The final few hundred kilometres were pretty dull with, as has become customary, a good headwind for the final 100km. Typical! However, despite the boring road we were bombing it along happily with the thought of cold beer, sandy beaches and a good break from the saddle constantly on our minds. Luckily there were no more punctures or problems to hinder us apart from my (Dave) snapping yet another spoke meaning that i had to ride with my back brake disconnected for the final part. That´s more than 10 spokes broken now!!

Arriving in Santa Marta we rode to the sea front and took the customary photo before checking into a hostel and having a nice celebratory beer. Bliss!! The real reward was to come the next day though when we went to Taganga then Parque Nacional Tayrona: a haven of beautiful palm-lined sandy beaches, crystal clear water and lots of sunshine We spent two days there with Danny, Matt and Carl, three guys we´d met in Cartagena. It was the perfect end to the trip, lying on the beach, sipping from coconuts that had just fallen from the trees and having an occasional dip to cool down once in a while. We also did a trek to the ruins at El Pueblito; a village overlooking the sea that once housed over 2000 indigenous Colombians.

So now we´re into the holiday after the ride and it´s time for Tom and I to part as Tom heads to Venezuela and I head back to Medellin to see Ann and to experience more of the friendliness that´s left such a lasting impression of Colombia on the both of us. It´ll certainly be weird not having to move on every few days and bnot having to worry about the bikes at last!

Fear not, though. This isn´t quite the last email… there´ll cretainly be a few more things to say after we´ve had a couple of weeks off of the bikes to reflect upon what we´ve just done. So until then, ciao!

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!

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!

After arriving in Quito we wandered around the city for a few days taking in the sights, climbing up the pretty impressive Basilica to look over the city and having lots of coffees. One of the highlights of Quito had to be the Ciclopaseo. This happens every second Sunday with the streets through the centre of the city being closed off for bikes. It was a real shame we didn´t have our own bikes there (they were in Baños) as it looked like it´d be a great way to see the city. It was really good to see so many people out enjoying a ride in the sun. Maybe Boris Johnson should visit Quito and get some ideas for having a London Ciclopaseo!!

So after a few days in Quito Tom arrived. We picked him up from the airport then hastily set off to a nearby bar for some beers and a good catch up. Both of us had been really looking forward to seeing Tom and getting some good riding in over the next month WE spent another day in Quito, going up the Teleferico to 4100m where we decided to have a race up a hill. Needless to say, at over 4000m we could only manage about 200m running before having to stop, gasping for air!

Next it was south to Baños, the place we´d start the riding from. We went for a few rides around the area, checking out the retty magnificent Volcan Tungurahua which overlooks the town and several waterfalls along the “Ruta de las Cascadas”. Before starting the proper riding, though, we had to visit the rainforest… We chose to do a 2 day tour and had such a great time. We swam beneath waterfalls (i had Peter Andre´s “Mysterious Girl” in my head for almost 2 days solid!), saw loads of crazy plants and insects, got to play with monkeys and cruised down some rapids in a dugout canoe. Finally, our stay in Baños came to a close with a dip in the local thermal baths before hitting the road the next morning.

So Tom (Schroeder´s) first day of riding was a bit of a baptism of fire, climbing 1750m (our 6th biggest in 6 months!). luckily we had a bit of a tailwind making it a bit easier, but nevertheles it was a pretty tough first day. We reached Latacunga, checking in at the Hotel Central where we were were given some of the best hospitality to date. The landlady there was great, offering us tea coffee and a nice breakfast and really showing an interest in what we were doing.

The next day saw us head to Sangolqui, a town with a massive market which seemingly only sold fruit and veg. Considering this market had a few hundred stalls i thought this was quite an achievement not to be selling anything else! the road was great… Smooth tarmac, lovely views (despite a lot of cloud) and some awesome downhills. Coming into a town called Machachi we managed not only to break a 70kph speed limit, but also broke our land speed record, hitting 81kph!!!!!!!!!!

Then it was over the equator (with the compulsory standing in both-hemispheres photo, some equatorial cakes and a rather irritating equatorial puncture!) before cruising down to Cayambe then on to Otavalo where we´ll have a wander round the market and have a little rest before heading into Colombia in 2 or 3 days.

