(May 13 – written by Dave) Happy Mother’s Day to all the mothers out there, and especially to our mothers.  We saved our favourite photo of the Pasto Mother’s Day cakes just for this occasion.  And just in case you were wondering, by late in the afternoon on Saturday, the bakery shops looked decimated.  All … Continue reading Happy Mother’s Day from Ipiales

(May 12 – written by Dave) We had another big day in the Andes.  In fact, we had two days today.  We were planning on riding 40k or so to a small town called Pedregal.  The only trouble was that we arrived there at 9:30 in the morning and it was sunny.  Too sunny to … Continue reading More up – Pasto to Ipiales (82k/15,192k, 7,200ft)

(May 11 – written by Dave) Ah, a rest day – no alarm and no pressure to get up.  Nice.  Could get used to this. We had a bit of a look around Pasto today.  Nothing overly strenuous, a cafe, a few churches, bit of a walk through the streets and a visit to the … Continue reading Bulging in Pasto

(May 10 – written by Nancy) I woke up several times last night to the rain coming down on the metal roof covering the walkway outside our room.  Hmmm, not a good thing to hear but thankfully when we got up this morning the rain had stopped and there were only broken clouds in the … Continue reading The rest of the climb – Chachagui to Pasto (29k/15,110k, 3200ft)

(May 9 – written by Dave) Wow, what a day. It is sort of hard to know where to start.  We are very tired after only riding 61k.  The thing is, 13k were screaming down an Andean mountain, the other 48k were crawling up those very same roads at all of 6kph.  We climbed almost … Continue reading Day of Wow – El Remolino to Chachagui (61k/15,081k/6,750feet)

(May 8 – written by Dave) Luck smiled on us today.  We had a gorgeous ride through the foot hills of the Andes AND we managed to do the whole ride without getting wet.  That’s not to say it didn’t rain today, rather, our riding hours were done mostly with sunshine and distant clouds.  This … Continue reading No rain day! – El Bordo to El Remolino (81k/15,020k/2,800feet)

(May 7 – written by Dave) Today we spent most of the day looking out at the views of the Andes we’ve all seen in tourist brochures.  We had a lot of uphill and a lot more downhill.  The views were fantastic nearly all of the time.  We rode through the fog, above the cloud, … Continue reading Andes rolling –Popayan to El Bordo (84k/14,939k/4,600feet)

(May 5 – written by Nancy) We were out for the count early last night – well, I was anyway, falling asleep while Dave posted the blog out in the lobby area of the hotel.  All that climbing really wears me out – and I know we’ve got a lot more ahead of us so … Continue reading Cycling Sunday – Tunia to Popayan (42k/14,855k/2,200feet)

(May 5 – written by Dave) We had a quiet night in the Oasis (Drop Bear) Hostel.  Even though it was Friday night, the youngsters were well behaved.  The only issue was the rain starting up a little after midnight.  We of course were inside so the rain didn’t really bother us.  It was more … Continue reading Cane to coffee – Cali to Tunia (97k/14,814k, 4,500ft)

(May 4 – written by Dave) It’s Friday but it was our “weekend”.  You are supposed to relax, do chores and catch up on sleep on the weekend, so that’s what we did today.  For what it’s worth, “fin de semana” means the “finish of the week”.  We thought about running around and doing tourist … Continue reading Happy fin de semana in Cali