Ruta Caribbean

It was with more than a little bit of anxiety mixed with excitement when we pedalled away from the comforts of our hotel room in Cartagena 5 days ago.  While we had done an overnighter a few months ago back home to test out some of our new gear, this was it, game day, and quite literally when the rubber finally hits the pavement.  Time to see if the seemingly mountainous amount of stuff we have will all fit nicely into our panniers, and the bikes would roll down the highway, and most of all, to see if our bodies where up to the challenges given our previous weeks of near-zero physical activity.  Nothing you do back home can really prepare you for it though, you just gotta get out there do it.  32 feels like 48....ha!


Our direction was northeast out of town towards the beach towns of Santa Marta and Tangaga.  Looking at our maps, we knew that Santa Marta was beyond one day’s ride, and particularly, the first day on the road – which we were hoping would be easy (but wasn’t).  The challenge was that we didn’t know what was between us and Santa Marta, and if anything would present itself as a stopover for the night.  About 6 hours in after a 7 am start, we were really feeling the heat and our tender unaccustomed butts were real sore.  With nothing in sight, we stopped to quiz a uniformed security guard sitting in a hut on the side of the highway (no idea what he was guarding), in my best gringo travel spanish.  What I got out of his response was “cinco kilometros”, “Santa Veronica” and “izquierda”, which I surmised meant: in about 5 kms take the next left to a town called Santa Veronica.  Hmmm, not on any of our maps, but hey, any port in a storm.

And so it was, the first of our pleasant surprises, and a reminder why cycle touring is such a rewarding experience.  A short roll off the highway we spotted a hammock-filled, cool-looking place with a tire beside the road painted with the words “welcome aboard”.  Hernan was the guy’s name, and welcome aboard it was!  20 bucks for the night, have a cerveza, go for a swim in the ocean, then pick a hammock and lick yer wounds.  Perfecto!

Hernan, and wife Margarita, turned out to be perfect hosts and imparted endless advice and knowledge of Columbia on us.  The place was so chill, we decided to spend another night to max out the hammock time.  Great little town.  From a breakfast swim in the ocean to a sunset dinner on the beach.  Again, easy to get used to that, but the dream must be kept alive, and with a “ciao amigo” we were off the next day into the wilds of Colombia. 

Day 2 on the bikes was a bit more grueling, simply due to the distance and lack of anywhere to call home for the night.  But alas, at km 119 for the day, in the middle of the midday heat and Amy getting a little delirious, another gift from the heavens presented itself in the form of a high-end hotel on the ocean, room with balcony overlooking said ocean, and a pool with bar – all for 25 bucks.  Within 5 minutes of checking in, we were poolside sipping cervezas.  What a difference 10 minutes makes.

Next day, a quick jump in the ocean, and we were off towards Taganga, with a bypass of Santa Marta (just another big city we’re thinking).  Although, arrival in Taganga was irritatingly delayed by our missing the turn-off.   An extra hour of unnecessary pedalling in the middle of the day is about as welcome as having a pin stuck in your eye. However, with zero signage to this place, and another lost couple in a car asking us where the road to Taganga is, we didn’t blame ourselves too hard.  Suffice it say, we were more than delighted to just get out of the sun, find a comfortable hostel, have the mandatory celebratory cerveza, clean up, then chill in a hammock for the afternoon.

Problema: Taganga is not the cool beach town we were hoping it would be, and/or reported to be.  Wistfully passing the days on a post-card, white-sand, palm-treed beach is not going to happen here.  While it might have resembled that one day in the past, Taganga has now evolved into a backpacker ghetto town complete with inadequate water and sewage facilities, and a beach scene complete with scraggily clad travelers hawking cheap jewelry, ear-popping latino top-40 blasted from every corner, and of course, muggings and robberies. 

