Pidigua

When I arrived home after the motorcycle tour, John, one of the other bike guides, immediately informed me I had made it back with perfect timing because we were scheduled to ride Pidigua the next day.

Pidigua has legend-status among the Colombian Bike Junkies guides. The trail has a reputation for being an incredibly unique downhill track featuring technical sections that make it impossible for most tourists to ride. The trailhead is at least two hours away and the trail has to be shuttled so it costs a decent amount in gas as well. These factors mean that the guides rarely get to ride there - I had less than a week left on my visa before an opportunity to ride the trail presented itself. Anticipation was high.

The next morning the bikes were loaded onto the Land Rover and seven people piled in. The drive to the trailhead snaked along a canyon wall following a small river upstream. Sitting in the back sideways-facing seats of a thrashed 4x4 was making me feel sick, a sensation that was made worse when we pulled onto a rough dirt road. We continued climbing, passing the town of Pidigua, crossing a bridge of lashed together logs, spinning all four wheels on a particularly steep section of road, and finally arriving at the school house which would serve as our staging area.

This is what a school looks like in rural Colombia.

We unloaded the bikes, checked for any last-minute mechanical issues, and suited up. Getting to the top of the trail involved a 15-minute hike-a-bike climb through jungle and over strangely compact dirt. For some inexplicable reason I grabbed a handful of front brake on one of the short pedal-able sections and crashed immediately. It wasn't a great start.

The trail has been created by hundreds of years of goat herders walking the path - no construction, no hired trail builders, no thought to flow or lines at all. I could tell you more, but instead I'm just going to throw in some pictures. Enjoy.

John prepares to drop in.

I tried looking at the view once and crashed. After that I stopped looking at the view. Photo credit: John Butler

Loose corners require extreme concentration. Photo credit: John Butler

John snakes through the trail.

The trail was steep - check out the brake lever position.

Mike - co-owner of Bike Junkies - has an incredibly encyclopedic knowledge of the roads and trails in the area and had planned for us to ride back towards San Gil by way of an awesome swimming hole. Unfortunately the road was under construction so Mike had to drive the Rover on a 2-hour detour but we were able to pedal over the mountains and descend into the pools at Curiti.

Jamie throws his signature backflip into Curiti.

Long way home (Motorcycle Diaries, Pt V)

Heading towards El Carmen.

Like a Walmart shopper, I got an early start on Black Friday. I've found there comes a point during most adventures when I need a break from my own thoughts so I popped headphones in and cruised through the countryside. With the throttle on the little 125 wide open, I danced along to ZZ Ward, Kanye, and some reggaeton while ignoring the uneasy looks from other drivers. Apparently dancing and driving isn't a thing in Colombia.

I cruised all the way back to the Ruta del Sol and started retracing my way south towards Bucaramunga. I wasn't quite ready for my adventure to end though and Marlon's map denoted a big triangle off to the east going through El Carmen, Ocana, and Cucuta so I decided to head that way.

Exiting the Ruta del Sol, it would be an understatement to say I was startled to find the road I needed was dirt. I still wasn't used to the idea that I could go from one of the largest highways in Colombia to a dirt road instantly, so I spent several minutes sitting on the side of the road trying to figure out if I was in the right place. It was only when I saw a tanker truck barreling along, kicking up a huge cloud of dust, that I decided this was indeed a "main road."

The road twisted through the mountains, following babbling creeks and climbing to scenic outlooks over and over again. When I finally made it to a small town I stopped for the night. The one hotel in town didn't have a single-occupancy room for me so the proprietor told her 4-year-old son to walk me down the street to a family that had a cheap room. Basically what they had was a bed in their storage room which they rented for 3 bucks a night. It was awesome to stay in a rural family's home and though the accommodations were extremely basic nothing was lacking.

It took about two hours, but once one of the kids started talking to me everyone had hundreds of questions. All in Spanish. One of the men, William, drew me three maps in a row - every time I would get up from the table the map he had drawn would disappear and he would insist on redrawing a new one for me. He warned me to stay on main roads because I was deep in FARC territory and venturing down a side road would almost certainly land me on the front page of newspapers. Although I had seen an "anti-explosives" insignia on a soldier walking down the road earlier that day, this was the first time I realized I would be riding through a conflict zone and had mixed feelings.

