Barranquilla → Ciénaga → Santa Marta (→ Taganga)
Well, i took the plunge! I bought that bike. It is around 20kg, which is about 5kg heavier than the bike i took across Turtle Island, and it only has 6 gears (versus 21), so it is a lot tougher to move around, but fuck it. When i was cycling in the US i met dudes hauling trailers across the country, so i figure at the end of the day the main difference with a heavier bike and less gears is just that you'll get there slower... but you'll still get there.
Of course, i say that now, before i have tackled the most murderous hills of Colombia. Which also happen to be some of the most murderous hills in the entire world. But they're up in the Andes, miles and miles away from this beautiful Caribbean coast.
I checked out of the hotel and headed through the back streets of Barranquilla till i popped out on the bridge across the Rio Magdalena. The bridge is so new that there isn't even a Google Street View yet. It replaces a parallel - less awesome - bridge, which appears to be the only bridge across the river for hundreds of miles. It really feels significant when you cross a river, knowing that the only way to get back across might be in a boat.
Once i got out of the city, i entered the national park Isla de Salamanca. It is a really bizarre landscape of tropical coastal wetlands mixed with desert. At times it looks like you're in the Everglades with all the brownish, brackish water and swampy mangroves, then the next minute there's fucking cactuses.
I knew from the get-go that this was going to be a challenging leg. It was about 50km without any services - no towns, no gas stations, no kiosks, no street vendors. If i was on the bike i had before i'd shrug my shoulders at 50km of flat, but given the heavier bike and the much hotter weather than anything i experienced in Canada or the US, it was a slog. There were barely any trees, although i did find one spot where i could hide in the shade, quaff some water and eat a small loaf of bread.
At some other points the only place to rest was in the shade of a cactus.
Ahead of getting to Ciénaga, i passed some very poor settlements. One of them is famous for being the place where a fuel tanker flipped over, then the locals all rushed to collect the fuel that was leaking from the truck, then the truck exploded, killing 11 people and injuring dozens more. Imagine how desperate you have to be to try to collect gas from a capsized truck. That was less than two years ago.
This year the locals were trying a different technique to earn some money. Aside from the usual touts selling water and energy drinks and candy to the cars forced to slow down to pass through the toll gates, there were also people in crazy masks blocking the road asking for money. I saw those guys in Panama too, but only way out on the country road to Portobelo - they're sort of like squeegee kids, except they wear elaborate costumes and masks and don't try clean your windscreen, they just block the road trying to get money. In Tasajeras, they had set up truck tires and ropes across the road, then lifted up the rope to physically block cars from passing so they could try extract a donation/toll. The good thing about being on a bike, is that they didn't give a shit about me. Bikes, motorcycles, buses and trucks get to pass. This is a tax aimed at the people rich enough to own private cars, and i am not really going to fault some of the poorest people in the country for targeting those folks.
Ciénaga is apparently the world capital of magical realism. Or that's the tourist hook, anyway. I think the tenuous link is because Gabriel García Márquez talked about the horrors of the banana industry in 100 Days of Solitude. Notably, the Banana Massacre of 1928 when striking workers near Ciénaga were murdered by the Colombian army, actually at the behest of United Fruit Company and (by extension) the US government. If anyone ever wonders why Latin Americans hate the US so much, all you have to do is travel around here, and you will find massacre after invasion after coup, all instigated by the US government. It's pretty disgusting.
I struggled to find a hotel there where i could easily wheel my bike inside. I'm realizing this is going to be a problem in Colombia. Eventually i found a spot in a hotel right on the edge of town, then headed into the center to check out the town square and some street vendors, before returning back to the hotel. Immediately the power went out. For fuck's sake. The annoying thing is that the power had gone out in Barranquilla that morning too, so none of my shit was charged. But, hey, 4G still worked.
The next morning i had a chat with the workers at the hotel who were thoroughly bemused by my idea to bike to Riohacha - a town in La Guajira, the desert peninsula that butts up agains Venezuela.
