San Francisco to Santa Cruz: Our last hurrah (part one)

Ben in front of the Golden Gate Bridge. 

The final (and much anticipated) leg of our trip involved cycling down the Californian coast from San Francisco to Los Angeles. This involved a big jump over all of Central America which we reluctantly decided to save for another trip as we were both eager to get a taste of the USA and cycle some of the Pacific Coast Route, which is meant to be one the best rides in the world.

San Francisco sure was hilly, but the views were worth it - Alcatraz from a typical street.

After a hugely stressful period of transit out of Colombia and into the USA which we detailed in an earlier post we were relieved to arrive in San Francisco with the bikes safely in one piece and find somewhere to stay relatively easily as we hadn't booked anything or even brought a map or guidebook. We didn't need one as it turns out, as San Francisco is awesome in every direction. Such a big change in scenery immediately recharged our enthusiasm for being tourists, which had waned towards the end of South America - we didn't take a single photo in four days in Bogota which was pretty terrible. We spent the first day just walking around sightseeing and our second riding our bikes over the Golden Gate Bridge to Sausilito and Marin County. The ride was only 50kms but it took us ages due to constant photo stops, then we got lost in Marin County trying to find the Redwood forest nearby. But then it was our own fault as we didn't take any maps. We stopped in for lunch at a cafe and then made a long overdue visit to a bike shop where Ben brought a new magnet for his speedo (lost 6 months ago) and an excellent cycling map of the greater San Francisco Area which held us in good stead until Santa Cruz. The USA Adventure Cycling Association publishes fantastic touring maps covering the whole country especially for cyclists that include camping areas and food places, but we couldn't get them as they have to be posted and we haven't had a mailbox for ages now. Our local map was better than any map we had ever cycled with before so we were confident that we'd be able to muddle through without too much trouble.

Riding on the bridge.

Our "muddle through" style came to the fore the following day when it came to leave San Francisco. After another great bagel in Chinatown (of all places) we headed off on a non-obvious route, through Haight Ashbury and the Golden Gate park, instead of the flat and well-marked trail around the bay. The hills were occasionally steep but the morning was brisk so it was okay and there was a alot of left-right-wait-no-maybe straight-no-left navigation. We stopped a few times for pictures and Anna looked around the De Young Museum on the way through. The wind on the coast side was fierce and progress was slow into Daly City. Fortunately there was a big mall/food court on the side of the road where we could shelter from the wind in KFC and stock up on some food in an Asian supermarket. Ben went in to brave is first American supermarket while Anna waited outside digging through her panniers for all her cold weather cycling gear that we thought we'd never need again. Once layered up the cycling improved and we carried on down the highway without too many problems. There was only one narrow stretch of road up over a hill that reminded us of some NZ roads, but we just plodded through it and the cars were generally aware and considerate. We pulled in that evening at the campground in Half Moon Bay, and upmarket seaside town about 60kms south of San Francisco. It was much, much colder than we had anticipated - we thought California was the home of Baywatch! This was more like Patagonia and down jackets and wollen hats had to be pulled out in the evening and morning. There was quite a few other cyclists in the "Hike and Bike" section which was something we hadn't seen since Patagonia and Ben spoke to Mark and Chip, our neighbours and on/off cycling buddies for the rest of the trip.

Typical seaside view south of San Francisco. It was chilly!

The next morning was freezing! We ate our porridge as fast as we could and set off bundled up like Antartic explorers. After making a hash of following the bike route out of town we eventually rejoined the main road and ran into Chip and Mark who wisely had eaten breakfast in a nice warn cafe in town. We cycled together at quite clip thanks to the tailwind, passing an old lighthouse, windsurfer people in the ocean and numerous cyclists out for their Sunday ride. At least two recomended the artichoke bread in a nearby town but it was at least 5 miles out of our way which was a bit too far just for bread. We ended up getting another bakery recomendation for a town that was bang on route, but a little further away. With the tailwind it was pretty easily reached and we tucked into some great sandwiches at about 1pm, a mere 2 hours after our porridge wore off. We had no one to blame but ourselves for making such a beginner mistake of not bringing snacks.

