{"id":100,"date":"2016-12-23T00:34:17","date_gmt":"2016-12-23T00:34:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.thealexandertechnique.co.uk\/?p=100"},"modified":"2017-04-06T06:03:28","modified_gmt":"2017-04-06T05:03:28","slug":"leaving-bogota-and-travelling-slower-than-a-tortoise-in-peanut-butter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.thealexandertechnique.co.uk\/?p=100","title":{"rendered":"Leaving Bogota and travelling slower than a tortoise in peanut butter."},"content":{"rendered":"

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4 days for two experienced cycle-tourists to cycle 160km! Easy…. Are we fit? NO! Are we altitude adjusted? NO! Was it easy? hahahahahahah……<\/p>\n

The first 65km literally took us all day, with steep climbs, wrong turns and no oxygen. Cycling out of cities on nasty busy roads always sucks however, this was especially polluted, especially busy and especially sucky. Our campsite for the night though was anything but. Our WarmShowers ( CouchSurfing for cycle tourists ) host Daniel runs his own tiny campsite and gave us a beautiful free spot for the night; it was just a shame that we were rubbish guests and too exhausted to do anything but collapse in the tent and pass out.<\/p>\n

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Free WarmShowers camping spot.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Our plan was to take the back roads to Villa de Lleyva. That means no tarmac and STEEP gradients……. at altitude, with regular 2600 metres to 3000 metre climbs. The good part is that we get to see amazing views and Colombian\u00a0rural life and hardly encounter any vehicles except for one notable exception.<\/p>\n

Our second night camping was another beautiful site; a campground by a rock climbers hang out. The new tent is proving to be excellent.<\/p>\n

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The notable exception to being on quiet roads was finding ourselves climbing up a steep gravel road between two towns between which coal trucks, multiple, multiple coal trucks were ferrying their load. Nightmare. Wheezing like steam trains anyway on account of the altitude and sucking in lung falls of coal dust. We were shattered at the next village.<\/p>\n

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Pushing…. And Steve never pushes.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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Trucks, trucks and more trucks<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Coal blackened and exhausted.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The next challenge was Steve waking up in the night with stomach related issues….. \u00a0The next morning the stomach and \u00a0Steve were worse. Faced with the choice of cycling sick on rough roads with big climbs or staying in a one horse town whose horse ran away, we decided to buy movement stopping drugs and cycle.<\/p>\n

27 km later after 400+m of climbing and 800m of decent on a really diabolical road, we reached a village with taxis and more specifically, a taxi driver that agreed to put our bikes on his roof and drive us the last 20km to Villa de Leyva where steve crawled into the tent and tried not to die.<\/p>\n

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We’re now camped in the grounds of a lovely hostel where we plan to stay for the next few days with plans to head further north on Boxing Day.<\/p>\n

And here’s a few more photos:<\/p>\n

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One of many great views.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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Statue of a breast-feeding woman… Probably be banned in England.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Where 4 legs is better than 4 wheels?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Headless saint…<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Plastic bottle xmas tree.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  4 days for two experienced cycle-tourists to cycle 160km! Easy…. Are we fit? NO! Are we altitude adjusted? NO! Was it easy? hahahahahahah…… The first 65km literally took us all day, with steep climbs, wrong turns and no oxygen. Cycling out of cities on nasty busy roads always sucks however, this was especially polluted, especially busy and especially sucky. Our campsite for the night though was anything but. Our WarmShowers ( CouchSurfing for cycle tourists ) host Daniel runs…<\/p>\n

Read More Read More<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":109,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[5,7,8,6],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.thealexandertechnique.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.thealexandertechnique.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.thealexandertechnique.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.thealexandertechnique.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.thealexandertechnique.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=100"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blog.thealexandertechnique.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":123,"href":"https:\/\/blog.thealexandertechnique.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100\/revisions\/123"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.thealexandertechnique.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.thealexandertechnique.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.thealexandertechnique.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.thealexandertechnique.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}