You see, as i have written before here, i had no intention of ever visiting South America. The food doesn't interest me, and the scenery doesn't interest me. Except for one part. The very northern part around the ABC islands (Aruba, Bonaire, Curaçao) and the Venezuelan coast just nearby. Because it's a desert. What i didn't realize until recently is that that desert extends to the Colombian coast as well, so obviously that became my number one place to visit.
The ride from Ciénaga to Santa Marta was much shorter than from Barranquilla, but it was a fair bit hillier. Santa Marta is basically hanging off the edge of a weirdly spikey mountain range, which presumably is what causes the rain shadow that has resulted in the coastal desert. The only vegetation is cactuses and dried out scrub and trees with thorns all over them. There is no shade. It was sweltering, and trying to pedal my heavy bike up even just the slightest of hills was very difficult.
Of course, i wanted to get a cool view, so instead of following the less-intensively graded highway all the way around, i took a turn-off to the weird suburb of Rodadero, which is almost entirely beach resorts. The road heading in there is very odd - it's a dual carriageway, with no way to get from one side of the road to the other, except roundabouts miles away to either side, and then these turn-offs into a gated community or resort and no coastal road whatsoever. So, if you're in one of the resorts, you're essentially imprisoned on a private beach. It's horrific.
Despite that, there is an escape route over the mountain to Santa Marta, and it's an awesome route. I didn't know until i got there, but they have just opened up a new pedestrian boardwalk parallel to the road. No pedestrians were stupid enough to climb over the mountain in the middle of the day, so i had the boardwalk all to myself. It was so steep i had to break at pretty much every workout spot (it's one of those boardwalks with exercise equipment every 100m or so), but i eventually made it over the mountain and got to glide down into Santa Marta and it was glorious.
Santa Marta itself didn't really capture me the way Barranquilla did when i first arrived. It does have street markets and lots of hustle and bustle, but it doesn't feel as laid-back, in my opinion. It has a beach town vibe, but ironically that makes it less relaxed than the industrial smokestack of Barranquilla - the touts are more aggressive, and for the first time ever in Latin America i had people calling out "hey, gringo!" Also the streets are not as open-plan. I guess it's because it has more colonial-style buildings, multiple stories and edifices mashed together - space is a premium, and all those tienda y estaderos that i loved to just saunter into and have a beer... yeah they don't exist. Well, they do exist, but they're fewer and farther between. Most places are like a door that you need to go inside and sometimes even up the stairs to find your hotel, bar or restaurant... which is the worst possible thing to have as a touring cyclist. If you can't sit down outside, next to your bike, it basically gives the place a negative five star penalty.
In the end i did check into a hotel with a front porch, and i had a walk around town, bought some bananas that turned out to be bad, had a beer and watched the end of the very exciting Real Madrid / Paris Saint-Germain game that basically the entire city had ground to a halt for. Then i went back to my hotel and slept.
I was in two minds about staying in Santa Marta, because it didn't feel as comfortable to me as Barranquilla, but on the other hand i have received yet another warning from the Canadian embassy about possible violence. This is literally a weekly occurrence since i arrived in Colombia. Don't go here. Don't go there. Paramilitary action. Political action. Be careful. The vast majority of the country is fine, but you do need to be on your toes, since i guess shit can flare up. The latest warning is because there is an election on Sunday and that means the cops will be setting up roadblocks and it's strongly advised not to travel. Now, the last place i want to be when there is potential for drama is in some podunk village with no mobile signal or potable water, so it might be wiser to kick it in Santa Marta for a week before moving on.
This morning i wasn't sure if i would stay. Now i am. I took my bike over the next mountain to a small town called Taganga and did some hiking around there. Taganga is known as a former hippie/backpacker hangout, now tourist mecca, and i will say for sure that it's the first place since leaving Cartagena where i heard people speaking English on the streets. There are a lot of tourists there, but there are also plenty of Colombian tourists, so it didn't feel quite as abysmal as Bocas del Toro. It does have the typical beach town vibe, though. Lots of touts, lots of fish restaurants, lots of guys selling boat rides, everything is kinda shabby and run down, people are dressed in shorts and flip-flops and they're topless and sunburnt.
