Cartagena – San Juan de Nepomucene (alt 210)

89 kms. Flat, but still 489 vertical mtrs ascent. A long and hot day. Another flat tyre, most likely caused by an old patch I used when I repaired it some days ago. To make it complete I had to change also the replacement within an hour. This time it was a real new puncture. We really hope this is as far as is it concerning punctures, we never had this much bad luck with our tyres. Could it be because we changed from Schwalbe Matrathon Extreme to Schwalbe Marathon Supreme? All this took some extra time and we know now that the last hours of cycling on long days are not the nicest. There is the heat, 41˚C is no exception at all (after having changed the tyre my Garmin indicated 45˚C), and under these conditions at the end of the day the distance counts double.

We checked in at a very basic hotel along the road in San Juan de Nepomucene (who invents such names?), a concrete box with a bed and a simple bathroom. The airconditioning was not personal, and we couldn’t adjust it ourselves. It made the box so cold, that we had to put on a t-shirt in order to stay warm under the sheet. There was no blanket of course.

We had dinner in a road-side kiosk, where we were served by a very nice lady, who was enormous in size (not in length) and who appeared to be 27, with an 11-year old daughter and a very nasty litlle boy of about 4. Her amiga, a school-girl we thought, was seventeen and a mother of a 2-year old. We could not find out if there were husbands, or at least where they were. We are in the Caribean, so much seems obvious. Different matrimonial morals here. They were a happy lot though. We had salchices (sausages) with patacones. Patacones are made of a large kind of banana that you cannot eat fresh. It is cut in pieces of 4 cms and these are diep fried. Then they are taken out and flattened into rond cakes and deep fried again. Not high cuisine, but good food and very cheap. The beers were nice and cold.

The track: Download 20100127_cart_sanjuannepomuceno.gpx

Schermafbeelding 2010-11-09 om 16.13.13

Schermafbeelding 2010-11-09 om 16.13.43

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