getting back on the horse
Last night i slept very poorly. I woke up twice during the night trying to figure out where to get a bike, or even if it would be a very good idea to travel on one in a country with active paramilitaries in rural areas.
You see, after pondering the bicycle idea in my last post, i decided to give it a trial run over the past 5 days here in Barranquilla by renting.
The first bike i rented was a comfort bike, which looks like an old-fashioned mountain bike, but nowadays that shape is considered a city bike.
I decided to go back to the stretch of road that i had turned back from before, a piece of road that led to the southern end of the riverwalk, but went right through huge piles of trash and a strip of informal development to get there. Barriers prevent cars from entering the area, although some mopeds and cyclists still zip though. There seemed to be a disproportionate number of young people walking around considering school hasn't been shut down due to COVID in Colombia like it has in Panama. Some were barefoot and a bit grubby, but mostly they didn't look especially different to any other low income young people elsewhere in town. It didn't feel unsafe, but i would've felt uncomfortable as a tourist walking the few hundred meters through their neighborhood - on a bike i was in and out in under a minute, so i didn't feel like i was giving the impression of gawking.
After cycling briskly along the Gran Malecón riverwalk that i had spent an hour or more hiking the week before, i decided to head up to the very end of Río Magdalena - the Bocas de Ceniza. The reviews i'd seen online said that it was a disgusting pile of trash with unfriendly locals trying to scam you, but i figured if i was on a bike i could quickly avoid any bad situations, so i gave it a shot anyway. The Bocas de Ceniza is the mouth of the river, which features a ~5km long breakwater. What isn't clear from the map is that the "road" becomes a dirt road before it even gets to the breakwater, and then it becomes a very rugged path over chunks of riprap, boulders and coral... And somehow on top of it, people have constructed tiny villages. It's nuts.
I half-rode, half-pushed the bike as far up the breakwater as i could go, then lifted it on my shoulder and started stepping from stone to stone with a bike on my shoulder like some manic triathlete. After excusing my way through several residents' "front room" - a sort of flat, sheltered area with a couple of chairs in front of their shack, on the path - i realized i wasn't going to be able to drag it all the way to the end. A local resident said i should just leave the bike there and walk the rest of the way. At first i was a bit worried someone would nab the bike, but realistically what would they do? It's not like you could go anywhere with it. And anyway, all the neighbors would know exactly who took it. So i shrugged and left it there, scrambling my way to the very edge of the river.
I think i had heatstroke, to be honest. I had taken 2L of water with me, and had downed a small bottle of malta (a non-alcoholic malt beverage fortified with vitamin B that is popular across the Caribbean), but the temperature and humidity here is very high, and (aside from the shacks) there was no shelter at all. I was exhausted from the exertion, feeling sunburnt, and getting off the bike left me dizzy. It was all i could do to get to a point where i could look north into the Caribbean. A few locals had made it down a little further to go fishing, but the waves were smashing into the rocks sending spray meters up into the air, so i stopped where i stopped and considered it a victory. I didn't even have the energy to take a photo.
When i got back to the shack where i had left my bike, the resident introduced himself and we had a bit of a chat. He showed me his contraption for fishing - he had rigged up a line to a kite so that he could set the hook further out to sea. He asked if i was American or German. I said i was Canadian. Then he asked what i think about what's happening with Russia and Ukraine. I said it's really sad to see, and that war is a terrible thing. He agreed. He asked if i was heading on to Puerto Colombia today, but i said maybe next time. I was 5km out to sea standing on a precarious rock with a heavy bike and only a half liter of water to my name.
I pushed back along the breakwater till i got to one of the tiny tavern shacks that seemed like it was open. The owner had a cooler with a Sprite in it, and it was the greatest Sprite of my life. At the next beacon, i maneuvered into the shade and ate the pan jamón y queso i had taken along.
When i got back into town proper, i got another malta, then followed a route back through some new development, taking me along the freeway and past a bunch of ominous gated communities before getting back into the Barranquilla i was more familiar with.
