Pic: Another "Plaza Bolivar", this time Periera.
Pic: Bridge out of Periera, sideways (sometimes it works, sometimes not).
Pics: Typical tavern, typical broadcast: footie.
Pic: The not so hot hot springs.
I left my bivy spot which was tucked under turn one out of Salento by 8am, and the first 10-mins were a wicked descent, and so my first pedal strokes of the day were up an evil little 5-km bastard of a climb. 1-hour into the ride I hit Filandia, another tiny colonial town in the coffee region, but I didn't feel like hanging around for long, but the rain kept me in a bar drinking espressos with the locals. I finally braved it and rode out into the havoc bare chested... like the cold showers, refresco, that shock at first but really make you feel alive.
Today I hammered! My legs felt great and so I thought it would be a good day to do some traveling intervals... why not bring my race prep on the road with me? I've actually been doing this a bunch this trip: I throw down some intervals and "efforts" on climbs or I take a couple long pulls, but its always "farlek"... nothing planned or structured, just good old fashioned suffering until I can suffer no more. So this day it worked out well because the terrain was in my favor, up and down some rolling hills for 20-kms into the bustling capital town of Risaraldia, Periera (pron: pah-dee-dah for the romance language challenged). Traffic was just right too for some high speed motorpacing.
Someone told me about the hot springs in Santa Rosa and its supposedly open til 1am, so I went for it. Left Periera in the dark and not far out of town the road went up, and up, and the traffic was hell for some reason... a constant backlog of trucks spewing exhaust in my face that lasted just until I summited after about an hour of climbing. Yea, nice. Finally dropped into Santa Rosa and I was stocked for the hot springs, but discovered they were another 12-km out of town. Tried the Bomberos but they weren´t Voluntario so they denied me, and so my reaction was to push on even further in the dark. Oooof... it was a long 12-km, almost an hour and a half up a steep stone cobbled road that rocked my bike. But it made it by 9:30 in time for a 2 hour soak in a hot springs with the most amazing setting although it wasn't quite hot enough for my liking. On the way up a guy said i could camp on his property so I did, right between the trampoline and the swing set.
Hours up!
Stats: 85-km, XX-hours.
Amigos, amor y brazos de Colombia!
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