A cute lighthouse just off the main road

Ben and Chip watching the local 'dudes in action near Santa Cruz

An emergency fruit stop on the way to Santa Cruz.
Who can turn down cheap stone fruit?

After lunch the great cycling continued until Santa Cruz where we detoured from the signposted route to take the bike path along the coast, which was fantastic. We saw natural bridges, heaps of surfers out enjoying great waves and big crowds out on the beach watching them. We resisted temptation to ride the wooden rollercoaster in the boardwalk downtown but carried on around the bays to another beachside campground just south of the city. After consulting with the girl on the gate who assured us that there was some food outlets "just down the road" we were disappointed to find, 4 miles later, that they weren't as close as she seemed to think. Clearly not a cyclist. After over 100kms that day we weren't too impressed but settled town to our first tacos in North America with Chip and Mark before a quick supermarket shop on the way back. After our biggest day riding in umm, 6 weeks (gulp) we were dog tired and worried about our legs seizing up, but we were out to everything the moment our head hit our blowup pillows, not even hearing the racoons having some sort of party outside the tent.

Coastal Santa Cruz

Ben looking out over the Santa Cruz boardwalk. 

Mark and Chip were up early again to go and buy their breakfast so we ate our porridge with John, a local cyclist who had been biking up and down the coast all summer. He gave us some helpful tips on the road ahead including a potential headwind today (ugh) and that leaving Santa Cruz was pretty tricky with a roundabout route to avoid the freeway taking us out into the middle of nowhere for about an hour, which was correct. We went out past huge strawberry fields being harvested by Latino works. It looked like backbreaking work, but the whole area smelt like ripe strawberries which was amazing and made us hungry, we stopped and pigged out at the first farm stand we came across. Things were going well and it seemed like we would be in Monterey by lunchtime and maybe we could push further. We were so confident that we took a detour to see Castroville, artichoke capital of the world, even though neither of us have ever tried an artichoke. From Castroville the wind hit us head on, reducing our speed significantly but soon enough we were on a bike lane that took us right into town and we even got an escort from a local rider who rode across America in 1976 and said he often helped cyclists into town as a way of paying forward all the kindness people showed him during his trip - what a nice guy! He gave us a great commentary on the towns history and local personalities and showed us right to the campground, where we had decided to stay as the afternoon was getting on.

The campground was in the middle of town but up a massive hill which wasn't that much fun with sore legs from the day before. We pitched the tent and walked back to town as Anna refused to ride the bike another inch that day. We walked down and had some great burgers at a local place before stocking up properly at Trader Joes, our new favourite supermarket IN THE WHOLE WORLD. It would be a few days before we would be in a big town again.

Bogota, buses, airports and transit stress

Conversing with the locals in Cartegena before heading to Bogota.

Cycling to the bus terminal in Cartegena in the early afternoon heat was easier than cycling into town a month earlier as we learnt for our errors and referenced a map before starting out, but still forward planning was a skill we weren't practised in which became obvious during a conversation over lunch with a cafe owner just before we left:

Cafe owner: "So how are you getting there?"
Us: "Bus"

Cafe owner: "What time does the bus leave?"
Us: "Don't know"

Cafe owner: "Where are you staying once you get there?"
Us: "Don't know"

Cafe owner: "How long does the bus take?"
Us: "Don't know"

Cafe owner: "How are you getting into the city?"
Us: "Don't know"

Cafe owner: "Oh." Followed by a long awkward silence before he walks away. We can sense that he feels we are disorganised.