It was an epic day.
After a day break, i returned to the rental place and got a "29er" mountain bike. That is, a modern-shaped mountain bike with unusually large and fairly fat wheels. It was in abysmal condition. None of the gears on the front worked, and on the back only 3 or 4 clicked in. To add insult to injury, the back tire was slowly leaking, and the front suspension could not be locked out for cycling on the road. Despite ostensibly being a "better" (and more expensive) bike than the one i had rented two days before, the only positive part of the experience for me was not thrashing my palms on the bumpy roads and curbs, due to that suspension. But it was much harder to get up hills, and that was a problem, because i had gotten in my head that i wanted to visit Puerto Colombia, a town about 30km outside of Barranquilla.
I never made it to Puerto Colombia, but i did make it to one of the waypoints i had wanted to reach - the Castillo de Salgar, about 20km out of town. It was a much more interesting cycle ride for actual cycling, as opposed to the couple of kilometers of pushing/lifting i had done to get out to Bocas de Ceniza. Outside of town was a mix of mangrove-like undergrowth with dry, coastal scrub. Most of the land was private, and it looked like a bunch of it had been attempted to get developed as resorts, but a lot of it was just half-finished buildings, perhaps nothing more than real estate scams. Closer to the beaches, i realized there are no public beaches anywhere around Barranquilla. Every single turnoff heading to the waterfront had a bunch of folks at the edge of the beach trying to sell you a spot in a hut.
I really don't understand people who go to the beach just to sit in a hut and sip drinks. Why not do the same thing in a tiki bar or a beer garden or at poolside? To me the whole point of the beach is that there isn't any private ownership, that you can freely walk along it for as far as you want to go, and walk back, and paddle, and play. And if you have to pay, then fuck it.
Needless to say, i stayed on the road. Amusingly the only official tourist site which appears on maps of the area is the Castillo de Salgar and unlike the private beaches it's completely free. The castillo is a relatively modern (19th century) building on top of cliff that i think was originally used to spot smugglers coming in outside the official port. It's been maintained in a brilliant yellow, and it has these wonderful arches, and it feels exactly like you are in a period movie. There was someone (perhaps a bride?) there getting a few glamor photos, and a couple who came and left. I wandered around a bit, then sat in the shade of the building and ate my half loaf of brown bread and a banana, debating whether to press on to Puerto Colombia with a completely flat tire and only a liter of water left.
After pushing the bike back up the hill in sweltering heat, i decided to head back to town. I did stop at a coconut stand along the way, and gratefully slurped the coconut milk, then tucked the coconut meat away for my next pitstop. Which turned out to be a gas station. I had just headed into the shadow of the building to try recover from the intense heat when i noticed they had a bike repair station! Yes! I pumped up the back tire and ate my coconut meat and zoomed back to the city feeling a lot better.
I think it was on that ride when i thought to myself... yeah, perhaps i can do this. Perhaps i can bike tour in Colombia. There had been one section where a motorcyclist pulled over and told me not to go down a particular road i had been planning to go down because it was dangerous. (It was a gravel road with mounds of trash on both sides that looked like a shortcut, and honestly it probably would've been safe for the 500m or so i needed to go, but taking the main road wasn't all that much more distance, so i filed away the knowledge of what dangerous roads might look like in Colombia for future reference.) I also went through a police checkpoint, where fortunately they didn't ask for my ID - despite asking the cars pulled up in front of me. My passport was back at the bike shop as my deposit! The roads weren't in great shape, and i didn't have a mirror or a helmet, but the cars and buses and motorcycles zooming past all seemed a lot more understanding of cyclists than the hellish section of the American south where it seemed like drivers went out of their way to terrorize anyone not in a diesel-belching truck. I felt like... yeah, i think i can do this.
One of the nicest things, at least here in the area close to the city, is the thing i loved about cycling in China too - there are vendors dotted around frequently enough that you can get drinks and fruit all over the place, you don't need to stock up a gallon of water and an Ursack full of food just to survive a day out on the road.
