| Camino a Guacamayal | ||||||||||||||||||||||
Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, "Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not." This Saturday bike trip was an extension of earlier trips, but the route was new, with nice little surprises. As always I started late, having given up the precious early morning to making maps, notes, labeling photographs and other unimportant administrivia. At 10:00 AM I departed with a couple of alternatives routes in mind.
Until recently I only knew of two bridges, the rail bridge which is not accessible to bikes and the highway 45 bridge which I have used, but it’s a busy highway and well east of my destination. Recently I learned about another bridge, one that was built incorrectly (far too high) and subsequently abandoned. I thought it had collapsed, but recently stumbled on it and find that the bridge is solid, but without ramps from the land. So, I pedaled out of Aracataca to Cauca on a series of rocky dirt roads. It hasn’t rained in four days and the dust is back in force. I dread passing the big, dust kicking trucks that are hauling loads of palm-oil fruit bunches.
The bridge is located on the border between rural areas called Mercedes and Garrapata (local name for tics). The Aracataca side has the eroding remains of an earthen ramp leading up about 12 feet to the bridge deck. The ramp lands about 3 feet short of the deck, so you have to clamber up with the bike. The view is nice, particularly as it is rare to gain any altitude in this flat landscape. The other end of the bridge has not ramp at all. The 12 or 15 foot drop to the ground is vertical. A ladder made of bamboo, rope and old inner tubes leans against the bridge. I hooked the bike on my shoulder and climbed down the ladder, hoping upon hope that the rungs hold. There are clouds of mosquitoes to greet you at the bottom. The Tucurinca River marks the boundary between Aracataca and Zona Bananera (a municipality named Banana Zone).
At the foot of the bridge there is a small trail that leads to a dirt road through more palm to a dusty trunk line. I was hoping to slip through without meeting the land owners. A lot of the roads are private, even when they lead to public infrastructure, like the bridge. As I pedaled-out a crew of workers arrived on a tractor. I waived and kept going while they looked on probably wondering what I was doing there. Fortunately the locking gate (who knew?) at the other end of the plantation was open. From here it’s a long slog on dusty, rocky roads, but it was not monotonous. Immediately on the left was an abandoned palm oil extractor. I’m fascinated by the evolving technology of palm oil extraction. You can see some great videos on YouTube of very simple systems that are still used in some parts of Africa. Oil is extracted through a process of cooking, pressing and filtering. There is a lot of oil in the fruit as well as the hard nut in the center of the fruit. The two parts have to be separated and extracted through different processes. The remaining solids are divided into fuel stock which is burned to cook the fruit and oil cake that is primarily used as animal feed.
A short distance beyond the abandoned extractor is the newer, still active “Roble” extractor. I need to ask for a tour sometime. Shortly after the oil extractor is a community called Ciudad Perdida (Lost City). There is a now famous Ciudad Perdida in the Seirra Nevada that is a popular hiking destination. This Ciudad Perdida has probably never seen a tourist. The School appears to have been created to serve “afrodecendentes” or descendents of afro-Colombians. I wonder about the utility of this classification since race is very difficult to discern. Most of the people I meet are a mix of indigenous, Spanish and African. The school has a telephone on the outside wall. I’m noticing that the most rural schools often have these phones. I don’t know if they work, but it seems unlikely. Cell phones are ubiquitous.
The road bounces north and east passing through other small hamlets. Zona Bananera has no center, but is a lot of small villages and a few larger towns. One of the smaller towns is Monteria. Like most, it has a school and a soccer field. The odd part was a series of nearly identical block houses all in a row, a sort of Colombian version of rural public housing.
A little before I reached my destination I passed a large field in La Paulina was filled with mud and stick houses. 2014 aerial photographs show no such development. They all look temporary, almost like a squatter settlement, but they are laid out in a neat grid with roads, corner posts and other defining features. I should have asked about this, but the area has the hallmarks of a well planned land invasion. If people gain title to their lots, they can upgrade the stick and mud houses to block, brick or other better materials. Some people sell the lots if they gain title.
The outskirts of Guacamayal suffer the same problem of other towns. Ditches are filled with rotting, smelly garbage. Some sections of the garbage have been burned repeatedly to reduce the volume. Some garbage collectors are paid to take the trash away from homes and dump it beside the roads. It’s a public health problem and severely diminishes quality of life. Just beyond the garbage zone is the town cemetery. Guacamayal is a bustling small town which on this Saturday afternoon. It is packed with buses heading to Cienaga and Santa Marta, an large number of pool parlors, shops and restaurants. The main square is headed by a large white Catholic Church. In the center of the park is a monument dedicated to a young man that was assassinated. It is one of the larger hamlets within Zona Bananera, despite the fact that it is not located on the highway. The train does pass close by, but only hauls coal to the coast, never stopping here.
I stopped a little while, had a Pony Malta and piece of bread and pondered how to return. There are several options for pedaling to Highway 45 or returning the way I came. I chose a route, then mistakenly took a different one that worked out very well. I’d be lost without the GPS feature on my cell phone, but even with that I managed to get off track. The route I took headed more or less south along a very relaxing canal path with virtually no traffic. The canal had water in it and the trees provided intermittent shade.
It’s still very hot, but storm clouds are building in the sierra and frequently sweep down over this flatland. The canal leads close to a very small hamlet called Guamachito which is located on Highway 45.
I decided to use the highway shoulder from here. It’s smooth, which is a great relief after several hours of bumpy dirt roads. The tradeoff is the intensity of being passed by really large trucks and busses with little margin for error. I made one more planned pit stop in Tucurinca which is part of Zona Bananera and featured in an earlier blog. I was nearing meltdown at this point, but drank a lot of water while watching the storm sweep my way. The storm finally caught me in Aracataca. I sheltered from the rain under a flapping tin roof, leaving when the rain had nearly stopped.
The loop was almost exactly 50 km and enough to tire me out. The late onset of rain finally cooled things off a little, but never enough. |