Our route to the bus station fell apart almost immediately when our carefully planned direct route turned out to be a one way in the wrong direction coupled with large and very disorganised roadworks which forced us into several bocks of pushing through mud and construction rubble, followed by a long spontaneous detour in the wrong direction. Things eventually improved and with some assertive cycling in the middle of the fast lane holding up several buses we made it to the terminal, covered in sweat and road grime. And there's nothing better to do when you're covered in sweat and dirt than to sit on an overnight bus, so we did. According to the guidebook it was a 20 hour ride but things began to unravel immediately, when 5 hours into the trip we stopped at a city that we had already gone through and knew it was only 2 hours from where we started. It was tea time but we didn't get a food stop, instead got videoed by the military to record who had got on the bus, a concerning thought when we began to wonder why that was necessary. When we didn't stop for breakfast we began to get concerned, had we accidently hopped on some sort of diet bus? Eventually the bus pulled into some sort of rural self service food area at 11am, when we were meant to be in Bogota at 11:30. So we were running a little late, but how far late we had no idea. The food was terrible so we didn't eat much, think we'd be there soon enough, but a few hours later we saw a sign for a town that appeared to be going in the opposite direction to Bogota, which was concerning.

5 hours later the driver put in a dvd of 118 Colombian accordian songs.
4 hours after that night was falling and we still weren't in Bogota and the bus hadn't stopped since our 11am food stop and the accordian songs were still playing.

Eventually at 9pm, 29.5 hours after we left we arrived in Bogota, at a bus terminal on the opposite side of town from where all the hostels were located. Anna wanted to get a taxi but Ben thought the line was too long so we rode, and it wasn't as bad as we thought it would be, there was some homeless people but most of the way was on a bike lane which was a pleasant surprise. We found a great hostel run by Australians and had a great nights sleep in the dorms, despite our room mates partying until mid morning.

Bogota was much nicer than we thought it would be, we had 4 nights there to prepare for flying but ended up picking up a couple of bike boxes really easily on the first morning, as it turns out the city it huge on cycling. There is over 300kms of cycle lanes in the city and on Sunday all the major roads are closed to traffic and cyclist rule the roads. We took our bikes out on the Sunday and had a great time riding all over the city with locals from all walks of life. The roads were lined with vendors selling energy drinks, snacks, cycle clothes and bike mechanics offering their services. There was lots of kids out and roller bladers and people walking their dogs meaning that cycling wasn't exactly fast, but it was really fun. We spent the rest of our time in Bogota visiting a number of interesting museums, some on purpose like the gold museum; and some by accident like the money museum when we were looking for something else. We spent an afternoon at the Botero Museum which was really cool, both his work and other art from his personal collection including Picassos and Monets.

Due to the huge size of our luggage we had to get two taxis to the airport, which took way less time than we had expected and we had to wait around for ages to check in. When we did we got spat out of the line firstly for not having some sort of airport exit piece of paper that we had to get from a booth down the hall, then because we didn't have a printout of our USA visa waiver number that we had applied for a day earlier and it said we wouldn't need it. Thirdly because after Ben had ran through the airport looking for the internet to get out numbers only to find out there wasn't any and having to convince a travel agent to let him borrow her computer we then were asked for the expiration date of our number. We nearly throttled the check in person, but she saved herself by telling us we wouldn't need it after all. Then the bikes had to be completely pulled apart for a drug search, undoing all our careful packing of the day before and some, when we had to deflate the tyres so they could check there was no cocaine stashed in the inner tubes. They also checked all the additional stuff we had crammed into the boxes to reduce the weight of our other bags, like the tent, sleeping bags, towels, sleeping mats, bike tools, helmets and the like, all right behind the counter next to the baggage conveyor belt. We had to be careful not to accidently rest thing on the conveyor belt in case it got carried away to wherever luggage goes. Things were no repacked as well as they should have been, and the boxes weren't taped up as well as they were - something we would regret later.

After about 6 security checks we were about to board the flight when the attendant asked us for the expiration number we had been told we wouldn't need earlier, When we said we didn't have it he said we'd have to bring it up on the internet and get a staff member to view it in order to get on the flight. So again, we were spat out of a massive line to go and find the internet. Then our numbers wouldn't work and it kept coming up as we weren't authorised to enter the USA. Blood pressure rose exponentially before we realised we had written it down unclearly and the "I" was actually an "1". With tempers fraying we pushed to the front of the line offending everyone and showed the attendant the date on a piece of paper and were happily let on the plane.