And in general i love the street vendors and all the fruit here. There's the coconuts, the mangos, the tangerines, the melons, the pineapples - all cut up and ready to eat, if you want it. There's the guys with a blender who will make juice of anything for you. People just cheerfully eat a banana on the street like they're actually enjoying it, not shamefully hiding away their fruit consumption like i experienced in Panama. It's a delight.
I love the joints known as "tienda y estaderos" too. They're something in between a convenience store and a bar. At the front is a little heater with some arepas or empanadas or buñuelos (donuts). In the back is a counter where they sell liquor and coffee and soft drinks and cigarettes and candy and chips. In between - sometimes spilling out to the sidewalk, but always open to the air - tables and chairs and a TV showing some football or the news. The TV is always on mute because there is also a massive sound system blasting accordion and trumpet music. In the mornings people pause - standing - to chow down an arepa de huevo (now my non-vegan breakfast snack of choice). In the afternoons, dudes sit round the tables stacking beer bottles like they're dominos.
Anyway, today - grumpily, due to my lack of sleep - i resolved to do a walk around all the bike shops in town and see if i could find an affordable bike. I have already poked my head in one or two pawn shops that i randomly walked past just to get an idea of the prices, but if i'm going to tour i really want a new bike mainly to avoid the problem of a slipping chain or defunct gears like i had to suffer through on my Salgar excursion. It turns out that the entry level bike at a "serious" bike store here is the same brand (and the same price) as the entry level bike anywhere else in the world. For around $500 you can get a so-called "fitness bike" or hybrid that would be perfectly reasonable for touring on, given a decent rack and some panniers. Unfortunately, once you add the cost of a decent rack, panniers and so on, you are getting up to around $1000, which is more or less what i spent to put together my setup in Canada too. I could accept spending that if i thought i'd cycle 2-3 months here in South America too, but right now i'm still not entirely confident that i will feel safe or that i will enjoy it to the same extent that i did in Canada and the US. I wanted a cheaper entrance price.
And then i found the Buffalo Charger, which is a commercialized version of the bikes that World Bicycle Relief distribute in sub-Saharan Africa. Colombia is the only country outside of Africa where they distribute them, and dude those bikes are badass. They are very heavy duty steel bikes that have more in common with cargo bikes than the trendy road and mountain frames sold to people who wear Tour de France jerseys and shoes with little metal clips on the bottom. They're designed to carry a ton of shit across a dirt road from your farm into the village market. They come with a pump and patches and a full toolkit to dismantle them. And they're under $200. The commercialized version has 6 gears, so it hopefully won't be as hellish to pedal up a hill as the original probably is. I figured, what have i got to lose? That's the kind of price that even if i only cycled from here to Santa Marta and back, maybe do some day-long loops here and there, i still got my money's worth. And even better, the profit goes back to buying more bikes for rural communities in developing countries.
So i decided to get one.
Note that i didn't actually get one. Yet. Mainly because - like most places here that cater to the local working class population - they don't take card. So i needed to get to an ATM, and after walking to random shopfronts and warehouses in industrial districts all over town i didn't have the energy. I told them i would be back to purchase on Monday, and over the weekend i will try to find some panniers, or at least a big basket and some bungees - which is the standard "dudes taking shit to the market" bike setup here.
I might regret getting such a heavy bike that needs serious elbow grease just to take the wheels on and off, but... fuck it, let's just see what happens. Assuming i get everything together, i should be able to set off next week. And i probably will try Santa Marta first, since it's relatively close, very touristy and there are other small towns with hotels along the way.
Then i am tempted to try go up the Río Magdalena.
I bought a book by a Wade Davis called "Magdalena: River of Dreams" about his travels along the river and reflections on the people who lived there. I haven't cracked it yet, but it's downloaded to the Kindle app on my phone. Just reading the blurb inspired me. I never did get to follow the Milk River and the Missouri due to the COVID border closure last year, but perhaps this is a river i can bike along, for a while anyway.