On one hand I felt confident I'd be fine. FARC was making headlines for surrendering and de-escalating conflict, and I figured the last thing their PR campaign needed was a foreign kidnap victim. I was riding a local motorcycle, and with a full-face helmet, long sleeve shirt, and jeans it was difficult to tell me apart from a Colombian. But - this local man was very adamant that it was very dangerous. I decided I wasn't willing to turn around.

Overlooking El Carmen.

In the morning I rode on to the beautiful colonial town of El Carmen and found further evidence of the conflict. The buildings leading into town forced a pinch-point in the road and that was exactly where the police decided to position their station. It didn't look like a peaceful police station though, there were bunkers and sand bags stacked out front in case of an attack. On the street corner an officer was lounging in a plastic lawn chair, surveying the area while casually chatting on a phone held with his left hand. In his right hand, draped over a sand-filled 55-gallon barrel was a large pistol, and slung across his lap was a menacing automatic rifle. It was the most casual display of massive firepower I'd seen.

The rest of El Carmen was beautiful but I left to continue towards Ocana. I was nervous the whole way and tried to avoid talking to people since that would give away my Gringo status, but the remote dirt road riding and spectacular views made it worth it. At Ocana I relaxed because William had told me that was the end of the dangerous area. He also told me to check out Los Estoraques and although my Spanish wasn't good enough to understand what Los Estoraques was, when I saw a sign for them I peeled off the road.

Los Estoraques. They're cool and all, except I live near Moab, Windows, and Zion.

Leaving Los Estoraques I started climbing a mountain pass on to Cucuta but was turned back by a rain storm. By the time I got close to the top I was wearing shorts, jeans, a tee-shirt, a tank top, a long sleeve shirt, a wool sweater, and a rain jacket, and I was soaked and freezing. I crested the mountain pass, grimacing as the road transitioned from pavement to potholed mud. A local shop owner told me the rain went on for hours, and though I know rural Colombians would rather make something up than admit not knowing the answer, at this point I was just looking for a reason to turn around and that's exactly what I did.

Bad weather lost its novelty real quick.

That night I stayed just outside Ocana in one of the nicest hotels I've ever been in. It cost 13 dollars a night. The town was having a celebration of some sort so I sat in the town square and watched kids have flour fights, teenagers race motos in the streets, and a local band rock out while writing in my travel journal. It was a fitting way to spend the last night of my trip.

In the morning I made the epic run from Ocana to Bucaramunga to San Gil. It was 310 kilometers on extremely twisty road on a 125cc motorcycle. I got stopped by a cop once, I saw a flipped cargo truck, I descended into a 2000m deep canyon and climbed back out, and then, finally, I arrived back at the Colombian Bike Junkies HQ in San Gil. The moto made it. I made it. The adventure was incredible.

Overlooking the Chicamocha Canyon, nearly home!

Finial route map

Out of the desert (Motorcycle Diaries, Pt IV)

The adventures in and around Riohacha continued the next morning when my trusty moto, reliable until this point, decided it didn't want to start. I pushed it down the road, sprinting at full speed, and eventually got it bump-started causing blue smoke to billow out the back. I ran it for a while, then stopped and started it a few times over to make sure the water in the watered-down gasoline had mixed back in correctly.

I rode the straight and flat highway east towards Maicao, then turned north towards Uribia and the intersection aptly named Cuatro Vias. There was a railroad that paralleled the highway perfectly, several crashed cars in the ditch presumably from people falling asleep at the wheel, and a lot of cactus. The road was so hot and so boring it wasn't fun anymore and I questioned why I was continuing several times.

I was trying to get to the coastal desert oasis of Cabo de la Vela but had heard that the way there involved a long desert road. I started to take that more seriously as I was passed by expedition-worthy 4x4 trucks with lifted suspension, extra gas cans, full size spare wheels, winches, and jacks. My fantasy of skipping across the desert on an underpowered motorcycle was evaporating as quickly as my water reserves.