So that´s about it for the time being… the next updae will be from sunny Colombia, land of beautiful girls, great coffee and, of course, some more great riding.

Until then,

Ciao    

All of us were pretty excited about climbing the mountain and on leaving the hostel early on a thursday morning couldn´t wait to get going. WE only hoped that the weather would hold out so we could summit. From the start it didn´t look good, with rain turning to snow as we trekked, fully loaded with crampons, boots ice axes and camping gear, up to base camp at 4900m. There we pitched up, the tents being covered with snow before we could even get the guy lines out. Then it all started to go wrong…

We´d chosen our tour company as they had good reviews and recommendations in pretty much all of the travel guides, so when our guides, who were quickly dubbed tweedle dum and tweedle dee, came into our tent asking to cook there as they had nowhere to cook themselves. Ok, we thought… It is snowing and it is very cold. Next they asked for a lighter. It would seem that Monttrek tours don´t believe in bringing any sort of fire-lighting equipment to a place where they intend to cook up! This was followed by asking for a knife too to cut up food and some batteries for the guides´ headtorches! By now, as you might imagine, this had us rather worried about the climb at 1.00 the next morning.

After little or no sleep, the time came to start walking. thankfully the night was so clear and there was a full moon so we could walk without headtorches.  Reaching the glacier after a few minutes we roped up and started the 5 hour trudge up to the summit. The scenery was spectacular: clouds were lurking in the long valleys below making them look like eerie lakes, the snow capped peak of Mt. Huascaran (Peru´s highest mountain at 6746m) was looming in the distance, and the mountain was so quiet giving us a lovely break from the countinual toot-toot of taxi horns! the climb was pretty gruelling though with all of us feeling the effect of the altitude. Paul and Ronan and I had bad headaches and Tom was staggering as if he´d just drunk ten pints of stella! he was really struggling after getting a stomach bug the night before, most likely cxaused by the guides feeding him chinese pork-fried rice despite us asking for veggie food! Nevertheless, we carried on until reaching a broken ice bridge at just over 5550m where we were forced to turn back as the summit was unreachable. Despite not summiting, however, the mountain was so beautiful that it was worth it anyways.

The way down was also horrendous. as we neared the end of the glacier snow began falling in the distance and didn´t stop until we were back down at 3800m. We had to put the tents down and pack up in the freezing cold then walk down a very steep, extremely slipppery path to where we´´d get a minibus back to the comfort of Churup. By the end we were all frozen and soaked through, but a hot shower at the hostel followed by a pizza seemed to sort us out pretty quickly.

the next two days were spent resting then climbing before heading off the day after for Trujillo where we´d meet the cycling legend that is Lucho. Pretty much every cyclist we´ve gone past has told us we HAVE to visit Lucho at his Casa de Ciclistas so we were pretty excited about getting there, not to mention about seeing the sea and sun again!

the ride there was nice, winding through the Cañon del Pato – a steep sided, very deep canyon housing a raging river. The road was pretty bad, but spectacular nevertheless. It wound along the valley side wherever there was space, passing through dark tunnels hewn into the canyon walls. Reaching Huallanca, our first stop, we ate then went to bed, only to wake and find that some rather unsavoury peruvian had been into the room and stolen my phone and Tom´s wallet. Now we were pretty cheesed off with Peruvians after i´d been pickpocketed in Huaraz only 3 days before. we´d taken so much care over the last 5 months then this happens… All the trust we´d gained for the Peruvian people after all of the horror stories we´d heard was gone in an instant. It´s such a shame when we´re so close to reaching the end of the country.

Anyways, from there things could only get better and arriving at Trujillo was the start of it. We met up with Paul and Ronan, and were amazed at how many cyclists were there at the time. 2 swiss had just  left and we were sharing a room with 2 more, 2 Argentinian brothers were there riding the craziest most dilapadated bikes you´d eveer seen, and then there was Julien, a French cyclist coming down from Mexico. A few drinks saw us all get acquainted before going out to a salsa club until later on.