You see, after pondering the bicycle idea in my last post, i decided to give it a trial run over the past 5 days here in Barranquilla by renting.
The first bike i rented was a comfort bike, which looks like an old-fashioned mountain bike, but nowadays that shape is considered a city bike.
I decided to go back to the stretch of road that i had turned back from before, a piece of road that led to the southern end of the riverwalk, but went right through huge piles of trash and a strip of informal development to get there. Barriers prevent cars from entering the area, although some mopeds and cyclists still zip though. There seemed to be a disproportionate number of young people walking around considering school hasn't been shut down due to COVID in Colombia like it has in Panama. Some were barefoot and a bit grubby, but mostly they didn't look especially different to any other low income young people elsewhere in town. It didn't feel unsafe, but i would've felt uncomfortable as a tourist walking the few hundred meters through their neighborhood - on a bike i was in and out in under a minute, so i didn't feel like i was giving the impression of gawking.
After cycling briskly along the Gran Malecón riverwalk that i had spent an hour or more hiking the week before, i decided to head up to the very end of Río Magdalena - the Bocas de Ceniza. The reviews i'd seen online said that it was a disgusting pile of trash with unfriendly locals trying to scam you, but i figured if i was on a bike i could quickly avoid any bad situations, so i gave it a shot anyway. The Bocas de Ceniza is the mouth of the river, which features a ~5km long breakwater. What isn't clear from the map is that the "road" becomes a dirt road before it even gets to the breakwater, and then it becomes a very rugged path over chunks of riprap, boulders and coral... And somehow on top of it, people have constructed tiny villages. It's nuts.
I half-rode, half-pushed the bike as far up the breakwater as i could go, then lifted it on my shoulder and started stepping from stone to stone with a bike on my shoulder like some manic triathlete. After excusing my way through several residents' "front room" - a sort of flat, sheltered area with a couple of chairs in front of their shack, on the path - i realized i wasn't going to be able to drag it all the way to the end. A local resident said i should just leave the bike there and walk the rest of the way. At first i was a bit worried someone would nab the bike, but realistically what would they do? It's not like you could go anywhere with it. And anyway, all the neighbors would know exactly who took it. So i shrugged and left it there, scrambling my way to the very edge of the river.
I think i had heatstroke, to be honest. I had taken 2L of water with me, and had downed a small bottle of malta (a non-alcoholic malt beverage fortified with vitamin B that is popular across the Caribbean), but the temperature and humidity here is very high, and (aside from the shacks) there was no shelter at all. I was exhausted from the exertion, feeling sunburnt, and getting off the bike left me dizzy. It was all i could do to get to a point where i could look north into the Caribbean. A few locals had made it down a little further to go fishing, but the waves were smashing into the rocks sending spray meters up into the air, so i stopped where i stopped and considered it a victory. I didn't even have the energy to take a photo.
When i got back to the shack where i had left my bike, the resident introduced himself and we had a bit of a chat. He showed me his contraption for fishing - he had rigged up a line to a kite so that he could set the hook further out to sea. He asked if i was American or German. I said i was Canadian. Then he asked what i think about what's happening with Russia and Ukraine. I said it's really sad to see, and that war is a terrible thing. He agreed. He asked if i was heading on to Puerto Colombia today, but i said maybe next time. I was 5km out to sea standing on a precarious rock with a heavy bike and only a half liter of water to my name.
I pushed back along the breakwater till i got to one of the tiny tavern shacks that seemed like it was open. The owner had a cooler with a Sprite in it, and it was the greatest Sprite of my life. At the next beacon, i maneuvered into the shade and ate the pan jamón y queso i had taken along.
When i got back into town proper, i got another malta, then followed a route back through some new development, taking me along the freeway and past a bunch of ominous gated communities before getting back into the Barranquilla i was more familiar with.
It was an epic day.