Four hours later we landed in Fort Launderdale, which we think is in Florida. Customs was easy (clearly we were authorised after all) and even our luggage arrived without hassle...things were going too well and when we put the last piece of luggage on the trolley and turned to go we saw a line of well over 100 people when we has less than an hour to catch our connecting flight. We experienced our first encounter with American air rage after a woman pushed in front of us but actually it went quite fast and they didn't need to open our bike boxes again thank god. We brought our first ever American candy, some english magazines and some bottled water that upon closer investigation actually was tap water from the public supply just bottled. We also met our first homeland security officers who made us put our shoes through the x ray machine, they have a crap job. The flight to LA was uneventful but when we picked up the bike boxes one had completely fallen apart in transit. Fortunately nothing was lost, the baggage guys went back and found some pedals which had fallen off which was lucky. The airport was undergoing rennovation which made locating a phone to call a taxi a total mission, but eventually we made it to the hostel at midnight making for a pretty long and stressful day.

We left the boxes at the hostel where we will hopefully pick them up when we leave and got a taxi first thing the next morning to the greyhound bus terminal downtown. We ordered the taxi both too late for the bus that we were hoping to catch but also too early for us to get the bikes back together and out bags packed again. Rats. The moment we got to the terminal we were told the bikes can't go on the bus like that and we had to get boxes which we could buy at the terminal, so we spent 20 minutes undoing all the work we had rushed to do before we got a taxi that morning. Rats.

It turns out that alot of crazy people catch the bus in America, and alot of crazy people are interested in bikes.

But about 8 hours later we arrived in San Francisco, which after only one day we have decided is completely awesome. Our day has been spent marvelling at the cool bikes everyone seems to have here, and doing tourist activities such as Pier 39, Fishermans Wharf, Chinatown and North Beach. Our accommodation is really great and central and the food compared to South America is a-mazing. Today we even managed to fit in some engagement ring shopping at Tiffanys, Anna is now the happy owner of a diamond ring which she is collecting in Santa Monica. We have another day here being tourists before we start to head south along the Pacific Coast towards Los Angeles.

25 Days of Summer: The Caribbean Coast Part II

The mud volcano we visited (as mentioned in the previous post)

We're the mud blobs on the bottom right. The mud is supposed to have healing properties and is combined with a massage (against your will) and a complete wash down in the lagoon, including clothes removal (also against your will).

After feeling robbed of a southern hemisphere summer in Patagonia we decided when we were in northwest Argentina that we were going to make time towards the end of our trip for some beach time in the Caribbean, as a holiday from our cycling holiday. We have been looking forward to it ever since, some might say it has been the dream of white sand and clear water that has got us though some of those Andean mountain passes. The prospect of a wardrobe change was also appealing, our polar fleece pants have already had a lifetime of wear and we were sick of wearing our jackets and gloves.

Cartegena was hard to leave, but the lure of the beaches was too strong.

After an event-filled week in Cartegena we headed west towards Venezuela to the town of Tangagna, a famous backpacker hangout. After not booking any accommodation in advance we ended up in a super expensive luxury suite complete with its own kitchen, flat screen tv and killer sea views. It was awesome and was our first ever encounter with a mosquito net, which we didn't cope with well. In order to tuck it into the mattress one person was always trapped outside the bed, Bens feet hung off the end of the bed anyway so it came untucked in the night, and even when we did manage to get it secured correctly we then couldn't then get out. The highlight of Tanganga for Anna was getting a custom-made bikini made within 24 hours. We also splurged and brought beach towels to help us blend in more with other tourists and look less like pasty-white cycling freaks.

Our campsite in Tayrona, scene of numerous mosquito bites.
If only mosquitos sucked fat instead of blood...

The hiking trail into the park. Pretty tricky in jandals, actually, and sweaty too.

We spent 4 nights camping in a National Park on the coast where you can only access the campsites by an hour hike through the jungle. One of our special treats was to not have the bikes with us, we left them in the hostal in Cartegena so we were really making do with heavily overloaded daypacks. The 'bus' that took us to the start of the hike managed to squeeze 14 people into a minivan with no aircon. Amazingly on this bus we ran into some people we had hung out with in Boliva, proving its a very small world.