At Cuatro Vias I was tired and bored, and the rude attitude of the man in the shack that passed as a convenience store further soured my mood. I was feeling less and less motivated to continue to Cabo and when I realized I was standing on the last meters of paved road I decided against riding it. I probably could have made it but it just wasn't enjoyable anymore so I turned around.

The rural desert had one more trick up it's sleeve though - there's no gas stations. When I asked for directions to a gas station I was pointed to the front of the convenience store shack where a man had soda and liquor bottles filled with fuel. Each one was prefilled, and when I asked for a certain amount the bottle containing it (a liter, a gallon, etc) was upended into my gas tank. I had seen stands on the side of the road where people had a yellowish liquid in bottles but I had assumed it was some sort of local drink, not a makeshift gas station. Turns out gasoline is so cheap in Venezuela there's a huge amount of black market fuel that pours across the border into Colombia. There's so much that conventional gas stations don't exist along the eastern border of Colombia.

Cuatro Vias' gas station

Once I had turned around from Cuatro Vias and decided I wasn't going to Cabo my mood started to brighten. I still wanted to ride some dirt so I swung over to the rail road tracks but was turned back to the highway by a security guard resembling an under-funded Terminator impersonator. I took some pictures of the cactus fences I saw, watched some cows eat watermelon, and smiled as the foliage turned green, the temperature dropped, and curves started to grace my path.

Cows eat watermelon. Who knew?

Ok, ok, I won't try to jump the fence.

Continuing south I lost my gas cap once but went back and found it, and ran out of gas again but quickly found a man on the side of the road selling some. I checked in to one of the worst hotels of the trip, and after dinner turned on the TV finding out it was Thanksgiving because the American football game was playing live.

Thanksgiving sunset outside of La Paz, Colombia.

Riohacha (Motorcycle Diaries, Pt III)

While Marlon's hand-sketched map may have lacked details and scale, it was my main navigational guide and all my problems started when I lost it. I set out from Costeño Beach hostel headed northwest towards Riohacha. The highway hugged the coast line and every hill crested led to a beautiful beachfront view. It was gorgeous and I eventually had to force myself to stop taking pictures for fear I wouldn't actually complete any mileage.

I shouldn't have worried so much. About an hour after leaving the hostel the road turned flat, straight, and hot. Dense jungle foliage which offered shade gave way to grazing pastures of grasses. The road wasn't paved as well, and it stopped following the coast. Eventually I got tired of this and took a random left towards a beach town called Camarones (meaning shrimp in Spanish).

The road was paved, but probably not in the past 20 years. It was elevated and on either side was a weird ecosystem that alternated between swamp and grassland. Strange buildings dotted the landscape so I pulled off the road to have a look. It felt like a desolate place but as I was searching for clues as to what the buildings were a boy carrying a ladder walked by. He told me they were ovens for firing bricks. It's funny – if asked I would have had no idea what the word for oven was but as soon as he said it I understood. I wonder how much we don't know that we know.

I thought I'd stop in town for some lunch but as I rode through I got the feeling I was the only foreigner most of them had ever seen. I was still sick and not ready to sign up for a two hour meet-the-weird-guy town hall so I decided to head back to the highway.

Grazing lands outside of Riohacha.

Brick ovens belching smoke.

I cruised to Riohacha without further incident, got some lunch, and took a dirt road out of town that led straight into an impassible river. The locals told me the road went back to the highway but that clearly wasn't the case. I retraced my route, stopping to watch some people kite surfing as the sun started to set over the ocean.

I didn't want to stay in the city so I rode out of town and saw a sign for The Beaches of Mayapo. I remembered seeing a small road on a map that wound along the beach ending up in Quatro Vias and I was much more interested in taking that road than two long, straight highways. So I headed towards Mayapo.

The road surface was some of the best I had encountered in Colombia so I figured it was a main road and would lead to a decent sized town, which was good because I knew I had to get gas sometime soon. The road was so much fun – long sweeping corners with nothing to obstruct the view so I could fully commit to the apex and push my little 125 as fast as it would go. I was having a blast until the road suddenly, without warning, turned to a network of spidering dirt trails. I felt like I was in a cartoon as I sat there, blinking, thinking “huh.”

Ya can't get there from here.

