Pics: Swilling coffee in my favorite setting: old time pool hall with old timers.
Those are coffee plants dominating the slopes here in Cafetera.
A glorietta here in Manizales: thats as flat is it gets, right there.
Had to retrace my ride the 10-kms back to town but in the daylight this time and I imagined it more beautiful at night when i couldn't see. But the road was just as bad as before and the rattling of brain in head so early in the morning put a damper on my spirits... but thats half of enjoying: you gotta get yourself in the mood, and so thats just what i did when i hit town. I ordered a guanabana shake and then an espresso doble, and if that hadn't of done the trick I wouldn't have kept reordering more of the same, but I didn't need to.
I rolled onwards, pleasantly downwards to the town of Chinchina where I half expected that I might just make a layover day by checking into some local coffee finca. I imagined myself stretched out in a hammock smoking a big cigar on some plantation veranda while the slaves served me mochiattas. Didn't happen... I felt like riding on this day and the rain didn't seem right for chillaxin, so I pressed on after rolling around town and looking for Juan Valdez... he hails from this town.
I wanted a ride, I got a ride. The next 40-kms were up, up again, up some more, and then when I hit the outskirts of Manizales it got steeper, then even steeper when I neared the Plaza Bolivar... this place was fortified by its damn hill top perch. Imagine Queen Anne drive times 10 and maybe even steeper. With a payload of almost 40-kgs it was brutal and I rode every last inch of it too! My computer only reads as low as 4-kph i think because I must have been going slower than that. I have some pics but a camera just can't do a slope justice.
Stats: 64-km, 4:20-hrs (and over 3000' of vertical up).
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