Santa Marta to Cartagena - Colombia

(This is the last post from Colombia where we went at the end of the trip for something different than Patagonia. We did more continuous touring in Chile and Argentina. So if you are interested in that go back to those posts. I am not going to go to the trouble of making a separate blog for Colombia. If you want to go to the start of the posts for Colombia click here.)

From Riohacha Colombia we decided to ride back over a section of the road we had already ridden, back in the direction of Cartagena.  We stopped in the east end of Tayrona National Park to spend a couple of days there because we skipped over that on the way to Riohacha. More than one nature loving tourist had said that Tayrona was their favorite part of Columbia. You have to walk into the beaches on the east end a bit but, there are full services at the beach like restaurants and cabins. The beaches are some of the most beautiful I have ever seen with white sand and big round piles of white granite boulders here and there. Picture a tropical Joshua Tree on the Caribbean. We were there in low season and there were about a dozen people on each beach,  so it was not too crowded but it would probably be a zoo on holidays and high season. The big thing about the park is they are making an effort to keep it clean which was much appreciated. We stayed in a private campground called Castilletes on the way into the park where we felt they would do a better job of watching our stuff. It had about a kilometer long beautiful beach we had largely to ourselves. As a bonus it was also clean. Whenever we see a campground that has the word eco in it they tend to be cleaner so eco here must mean clean? We had the owner hack open a perfectly ripe guilt free LOCAL coconut for breakfast to go with the perfectly ripe guilt free LOCAL pineapple. I think if there is a risk that your food of choice could fall out of a tree and hit you in the head at any moment it qualifies as local.

The five k road into Canavaral beach was actually a highlight for us as there was little traffic and it was a total tropical jungle complete with Howler monkeys we stopped to watch and listen to.

The climb around Tayrona Park to Santa Marta from east to west was excellent, not too steep and it leveled off here and there. We had the good fortune of some rain to cool us off.  It takes a bit of a mental shift to get used to thinking of rain as a good thing when in southern Patagonia hypothermia was a serious concern.  In the tropics we have learned to just ride in clothes and sandals that dry off relatively fast. If it is real hot when it stops raining you don’t necessarily want to dry off right away as you get evaporative cooling. Plus when it is raining the sun is not out and mid-day riding on the Coast here in full on sun is too hot. It tends to cloud up in the afternoon like elsewhere in Columbia we have been.

The riding in and around Santa Marta is sunnier and hotter because it is in the rain shadow of the Sierra Nevada Mountains to the east. We rode until Cienaga a short way southeast of Santa Marta.  At that point we took a bus to Barranquilla as we were told the wind across the causeway would be dangerous due to crosswinds. On this particular day that would not have been an issue but we seriously thought we were going to have heat strokes if we kept riding. The first ten or fifteen kilometres out of Cienaga had some pretty shocking poverty.  Make shift houses were often half surrounded by water and the water was full of garbage.  After that stretch, the scenery is pretty pleasant with all these tidy little vegetable farms where they seem to be making a statement that they are not trashy like their neighbors to the east. The last half before Barranquilla you can see the ocean quite a bit and there is little development with not too much trash. A portion of that is a national park of some sort.

We were a little scared of Barranquilla being a large port town with little tourism. As usual we were worried about nothing.  We rode all the way through town and it wasn’t bad at all. The west end of town was fairly prosperous and had quite a few universities. 

The ride from Barranquilla to Cartagena was gently rolling and we had the good fortune of having it rain a fair amount even though this is not as jungle like as the area around Tayrona.  The pavement was excellent and there was a big shoulder. We were worried that the truck traffic we had seen from Bogota to Bucamaranga would be on this road to Cartagena but they weren't. We had been told there was good scenery along this stretch of the coast but there were only limited views of the ocean. Us being from Oregon, coastal scenery has to be pretty spectacular to get an honorable mention. The view was mostly light green rolling hills and pastures with just enough rainfall to grow small scattered trees. There were a couple of towns on the way and very few of the more typical road side vendors of fruit and drinks we have become accustomed to.

