Day 1 - Bogota to Girardot

6am wakeup and early hotel breakfast ... I've eaten too many meals at the Habitel but it is convienient.  We quickly sorted our stuff into ship and carry and took the bike boxes to the Deprisa depot about a kilometer from the hotel toward the airport.  The shipping process was made a whole lot easier by the presence of another customer who worked for an American company.

We actually made it on the road by 10am ... even after the 20 mminutes it took to check out.  The route out of Bogota took a long time.  Most of the way we were on bike paths which was good but they didn't connect that well and there were some crazy streets to deal with.  There are a huge number of people on bikes in Bogota and it certainly isn't much slower than driving.  This is a very large city and it takes a long time to get across it.  I think I would rather live here than visit.

At one point the city just ended and we were in the country.  We crossed Rio Bogota a few times and it is not a nice smelling river.  We joined the main highway 40 by scrambling up the embankment of the underpass which joined 40 from the left lane.  It turned out the traffic wasn't bad enough to warrent that manouver which also disturbed a guy sleeping on the path.

We then began a climb over the lip of the plateau.  It was about 500m with a few downhills.  Then we began a huge decent with a few uphills.  Nearly 2500m and the further we went the hotter it got.  The sun came out, too.  We are all showing tan lines.

Girardot is fairly big and a destination for people from Bogota.  We got a pricey botique hotel which is a restored old building and they tried to keep the old colonial charm with modern rooms.  My do doesn't really lock and is pretty flimsy.  I have my bike wheel keeping it closed.  For dinner we had pizza in a pretty decent place.  I also had a pork steak as Mike and Andy didn't let me eat all day.

Early to bed and  6am start planned.  Good night.