Typical beach in the park, this one was about 5 minutes from the beach we camped on.

Yep, it was a tough life hanging out here. We spent much time thinking of people in NZ and how much they were enjoying their winter. (not)

Ben on the way to our favourite beach, an hours walk from camp. The stylish beach bag was a $1 purchase from a Peruvian market for groceries a few months back.

There was nothing to do there apart from laze on the beach and go swimming, hiking through the jungle to different beaches. Ben brought a snorkel set which he put to good use on the coral reefs just of the beach. We learnt from our earlier beach experience and brought in buckets of sunscreen, insect repellant and stayed away from the beaches and potential crab zones at night. Despite this we saw heaps of giant crabs, monkeys in the jungle and lots of interesting tropical fish. A satisfying food highlight of the park was a small bakery that produced chocolate filled buns for 2000 pesos (just over 2 NZ dollars) which we ate for lunch every day. Some days we walked all the way back from the futherest beach over challenging boulders just to eat one. In other snack news there was vendors walking up and down the beach like in Playa Blanca selling fresh tropical fruit juice, coconut ice cream and other tasty morsels. You could also stay in hammocks here in a big shed lined with mosquito nets. People who took this option reported that it was miserable and the one guy who had a good night's sleep woke up with what was either a nasty rash or hundreds of mosquito bites.

The best lunch ever: $1 chocolate buns straight out of the oven. We visited for lunch 4 days in a row.

Our favourite beach. Those are our footprints.

We came out and spent the rest of our time hanging out in Tanganga, where two amazing sandwich shops, affordable internet and a hostel room with cable tv entertained us when we were sick of the beach. Not that out stay was all sandwiches and episodes of "Bones": whilst undertaking a pleasant 20 minute hike over to a neighbouring beach one day we became victims of crime when we were robbed at knifepoint. Thankfully the criminals picked the poorest tourists in town and only made off with $25NZ and Bens broken watch and we remained unscathed. When we were walking back to town we ran into a police officer on patrol who started down the track after them and we were able to identify the offenders from photos at the police station minutes later. The police were surprisingly high tech, being able to pixt the pictures to the police on the track to help identification.

But this was hardly the only drama to befall us in Tanganga, as Anna also managed to get sick again, involving multiple days in bed and another hospital trip for IV fluids. There was rumours of Dengue fever but due to our lousy espanol (especially medical terms) meant that we'll probably never know. Ben thought Anna had "Man Flu" and refused to take her to the hospital until after he had finished his steak.

We also heard of another traveller drowning on a popular hike not far away which sounded terrible for all concerned so things really could have been worse for us.

Cost cutting resulted in some less-than-roomy hotel rooms.

But despite of these setbacks we're still happily continuing, Anna is better, Ben brought a cheap new watch to we didn't have to tell the time by the position of the sun and all is well. We spent a couple of days in Santa Marta before heading back to Cartegena to rescue the bikes and prepare for a 20 hour bus ride to Bogota and our flight to the USA. The bikes had turned into rustballs in our time away but apart from that everything was safe and sound and in one piece, we tidied them up as best as we could be bothered and headed back to our favourite Australian cafe just down the road for sausage rolls and a healthy dose of air conditioning.

25 Days of Summer: The Caribbean Coast Part I

The Caribbean.

Our brief stay in Medellin ended exactly the way it began: with a middle of the night dash across town on our bikes, with only an approximate idea of where we were going.  At this stage of our trip we can't be bothered with maps, and after a quick scan of the hostel map we took the hell-for-leather approach to late night urban cycling and arrived at the bus station puffed, about half an hour later. The station was on 3 levels, we arrived at the top and our bus was leaving at the bottom and no, there was no ramps or other convenient vertical transportation options so we just rolled the bikes down three flights of stairs in the main concourse which startled other passengers but we had our eyes on the prize - a bus to the coast!