Yo. I'm sunburnt too.
There is a hike that goes for about half an hour up and down multiple very steep hills to increasingly remote beaches. I went to the last south-facing beach and sat down on a rock. There was a dude under a tarp smoking pot next to me. There was a couple further down the beach under a tarp hanging out. A few kids jumping around in the sea. And an old guy missing a hand who i think lived in a shack there came out to talk to me. Everyone spoke Spanish and was a good deal browner than me. We chattered about my travels, and my plan to get to Riohacha. The guy said i'd need to bring a bunch of water, maybe i should get one of those water backpack thingys. He said fruit is good too. He reckoned it'd be about two weeks to get there and back. In distance it's actually not that far, but his theory was to take a few days to get there, then a few days rest, then a few days back. I wouldn't be surprised if someone he knew had done it at some point. And not as a cycle tourist.
You see, the only other cyclists on the roads outside of the city here are what appear to be peasants or fishermen. They have busted up old city bikes with a large crate strapped to the back, piled high with whatever they are trying to transport to their farm or their fishing spot or perhaps their shack out in the middle of nowhere. They ride without helmets but with long sleeved shirts and balaclavas made out of T-shirts. They are much smarter than me, because that is surely a better sun shield than my 50 SPF baby sunscreen. They also look like ninjas.
Anyway, i'm back in Santa Marta after stopping off at an estadero for a beer and a bakery for some fresh-out-of-the-oven bread to make my dinner. Figured i should get an entry in before zonking out. It is straight-up exhausting to cycle and hike in this weather, and i love it. Here's hoping i can find a few other things worth doing as day trips out of Santa Marta that aren't completely tourist-ridden. I know i could take a bus up to into the big-ass mountains, even if i don't have time to do the multi-day Ciudad Perdida (Lost City) trail. We'll see. This is a different pace from my bike tour across Turtle Island - i'm doing shorter legs and taking more breaks - so i need to kinda adjust my brain to that.
Of course, i say that now, before i have tackled the most murderous hills of Colombia. Which also happen to be some of the most murderous hills in the entire world. But they're up in the Andes, miles and miles away from this beautiful Caribbean coast.
I checked out of the hotel and headed through the back streets of Barranquilla till i popped out on the bridge across the Rio Magdalena. The bridge is so new that there isn't even a Google Street View yet. It replaces a parallel - less awesome - bridge, which appears to be the only bridge across the river for hundreds of miles. It really feels significant when you cross a river, knowing that the only way to get back across might be in a boat.
Once i got out of the city, i entered the national park Isla de Salamanca. It is a really bizarre landscape of tropical coastal wetlands mixed with desert. At times it looks like you're in the Everglades with all the brownish, brackish water and swampy mangroves, then the next minute there's fucking cactuses.
I knew from the get-go that this was going to be a challenging leg. It was about 50km without any services - no towns, no gas stations, no kiosks, no street vendors. If i was on the bike i had before i'd shrug my shoulders at 50km of flat, but given the heavier bike and the much hotter weather than anything i experienced in Canada or the US, it was a slog. There were barely any trees, although i did find one spot where i could hide in the shade, quaff some water and eat a small loaf of bread.
At some other points the only place to rest was in the shade of a cactus.
Ahead of getting to Ciénaga, i passed some very poor settlements. One of them is famous for being the place where a fuel tanker flipped over, then the locals all rushed to collect the fuel that was leaking from the truck, then the truck exploded, killing 11 people and injuring dozens more. Imagine how desperate you have to be to try to collect gas from a capsized truck. That was less than two years ago.
