Finding the Hardest Gravel Adventure in Colombia
Bikepacking at high altitude in the northern Andes
Bikepacking at high altitude in the northern Andes
So here I am. Beaten down by another mountain road more fitting for goats than cyclists. Only when I skid to a stop to snap a picture of another widescreen view do I notice a concerning problem with my hands. I’ve been on this screaming gravel descent with an ever-present Andean backdrop for nearly an hour, and being overly cautious with my speed (read: mucho braking) has left me struggling to pry open my fingers. To one side, a riot of colourful birds is darting in and out of the verdant wall of jungle; to the other side is a sheer drop toward the sun-baked valley that is home to the cinematic colonial pueblo of Jardín. I exchange a requisite buenas! with a cowboy galloping by on his horse as sunscreen-saturated droplets of sweat sting my eyes. There are still several kilometres of a gravel-crunching descent ahead of me. I can only hope that my suddenly arthritic digits function once again. Nobody promised that a bikepacking trip to Colombia would be noproblema.
If cyclists know anything about Colombia, it is the country’s propensity to populate the professional peloton with some of the best mountain men. Or that the whole Andean region of the South American nation is home to some of the longest air-sucking paved climbs anywhere in the world, including the 80-km slog that is the famed Alto de Letras. But what is piquing the interest of bikepackers like me and my longtime riding partner Tabi Ferguson is the promise of a treasure trove of virtually untapped dirt riding. The mighty Andes run through this nation like three spines. With the aid of Google Street View, we realized during our pre-trip planning that tarmac here is the rarity not the norm. In the end, the route we chose for our gravel-centric adventure was one of the hardest we could find, but also the quietest and most fetching as it tapped into the panoply of car-free trocha (dirt roads) that snake their way through the topography.
Our two-wheeled journey kicks off in Bogotá, the energetic cradle of the nation and the fourth-highest capital in the world, where we take advantage of its Ciclovia, a forward-thinking, car-free movement that see many miles of roads turned over to pedestrians and the Lycra crowd every Sunday. It’s a stress-free way to bolt out of the city of roughly eight million. It’s not long before the thrum of the megacity bustle gives way to the jagged ridges of the Cordillera Oriental surrounding the city that whet our appetite for what’s to come.
As recently as 25 years ago, any cyclist riding a bike or locals simply riding on a bus to visit relatives in this countryside, with its instability largely connected with the drug trade, risked being escorted down a road to the Amazon where kidnap victims would go to vanish. (Longhaul cyclists most often hopped on a plane to fly over Colombia.) But just as tourists like us are discovering the country, Colombia is rediscovering itself. In Salento, after a ride through stands of towering wax palm trees that can grow as tall as 50 m, we see what is the definition of a tourist mountain town not filled with Europeans or North Americans but instead with the middle class of Colombia.
As we take a deep dive into the belly of Colombia’s coffee-growing Zona Cafeteria, west of Bogotá, curvy dirt roads in an atmosphere thinned by altitude are accompanied by rushing mountain rivers, never-quieting bird song and pueblos. The climbing is legit – multi-hour climbs are followed by long descents. We can’t remember