Day 71 1/5/2022
Odometer 31,790 – 31,800 ——– 10 Miles (9100 Miles Total)
Minca, Colombia
Slept like a baby last night and I was surprised to see 8:15 on my phone when I woke up. My plan today is to go for a long hike and switch hostels. But I’m going to try to leave all my stuff in the locker at the hostel I’m at right now so I don’t have to haul everything down the block to the other hostel. Hopefully they don’t catch me!
I got up this morning and had some breakfast at the hostel which was free. I laid in a hammock for a bit just being a lazy fat ass. Ugh this is life. I walked up to the counter and asked the girl about the hike I wanted to do to Los Pinos. its on a mountain with a beautiful view of Santa Marta and the city by the ocean. She told me it’s 3 hours from Marinka waterfall. She did it in 2.5 since she’s fit. I made an interesting face doing some math and said 1:15. She said no fucking way. Challenge accepted. She told me not to cheat on the times and I showed her my Garmin watch. She believed I wouldn’t cheat. What am I going to cheat for? I’ll only be cheating myself if I do that. She told me she’ll give me a chocolate bar on the house if I do it in 1:15.
I packed up 2 liters of water and my Canon 5D. I took my bike into town to get breakfast since I was still hungry. I was sitting in the breakfast joint I was at yesterday and a woman came in asking how long until they took her order. We started chatting. She’s from Ukraine. I told her to wait a few minutes since they’re really slow here. She invited me to sit with her and chat while we waited for our food. We chatted about all kinds of things and she’s been to 80 countries! I’m so jealous. I can’t wait to experience all of that. Hi Iryna! Sorry for the bad sandwich recommendation! I gave her my website so she will be reading this. She was telling me she knows some Ukrainians that have been to every country in the world. That’s insane. 180 countries. Jesus Christ what these people have seen must be incredible. We chatted for about 90 minutes while we waited for our food to come out and pay for it.
I ran off in a hurry to get this hike done. I rode up to the waterfall and parked. My maps.me for the first time had a hike all wrong. It was telling me I had to start the hike from the waterfall which the guys at the parking lot told me no. Oh well. I started walking up the dirt road hoping I’ll actually even find the viewpoint. I put my phone away since I had no direction at all from it on this hike. I noticed google maps said the distance was 5.6Kms. That’s 3.3 miles or so. If that was right I’d have to keep an avg of 20 minutes per mile to make my time. Easy enough. I was climbing and climbing and climbing and took out google maps after about 30 minutes. There’s a road going to the top that’s complete trash. They have a bunch of hostels up there where motorcycles are transporting people up top for a small fee. Google said I was way off course and the time and stance kept getting longer. Shit. I won’t make it at this rate if it’s more than 3.5 miles. I picked up the pace and was nearly speed walking uphill.
I passed a few trucks bringing people down and they confirmed I was on the right path. I was now at 1:05 and 4.5 miles. I can’t believe I made this hike so quickly with 2000′ of gain so far. I met a couple that spoke some English and they told me 5 minutes more a few minutes later. I started to run. My watch said 1:15:30 when I came around the corner and saw the viewpoint. Boom. I hope the chick throws me some free chocolate. Haha
It was a lovely hike. So quiet. I only passed two couples on the way up. When I got up there I was a bit chilly with my linen shirt that was covered in sweat along with my shorts and socks. My legs have literally maybe 150 mosquito bites on them and this bug spray I bought hasn’t been doing shit. My legs look nasty like I have a disease of some sort. I sat up there for about 5 minutes and took some pictures and videos. The view was incredible. You can see Santa Marta and the next city over with all the big buildings on the water with the mountains on either side of the city. Beautiful! The view was worth it but I’m happy I can crush some elevation and get some good cardio in this morning.
I started the hike back down and my knees were fine but my crotch had a bad rash with blisters from the mush lining of the shorts I was wearing. They always do this when I get them wet, especially if I go swimming in them. Nothing I could do about this but just deal with the pain but god damn it was bad. About 40 minutes on the way back down one of the motorcycle taxis stopped behind me and said jump on. I asked him how much and he said $2. Deal! I hopped on the back and this guy could ride. Two up on a little 125cc Chinese bike. He was ripping down this mountain with us both on there. We were bottoming out left and right. I can’t believe these bikes last so long. He had 10,000kms on it which is 6,000 miles. We made it to the parking lot where my bike was at the waterfall. I jumped off and paid him, walked over to my bike and opened the top box and he gave me the funniest look ever. I asked him if he wanted a ride to the bottom and would charge him $1. He laughed pretty hard.
I got on the bike and rode it down the long dirt road to my hostel. As I went for a walk to the “secret spot” which is a 5 minute walk to a deserted part of the river by the hostel and jumped in fully clothed with my shoes on. I needed to wash my shoes since they were filthy. The freezing cold water felt so good on all the bug bites. I washed my linen shit for the third time in a river this week and it was holding up well. No smell or anything and I haven’t even used soap. This stuff is as solid as wool except way more expensive. I laid out by the pool for a bit to dry off and hung my clothes to dry.
After a little while I went upstairs to my locker and changed into dry clothes, no one caught me yet with the locker situation. I took the bike back into town to get a huge huge late lunch. Two Chicken chipotle sandwiches. The girl serving me thinks I’m nuts eating so much food! After this I just switched hostels, walked around town a bunch, sat in the center and worked on my Spanish on Duo Lingo and had some snacks around town. The mosquito bites on my legs are getting really bad. There really isn’t a spot on my leg from my shins down that doesn’t have a bite. My ankles and legs are so swollen and hot that I’m actually losing mobility from how swollen they are. I’m gonna go get some cream in the morning for them. While I was in bed watching Netflix they started to itch so bad so I had to make periodic runs to the river in front of the hostel to just stand in the water since it felt so good there.
That was my day.
The “secret spot” at the hostel.
View from Los Pinos
Rough life at my hostel
Secret spot is a lovely place to swim alone
View of the pool from the hostel where we eat
I was a bit wet on the hike.
Mosquito bites are terrible down here
Stats from the hike. I can’t believe I was able to time it so well. I also had alot more juice left in me it was just hard to run with a backpack full of water and the camera.
Sunset while walking to town form my hostel
Sunset at a little bar on a hillside in town.
Fantastic parking job getting breakfast
The road leading to my hostel from town.
The center