After a day break, i returned to the rental place and got a "29er" mountain bike. That is, a modern-shaped mountain bike with unusually large and fairly fat wheels. It was in abysmal condition. None of the gears on the front worked, and on the back only 3 or 4 clicked in. To add insult to injury, the back tire was slowly leaking, and the front suspension could not be locked out for cycling on the road. Despite ostensibly being a "better" (and more expensive) bike than the one i had rented two days before, the only positive part of the experience for me was not thrashing my palms on the bumpy roads and curbs, due to that suspension. But it was much harder to get up hills, and that was a problem, because i had gotten in my head that i wanted to visit Puerto Colombia, a town about 30km outside of Barranquilla.
I never made it to Puerto Colombia, but i did make it to one of the waypoints i had wanted to reach - the Castillo de Salgar, about 20km out of town. It was a much more interesting cycle ride for actual cycling, as opposed to the couple of kilometers of pushing/lifting i had done to get out to Bocas de Ceniza. Outside of town was a mix of mangrove-like undergrowth with dry, coastal scrub. Most of the land was private, and it looked like a bunch of it had been attempted to get developed as resorts, but a lot of it was just half-finished buildings, perhaps nothing more than real estate scams. Closer to the beaches, i realized there are no public beaches anywhere around Barranquilla. Every single turnoff heading to the waterfront had a bunch of folks at the edge of the beach trying to sell you a spot in a hut.
I really don't understand people who go to the beach just to sit in a hut and sip drinks. Why not do the same thing in a tiki bar or a beer garden or at poolside? To me the whole point of the beach is that there isn't any private ownership, that you can freely walk along it for as far as you want to go, and walk back, and paddle, and play. And if you have to pay, then fuck it.
Needless to say, i stayed on the road. Amusingly the only official tourist site which appears on maps of the area is the Castillo de Salgar and unlike the private beaches it's completely free. The castillo is a relatively modern (19th century) building on top of cliff that i think was originally used to spot smugglers coming in outside the official port. It's been maintained in a brilliant yellow, and it has these wonderful arches, and it feels exactly like you are in a period movie. There was someone (perhaps a bride?) there getting a few glamor photos, and a couple who came and left. I wandered around a bit, then sat in the shade of the building and ate my half loaf of brown bread and a banana, debating whether to press on to Puerto Colombia with a completely flat tire and only a liter of water left.
After pushing the bike back up the hill in sweltering heat, i decided to head back to town. I did stop at a coconut stand along the way, and gratefully slurped the coconut milk, then tucked the coconut meat away for my next pitstop. Which turned out to be a gas station. I had just headed into the shadow of the building to try recover from the intense heat when i noticed they had a bike repair station! Yes! I pumped up the back tire and ate my coconut meat and zoomed back to the city feeling a lot better.
I think it was on that ride when i thought to myself... yeah, perhaps i can do this. Perhaps i can bike tour in Colombia. There had been one section where a motorcyclist pulled over and told me not to go down a particular road i had been planning to go down because it was dangerous. (It was a gravel road with mounds of trash on both sides that looked like a shortcut, and honestly it probably would've been safe for the 500m or so i needed to go, but taking the main road wasn't all that much more distance, so i filed away the knowledge of what dangerous roads might look like in Colombia for future reference.) I also went through a police checkpoint, where fortunately they didn't ask for my ID - despite asking the cars pulled up in front of me. My passport was back at the bike shop as my deposit! The roads weren't in great shape, and i didn't have a mirror or a helmet, but the cars and buses and motorcycles zooming past all seemed a lot more understanding of cyclists than the hellish section of the American south where it seemed like drivers went out of their way to terrorize anyone not in a diesel-belching truck. I felt like... yeah, i think i can do this.
One of the nicest things, at least here in the area close to the city, is the thing i loved about cycling in China too - there are vendors dotted around frequently enough that you can get drinks and fruit all over the place, you don't need to stock up a gallon of water and an Ursack full of food just to survive a day out on the road.
