Let’s go cycling

Day 16- 49 km and more mud

Another day of ascent and another day of shocking roads and bogged trucks! We’re getting used to it now…

Spent the night at the top of the world again, about 1450 m above sea level. In a guest house this time so we had a warm (ish) shower and a toilet with a bucket…and a couple of good meals!

The lady down the street ( yesterday told us to come back this morning, she’d be open at 6, but we did wake her up we think!) made us a hearty breakfast of fried eggs and random steamed bread roll, but it was much appreciated and did the trick to get us in the road.

The landscape is truly spectacular, the roads following ridge lines, the views infinite and changing with every turn. Life looks tough in the roadside settlements – weather beaten rattan huts perched on precarious slopes, amidst the mud and dust from the passing trucks. Signs of a more prosperous past, with closed guesthouses, and abandoned restaurants. Maybe the effects of COVID or a change in the dynamics of tourism.

They are growing crops on incredibly steep ground, easily over 45 degree slopes in places. With the torrential nature of tropical rains there is some erosion. however this is subsistence farming, small areas of forest are being cleared out of necessity, not greed.