Barichara

After spending the night in Aguachica, I headed to Barichara, on the way there were some interesting mostly dry vegetation landscapes, first along narrow valleys and later climbing up mountains with impressive views.

Shortly after noon I reached Barichara, had a look around and searched for a place to spend the night.

Later on I had a try at grilled goat ribs in the first restaurant I found and despite being the only client, the food was fresh cooked and tasted deliciously.

In the morning I woke up to the sound of rain, enjoyed breakfast at a slower pace than usual looked at the map and saw two possible routes to my next destination at lake Tota. Entered Aquitania as target on the GPS and checked the fastest route, looked in the map and saw that it was the road that I wanted to avoid, then tried the shortest path, it was 90 kms shorter and looked like the road I wanted to ride but did not checked it completely against the map, just assumed it was what I thought and headed my way. Well, this assumption proved, later on, to be a huge mistake. My expectation was that the shortest path would give me an extra hour to enjoy my route. The max. speed in Colombia is mostly 60-80km/h and even ridding constantly at the max. allowed speed, I'd need at least around 1:15 for the extra 90kms. In the first 20-30kms the road was unexpectedly wide and new, then I passed a few construction areas where it constantly changed between new and old but had not much trouble maintaining a good pace and the landscape was really nice as well. Everything was just fine until I reached a construction site where the young lady that stopped me asked if I didn't knew that the road was closed. Well, how should I know that?

There were no signs at all point this out. Then she explained that I would have to wait until noon to pass, it was 10:30 at the time, so I took my helmet, jacket and gloves off, had a couple of small bananas I had bought along the way and enjoyed my time, this journey was not supposed to be that long after all, so I was still pretty relaxed. 12 o'clock passed and the girl got a little stressed, asking if she could let us pass, by this time there where a lot of trucks, motorcycles, cars and buses waiting, she even said, well, there this tourist here from abroad on a motorcycle can't I left him pass :-) but it didn't work, the other side had the first go and we had to wait another half an hour to get over. Shortly after this stop I crossed a small village and the road became smaller and once in a while unpaved which I really enjoyed because I always ride standing on unpaved ground and it's really nice to relax my back and stretch my legs.

After a while, tarmac disappeared completely, I looked down to the gps and saw the next turn in over 30 kms, by that time I understand that I'd still be on that kind of rocky ground for a while.

About 1 km to the turn the asphalt was back but as soon as I left the village the heavy rock unpaved track was back and now there over 90 kms to go.

With time and kms I realized that this was not the road I thought I would be ridding at the beginning, all the marks on the track where old and no one at sight while the track began to climb the mountain, 1.000 meters, 2.000 meters then 3.000 meters high, the temperature drops to 13 degrees. To you tell the truth, under normal situations this is the ground I love and most enjoy to ride but here, I started to think that if I'm unfortunate enough to get a flat tire, it will be end of the road for me and this trip. I'm in the middle of nowhere, if I get lucky some one would find me on the same day if not ...
On the motorcycle I'm ridding, BMW had this excellent idea of moving the valve sideways and there is no way you can use a tube on its rims, which on the other hand would be "easy" to find. Without a repair kit you're done and I didn't had one with me, I ride pass 3.500 meters and by this time I realize that I'm way over 340 kms since my last fuel stop, now everything comes together, with all the stress I actually forgot gas but there wasn't any change to refuel in the last 60 kms anyway, so I was still kinda happy not to have seen it before :-)

Finally I reached the top at around 3.700 meters, from now on I could save some gas by letting it roll for a while and 20 kms later I sighted a nice road down to my left.

Checked the next village on the gps and it was around another 20 kms, going downhill on this wide, newly build road made me think the worse was over and from now on and until Duitama it would be only asphalt, well, guess what, this new road that started from unpaved ground, ended just 4 kms later again in unpaved ground. This is something that you find a lot in Colombia, on a construction stretch of 50 kms for example, you'll have like 3 or 4 kms of excellent new asphalt every 10 kms or so, they start everywhere, it looks like 10 different enterprises, each doing a piece of 5kms. By the way this is one of the reasons why you should not ride at night in Colombia (well not only here ;-))

In the end this was the best drive ridding day so far and as nothing went wrong I don't regret not having checked the route on the gps against the map but it is a thing to have in consideration when selecting the shortest path in some countries ;-)