Blog writing is hard. Probably all writing is hard especially when one is rubbish at it and is trying to make things non-boring and interesting…..   Anyway.

As ever, leaving cities sucks! After 5 days in Medellin we were glad to be leaving.  The ride out during morning rush hour was pretty awful though;  Trucks and busses squeezing past with inches to spare, motorbikes and scooters zooming past on all sides and every vehicle belching out clouds of toxic fumes and smoke.

Medellin sits in a valley and is surrounded by steep hills on three sides with five main exits from the city and all but one of them necessitate a climb of at least 15km – unfortunately we didn’t choose the “all but one” however, once we’d escaped the worst of the traffic, the climb out actually wasn’t that steep and was alleviated by a random motor cyclist stopping us and demanding that he buy us coffee and let him take photos of us! We couldn’t really refuse – as it turned out, Freddy is planning his own long distance South American trip and wanted to simply talk to us to find out how our Colombian cycling experience had been so far.

Our first days cycling on the Pan-American highway was as horrible as expected although the 60kmh, 10 mile zoomy descent after the big climb was fun but then it was just heat and huge trucks for a whole day until we reached the hot, steamy mosquito infested town of La Pintada and its expensive campsite. No more Pan-American if we can possibly help it.

The following morning we left the Pan-American and headed into the hills of coffee country. Expecting a sealed road all the way to Aguadas our destination some 45km horizontally and 1700m vertically away, we were crushed, disappointed and mightily pissed off when the tarmac disappeared and we unexpectedly found ourselves crawling up an 800m climb on a hot rough dirt road again. Thankfully, after a couple hours, the tarmac reappeared and our biggest challenge became completing the remaining 1100 metres of climbing surrounded by coffee and banana plantations set on almost vertical slopes; some of them so steep it seemed like a mountain goat would have struggled let alone a plantation worker.

Aguadas, a small mountain town sitting in the Caldas Coffee Culture Landscape – a designated World Heritage Site – is mainly interesting for its Aguadeno hats ( http://www.palmato.com.co is a fair trade business supporting local hat weavers, traditional skills etc) handmade from fibres of the iraca or shawl palm, grown and processed in the region.

Then more hills and coffee country and more 1000m+ climbs ( imagine climbing Mt Snowdon every day and you’ll get the idea ) although now almost completely on sealed roads which makes life much, much easier; the next day to Salamina, another attractive, historical town and the next day to the odd but attractive town of Neira with its 5 pool halls in the space of two blocks! They must be national if not world champions.

The next couple of days took us back onto the dreaded Pan-Am’ highway – the first day was like our previous experience:  absolutely diabolical with huge trucks and busses roaring past, the sweltering heat adding to the misery and our destination of Santa Rosa de Cabal wasn’t much better with crowded, polluted streets, gangs of Punks as in Mohican-haired, safety-pin attired Punks and lots of rough looking people wandering about. Conversely though, another local asked for photos of him with us and the bikes and then gave us a huge melon!

The following day on the Pan-Am’, a Sunday, was a pleasant surprise with very little traffic and dozens of local lycra-clad cyclists giving us shouts and waves of encouragement and people stopping in their cars wanting to have photos of themselves with us and our bikes.

Salento our destination for the day ( 1400m of up and 1300m of down ) is uber touristy and not our thing at all however, the eco-farm of La Serrana, where we’ve been camping for the last 5 days has views to die for and its altitude of 2000m is just perfect with warm days, cool nights and lovely walks in the hills dotted with wax palms and little humming bird sanctuaries hidden in the forest – it’ll be a real shame to leave here tomorrow but we must press on.