This year the locals were trying a different technique to earn some money. Aside from the usual touts selling water and energy drinks and candy to the cars forced to slow down to pass through the toll gates, there were also people in crazy masks blocking the road asking for money. I saw those guys in Panama too, but only way out on the country road to Portobelo - they're sort of like squeegee kids, except they wear elaborate costumes and masks and don't try clean your windscreen, they just block the road trying to get money. In Tasajeras, they had set up truck tires and ropes across the road, then lifted up the rope to physically block cars from passing so they could try extract a donation/toll. The good thing about being on a bike, is that they didn't give a shit about me. Bikes, motorcycles, buses and trucks get to pass. This is a tax aimed at the people rich enough to own private cars, and i am not really going to fault some of the poorest people in the country for targeting those folks.
Ciénaga is apparently the world capital of magical realism. Or that's the tourist hook, anyway. I think the tenuous link is because Gabriel García Márquez talked about the horrors of the banana industry in 100 Days of Solitude. Notably, the Banana Massacre of 1928 when striking workers near Ciénaga were murdered by the Colombian army, actually at the behest of United Fruit Company and (by extension) the US government. If anyone ever wonders why Latin Americans hate the US so much, all you have to do is travel around here, and you will find massacre after invasion after coup, all instigated by the US government. It's pretty disgusting.
I struggled to find a hotel there where i could easily wheel my bike inside. I'm realizing this is going to be a problem in Colombia. Eventually i found a spot in a hotel right on the edge of town, then headed into the center to check out the town square and some street vendors, before returning back to the hotel. Immediately the power went out. For fuck's sake. The annoying thing is that the power had gone out in Barranquilla that morning too, so none of my shit was charged. But, hey, 4G still worked.
The next morning i had a chat with the workers at the hotel who were thoroughly bemused by my idea to bike to Riohacha - a town in La Guajira, the desert peninsula that butts up agains Venezuela.
You see, as i have written before here, i had no intention of ever visiting South America. The food doesn't interest me, and the scenery doesn't interest me. Except for one part. The very northern part around the ABC islands (Aruba, Bonaire, Curaçao) and the Venezuelan coast just nearby. Because it's a desert. What i didn't realize until recently is that that desert extends to the Colombian coast as well, so obviously that became my number one place to visit.
The ride from Ciénaga to Santa Marta was much shorter than from Barranquilla, but it was a fair bit hillier. Santa Marta is basically hanging off the edge of a weirdly spikey mountain range, which presumably is what causes the rain shadow that has resulted in the coastal desert. The only vegetation is cactuses and dried out scrub and trees with thorns all over them. There is no shade. It was sweltering, and trying to pedal my heavy bike up even just the slightest of hills was very difficult.
Of course, i wanted to get a cool view, so instead of following the less-intensively graded highway all the way around, i took a turn-off to the weird suburb of Rodadero, which is almost entirely beach resorts. The road heading in there is very odd - it's a dual carriageway, with no way to get from one side of the road to the other, except roundabouts miles away to either side, and then these turn-offs into a gated community or resort and no coastal road whatsoever. So, if you're in one of the resorts, you're essentially imprisoned on a private beach. It's horrific.
Despite that, there is an escape route over the mountain to Santa Marta, and it's an awesome route. I didn't know until i got there, but they have just opened up a new pedestrian boardwalk parallel to the road. No pedestrians were stupid enough to climb over the mountain in the middle of the day, so i had the boardwalk all to myself. It was so steep i had to break at pretty much every workout spot (it's one of those boardwalks with exercise equipment every 100m or so), but i eventually made it over the mountain and got to glide down into Santa Marta and it was glorious.