This was completely outside my frame of reference. How does a main road disintegrate to unmarked dirt trails within a meter? There was no town, no turn around point, no road signs. I shrugged and went back the way I came.

I still didn't want to sleep in the city so when I passed a sign for a refugio (a small guest house) I headed that way. The beach was about a half a kilometer away through the grasslands, and there were about 10 house-looking structures in a row. I assumed one of them was the refugio but as I got closer I realized there were no lights in any building. I walked around and determined that there was absolutely no one around. It looked like a tourist town with restaurants and small shacks, but it clearly wasn't in-season and no one was there. It was a bit eerie as the sun had set and I was quickly running out of the last glow of light.

No matter, I unpacked my hammock and strung it up between two support beams of a thatched roof. It was idyllic – motorcycle, hammock, and backpack all sitting under a thatched roof a few meters from the lapping waves. But it was also spooky. And windy. When I got in the hammock it started slapping me in the face at a rate of about 3 times per second.

I had second, and then third and fourth thoughts. 'Why am I doing this?' I wondered, 'I'm nervous, I'm in the middle of no where in a foreign country, I'm getting battered by wind, and there are normal hotel rooms – not sketchy ones - just a half hour away for only 10 dollars.'

'Forget this nonsense.'

I packed up in about 3 minutes (Hennesey Hammock's snake skins are awesome) and took off back towards Riohacha. It was a euphoric feeling until the bike sputtered and died. I realized I had ran myself straight out of gas. Exasperation set in.

I had passed a house with a light on a few minutes before – the biggest indication of civilization I had seen in a while so I started pushing the bike back. I didn't remember it, but it turns out I had also passed a school where two security guards were chatting at the gate. I told them I needed gas and they answered in the most accent-riddled Spanish I have ever heard. I had no idea what they were saying. I couldn't even understand when they said the word for “10.” Luckily they understood me fine and eventually we worked out that one of them would walk about 2km with me to a cluster of homes where some guy had some gas.

I grabbed my removable day pack which contained all my valuables and we started walking down sand footpaths into the dark. I could see no lights on the horizon, and it was too dark to see any building outlines. I was sure I was going to get gas or get robbed, but I had no idea which one was more likely.

After several random turns we arrived at a trailer where an old woman was lounging in a hammock. My guide asked her for gas but she was out. I started to panic but no one else seemed concerned. We walked a few minutes down the road to another trailer where a disheveled man said he had gas and showed us to a locked shed out back. He opened it, and as his flashlight darted around I saw 10 or 15 five-gallon containers all presumably filled with gasoline. He sold us a few gallons and we walked back to the school, lugging the gas long.

With new gas the bike fired right up and after thanking the guards profusely I headed towards Riohacha for the fifth time that day. Yes, the fifth backtrack in a day.

I was exhausted, sick, anxious, and even a bit scared as I followed the deserted road back towards the city but I couldn't help be in awe of the stars overhead. I stopped, turned off the bike, and starred at them for a few minutes. I felt like I was on a big journey but I was only venturing around one part of one country, a rather small country at that, on one planet. I felt far away from home, but my DT125 topped out around 70kmh and I had only been riding for a few days. The star light had been traveling at the speed of light for 100's or 1000's of years to get to the same spot. Granted – they didn't have to deal with running out of gas (since they are gas. Boom! science joke), getting directions, mechanical failures, or FARC kidnappings, but it still made me feel infinitesimally small and my problems even smaller.

I stopped at the first hotel I found on the outskirts of Riohacha, and with thoughts of all the problems that day juxtaposing the immensity of the universe I climbed into bed. Digging through my pack before falling asleep I found what I should have started the day with – Marlon's map.

Santa Marta y la playa (Motorcycle Diaries, Pt II)

After a few days of hanging around in the sand I was ready for a night out in the big city of Santa Marta for two reasons. Reason 1) I know laying on the beach doesn't take much skill but I'm strangely bad at it and 2) San Gil's largest party spot was the downstairs section of a gas station. Even though they tried to hype it up by calling the gas station La Isla, there still wasn't much of a scene there.

I knew I would have fun on a Saturday night in Santa Marta, but the idea of driving through city streets was very unappealing so I procrastinated well into the afternoon. Finally I tossed my bag on the back of the moto and started into town.