There were also very few places to stay and we ended up riding about a ninety some kilometers to the first hotel we could find. It was the only one left of a handful of failed hotels in a cluster. The hotel was actually nice but we were the only guests so that combined with the other abandoned new ones was a bit spooky.  We have noticed quite a few nicer abandoned homes and hotels around Columbia and would like to know what that is all about. As far as I know there was no big economic downturn unlike say in Argentina. All I can think of is maybe there were all these drug traffickers that needed something to do with their money like say movie stars in the US.  In this case the beach was nothing to write home about and it is only about fifteen minutes by car to Cartagena so it seems like an odd place to invest a lot in a hotel complex.

Speaking of drug dealers the highway had the usual random military check points maned by guys with machine guns. They randomly pull over cars to search or ask for ID. They never stop us, so we now have this total nonchalant attitude about encountering guys with machine guns on the side of the road. We have gone through at least twenty of those check points. The ironic thing about the Colombian soldiers is that they generally looked like fresh faced mamas boys and did not try too hard to look intimidating. Most of them were very young looking and no they weren't ten year olds. We did see a eight year old girl with a machete one day but that is a very common tool here. I guess there is no need to look too macho if you have a machine gun at your side. Laurie was in agreement with this and said that they were quick to wave and smile. When she talked to them they were pleasant and did not try to maintain that robotic commando facade like US soldiers and policemen seem to be trained to do.  I noticed that near the Venezuelan border the soldiers seems to not let their hands off the trigger and they smiled less.  Colombians are openly not too fond of Venezuela.

On a final bus ride back to Bogota (I know it is a bike tour but we only had so much time) they showed three incredibly violent movies in a row. They were all American of course and unlike the baby faced friendly Colombian soldiers we got to look at, we got to see real deal tough guys like Sylvester Stalone with lots of black stuff on their faces. I am sitting there as the only American besides Laurie on the bus and am supposed to be so afraid of Colombia and Colombians but in the course of one evening watched what had to be at least a couple hundred people die violently or be maimed. Hats off to the creative geniuses of Hollywood and all the money and energy they put into making movies. Too bad we lack funds for our schools, infrastructure and a million other things.

Cartagena is a modern high rise city with the big draw being the well preserved and restored old colonial part of town. Again we went from seeing no gringos to lots of them. Here though there are also quite a few high dollar tourists. There are lots of high end hotels, jewelery and clothing stores to accommodate them. The old walled city now is kind of an artificial tourist enclave where they go to great lengths to keep it clean and safe for the tourists.  The walled off old city has limited entry points through the walls which help the police keep the vagrants out. Visiting only here would be about like saying you had been to America if you flew into see French Quarter in New Orleans then left.  Cartagena feels a bit like the French Quarter in New Orleans only with less emphasis on debauchery and far less live music. There is more emphasis on the architecture, history and shopping. It is also quite a bit more expensive than the rest of Columbia. In Bogota I bought a plain cotton t shirt so as to dress down and not look to conspicuous as a gringo but here I feel the need to dress up to make the grade as a well healed tourist.  Only one more day here though so I am not going to go out and buy a collared shirt to keep up with the Jones-es. This time of year the Colombian tourists outnumber the international tourists about 20 to 1 especially in the high rise area of Boca Grande just south of El Centro. Outside the tourist areas there is plenty of poverty but lets not go there.

We spent the morning doing a self-guided audio tour of the military fort that over looks the town. The fort was the biggest colonial fort the Spanish ever built. There were lots of cool guy things like secret tunnels and chutes where they poured hot oil on the enemy. Cartagena has been attacked many times so there is no shortage of war history. Always heartwarming to learn about some more battles in mankind's seemingly infinite log of fighting wars. Good thing we are so evolved now we won't have anymore.

The next day we went to the inquisition museum in a building that they had life size instruments of torture used to get people to confess to this and that. It was in a building where they did the torturing.  See the slide show for some pictures of those effective looking inventions. From the looks of things I am glad i was not around then. I am sure i would have made the witch short list. Lets hope Fox news types never have total control or i am sure they would use similar things to get "liberals" to confess to all sorts of demonic transgressions.