OK, plan B it is.  With a rest day today, we’re setting our sights on a beach about 70 km up the coast called Palomino.  We’re just looking for a picture-postcard, white-sand, palm-treed beach that is completely uninhabited, yet has all the facilities at cheap prices that we need to stay for a week or so.  Is that too much to ask?  :-)

 

Cartagena de Indies

For those of you keeping track, you might have wondered about the radio silence lately.  We left Cartagena 4 days ago and are only now back in the wi-fi zone in a beach town called Taganga...but I’m getting ahead of myself, first let’s talk about our time in Cartagena.

 

Pronounced Cartahena (i.e. “hen” as in a female chicken), Cartagena is the quintessential Latin-American colonial city.  Founded in 1533 by the Spanish invaders, it was their principal port on the Caribbean coast and their gateway to the north of South America.  Gold and other treasure pillaged and looted from the indigenous inhabitants was stored here for shipping back to the motherland.  Because of that it attracted pirates and other non-desirables looking to reloot the loot from the original looters. Hmmm, interesting twist.  In response, the Spanish made Cartagena an impregnable fortress complete with a massive stone wall around the city and thus preserving the original city inside the wall, otherwise referred to as El Centro.  Lucky for us tourists, but too bad for those indigenous inhabitants.

 

True to form, Cartagena, and particularly El Centro, is all about just walking around, eating the street food, and taking in the central squares, lavish cathedrals, cobbled alleyways, balconies overlooking the streets, and other classic colonial features of the period.  Every street is a post-card-worthy scene from the 16^th century.   It’s one of those places you just don’t get tired of.  Every outing finds something else, another little cafe, another spot to have a cerveza and look out over the ocean, another cobbled street, another romantic corner to sit, split a bottle of wine, and watch the world go by. 

Highlights for us were sitting on a cannon atop the wall (see photo in previous post) one beautiful evening looking out over the Caribbean bathed in a wind of warm salty air, planning the rest of our lives.  It only got better when a young Columbian entrepreneur with a cooler came by with a “Senior, cerveza?”.  Hard beat that!  Then there was the “wedding night”.  It would seem that rich Columbians like to get married in Cartagena, on Saturday night, and in the most elaborate way possible.  We hit it right on and must have seen 4 wedding parties carting around in horse-drawn carriages complete with drivers donned in full suits and hat, coming and going along the cobbled streets, stopping outside the most beautiful cathedrals all done up for the recoming of Christ (or so it seemed).  Cartagena at night is indeed pretty hard to beat.  If the word romance isn’t in your vocabulary, it will be after spending a few evenings here.

Alas, all good things come to an end (or do they?).  The beaches of the Caribbean beckon.  Although it would have been quite easy to just slip into a Cartagena coma for a while, we came here to cycle across the continent, so we figured we better get our feet wet and see if our rigs even roll down the road.  The plan leaving Cartagena was to cycle up the coast towards the beaches of Santa Marta and Taganga.  We weren’t entirely sure of the distance or the route (we don’t have a high-resolution map showing all towns and distances), but we knew the direction and that’s really what’s important.  “Hola Senior, donde es Taganga ?”  Must have said that about 100 times.  Four days of cycling on the Caribbean coast, what could go wrong?  More on that mission next.

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Made it



32 feels like 46.  That’s the standard daily weather forecast, and pretty much sums up the weather here (hot and 100% humidty).  Day 3 in Cartagena and I’m still sweating while sitting.  Amy, “bring on the heat Robillard” is loving it.  Stepping off the plane, we had that quintessential experience one has when travelling to hot countries of hitting a wall of air so thick and damp, it’s as if you could reach out and wring it out like a sponge.  But ahhhh, filling our lungs with that first breath...the tropics, we’re here!



The flight(s) was boring, uneventful, and went without a hitch, i.e., perfect.  Ottawa, Toronto, Miami, Cartagena.  It always amazes me when I land in some godforsaken country and standing there at the luggage area, anxiously wondering if all of our “stuff” made it, only to see our 2 huge duffle bags come around the corner followed by our 2 bike boxes – admittedly looking a bit more stressed than when I passed them over to the airline gods – but all alive and well.  Big points to the boys and girls behind the lines that make that happen.