I suppose we really don´t have a lot to say about Trujillo as we´ve not done a whole lot here except for eat, sleep, and meet countless cyclistas. The local beach, Huanchaco, is great for surfing. It´s just a shame that we´re not!! It´s alos reputed to have some of the best cebiche in Peru. I can definitely vouch for that. The main thing we´ve enjoyed here though, is the community at Lucho´s. Up until now we´d never realised just how connected the cycle touring world is. Everybody who´d stayed here from 1985 when the casa de ciclistas opened has written in the book totalling over 1200 entries and some REALLY interesting stories. Many people have sent books and gifts back to Lucho´s since their stays too. Also, Lucho is a dab hand at  truing wheels and fixing our ailing hubs and bottom bracket. Thanks Lucho!

Well… that about brings us up to the present so i guess it´s time to sign off.

Ciao,

Tom and Dave

If James Watts is reading this, the taxi driver made you look like an old women driving a metro to Tesco. I have never pushed the imaginary passenger foot brake so hard or had a need to close my eyes approaching juctions. Just as well for Dave he was in the back with the bikes and couldn´t see…

After 2 days in Lima in the relaxing Wayruos hostal we were ready for the ride to the moutain town of Huaraz. We bused out of the city to Barancas and enjoyed the first swim in months in the Pacific Ocean. The following day we were on the bikes and ready to attack the moutains! After a boring but fast start on the Pan Ameirican highway we began to climb. The climbing ended up being the two largest days we had done. The first day we climbed from sea level to over 2000m,gradually leaving the desert behind. This was followed by an even larger day to over 4100m! We were happy that on the third days ride to Huaraz we had a 600m descent over only abou 30kms. The add to this we we treated to stunning views of the snow capped Cordillera Blanca Range, in which Peru´s highest moutain Huascaran (6768m) resides.

Good gravel, going to church and the worlds highest paved road!

 
Only a short update of the last few days and what is to come soon! We are trying to make updates shorter, and more regular so they are a little less time consuming to write and read!
 
We had a really good days ride from Ayacucho, espescially as the first 50km was tarmac and mainly downhill. Even when the upaved earth road started it was smoother and faster than we have been used to so we made really good progress. We had made 80km by 2.30 and the town we had intented on staying at. However, with so much of the day left we decided we would push on to another town called La Esmerelda, 35km further. 
 
On arrival at La Esmerelda we were greeted with friendly locals offering us food and drink. We stayed and chatted with them about our trip and then had several photos taking of us with everyone there. We then were escorted to a small internet cafe where they wanted us to save the pictures to the computer. It was very starnge, yet fun having such a huge entourage of kids follwing us through the village, offering to push our bikes ect.  They were even our guide to finding us a hostal to stay at. We were invited to attend a service at their church which was to inlclude music and be quiet lively. We felt we should attend, one as they had been very kind to us and two because this was something we were not likely to experience again.
 
At 8pm we returned to the church and the place began to fill. The people we met earlier seemed very pleased we came back. The service was very diffilcult to follow, with random chants being said stood up at intervals. What really seemed to bring the congregation together was the music. These songs would go on for ten minutes, with a heavy beat and sythasied rythm from a guy playing keyboard. It seemed almost like a prayer to some people as they closed their eyes and sung. However interesting it was I was still pleased when we got out and escaped the music!
 
We finished the last of the unpaved road the next day ending up at a town some 87km away called Izucuchaca. It was a small and fairly pretty town and was a nice place to spend the rest of the afternoon, resting for our big hill to Huancayo the next day!
 
The road to Hauncayo rose steadily up to around 3850m, in that time we had intermitent rain in which we would have to stop and put on our waterproofs. Then in about ten minutes time it would be hot and sunny again! We enjoyed a nice descent the other side and made the 69km to town by early afternoon, in time for late lunch and Dave to get hid rack welded!
 
So this brings me onto the next leg of our trip, down to Lima. We have been researching the route, and it is apparently the highest paved roed in the world at 4818m! Thats nearly as high as Mount Blanc! And potentially the logest paved downhill in the world (140km) as Lima is on the coast. We are not sure if we will ride up and down in one day, or camp at the top so we get one whole day of downhill. Either way we will have the photos and stories after…
 
Until then
 
Aidios,
 
Tom and Dave
 

We´ve had a few emails lately saying we should maybe update you all a little more often so here goes…

Since Cusco we´ve only ridden a few hundred Kms but have had loads of fun! In Cusco we hatched a plan along with Paul, Oliver and a Kiwi named Joe to sneak into Machu Picchu for free. this was one of the best experiences of the trip so far! We´d found a website detailing where there was a “secret path” up to the back of the ruins where you could sneak in so we thought it worth a try. Also, Oliver had met a guy who said he´d done the same thing so we knew it was possible.

