Day 8: Salento to Ansermanuevo

Today was nearly perfect, therefore I don’t have anything to write about.

Kidding!

I needed a day like today.

Started by waking up in what may have been the most comfortable bed I’ve ever slept in. It was also the first night I actually slept (this is not usually a problem for me) and the first hot shower I’ve had. I was on a roll!

Breakfast was an americano, chocolate croissant (in a tourist town, don’t forget) and a plastic cup overflowing with mango slices. Mangos are a true miracle, particularly in places where they are actually grown.

For the riding, it was a quick drop then 4 km climb to the highway. Just me and the Salento cycling clubs. A few kms on a highway and then on to a gravel side road towards Filandia. This road was 60% decent and never really bad for long, so the 20ish kms were rideable and the kind of gravel that’s fun (I was also going downhill). Plus it was gorgeous. Coffee plantations, stands of bamboo and lovely farmland. I did stop to help a guy who had fallen over to reload his motorcycle. He must have been carrying 200 lbs on the thing. He said it was meat.

Arrived in Filandia before I needed anything, but stopped for fresh squeezed orange juice anyway. I’m not usually much of a citrus person, except the other day at a restaurant I was given a jug of some tang like orange drink and it was crazy good. So good I drank 2 jugs. The fresh stuff was great, but American that I am I may have preferred the tang 🤷‍♂️

If you are ever in this part of the world, consider choosing Filandia over Salento. All the charm but smaller and less of a hot spot.

Some more gravel until I reached Alcalá. What a cute little blip of a place. I had pollo asado in the central square under a majestic tree.

Paved side roads from that point on. The ride I did today was a mix of the bike packing route and some less risky alternatives. After much time triangulating the original RidewithGPS map, Komoot routing and Google maps (because it’s so damn fast and easy to use), looks like es posible to do a bit of a choose your own adventure situation where I do bits of the gravel route and bits of paved alternatives and land in the same towns. This is a pleasant and relieving compromise.

I’m still a little wary of committing myself to any particular ultimate destination on any specific timeline, especially publicly, because all it would take to thwart any plan is large piles of large rocks 🪨 where I’m supposed to be pedaling. I have less than a week on the bike and a plane to catch from Bogotá and am confident I’ll get there one way or another. Because I have options.

Dinner was a fancy one just off the main square. Went for a steak because there was no reason not to. My dates were two black dogs who could obviously smell the softy gringo in town from a mile away. They were rewarded for their intuition. I mean, there was a lot of meat on that plate.