On Saturday I set out on a small bicycle adventure following a gravel road from Aractaca straight to the mountains. I had no idea how far I would get given the heat, road conditions and my families warnings not to leave the city. If you want to skip ahead, there is a Google Earth narrated tour of the bike ride linked to the end of this page. You need Google earth on your computer to download and view the tour.

The first part of the ride is quite familiar, riding out of Aracataca on the grid of local cement roads. My goal is to find quiet roads with nice people and few motorized users. This generally takes me though neighborhoods, over the Drummond Railroad Tracks, past the big soccer field before joining the throngs of motorcycles and buses on the bigger roads. Motorcycles are like family cars. Here's a picture of four girls riding on one motorcycle.

At this time the town ends just before reaching the "Vuelta de Torito" or Bull Ring, an interstection with a two lane north-south highway. Construction patterns suggest that the town is running up against the highway and may spill over it soon, creating a complicated and dangerous intersection of local users and very large trucks and double-deck buses that fly past this intersection without slowing. Much of the growth up to this intersection has occured through property invasions, some of that being well orchestrated.

The gravel road that continues east on the other side of the highway seems not to have a widely recocognized name. I'm calling it the Road to Rio Tucurinca as it follows a valley formed by this small river. Initially the road is very hot, flat and rocky. Trucks and a few cars venture in, but most transportation is by motorcycle and the occasional bicycle. In the distance you can see the mountains.

I peddled in without much notice from motorcycle operators that often hang out at the intersection waiting for work moving people or things. The road condition is mostly very bumpy where it isn't sandy. There are barbed wire fences on both sides and occassionally some very welcome shade from over hanging trees. There are utility lines for the first part of the journey.

About 5 miles in I came to a monument to fallen members of the army. It wouldn't be here I think except that this road is the primary access road for a significant military base.

About the time I was ready to drop from the heat I came to a military check-point. Young men in uniforms sit outide the guardhouse and open a gate for people passing through. Not to long in the past there were gorilla and paramilitary forces in the foothills with may account for the ongoing security on this road. Immediately after crossing through the gaurd post my road interected with anothe gravel road heading north to the military base. I didn't take pictures here to avoid causing problems.

The road begins to develop some up and down pitches. On the side the grazing land becomes more and more connected with the hills.

Up to this point I had crossed a number of streams, but all were dry. I was hoping to find Rio Tucurinco with water so that I could cool off. The hills became more pronounced and biking more difficult. Fortunately about the time I was running out of steam I reached the crossing, where at least a little water was still moving.

“At that time Macondo was a village of twenty adobe houses,
built on the bank of a river of clear water that ran along a bed
of polished stones, which were white and enormous, like
prehistoric eggs. The world was so recent that many things
lacked names, and in order to indicate them it was necessary
to point...”

― Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

The mountains above receive a lot more precipitation than the valley. The boulders in the stream suggest that the water can come down in a torrent. I started past the stream to see what was up above, but the slope was too steep to peddle. I could hear the loud singing and clapping of an evangelical church that was meeting at the top of the slope in a thatched building. I didn't want to interrupt that and had been warned about going too far on my own. So I backed down to the stream.

Even the small gain in altitude makes a difference in temperature and humidity. I sat by the stream for a read, splashed off and for the first time in a while fealt pretty comfortable.

The ride back to town was hot, bumpy and flat, but slightly easier with more downhill than up. It was a good adventure, but I want to go further, meet people that live in the hills and learn about thier attitudes toward tourists. Some hilly areas north oth this mountain have created destinations for visitors, with hostals, restaurants and hiking trails. The best known is the popular town of Minca.

This western flankof the mountains regional is appears to be suitable for tourism, but there are many tensions that I need to understand. The history of violence and displacement has left powerful memories and suspicions between people living in the hills and people living on the plains. Land ownership is often controversial as many people were displaced and their land seized. Even a few years ago the idea of mountain bike tourism, hill-side hostals and coffee growing retreats in this area would not have worked. The times are improving and this may be part of a broader tourism opportunity for the region.