And in general i love the street vendors and all the fruit here. There's the coconuts, the mangos, the tangerines, the melons, the pineapples - all cut up and ready to eat, if you want it. There's the guys with a blender who will make juice of anything for you. People just cheerfully eat a banana on the street like they're actually enjoying it, not shamefully hiding away their fruit consumption like i experienced in Panama. It's a delight.
I love the joints known as "tienda y estaderos" too. They're something in between a convenience store and a bar. At the front is a little heater with some arepas or empanadas or buñuelos (donuts). In the back is a counter where they sell liquor and coffee and soft drinks and cigarettes and candy and chips. In between - sometimes spilling out to the sidewalk, but always open to the air - tables and chairs and a TV showing some football or the news. The TV is always on mute because there is also a massive sound system blasting accordion and trumpet music. In the mornings people pause - standing - to chow down an arepa de huevo (now my non-vegan breakfast snack of choice). In the afternoons, dudes sit round the tables stacking beer bottles like they're dominos.
Anyway, today - grumpily, due to my lack of sleep - i resolved to do a walk around all the bike shops in town and see if i could find an affordable bike. I have already poked my head in one or two pawn shops that i randomly walked past just to get an idea of the prices, but if i'm going to tour i really want a new bike mainly to avoid the problem of a slipping chain or defunct gears like i had to suffer through on my Salgar excursion. It turns out that the entry level bike at a "serious" bike store here is the same brand (and the same price) as the entry level bike anywhere else in the world. For around $500 you can get a so-called "fitness bike" or hybrid that would be perfectly reasonable for touring on, given a decent rack and some panniers. Unfortunately, once you add the cost of a decent rack, panniers and so on, you are getting up to around $1000, which is more or less what i spent to put together my setup in Canada too. I could accept spending that if i thought i'd cycle 2-3 months here in South America too, but right now i'm still not entirely confident that i will feel safe or that i will enjoy it to the same extent that i did in Canada and the US. I wanted a cheaper entrance price.
And then i found the Buffalo Charger, which is a commercialized version of the bikes that World Bicycle Relief distribute in sub-Saharan Africa. Colombia is the only country outside of Africa where they distribute them, and dude those bikes are badass. They are very heavy duty steel bikes that have more in common with cargo bikes than the trendy road and mountain frames sold to people who wear Tour de France jerseys and shoes with little metal clips on the bottom. They're designed to carry a ton of shit across a dirt road from your farm into the village market. They come with a pump and patches and a full toolkit to dismantle them. And they're under $200. The commercialized version has 6 gears, so it hopefully won't be as hellish to pedal up a hill as the original probably is. I figured, what have i got to lose? That's the kind of price that even if i only cycled from here to Santa Marta and back, maybe do some day-long loops here and there, i still got my money's worth. And even better, the profit goes back to buying more bikes for rural communities in developing countries.
So i decided to get one.
Note that i didn't actually get one. Yet. Mainly because - like most places here that cater to the local working class population - they don't take card. So i needed to get to an ATM, and after walking to random shopfronts and warehouses in industrial districts all over town i didn't have the energy. I told them i would be back to purchase on Monday, and over the weekend i will try to find some panniers, or at least a big basket and some bungees - which is the standard "dudes taking shit to the market" bike setup here.
I might regret getting such a heavy bike that needs serious elbow grease just to take the wheels on and off, but... fuck it, let's just see what happens. Assuming i get everything together, i should be able to set off next week. And i probably will try Santa Marta first, since it's relatively close, very touristy and there are other small towns with hotels along the way.
Then i am tempted to try go up the Río Magdalena.
I bought a book by a Wade Davis called "Magdalena: River of Dreams" about his travels along the river and reflections on the people who lived there. I haven't cracked it yet, but it's downloaded to the Kindle app on my phone. Just reading the blurb inspired me. I never did get to follow the Milk River and the Missouri due to the COVID border closure last year, but perhaps this is a river i can bike along, for a while anyway.