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Cycling with Kody and Mark : Last Days

Posted April 15, 2009, 12:55 a.m.

We are finally home!! Our trip took a little turn for the better when we showed up to that “little coffee capital” town of Chinchina. They were celebrating their 152nd birthday, and we completely underestimated the fun that can be had in a little town during a birthday. We celebrated all weekend with a little parade of locals dressed up and dancing, celebrating their 152 year existence revolving around the coffee economy. We then heard there would be a Chiva the next day. A Chiva is basically a big party bus with a live band that drives around with about 40 people crammed in. What I thought would be a little hour ride around the little town turned into a 6 hour ride around all the surrounding mountain towns and coffee plantations with our live band playing as much and as loud as they could. The bus finally arrived back in Chinchina to drop us off on the street of salsa dance clubs to finish off the night. The best day of the trip…hands down!

We ended up staying in Chinchina, a town that literally has nothing to do, for five days and never got bored. We were unable to make it to Cali because of the extended stay, so we headed straight to Bogota.

We were in Bogota during Holy Week and visited an incredible underground salt mine cathedral in Zipaquira on Good Friday. They literally turned miles of mine tunnels into Stations of the Cross in which thousands of people were walking for Holy Week when we were there. The amount of work to convert this into a Cathedral was absolutely breathtaking!

We stayed for a week in Bogota with Mark’s cousin, Felipe, who showed us around town and hosted us in his vacant roommates’ beds. He had stored our bikes for a few weeks in his apartment, so it was really nice to have a home-base in Bogota.

On Wednesday, April 15th, we took a series of flights back to Denver to end the trip. What an adventure we had! Although we were unable to ride our bikes in Colombia, taking the buses throughout Colombia gave me a desire to come back and conquer it on bike some other time. The steep, green mountains of Colombia were absolutely magnificent!

Thanks again to all of you who took this journey with us by reading and keeping up with us. Audra, you get the All-Star for most comment entries! We hope this may have motivated some of you to take trip somewhere, and maybe travel in an unconventional way.

Mark and Kody…signing off