San Gil and the Chicamocha Canyon

Posted by Javier on 30 August 2009

Hi!

We have almost crossed Venezuela, through very remote and impressive areas. There was almost no internet, we just camped wherever and cooked with our gasoline stove, filtering water from the more reliable sources we could. It is great to see live that there are still some huge isolated and well-preserved areas on Earth. We are soon crossing another one, the tepuis of La Gran Sabana, and then the Amazon in Brazil.

We are doing well, although it was hot, a bit dangerous (quite a lot of criminality in Venezuela, we are told), and quite hard. We pedalled quite a lot, often with averages of 140-150 km. We have overcome an initial phase where it was very difficult to do everything: cycle, film, take photos, cook, take care of safety issues, etc..., and now we are much more used to everything. Still it will get better :)

The stories about Venezuela will have to be told in the future, because I want to recover some memories and photos from Colombia, just where I left the last time. The idea is, if we manage to have internet (in Southern Venezuela has been scarce to non-existent), to deal with more interesting topics (to me) than the mere description of places or routes, but for now I will just do that until I recover the posting delay.

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After exiting the coal area we still decided to try some off-road tracks, crossing areas of cloud jungle where the colonial villages were prettier every day. Uiba and Socorro deserve a special mention: the time appears to be stopped in those villages, the people seem aware of being part of an old story written in the stone of the pavement and the churches, and as such decide to live calmly, enjoying the wonders of a green landscape where everything seems to give fruit and the climate is mild. I love Colombia, we have to come back with more calm.

We decided to take the main road towards San Gil, since  I got some heavy diarrhea and was throwing up for 2 days. We wanted to make some distance after the delay, but mainly we realized that the landscapes could be as gorgeous in the main road as in the more demanding secondary ones. We arrived in San Gil, a nice place for a retreat and to get fully recovered before ascending to the Chicamocha Canyon, a gigantic canyon that creates a desert in the heart of the green Colombia.

The climb to the Aratoca Pass, although very known in the professional Vuelta a Colombia, seemed pretty easy to us. We already accumulated several thousands of meters in few days, and we started to be used to climb at high altitude. The Chicamocha Canyon is just great, it would have deserved several days of trekking to the very remote villages that can be seen from the road. The weather was extremely hot and windy, making the long descent to the river a bit difficult.

After about 40 km of bends and viewpoints we finally reached the Chicamocha river, where we slept in a bunker in the mini village of Pescadero. After the river the Canyon had to be climbed again, but the landscape was dramatically different. The cactuses left space to a dry forest, which gradually transformed into a jungle until close to the big and ugly city of Bucaramanga. After crossing that hell of concrete and asphalt we were ready to start the climb to El Picacho, one of the toughest climbs in Colombia, reaching 3400 m over the sea level after 50 kms of steady climb. But that is another story. for the next post.  

17 comments. Tags: San Gil, Chicamocha Canyon, javier. Location: Upata, Colombia