HelenWe’re sat on a bus, it’s a very comfortable bus but it’s slow. We left Bogota, the capital of Colombia, at 1pm this afternoon and will hopefully arrive at Cartagena on the Caribbean coast at about 11am tomorrow. Approximately 22 hours to travel less than 500 miles. But this is one of the many subtle differences I’m already noticing, the cities are incredibly busy and traffic is slow, and once you’re out of the city there are no motorways or even dual carriageways, just a few main roads that wind through the Andes and eventually drop down to the Caribbean coast.
We’ve been tourists in Bogota for the past four days, and it’s been good to stop and slow down after weeks of preparations. We flew into Bogota on Friday, and at approximately 2640 metres (8660 feet) above sea level, I was already feeling the altitude. At this altitude the climate is temperate, and so one minute you’re sat outside sipping coffee in the sun and the next you’re running fir shelter!
As with any city, there’s a good mix of culture, and it’s perfectly normal for a Michael Jackson lookalike to walk by with his ghetto blaster blaring out “Billy Jean” and stopping in front of me to do the moon walk! The city feels very safe, the street art is beautiful, we are staying in La Candelaria, the old part of the city which is a colourful mix of colonial buildings, cobbled streets and views down to the more modern areas of the city.
The currency takes a bit of getting used to, there’s roughly 5000 pesos to £1, and it took me a while to recover from the shock of our first 3 course meal costing 70,000 pesos until I worked out it was £14!
On Sunday we got the bikes out of their cardboard boxes and took part in La Ciclovia, an initiative where every Sunday from 7am-2pm, 75 miles of roads in the city are closed to motor vehicles, meaning cyclists, runners, skate boarders, roller bladers and more take to the streets and have fun. It was great seeing so many different people of all ages and abilities out, even when it started to rain!
Yesterday we walked up to Monserrat, the highest point in the city , that dominates the sky line with its white church at the top. At 3152m it was good altitude training, and we got back down just before a huge storm came!
So it actually took 26 hours on the bus in the end, and we arrived in Cartagena to intense humid heat and 50 taxi drivers trying to drag us into their taxis!
We’ll spend a few days at sea level now, doing some last minute preparations and getting the bikes ready for the journey ahead. I’m ready to start cycling now, I’m a mixture of excitement, anticipation and fear. Fear mainly getting out of the city, as the roads are so busy and the heat so intense. As much as I enjoy the culture and dynamics of any city, I always crave the peace and tranquility of the countryside, the open roads, the never ending changing views. 8000 miles lies ahead of us, tomorrow we cycle…