Since this was the only major city I planned to be in during the whole trip I had a short to-do list which I was able to complete fairly quickly. After checking into La Brisa Loca, I got a small oil leak fixed on the moto. The mechanic worked on my bike on the sidewalk outside the shop where about 30 other bikes were being repaired. He replaced a seal and a gasket, and tightened and lubed the chain all for a whopping $15. A mechanic won't even glance at a motorcycle for 15 dollars in America. Next I tried to sell an old iPhone, and then found an overnight parking space for the motorcycle.

La Brisa isn't the classiest place ever, but it is party central for travelers in Santa Marta.

With all that out of the way it was time to get the party started - an easy task at La Brisa Loca. I joined up with a few people I had met in San Gil who were living in Santa Marta, got some street food, and let the party progress from there.

I woke up the next day around 2 in the afternoon. I felt like I had eaten sand while someone blew a hairdryer in my face all night. Fortunately I couldn't sit around feeling bad because the CU Cycling Team abuelo, old man Becker himself, was due to arrive shortly with his girlfriend. It was really cool to meet up with a friend from home in a foreign country, but since they had to pack everything into a week-long vacation we didn't get to hang out a whole lot.

There's not much to do in Santa Marta as it's more of a hub for exploring the surrounding areas. I had accomplished what I wanted to do - fix the moto, have an all night party, and meet up with Becker - so by Monday I was past ready to go back to the beach. The only problem was the city had outlawed motorcycles for a day.

I now have a basic understanding of timber framing. I basically understand it's extremely hard work.

A few days before, two guys on a motorcycle shot and killed two cops in the city. The mayor's shortsighted fix was to immediately ban any male passenger from a motorcycle, thereby infuriating the hundreds of mototaxi drivers who rely on passengers for their livelihood and inciting them to riot. Most people ignored the ban so the police, not wanting to appear impotent, banned all motorcycles for a day - the day I wanted to ride my motorcycle out of town. So my departure was pushed back once more.

By the time I finally got out of Santa Marta on Tuesday I couldn't wait to get back to nature at Costeño Beach. Two of my friends were timber framing a building next to the hostel and I figured some testosterone-fueled hammering, chiseling, and heavy lifting would be a great cure to the congestion I had been fighting while in the city. After that we won an impromptu beach rugby tournament, and I climbed a (small) palm tree to get a coconut before hacking it open with a machete to drink the water inside. Rawr, watch while I beat on my chest! We built a bonfire on the beach that night and I slept outside in my hammock to round out the celebration of nature and manliness.

By the next morning I was over the cloistered atmosphere of a backpacker hostel and ready to hit the open road where new challenges and adventures awaited.

Leaving Costeño Beach.

Easily bored (Motorcycle Diaries, Pt I)

Marlon's hand-drawn map

Was I living in a foreign country, trying to learn a language, and immersing myself in a new culture? Yes. Was I leading mountain bike tours through the beautiful and lush Andean mountain range? Yes. Did I still get bored and decide to take off on a motorcycle ride? Inexplicably, yes.

Preparation

My friend Marlon seems to know where everything is in San Gil, so once I decided I ride through the country I asked him where I could buy a map. Apparently maps of Colombia are extremely difficult to find in, oddly, Colombia, but he sketched a quick route on a 10x15cm piece of paper with names of towns jotted in the margins. I don't think he intended for me to navigate a 2000km journey based on a hand-drawn map, but like I said, maps of Colombia are hard to find.

Gringo Mike and Marlon also warned me of all the dangers of riding solo through Colombia – flat tires, torrential rain, and harassment by the police if I didn't have my license plate numbers on my helmet and riding jacket. I think it's amazing that just 15 years ago Colombia was one of the most dangerous places on earth, but now my concerns were that the police would enforce minor traffic laws and it might rain.

Setting off

Mike recommended that I ride backroads from San Gil to the colonial town of Zapatoca, and then on to Bucaramunga. Backroads are always cool on a motorcycle so I set off through Barichara, one of the most affuent pueblos in Colombia, got on dirt roads and rode to Galan. Since I was only riding an air-cooled 125cc two-stroke motorcycle I decided to stop in Galan and hang out with some high schoolers watching the Colombia v Netherlands soccer match in a corner store while the moto cooled.

