Mountains to the Coast and Back Again

After arriving in San Gil, we took a few days off to relax. We visited a lagoon, I ate a Subway sandwich, and we went white water rafting. It was a nice break but we really wanted to get to Cartagena, the old port city on the Carribean. We cycled on asphalt up to Bucaramanga where we could get a big bus that would take our bikes. The bus driver wasn’t really happy to take our bikes, but we managed to convince him. The bus ride was a 12 hour overnighter.

Once in Cartagena we cycled from the bus depot to our AirBnB. It was hot, 40 degrees hot. We were definitely out of the mountains.

Soon we would need to make our way south and start the long haul to Ecuador. We have a three month visa for Colombia and we need to be out of the country by March 3.

We cycled for seven days heading south. The first day we realized we left far too late. The afternoon heat was getting to us. We had to stop early.

The second day we were up early to best the heat, but it wasn’t early enough.

By the third day we were waking up at 5am to be on the road by 6am which would give us maybe two hours of comfortable cycling followed by three hours of uncomfortable sweating. Anything after the five hour total was unbearable.

The roads were crowded, the shoulder non existent, and the repressive heat forced us to rethink. We didn’t want to be cycling on busy highways in 47 degree heat. This was not fun. Sometimes you just have to know to when to move on and this was one of those times. We got another bus, this time South, into the mountains again, towards Medellin.