While we were resting for a few days in Ibagué, we met Edgard and Nila from Peru and decided to organise a big dinner to celebrate New Year’s eve together. A few Belgium beers, a bottle of red wine, and a good tortillas de papas prepared by the chef Thibault and we were ready to enter 2020.
We got back on the road a few days later, heading down to the Tatacoa desert. A long descent awaits us and make it our longest day on the saddle with 120km. It’s also the first time we’re back at 400m above sea level since the beginning of this trip. The sun is strong, the temperatures are high, we’re sweating a lot.
After a short night at the fire station in Natagaima, we got back on the main road. We arrived at the entry of the desert around noon when the sun was at his maximum. We decided to stop at a natural pool for a few hours and took a mud bath, to make our skin soft.
Back on the bike at the end of the day, the sun is slowly going down, the light is getting warmer, and we finally manage to cycle in between sand and cactus. The Tatacoa covers 330 square kilometers around the town of Villavieja. The area is heavily eroded and crossed by dry canyons that develop transiently in the winter months.
Where is Waldo ?!
We spent a night camping near a small hotel in the desert and finished our short loop the next day. We passed by the Red Valley, a small part of Tatacoa where you can see those shapes that are created on clay surfaces, creating labyrinthine gullies in the landscape that can reach 20 meters deep.