Day 73 1/7/2022
Odometer 31,835 – 32,000 —— 165 Miles (9300 Miles Total)
Minca, Colombia – Cartagena, Colombia
I woke up sort of sad to leave Minca today but I was happy to not have to deal with the mosquitos anymore. I got up and had some free breakfast on the balcony overlooking the pool with another lovely view of the mountains nearby. I had a few cups of coffee and worked on the blog for a bit. I packed up, took a shower and headed down to Santa Marta to meet Daniella and Nick for a beach day. The temperature was so god damn hot down in SM I couldn’t believe it. It’s so bad to get around unless you’re in a car with AC. I found a beach Nick was talking about and parked my bike. It was a 15 minute walk to another beach over a small hill.
I hung out there for about an hour since it was taking them forever to get the rental car they needed for the next few days. I had intermittent service so after an hour I decided to walk back over to where they would park when they got there. I got back to them and they asked me if I just went for a swim. Nope, I was just sweating like this since I got into the city. It was HOT! We found a boat to take us to a private beach for the most part where they would pick us back up in about 3 hours. This was insane. We paid about $15 for a round trip boat ride to a private beach. We were hanging out there in chairs in the shade and swimming the whole time. Daniella talked to one of the guys there that was serving alcohol and food and he whipped out a bunch of fresh caught fish from a cooler. We each got a red snapper for $6 each. I couldn’t believe it. We all had a few beers and hung out on the beach eating snapper with rice and salads.
It was so nice hanging out with friends for the day even though it was only for a few hours. We got into a conversation about how life in New York is so much different than the rest of the world. As everyone says, we live to work in the states. That’s it. The rest of the world knows how to take vacation and time off from work, they know how to relax and enjoy life. Americans just work work work with barely any vacation to buy that big house with a white picket fence and the 4 new cars in their driveway. When they turn 65 they try to enjoy their life but are usually dying from a disease because they neglected their bodies their whole lives and then they try to travel but everything hurts too much to be able to travel. It’s such a bad trend people have in the states. It’s all people talk about on my travels. I’m glad I’m not one of them. I’m almost embarrassed to start telling people I’m American.
It took me 5 weeks to realize life isn’t about crunching so many activities into my day when I have nothing planned and to just relax. I was filled with so much anxiety the first 5 weeks of my trip because I didn’t understand what it was like to take a step back and relax every now and then. But now it’s all I want to do. If I have a busy day coming up it bothers me a bit. I’m getting used to it all though.
The boat guys came to pick us up a bit early and I was pretty sad to leave this little piece of heaven we found. We said our goodbyes back at the parking lot and parted ways. I might see them in Bogota before they fly off to Peru for a little bit. I put most of my gear on and off I went to Cartagena. This was one city I was so excited to see and it’s the one place in Colombia I feel like I would love. I typed in Carta on my GPS and it was almost 5 hours away. Ugh. I would get there at 7:30PM. A bit late into the night but I’m actually happy about it because of how hot it is outside. I’m actually going to start riding into the night some more here to help with the heat. I rode for about an hour and stopped for fuel and water. I poured water down my shirt and people were laughing at me. I was on a highway for about 40 miles right on the coast and it was so windy. The water from the ocean was blowing on me 50′ from the beach. The wind was literally almost pulling my helmet off my head. Maybe 15 times I had my hemet covering my eyes and I had to pull it back down.
I got to an intersection and it told me to make a right on a dirt road. Ok cool I hope this doesn’t turn bad I thought. It was trying to take me around a city with a lot of traffic I assume. I made a few turns on the dirt roads. I was pouring sweat as it was 96 degrees and now I’m only riding 15 mph in the dirt/sand. I had to wait 5 minutes for a huge train to cross the tracks at one point that I approached. So much for beating the traffic this way. I made a few more turns and I came up to a huge pile of mud/water covering the road. Fuck
I hope there aren’t 10 more of these and I hope I don’t crash. I was going to go through the middle because I don’t know what’s in there so I rode up along the edge. My bike got stuck in the mud a bit but I got out and I dropped the bike right on the edge of the water as I was getting out. My bike was covered in mud water from the back wheel spinning and my shoes were covered as well. I was pissed. I approached a few more of them and It was really killing me now as I had 1.5 more miles of this and I can’t cross 10 more of these with this heat and not wearing my moto boots along with how heavy this fucking bike is. I’m ok with this if it was cooler out but I don’t have the patience for it right now. I was so thankful to only have to cross about 5 of them and even more thankful that I didnt drop my bike in the middle of it. I got back on the road and kept riding.
I cut the time back off the arrival a lot and it looks like I wouldn’t be riding in the dark at all. I did some math with how many kilometers I had left and my speed and I actually might even make it for the sunset. I pushed hard on the rest of the ride and I made it to Cartagena with the sun about to set. There was a small sliver of clouds in the horizon and it split the sun right before it was about to set. It was beautiful. It was a perfect entrance to Carta. I got to my hostel and started taking off my pants as soon as I got in the lobby. The look on the receptionist’s face was priceless until she stood up and looked at my legs and noticed I was wearing regular shorts under my jeans. She laughed. I checked in and finally got a bunk bed that I didn’t have to climb to get into. Perks of staying at a place for three nights I guess!
I got on the bike and went into the old city center 1 km from me. I loved the vibe here. It was great. So many people, so much street food and I felt very safe here. I walked around for 2-3 hours and ate a bunch of food, ice cream and little things here and there. I think I’m gonna have to book more nights here. I watched some street music and performances which were nice. One of them popped up right in front of me when I was waiting for my food.
I got back to my hostel around 9:30pm. I made myself a cup of my Beam sleepy tea so I can get some sleep since I haven’t gotten much the last few nights. I keep waking up in the middle of the night. I drank my tea and took an edible. I met two young girls from the Netherlands that were in my room and chatted with them for about an hour about all kinds of things. My edible kicked in and I passed right now.