Hidden Treasures

Eleven nights from Bogota to Cartagena, guided, on lightweight bikes and pitched at riders new to adventure travel.

Villa de Leyva comes first, a colonial town north of the capital with one of the largest town squares in Latin America, cobbled and almost unchanged since the sixteenth century. The Chicamocha Canyon follows, one of the largest canyons on the continent, with river crossings on small boats where the bridges run out. Bogota itself sits at 2,600 metres, which makes the first morning cooler than most people expect of Colombia.

Coffee country comes next, where the farms sit on steep hillsides between sugar cane fields and the cooking is as good a reason to stop as the riding. Cobbled villages follow, with bougainvillea over the balconies and very little traffic, and a string of waterfalls that do not appear on any map. Cartagena closes the route on the Caribbean coast, a walled colonial port that is a world heritage site and a good deal hotter than the mountains.

Bike hire is included, on a Honda XRE 300, with a discount for anyone bringing their own. Twelve days on a light bike with a guide makes this the gentlest adventure tour Ride Expeditions run, which is deliberate: the dirt sections are mild and the daily distances are moderate. Colombia also has better roads than its reputation suggests. The dry seasons run roughly December to March and July to August, and Cartagena is an easy place to fly home from. For a rider who likes the idea of an adventure tour but not the idea of a heavy bike on loose gravel, this is the right place to start.