Distance: 77.28 km
Ride time: 3:47:27
Average: 20.44 km/h
Altitude: 1405 m
Total: 25585 km
As we cycled out of town on our heavy bicycles loaded with 20 days of food, I had the feeling that we were leaving civilization for good. We were climbing slowly to 1400 m – a nice tail wind made the cycling comfortable.
We passed a few abandoned houses and thought one of them might be a good place to enjoy lunch.
It turned out that my feeling that we were leaving civilization for good was not really true. During the day we passed a village with a couple of shops, and our destination Vinchina also turned out to be a rather civilized town with small supermarkets and even a hotel. As Petter was not feeling 100% fresh yet we opted to spend a couple of days a Omar Yoma’s Hotel to be completely fit for the hard mountain stages ahead.
Omar and his assistant were really nice hosts, always offering tea and bread as we were hanging around in the courtyard of the hotel.
With the extra time I had the chance to catch up a bit on the local history – something I should do more often. This area was inhabited by the Aguada people between year 700 y 1000 AD, known for their use of polychrome designs.
One day Omar told us to follow him across the street to the local radio station. We were not sure what to expect, but as we entered the building we were soon giving a microphone. The music stopped and the radio host started to interview us – in Spanish! I hope what we said made at least a little sense to the listeners 🙂
After another day relaxing at Omar’s Hotel we were ready to face the mountains!
