From Cartagena to Bogota

. . . more photos of the first Andean hills are here

Hello again, this time from the capital of Colombia, Bogota! It has been two weeks to get here from Cartagena, and it has been a very diverse two weeks regarding the countryside we cycled through, from the coast to the first high passes and mountain sights of the Andes.

The first couple of days leaving Cartagena we cycled towards the colonial town of Mompos on the Rio Magdalena, in the middle of the flood plains of lowland Colombia. Gentle rolling hills, everything very very lush and green, lots of cows on the healthy looking rancho fields, some first heavy rains that encouraged us to enjoy more hotel stays and do less camping. Mompos was at the times of Spanish rule a major shipping port on the river to get all the gold and other valuables out of the country down to the sea harbors of Cartagena and Santa Marta. Today it's a sleepy little town with nice plazas and colonial mansions. Here Simon Bolivar first declared independence of Greater Colombia (the colony of Greater Colombia then included Venezuela, Panama and Ecuador) from Spanish rule in 1810, even if this first independence didn't last very long, and the fight for it continued till 1819.

Past Mompos nearly 200km of dirt mud roads waited for us, through huge wetlands and floodplains full of waterbirds. But we were lucky enough to avoid the mud by hitching a ride on a cow truck; the bikes were strapped onto the back of the truck and we hoped the cows wouldn't shit on our nice leather saddles... The driver was very sweet, if difficult to understand (in general Colombian accents give us a hard time), we talked about how he once went to a Guns N'Roses concert, music, parachuting; he ended up inviting us to dinner before dropping us at one of the nicest - and cheapest - hotels we have ever stayed in on our trip: a roadside trucker hotel.

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Now we were finally on the road into the first hills of the Andes, towards the capital of Bogota. The first climbs gave us both a hard time as we hadn't had hills since Nicaragua about 2 months ago, so our legs were sore and we fell into bed early at night. Camping in the first mountain village was very nice, with village kids surrounding our camp curiously the whole evening, and even returning very early to watch us pack up.

On the way to San Gil, the "adventure tourism capital of Colombia", we had to pass the Canon de Chicamocha, where all of a sudden the lush vegetation gave way to cactus, red rocks and thorn bushes. The 1500m drop down into the valley was interrupted by a swim in one of the tributaries of the Chicamocha river, while the climb out of it was interrupted by nightfall and we had to set up camp in an abandoned, half-constructed house on the side of the road. The next morning we did the last 10km of the climb before breakfast, and then enjoyed the descent into San Gil, arriving by early afternoon.

We only planned to stay in San Gil for one day of rest but it turned into 4: the owner of the small hostel we stayed at asked us to run the place for 2 days as she wanted to get away and visit a friend in another town. We enjoyed staying in the beautiful old colonial house nearly all to ourselves, we had only one guest the first night and another two guests the next day. Free internet, laundry, hammocks and a nice private room with adobe walls (a mud-wood construction technique common in south-west US and from Central to South America) and large wood beamed roof kept us comfortable. We did manage to have some fun, too, and took an afternoon river rafting trip down the Rio Fonce through some class 3 rapids. Unfortunately we couldn't take the camera!

We were eager to say goodbye to San Gil and get back in the saddles and left a few hours after the proprietress of the hostel returned and we managed to pack up. The second day out of town we caught up with an Australian cyclist on one of the many uphills. It turned out he had heard about us from the cyclists we met in Cartagena, so he wasn't surprised to run into eachother. We continued together for the rest of the day, having a long lunch chatting about our cycle stories, and in the end spent the next 4 days cycling in a team of 3.

The mountains were getting ever higher, the landscape ever prettier on these days towards Bogota, often looking like the high grasslands of the alms in the Alps. Swen felt often that it is a bit like home here...! We did a little off-road loop to a lake at 3200m altitude, where we camped and for the first time in many months we had to get our warm clothes out of the bottoms of the bags.

The next day a drizzly rain greeted us when getting out of the tent which together with the cold at this altitude made it a very disagreeable morning. So we cycled off without breakfast, stopping an hour later and 500m lower in Zipaquira at a bakery for coffee and sweet breads, warming up in the sun that finally came out. Here an old huge salt mine had been turned into a tourist center: they have opened up a lot of the shafts and built shrines and churches into it. A bit weird all this religious fanaticism down there below earth, but still impressive the colorful lightning and huge caverns far under ground.

We left onto another dirt road over some high mountain passes into green valleys dotted with little farms and small villages. Beautiful, if hard cycling. Unfortunately, the little town we had picked to spend the night ended up not having any lodging; we weren't even allowed to camp behind the church and the school they told us to try was too far away on another hightway in the wrong direction. The next town 10km further, and the next 14km further didn't have any accomodation either... The sun was setting by now and the final (we hoped) next 14km to the city of Facatativa we had to ride in the dark - a very unpleasant experience with all the traffic, all our gear, and our exhaustion from this very very long day. Fortunately we found a place to stay there.

In Facatativa we visited an archeological park the next morning, where some pre-colombian cave paintings were partly overpainted with portraits of Colombian ex-presidents. Not so impressive but it was a nice park to stroll around for a bit. The final 40km into Bogota made a quick if polluted and traffic-busy ride, bringing us right into the city center where we said goodbye to our happy travel companion from Australia, having a last coffee and some street food on a plaza together.

Bogota - the capital and it's 8 million people - will be discovered in the coming days....