily steal it.
Looks like the next stop will be Cali. This is a 2 day cycle from here. I can see myself taking some time off in Cali due to it being the home of Salsa. I have 2 left feet and learning to dance has been on the to-do list for a while.
