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.