Some final thoughts on touring in Colombia -  Although there are a lot of compelling reasons to bike tour in Colombia like the geography and the culture, touring is problematical.  There are not a lot of options to link up rural roads through the mountainous terrain and the main paved roads often have mucho truck traffic.  Few of those trucks are in the running for any clean burning fuel efficiency awards.  The country really needs to get on top of the trash situation in many areas whether that is preventative media campaign or clean up with abundant cheap labor.

If you had some sort of sag wagon to do rural roads on mountain bikes here and there that might be a good way to go BUT some of the rural areas are supposed to be not too safe if they grow or process coca there.  Where exactly they grow that is not publicly available information and Colombia is a very fertile country.  Let me know if you find a map. We heard that in one town in Colombia where they get asked if it is safe they jokingly respond that it is “too safe”.

Colombia being near the equator where the sun sets and rises about the same time all year long you can pick your climate based on elevation.  Bogota was at about 8,500 feet and was cool enough in the evening to warrant a light jacket or sweater.  The Caribbean coast was swelteringly hot. One of the best micro climates we were in was near the top of Chickamocha Canyon. It was warm enough to grow bananas but not so hot as to be uncomfortable.  The bottom of the canyon was very hot much like the bottom of the Grand Canyon. So for bike touring purposes you have some options with the climate control settings.

It is a little strange to be back to Bend Oregon where everyone is so serious about fitness or their uber athlete status. Yesterday I was in a bike shop where a fifty something cyclist wanted the owner to help him sell a couple of his five thousand dollar road bikes because a bike fit guy at another shop had convinced him they were not exactly the right geometry for him. It is quite a contrast after coming from Bogota and participating in the Cyclovia Sundays where there are all these old guys on really old road bikes with tattered, faded, mismatched bike jerseys but, most are not the least bit concerned if their gear is better or worse than yours. They are serious about it but in a different way like it is their national duty or something. You never know when some other country is going to challenge everyone in your country to a cycle race!

Here are a few pictures of this section

Santa Marta to Riohacha signing back in

After spending a couple days in the touristic beach town of Taranga just north of Santa Marta we decided to ride our bikes back through Santa Marta on to Riohacha about two hundred kilometres northwest up the coast.

Taranga had at least as many local and Columbian tourists as it did any foreigners. The gringos were mostly European but not much more than a couple dozen.  Taranga is a well known dive center but we are not divers so did not pony up for that. The local beach was pretty poor and there was not any snorkelling in the bay to speak of. Good snorkelling would have taken an all-day boat ride with the divers. Taranga like many Columbian towns had no shortage of extremely loud stereo systems blasting from restaurants and stores. Some of the little road side markets can barely afford plastic tables but they have these huge sound systems.

In order to start riding up the coast we had to ride through the north end of Santa Marta which has to be the trashiest town we have ever seen. The locals said it would be dodgy on a bike.  We got up early and made it through ok but I did not stop to pull out the camera to take a picture of all the garbage.  It was like a living breathing garbage dump.

The upside was that shortly out of town to the north the desert changes to lush vegetation and the locals are much cleaner. To be fair though, just like the green side of Oregon, the vegetation can hide a lot of trash.The traffic turned out to be pretty minimal and there was a big shoulder on the side of road.  The touring for the next two hundred kilometres turned out to be really good.

The climate varies a lot in the area because there is a huge mountain nearby that is tall enough to have snow on the top. It is one of the tallest mountains so close the ocean in the world. There are all kinds of microclimates as you go higher up the mountain.

We camped twice on the beach in hammocks on the way to Riohacha, once in a place called Los Angles and another in Palomino.  Palomino was just a place on a map where the road left the coast and we were tired but turned out to be a gringo destination. The one cheap campground was full of long term resident hippies including one plain looking woman from Sweden that had been there a month.  That one cost only about three USD a night but did not look very secure if you had any possessions.  We stayed in a little more upscale one down the beach a bit where all our hammock mates were guess what nationality? If you guessed German you were right! Three of them were playing what sounded like Latin American music with bongo drums and guitar. They were good at it too and probably learned from a meticulously thorough German book on how to play Latin American bongos in thirty days. “Wie um die lateinischen amerikanischen Bongos in dreißig Tagen zu spielen”

In the book exchange area of the beach place we stayed I spotted a deck of cards with some rather risqué drawings of sexual positions.  Each card was a different position and each had six categories listed below with numeric rankings – in German. The rankings were probably pleasure for her and him then technical difficulty and how strenuous.  The Germans are so efficient and prepared, maybe they really are a master race after all.

