Day 108

Day 108  2/11/2022

Odometer  34,650 – 34,827  —– 177  Miles (12,097 Miles Total)

Medellín, Colombia – Jardín, Colombia and back

After spending a few days in the city getting back into my routine of relaxing, salsa classes and Crossfit I felt pretty stagnant so I decided to take a day trip out to Jardin. It’s a small town in the mountains fairly close to Medellin except the roads there are all going through mountains so the 90 mile ride turns into a 3.5 hour ride.

I packed up my top box with the bare minimum for the day to keep the bike light. I got on the road a bit late at around 9am. I was out dancing with my salsa instructors at a salsa club till about 1am so there went my plan of getting up early for the day! I left Medellin heading up in the mountains and holy hell were the roads lovely. No rain, the roads were dry, my bike was light and the temps were perfect. I haven’t ripped like this with nothing on the bike in a while.

It turns out I got really lucky that I got a late start. I hit a roadblock for construction about an hour into the ride. After waiting around for 30 minutes I heard two guys speaking English. Locals in Medellin now moved there from the states. I asked them what was going on and they said roadwork. They block the road off Monday – Friday 9-11am and 2-4 pm. So I guess I got really lucky that I didn’t leave early or else I would have been waiting at the roadblock for about 2 hours. I only ended up waiting about 30-45 minutes. I don’t remember exactly what time I arrived and left but I was there for about 30-45 minutes.

I guess I’ll be staying in Jardin till about 4pm just to make sure I won’t hit this on the way back. The rest of my ride to Jardin was pure joy. I don’t think I rode more than 100 meters of straight roads since I left the roadblock. I was pinned to the max ripping through every single turn. I was having a blast. God I wish my friends that ride could get a glimpse of this or even be here to ride these roads for a few hours. I’ve never in my life taken a 6 hour joyride anywhere for a day trip and I would do this all over again in a heartbeat.

I pulled into Jardin and this town was really cool. My salsa instructor told me it was her favorite town in Colombia to visit. It had its own unique vibe. Small town, beautiful church, lovely little houses with nice colors on the streets, mountains covered with banana, plantain and coffee trees all over. The smell around the town was delicious as well. I got some breakfast, walked around, took some pictures and did some googling on what to do here. There’s two nice viewpoints on either side of the town from the mountains.

I hopped on my bike and decided to ride to one of them. I had a nice little dirt road to ride on for a bit passing a big waterfall which I stopped at for some photos. Up some other twisty switchbacks I rode on dirt for about 20 minutes and decided to head back down because the viewpoint was nowhere to be found. I parked my bike by a river and walked down to it, stripped down and jumped in so I could cool off since I was sweating most of the ride there. I washed some of my clothes and let them dry up in the sun while I laid out on a rock to get some tanning in. This was so peaceful and maybe the most favorite part of my day.

After about 90 minutes I got back on my bike and headed over to the other side of town to get to the other viewpoint which I failed at as well because the dirt road turned into nothing at one point so I had to turn around. I parked the bike along the way for some pictures and a couple from the US approached me with the usual question. “Did you ride your bike here from New York”. Yes, yes I did.

I got a few messages from people when they saw I was in Jardin and one of them told me to head south a few more miles to a restaurant for good fish. I got on my bike and rode out there.It started to rain when I pulled in but I didn’t think the rain was going to stick around. I waited about an hour for my fish that was actually terrible and paid the bill in a hurry to get the hell out of there since the rain started to pick up. I hit the road heading back north to beat this rain and luckily I got ahead of it. The ride back was incredible just as the ride was on the way there.

I was really enjoying every single second of the ride knowing it would be one of the last ones I’ll be taking for this trip. I appreciated every single turn, mountain, river, waterfall, and everything else. I stopped for a few photos along the way and eventually another storm caught up with me and I was riding in the rain for a while. The roads once again were slippery as hell and my back tire was sliding out in most turns and it was getting quite annoying. I made it back to Medellin before sunset thankfully while almost running out of gas.

I met up with my salsa instructors for another night of dancing at the salsa bar and called it a night! What a wonderful packed day of fun!