We arrived the next morning in Cartegena and were immediately hit with a blast of tropical heat, as the temperatures here hover around 30 degrees all year and all day. As usual the bus terminal was miles away, we had no map and there had been very heavy rain overnight, turning the roads into mudbaths. And we were wearing mountain clothes including polar fleece pants. So we got lost, twice, and turned a 4km ride into a 16km ordeal. At one point we seemed to be cycling through a fish market. With no accommodation booked we rode up to the best looking one in the guidebook where we were turned away as they were full. We we standing on the street dripping with sweat and muddy road water when behind us we heard "cyclistas! hola! como estas?" as another cyclist came running towards us. She had spent a year and a half cycling up from Ushuaia so was possibly the only cyclist in the Americas who was even slower than us. She was planning on catching a sailboat across to Panama and then continuing up to Alaska. We think shes crazy, but she put us onto some other places to stay just around the corner, which had air conditioning in our room (yess). She probably thought we were crazy, covered in mud wearing polar fleece when it was so hot.

After a cold shower and a quick change into shorts we headed off for a day of strolling the historic old town, famous for being the post that the Spanish shipped all their gold from South America back to Spain, and for being attacked by pirates. It is almost completely as it was 500 years ago and has been completely restored so every street looks like a postcard. The following day we visited a mud volcano, which is a natural volcano that spurts mud instead of lava and is meant to have theraputic properties, but was mostly just fun. It's amazing how bouyant you are in mud, we couldn't touch the bottom no matter how hard we tried. The locals were naturally in on the act, giving massages, taking photos and giving washdowns in the lagoon afterwards whether you wanted it or not (including the unexpected removal of swimwear) and then charged you for it. Protests of "but I can wash myself!" fell on deaf ears.

Cartegena, old town.

That night Ben offered to take Anna out for a fancy dinner in the old town to celebrate making it to the top of South America. We dressed up in our nicest clothes, Anna in a dress she brought in Santiago and Ben in his monochrome navy travel pants and travel shirt. It was too hot for Ben to be wearing pants, plus he had to wear his travel shoes to complete the look so was a ball of sweat by the time we had walked 20 metres from the hostal. Wanting change from 100,000 pesos limited our dining options to a stylish pizza joint on an historic plaza. Unfortunately the only table left was right next to the pizza oven so things were warm (read: we might as well have been in the oven, it was so hot). After our dinner we desperately needed some air and Ben suggested a romantic horse and carridge ride, as it seemed to be the thing to do here. After picking what we hoped was a nice carridge and making a bad attempt at bargining a price we were off at high speed. We spent the first half of our ride trying to take photos but nothing was turning out crisp (due to the reckless speed of our driver and bumpiness of the cobblestones) and after we both had a go and got into a grump because it wasn't working we decided to put it away and just enjoy the ride. This, of course was just part of Bens plan as just as our carridge was lurching into another high speed turn on the cobblestones he bravely attempted to get down on one knee and proposed. Anna marvelled at his James-Bond-like ability to kneel in a high speed carridge and quickly said yes before he fell out. We were both super excited an missed the rest of the ride but we're sure it was nice.

Us, post question asking.

We celebrated afterwards with champagne and dessert at a much fancier place than the pizza joint. Ben wisely hadn't brought a ring, reasoning that the "3 months salary rule" meant that as he currently had no salary no ring was required. And because he probably would have brought the wrong one, and because he'd probably be ripped off, and because we´d be stressed about losing it the whole time. (A good move as it turns out as we would certainly have got it stolen in Tanganga)

Celebrations.

After sending off brief 3 line emails to our families the next morning we promptly caught a boat to Playa Blanca (where there was no internet) for 3 days. We camped in the beach there, ate fish caught in the ocean offshore, snorkled and got very sunburnt. Anna wasn't impressed by the local crab population that emerged each night, making sitting outside stressful. Particularly memorable were the giant dinner-plate sized climbing crabs, which climbed poles around the hammocks and tents.

Playa Blanca: Sun, sand, snorkling and gaint crab sightings.