It is so weird to be traveling on a bike where we are the only gringos around and then seemingly for no apparent reason there are gringos around at some town. The poverty in these coastal towns is at a level we have only experienced in National Geographic magazines. Not everyone is really poor but it takes getting used to and we are not real camouflaged in those areas. No matter how “one” you try to feel with the local culture mentally you aren’t one and never will be one coming from middle class America.  We still have not seen any bike tourists in Columbia and the last three days have been very good touring.

The main road has very few side roads and the people who live back in the country either walk or ride a horse.  Very few can afford a car or even a motorbike which are popular so there are quite a few local buses on the road. Still even then the traffic was light enough to listen to birds and insects. At the campground in Palomino there was an English girl working who had a good quality kayak that she let me take out in the surf a bit. She had been with some other expert kayakers trying to do first descents in Columbia. I have seen a number of rivers with granite boulders that looked promising.  The problem is there are not a lot of roads along the rivers or anywhere else for that matter. Plus they grow coca in the local mountains here in spite of the drug war so hiring some dudes with donkeys to go upriver might not be such a good idea.

We have heard a number of times that Columbians are trading coca or its derivatives with the Venezuelans for gas. {The closer you get to Venezuela, the more people sell gasoline out of one liter plastic bottles outside their homes.} That way the coke goes into a country that is an enemy of the US and we are not able to operate out of unless we take it upon ourselves to bomb them with drone planes as is our prerogative. We sure are good at having wars and enemies.

After a ninety kilometer ride to Riohacha we are making arrangements for a guided transport for the coastal desert town of Cabo de La Vela. It abruptly turned back to desert about twenty kilometres from Riohacha. Riohacha is actually a decent medium sized town. The water front beach is clean and lined with quiet native women selling very colourful baskets under palm trees. Plus there are not hordes of dudes hawking this and that in your face.  There are very few tourists here. We saw and spoke to one Swiss family who like us were booking a trip out to the end of the peninsula.  It takes a four wheel drive.  They are very horn happy in Riohacha however and honk for no apparent reason or maybe there are a million reasons to honk a horn and I have just not deciphered the collective Morris code. They need a horn honkers anonymous group here.

Cabo de Vela would not be recommended as a bike tour even though a good portion of it is paved.  Water could be had here and there from vendors but the ride would be very hot and boring not to mention ugly with all the trash. The indigenous Wayuu people like many other indigenous folks do not have any values about littering. The Wayuu capital of Uribia you drive through is very trashy.

It is ironic that the Wayuu are famous and prodigious weaver of shoulder bags but where they live is so trashed up with plastic bags. Part of the reason may be that very few stores give you receipts and the bags show that you paid for the item. Merchants generally insist you have every little thing in a bag.

The Wayuu people other than that are incredibly calm though even in town when they are selling their handbags.  The women are especially quiet which is a very nice contrast to the rather loud Colombian culture in general. If you are a big city person suffering from anxiety attacks and your doctor says it is seriously affecting your health you should come hang out with the Wayuu people on the La Guajira penninsula.

Where the road that parallels the train turns to gravel past Uribia it would be pretty rough for touring. The dirt roads into the coast from that road would be doable but it would be possible to get lost in the desert.

The beaches up in Cabo de Vela were very beautiful as mentioned in the guide books but they had trash as well so they were not the pristine end of the earth experience I would have hoped for. All that sounds kind of negative but thought I would put it out there for anyone considering touring this part of Columbia. There are quite a few places where there are military guys with machine guns standing on the side of the roads. I am not sure exactly what their function was but security did not seem to be an issue.

 pictures from the coast

Pictures from the La Guajira penninsula