Santa Marta itself didn't really capture me the way Barranquilla did when i first arrived. It does have street markets and lots of hustle and bustle, but it doesn't feel as laid-back, in my opinion. It has a beach town vibe, but ironically that makes it less relaxed than the industrial smokestack of Barranquilla - the touts are more aggressive, and for the first time ever in Latin America i had people calling out "hey, gringo!" Also the streets are not as open-plan. I guess it's because it has more colonial-style buildings, multiple stories and edifices mashed together - space is a premium, and all those tienda y estaderos that i loved to just saunter into and have a beer... yeah they don't exist. Well, they do exist, but they're fewer and farther between. Most places are like a door that you need to go inside and sometimes even up the stairs to find your hotel, bar or restaurant... which is the worst possible thing to have as a touring cyclist. If you can't sit down outside, next to your bike, it basically gives the place a negative five star penalty.
In the end i did check into a hotel with a front porch, and i had a walk around town, bought some bananas that turned out to be bad, had a beer and watched the end of the very exciting Real Madrid / Paris Saint-Germain game that basically the entire city had ground to a halt for. Then i went back to my hotel and slept.
I was in two minds about staying in Santa Marta, because it didn't feel as comfortable to me as Barranquilla, but on the other hand i have received yet another warning from the Canadian embassy about possible violence. This is literally a weekly occurrence since i arrived in Colombia. Don't go here. Don't go there. Paramilitary action. Political action. Be careful. The vast majority of the country is fine, but you do need to be on your toes, since i guess shit can flare up. The latest warning is because there is an election on Sunday and that means the cops will be setting up roadblocks and it's strongly advised not to travel. Now, the last place i want to be when there is potential for drama is in some podunk village with no mobile signal or potable water, so it might be wiser to kick it in Santa Marta for a week before moving on.
This morning i wasn't sure if i would stay. Now i am. I took my bike over the next mountain to a small town called Taganga and did some hiking around there. Taganga is known as a former hippie/backpacker hangout, now tourist mecca, and i will say for sure that it's the first place since leaving Cartagena where i heard people speaking English on the streets. There are a lot of tourists there, but there are also plenty of Colombian tourists, so it didn't feel quite as abysmal as Bocas del Toro. It does have the typical beach town vibe, though. Lots of touts, lots of fish restaurants, lots of guys selling boat rides, everything is kinda shabby and run down, people are dressed in shorts and flip-flops and they're topless and sunburnt.
Yo. I'm sunburnt too.
There is a hike that goes for about half an hour up and down multiple very steep hills to increasingly remote beaches. I went to the last south-facing beach and sat down on a rock. There was a dude under a tarp smoking pot next to me. There was a couple further down the beach under a tarp hanging out. A few kids jumping around in the sea. And an old guy missing a hand who i think lived in a shack there came out to talk to me. Everyone spoke Spanish and was a good deal browner than me. We chattered about my travels, and my plan to get to Riohacha. The guy said i'd need to bring a bunch of water, maybe i should get one of those water backpack thingys. He said fruit is good too. He reckoned it'd be about two weeks to get there and back. In distance it's actually not that far, but his theory was to take a few days to get there, then a few days rest, then a few days back. I wouldn't be surprised if someone he knew had done it at some point. And not as a cycle tourist.
You see, the only other cyclists on the roads outside of the city here are what appear to be peasants or fishermen. They have busted up old city bikes with a large crate strapped to the back, piled high with whatever they are trying to transport to their farm or their fishing spot or perhaps their shack out in the middle of nowhere. They ride without helmets but with long sleeved shirts and balaclavas made out of T-shirts. They are much smarter than me, because that is surely a better sun shield than my 50 SPF baby sunscreen. They also look like ninjas.
Anyway, i'm back in Santa Marta after stopping off at an estadero for a beer and a bakery for some fresh-out-of-the-oven bread to make my dinner. Figured i should get an entry in before zonking out. It is straight-up exhausting to cycle and hike in this weather, and i love it. Here's hoping i can find a few other things worth doing as day trips out of Santa Marta that aren't completely tourist-ridden. I know i could take a bus up to into the big-ass mountains, even if i don't have time to do the multi-day Ciudad Perdida (Lost City) trail. We'll see. This is a different pace from my bike tour across Turtle Island - i'm doing shorter legs and taking more breaks - so i need to kinda adjust my brain to that.