The camino real rock wall in the foreground, overlooking the Rio Suarez.

Noting the absence of road signs, I asked how to get to Zapatoca and was pointed down a side road. I soon found myself on a beautiful, flower-lined dirt road that, upon further inspection, I realized was actually a well used camino real twisting through the countryside. This road was used every day but since it was never sealed the paving stones and rock walls that are a signature of the paths constructed hundreds of years ago still poked through the dirt and brush on the sides. I thought of all the people that must have used this route, from the indigenous people herding their livestock, to the colonial armies, to contemporary Colombia farmers, and then the most recent user in that long line – me.

The route was beautiful as it followed the Suarez River, and everyone I asked for directions was extremely friendly. I filled up my gas tank in Zapatoca but, not finding anything else particularly interesting, decided to press on towards Bucaramunga. As it started to get dark I thought about asking one of the finca owners if I could set up my hammock in their yard but it was my first day out and I was still feeling shy so I decided to go to a hostel in the city. This was a mistake and I highly recommend travelers, if lucky enough to get off the beaten path, stay with locals.

Fantastic canyon road between Zapatoca and Bucaramunga.

The next morning I set my sights north and rolled along the Ruta del Sol. Around lunch time it started raining, so I made a U-turn and pulled into a lunch spot I had just passed. As I parked, the skies opened up and it poured for about the exact amount of time it took to eat my meal. I hopped back on the bike as the sun came out and continued onward.

La policia

Colombia has road checkpoints along the main highways every half hour or so. There's always a speed bump, a group of people trying to sell snacks to hungry drivers, and weary, disinterested police officers standing around talking to each other. I've never been stopped at one and rode by all of them without a second glance. On the second day, few minutes after passing one of these checkpoints, two officers whizzed by me on an underpowered scooter. I remember thinking 'They must really want to catch whoever they're after to make that scooter go that fast.' A little while later, as they motioned for me to pull over, I realized that person they really wanted to catch was me. I was pulled over, and was instructed to get off the bike and get out all my information while one of the officers began searching my motorcycle for drugs.

A Yamaha DT 125 – my bike – is cheap, reliable, and fast and thus became the drive-by shooting bike of choice during the 90's when the cocaine cartels were at their peak. The bikes have retained their bad boy image and, while they're ridden by a wide variety of people in Colombia, today they're especially sought after by wannabe gangsters and drug runners. The police must have gotten a tip that a white DT was carrying drugs because they searched my oil and gas tanks, and spent about 10 minutes pushing on the seat to see if anything was hidden in the padding. They seemed more relaxed when they realized I was a foreigner but that didn't stop them from conducting a through inspection. I was just glad they were looking for something major, not trying to harass me for failing to wear a license plate emblazoned vest. 

The road flattened and straightened as it worked its way north, and aside from some sketchy passes by tractor trailers the ride was beautiful but uneventful.

No elbow room

The beach!

The following day I eschewed the traffic and congestion of Santa Marta by going straight to Costeño Beach hostel and relaxed knowing that I had made it all the way to the ocean. I had purposely ridden the easiest and fastest way north so I could hang out at the beach for as long as I wanted but already knew I'd take a more adventurous route home. 

Home sweet home, courtesy of Hennessy Hammocks

 

El Camino Real

While Whitney and I were at Mesa De Los Santos we heard about a backroads route directly through the Chicamocha Canyon. Unfortunately we received differing reports of the road conditions and everyone who had actually been there said there was no way we could possibly ride the motorcycle that way. I acknowledged that riding a difficult, technical route through a remote area with a passenger and luggage was a bad idea.

Awesome view from the top.

But I didn't think it'd be a bad idea under different circumstances. Gringo Mike had been to the bottom of the trail so I asked him to join in an ascent attempt. I climbed onto my Yamaha DT125 two-stroke from 1996 and he hopped on his Honda Tornado 250 with a street rear tire and we set off. Mike led the way, taking small detours to dip into singletrack and to point out a few waterfalls. We bushwacked through a cow pasture to end up at one of the most scenic viewpoints I've encountered in Colombia. As we descended into the canyon the temperature climbed - by the time we got to the town of Jordan at the bottom it was absolutely sweltering.