After a rather efficient shuffle through customs – luckily no one asked to see our return ticket, which apparently is law – we found the first cab with a roof rack (OK, a rather small cab, but we were convinced by her confidence that it would be “no problema”) , and bingo bango we were sipping our first rooftop cerveza at “Hotel Villa Colonial” and looking out over our new home. 

 

On a personal note, there are a few key milestone moments that occur for me on every trip.  This is one of them.  The point where you have all your gear, in one pile, in your room, on your first night upon arrival.  It’s the point where all the planning, all the preparation, all the packing, and all the planes, trains, buses, and taxis you took to get to this one moment, are officially behind you, and this, this is the start of the trip.  Everything is in place and in front of us.  Love it.

The immediate agenda is easy.  We’re taking a few days to relax, drink cerveza (only to replace our fluids of course), walk around this beautiful city on the edge of the Caribbean – Cartagena de Indies, the name just exudes intrigue – acclimatize, go to the beach,  and get our feet wet with the lingo, street food, and travel scene here.  Sounds stressful, I know, but we’ll just have to tough it out.   In a few days, when we’ve decided we’ve had enough lounging around, we’ll load up the bikes, see if they work, then head towards the beach towns of Santa Marta and Taganga.  More on that and Cartagena soon.

 

   
 
 
 

What exactly is the plan?

This is the plan

It all started on a cycling trip in Tibet some years ago.  Four weeks in, me (Rob) and my buddy Brian Cutts were feeling pretty good about our efforts on the Tibetan Plateau.  The trip was Lhasa, Tibet to Katmandu, Nepal -- an incredible experience and worthy mission to be sure.    About three days outside Katmandu, we ran into and then pedalled alongside a Danish couple who were also heading towards Kat as their final trip destination.  As we shared our stories, as travellers do, there was a moment of silence when they casually mentioned this was the end of a one-year mission that started in Italy.  Wow, I thought....makes what we're doing look like a day hike.  And so it was born.  My dream to launch a cycling trip so long, that there really is no end in sight.  Long enough to take trips inside the trip.  And long enough to become so normal, that the trip stops being a trip and just becomes your life. Luckily Amy and I share the same passion for travelling and specifically, cycling touring.  On previous cycling trips (looking back, warm ups for this one), we both agreed that the worst part of them was going home, and that we could easily keep travelling indefinitely.  So here we are. With our bikes packed and one-way tickets to Cartagena Colombia in hand, we are anxiously tapping our feet waiting for the plane to take off.

The actual plan is pretty simple on paper.  Start in Cartagena, and go south focusing on the Pacific Cordillera, otherwise known as the Andes.  Well, actually, first a little decompression stop at a beach northeast of Cartagena – the trip inside the trip thing.  Why South America?  We both fell in love with Latin America on a previous trip through Central America – the people, the culture, la salsa, la cerveca – our first together, and thus far, the best.  So much so, it seemed fitting to cycle through and get married in Cuba a few years later, which we did, and loved it.  So, it just seemed natural to set our sights on the ultimate Latin America mission.  Besides, cycling a continent seems like a worthy objective for a year or more of cycling.  As someone once said, "you haven't travelled until you’ve been to South America".  The idea is to have no specific destination, no schedule, no fixed plans, and no return ticket.  We’ll see how far we get.  In the perfect movie-world scenario, we'll just keep going until we ride off the edge of the universe hand in hand, but alas, the draws of our old lives will no doubt suck us back.  Or maybe not?  Hopefully that decision is a long way off. 

OK, that’s the background.  We fly on 1 August.  One-way to Cartagena.  We’ll keep you posted....



Sleep well my beauties.  When you awake, you will be in Colombia!