The passion for cycling we feel at hiddenjourneys.co is just the reflect of something that flows in the air in Colombia. We decided to show how this enthusiasm is lived by people that ride through these amazing mountains, by sharing their thoughts about their favorite trips in short interviews with our team.
To start this journey, we met with Dunia, who told us about her great female solo cycling trip from Bogota to her hometown, San Gil (Santander), last December.
Total distance: about 217mi / 350km
Journey duration: 5 days
Hidden Journeys: First, tell me about yourself and about your cycling experience: what do you do, how long have you been cycling, how often you go training…
Dunia: I dedicate myself to write, to edit texts, to teach how to write and how to read creatively. I’ve also practiced climbing for six years now, I have always practiced sports, I do mountain races, I love trail running.
Last October I bought my bicycle and started riding it, but at first, I didn’t feel so good… I was afraid, it was different because I used to ride a smaller bicycle in the city, but this one is an MTB bike, it is bigger, it changed my perspective about my body, about myself and about the bike as a means of transport. Now I always ride my bike, even if I must go really far and then come back, I like going anywhere on my bike, I’m not afraid of cars, I’m not afraid of riding at night, I don’t think anything bad is going to happen, so I just go out and I know it is going to be great because I’m on my bike. I feel really good.
I haven’t been cycling for too long, it hasn’t been even a year, but so far, I’ve liked so much that empowering feeling, it has been so motivating. Now I feel it is easy, you just hop on your bike and you don’t need anything else. That was what got me so motivated, to feel it was so easy and that it made me feel so good.
HJ: Besides riding for commuting every day, do you train?
D: Yes! Well, I don’t know if you can call it training, I go to the places that my friends recommend, or I go with my friends, that’s my training. I obviously do Patios, El Vino, but above all I like going to Choachi. It’s my favorite, a hard route but I love the paramo, the silence, the landscape, I love it. So, you could say I do train, at least on weekends I usually go out to ride.
HJ: What has been your favorite cycling trip in Colombia?
D: Well, it’s the only one I’ve done so far! Going to Santander, I am from Santander and its landscapes are so pretty. Actually, what happened was that, I think I have a problem and I can’t calculate distance, I have a really wrong perception of it and that was great because I started searching and I thought – well, it’s not that far, just 350km (217mi) …
HJ: And how long did it take you to arrive?
D: Well, I decided to do a fun trip, I like so much riding, it is so much fun for me and I feel so good about myself that I wasn’t going to plan a trip to feel frustrated. So, I planned it to be fun, to take the time I needed. You can do it in just three days, but I did it in five. I visited friends and family along the way, it was very nice.
Also, some friends gave me lots of support because the most I had ridden was about 20km (12 mi), and the first stop was Raquira, 170km away (105 mi), so I planned it as if it was a trail running race, and thought, well, I can do it in a bicycle. My friends told me like, if you can’t make it you just call us and we’ll pick you up, it’s okay. They gave me the motivation to make it as far as I was able to, and as far as my body was able to. For instance, on the first day my idea was to reach Raquira, but I had to stop in Chiquinquira because I just couldn’t continue, I was so tired, my legs, my back, my arms, my ass, everything felt too tired even if my mind was doing great. I really wanted to keep going but anyway to reach Chiquinquira was phenomenal.
To plan the trip and to do every fragment as I wanted was great because in the end I achieved it. And it was also very fun, for now it is my favorite. Now I want to ride to the Tatacoa desert, which is a lot less in distance… well, just a little bit less…you can see how my distance calculation is wrong. It’s like 80km less (50mi).
HJ: How was it to ride by yourself for so many days?
D: It was great, nothing bad happened to me. The only thing that happened was that my rear derailleur was too tight, so the chain was skipping between gears. That was the only thing, the chain skipped and got into the pedals so I had to stop and fix it. But everything else was fine, people encouraged me from their cars, in the towns… no one knew me and they encouraged me.
It was nice as well to enjoy the landscapes, the feelings you have during the ride, you go thinking a million things but at the same time, you are not. There is a moment you are not thinking about anything, just feeling this weird joy. It is very fun. That route was very fun because you have a lot of climbs and descends, then plain gaps so you pedal, then rest, and pedal, and rest. It’s cool. People were so nice. They even paid for my meals sometimes, usually men, because they were really impressed, for them it didn’t make any sense that I was riding a bike when I could just take the bus. So I think they admired my achievement and they gave me Gatorade or paid for my lunch… I was like, okay, thank you!
HJ: Did you feel safe?
D: Yes, very safe. I took the main road most of the time, but also some secondary roads and nothing weird happened. I mean, besides the animals, like the horses, the cows on the road… even the dogs but none of them tried to bite me or anything.
HJ: Did you find more surprises or more fulfilled expectations in general?
D: I didn’t have any expectation! I wasn’t sure if I was going to make it. Off course I wanted to reach Santander because that was my challenge, it was my objective, and I finally made it. But the big surprise was that it wasn’t only about reaching the goal, but about my own transformation in the process. I feel I was one person when I left my house in Bogota, I still am, but many things inside me changed. Especially the perception I had about travelling on a bike on my own, as a woman, about facing the challenge by myself, without anyone near, guy or girl, that could tell me how to fix things or help me solve a problem.
The surprises were like that, it was a self-knowledge trip that started by wondering if you could really do that or if it was too crazy and irresponsible. I did think it was irresponsible before I started, I had ridden that bike for just two months, I didn’t really train that much. I thought I was strong as I have done trail running races, and I think that is harder than riding a bike, so that was my logic. I climb, I run, I am trained. It was the way I convinced myself I could do it, but still I was also surprised when I finally made it.