I cross the primitive bridge from Jordan.

This part of Colombia is crisscrossed with hand-laid rock trails from two centuries ago called “camino reals.” They were the highways of days past, connecting towns and serving as major trade routes but today they have fallen into disrepair from complete neglect.

We crossed the Chicamocha River on a rickety suspension bridge before looking around for what we thought could be an old camino real. We started up a flash flood wash that had some flat paving stones strewn in the sand and soon found that we were on a proper “camino real” - though we didn't know if we were on the right one. The trail was completely obliterated when it dipped into the next flood wash and we started to get nervous as we gunned our engines over rocks on the other side. The trail continued as a brief rock-strewn respite from the claustrophobic vegetation around us. Several sections were only ridable if we were able to stay on a balance beam of sequential rocks, elevated off the surrounding ground by 10-30 cm (4-12 inches).

At the next major rock garden Mike's clutch cable slipped making any “feathering” impossible. With sweat already dripping off us we knelt down to work on a hot engine with the sun beating on us. A mule walked up the path with it's owner and I thought how sometimes the simplest ways are the best. The mule carried on with no mechanical issues whatsoever.

Mike rides by the mule.

Once the clutch was fixed the trail opened up and we got an idea of what it must have looked like a few hundred years before. The camino real was two to three meters wide, hand paved with flat stones and constructed with purpose built water channels and well engineered switchbacks snaking up the side of the canyon. Mike found momentum to be his best friend so  I was left behind on my smaller bike. I crashed once but found the riding enjoyable and the views incredible.
I caught up to Mike when he stopped at an isolated house half way up the canyon wall. Music was playing and we could hear water running but no one was around. Mike optimistically estimated that we were near the end. Distance-wise we might have been close but he couldn't have known how difficult the trail was going to get.

Mike rides up the tame portion of the camino real.

As we continued the canyon walls got steeper and the camino real deteriorated. As the trail tried to match the steeper contours of the canyon walls some of the switch backs – built for people on foot – had steps making them extremely difficult to ride. Workers were running wires down the canyon stringing them across the trail at the perfect chokeline height. At one point we found the camino real had been completely buried by a landslide and we were left to negotiate a loose, rocky singletrack on the side of a cliff. With every stop, with every technical rock section, our energy levels crashed. It took about three minutes for me to transition from enjoying myself and taking pictures to complete survival mode conserving every calorie of energy and drop of water.

I got stuck on a ledge that my bike didn't have the power to get over, and once my momentum died things started falling apart for me. I sat there for probably 15 minutes trying with varying amounts of enthusiasm to get my bike going. I was thirsty, I was hungry, I was tired, and nothing was moving my bike any further forward. I was starting to think negatively and that wasn't helping anything. Finally I psyched myself up for one big push and got the bike moving. That one small victory got me stoked again, which was good because when I finally caught up to Mike he was in a bit of a predicament himself.

Mike had been stopped by a steep, stepped, rocky corner and had worked so hard at getting started again that he was nearly passing out. We took a couple minutes to gather our strength and then with Mike pushing and me working the throttle we managed to lift, roll, and cajole the bike up the steps in a few efforts.

I attempt to negotiate the corner that got Mike.

That was the last extremely difficult part but we barely had any energy to celebrate as we rode out the top of the canyon and into the town of Santos. I had popped my chain and Mike broke his clutch lever, but our bikes had survived the thrashing surprisingly well. 

Sweating, dirty, and bleeding, we found a tienda on the town square and ordered up some Gatorade, water, and any food with high sugar or salt content. As we started to come back to life Mike told one of the locals we had just ridden up the camino real from Jordan. We were immediately transformed from weird foreigners in a quiet town to crazy dirt bikers with hero-status. Everyone suddenly wanted hear stories, see pictures, and check out the bikes. One guy even wanted to send the pictures to the mayor in the hope some repairs would be made.

We rode the rest of the way to Bucaramunga on normal roads, ate everything in sight once we got there, and I had my second warm shower in as many months at Mike's friend's Casa Guane hostel. I wonder what else my little 125cc two-stroke motorcycle can do.