The adventure started with around 8hrs in buses and Collectivos (kind of taxis) to Santa Teresa where we walked to Hydroelectrica, which is, unsurprisingly, an hydroelectric plant, and has a direct rail link to Aguas Calientes – the town you trek to Machu Picchu from. the route there was lovely with fruit trees lining the road. we tried to get some avocadoes too but unfortunately none were ripe enough to eat. Also along the way we had a go on a rather dodgy-looking cable-bridge linking a house over the river to the road. It was pretty scary being about 50ft above raging rapids suspended only by a cable and a couple of rickety pieces of wood!

Once at Hydroelectrica we walked along the railway line to Aguas calientes where we slept by the river for about 3 hours, in the rain without tents up, before walking up towards the ruins by moonlight so as to avoid being caught. After a lot of searching we found the “secret path” which turned out to  pretty much scale a cliff face! To make things worse it was raining too and the path had slid away in places! En route we also picked up a new addition to the group: a dog who followed us all night until sunrise at the ruins. He was possibly the first dog to illegally enter Machu Picchu! the path climbed steeply over some old inca terraces before we entered the main city and clambered up to get a good view for sunrise. It was amazing to have the whole place to ourselves until about 6am ahen we blended in as best we could with the tourists and started to wander around.

Unfortunately it was still raining and pretty cold so we went to shelter in a hut where Oliver had the clever idea of brewing up some hot drinks… Bad move! Within a few minutes our illegal escapade was over and we were standing at the entrance in a spot of bother with the police having been called! Oops!!! Luckily we were just made to pay the entrance fee and no further action was taken. Phew!!!

So… after our incan adventure we rested for a couple of days and became regular customers at the juice bars in the Mercado San Pedro. this place is great! they sell fruit smoothies for only 60p and that´s enough for two!! Crazy!!  

Monday saw us leave Cusco without Paul and Oliver as Oliver cut his feet dancing on glass and Paul was waiting for Ronan. The road was great, climbing up from 2000m to 4150m and then going back down again round the best switchbacks we´ve ridden to date! Needless to say we rode them at speeds way faster than would be advised! We were hitting most at over 50kph despite them turning 180 degrees! Great fun!!  this stretch was punctuated by Tom having the fright of his life after we camped out before Abancay. In the evening we found a rather conspicuous campsite which turned out to be at some kind of unofficial bus stop, cooked up and went to bed… In the morning Tom gets out of the tent to answer nautre´s call and a couple of minutes later i hear a bemused “I think there´s something in my shoe” from Tom. Tom proceeds to take his shoe off, give it a shake and guess what pops out?! No… its not those grubby socks we leave outside the tent for fear of inhaling noxious gases… It was a TARANTULA!!!!!!! How he didnt realise sooner we´ll never know, but luckily it didn´t bite and all was well. Apparrently, though, just in case you ever have a tarantula in your shoe, it “feels very soft. Like theres some tissue stuffed in it”.

After a day off at Abancay eating and sleeping it was on to the ripio (gravel) for a very slow and very bumpy ride to Ayacucho. The hills were monstrously large with climbs of over 40km reaching over 4000m. It went pretty well though, if not a little slowly and we arrived in Ayacucho yesterday for another well deserved rest day. It also served well to improve our prickly pear peeling technique. After the first time, when we managed to get prickles in our mouths and all over our hands, we used a rag to brush off the prickles before peeling. Although there were still a fair few left in our hands it was definitely worth the hassle for some tasty free fruit

Well that brings us to Ayacucho: a nice colonial town, much the same as the others we´ve visited, with a nice plaza and once again a lovely colonial cathedral Apparently they have 33 churches and cathedrals here – one for every year of Jesus´life. Anyways, churches apart, it´s a nice enough place to have a rest before (hopefully) the last of the gravel roads to Huancayo!

Until then, Adios

Tom and Dave