Tom and Dave’s BIG Ride

We now had left, essentially, the final push to the coast, and that definitely was an exciting feeling as we left Medellin. We had one final mountain to climb coming out of the city, and after that it was all downhill and flat to the coast!

After a couple of thousand metres climbing more than we had anticipated we crossed the brow of our final hill to see an amazing descent shrouded in angry looking rainclouds. After a huge descent in the pouring rain on the second day´s riding we found ourselves 3000m lower and a lot warmer. The heat we found was our biggest enemy whilst riding. The temperatures were high enough that even at night it was unconfortably hot to sleep, so it doesn´ t bare thinking about what it is like to ride! When we were moving fast it wasnt to bad, but as soon as we stopped we were in a puddle of sweat! It was almost impossible to drink enough to keep up with it!!

In the heat our new addiction became Postobon Manzana, a cold fizzy apple flavoured drink that became our thirst quencher and fuel!! The scenery opened up to flat plains and grass lands with lots of water around (very humid)  and lots of funny saggy skinned cows (we will put pictures of them up!). It was, unfortunately, sometimes just a matter of counting the kilometres down during the days due to the heat and fairly plain roads and the all too frequent stench of dead dogs on the verge. Luckily we were moving fast on the flat doing over 100kms a day so progress was fast. 
 
On the last day, after almost 130km we were so happy to arrive in Cartagena on the Carribbean coast! It felt like we had kind of finished as we had finally reached the coast and we knew we had some time off! From the icy waters of Tierra del Fuego to the warm waters of the Carribbean, it now had sunk in that we had pretty much completed our journey.
 
Another surprise layed in store for us in Cartagena…we recognised a bike in the hostal. It was Olivers, and by chance we had found the same hostal as him and were finishing around the same time. It´s incredible, as we first saw him at the very start of the trip in Southern Patagonia so long ago! We met a good group of mainly English travellers in the hostal and were able to relax and enjoy some preliminary celebrations with them.
 
We spent our time there doing the touristy things including; wandering around the historic center, visiting and bathing in a nearby mud volcano and of course visiting the beach. We got a boat to the perfect Playa Blanca and enjoyed white sands, warm waters, palm trees and a nice cold beer or two!
 
But alas our trip was not to finish there. To reach 10000 km and 100000m of climbing we needed to ride on to our planned finish of Santa Marta. We will be both very sad to leave Cartagena, but hugely excited to reach Santa Marta, the national park at Tairona and to finally meet the end of the cycling!

Well it´s been a little while since our last update and we´ve now come within 1000km of our final destination, Santa Marta, on the Carribbean coast. We´re now in Medellin, Colombia´s second largest city and the home to Ann, My (Dave´s) 2nd cousin.

We started off with 200 kilometres of flat from Cali to Cartago which flew by with no problems. The Pan American Highway, despite it´s large amounts of traffic and dull scenery was a blessing here as the trucks gave such a good draft that we could ride over 30kph for lot of the time . En route there wasn´t a lot to see apart from hundreds of fields of sugarcane and the odd roadside truckstop. At one such stop we decided to sit down for a drink and a packet of crisps. As we were happily chatting away we were interrupted with possibly the most unexpeted question by the lady who served us the drinks. Out of the blue she turned around and said ´what are transexuals´. A little bit confused about being asked such a random question, we explained in broken Spanish before drinking up and zooming on to the next town. Strange!

After Cartago the hills began as, contrary to what our map told us, we had to ride up through the mountains for the next few kms to Santa Rosa de Cabal. A cheeky truck surf saw us get to Pereira very quickly, but afterwards the hill got steeper and steeper until we reached 1700m, and a lovely descent to Irra, where we slept before the the penultimate hill of the whole trip!

The next day was a day to rival the day of a thousand punctures in Ecuador! All we seemed to do was fix tom´s punctures which, unfortunately, were always on the back wheel meaning all bags had to come off of the bike as well! By the time we got to La Pintada (the bottom of the hill) we´d had about 6 punctures and stopped at a petrol station to fix tubes and buy a new spare. From here the day got better after a really good pizza for lunch and meeting some really friendly guys at the vulcanizadora who checked our tubes for holes and bought us water. So, buoyed up by good pizza and Colombian friendliness we started on the massive 1700m hill, and got to Medellin the next day.

So… Medellin… Where do I start?

We LOVE this place. From the second we arrived here we´ve been welcomed as if we were family. We arrived at Ann´s apartment in Poblado, a lovely area of the city, at lunch time and were given iced tea and sat down on a comfy sofa straight away. Ann is my mother´s cousin and has been living in Medellin teaching English for the past 14 years. Despite only having been here for a few days now I can see why she loves the city so much.

On our second day here we were invited to talk to a few of Ann´s students and show a few photos. They really couldn´t believe just how far we´d cycled and loved the photos. I think we´ve inspired a few people to quit their jobs and start travelling now! Everybody was really friendly and we were invited out on Friday night to get to know them a bit better. We were also taken down to Parque Poblado and invited out to the farm of one of Ann´s colleagues, Jorge, wher we rode horses and saw some of the beautiful countryside around Medellin. This friendliness is almost overwhelming! We found ourselves inundated with offers of nights out, trips to farms and the like all the time. Ann has been great too, organising lots of things for us to do including going up Medellin´s two cable cars for superb views over the city, and to see a library built in Santo Domingo; a once very dangerous area of Medellin. Ther we were accosted by a little six year-old boy who wanted to give us a tour of the area and knew a surprising amount! He knew how many cariages there were on the cable car, the length of it, and all of the planned extensoins. I expect he´d have told us the number of books in the library if we´d asked! And all that cost us 1000 pesos (about 30p)!!

Well i could go on and on about Medellin until the cows came home but maybe that´s about all i should say for now. This place has surpassed all of our expectations and i´ll definitely be returning here in the future. We´ll be really sorry to leave!