CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
From Medellín it runs 528 km to Medellín; allow about 10 h 20 of riding. The stops in between: Zone A, Zone B, Zone C and back through Zone B. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 2,600 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. A steady touring day rather than a sprint.
Medellín is a city in a bowl. It fills the Aburrá Valley in the Colombian Andes, with houses climbing the steep sides in tight brick and tin-roofed rows, and the mild climate at around 1,500 metres has earned it the nickname of the city of eternal spring. For decades the world knew it for the drug trade and its violence, but over the last twenty years it has changed itself with a good metro, cable cars that link the poorest hillside districts to the centre, library parks and outdoor escalators in the former no-go neighbourhood of Comuna 13. The sculptor and painter Fernando Botero, born here in 1932, gave the city a collection of his plump bronze figures in a plaza in the centre.
Read the complete Medellin write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Medellín is where the day begins. Next is Zone A.
Colombian coffee does not grow on big estates. It grows on steep green slopes in small farms, where families pick the red cherries by hand and dry them on patios by the house, and the cultural landscape that has grown from this way of life, in the central Andes, was listed by UNESCO in 2011. The region is known as the Eje Cafetero, the coffee axis, and the Zone A on our list is one of the main areas of the property, a mix of hills, valleys and villages of small farms and old towns.
Read the complete Zone A write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Zone A comes up about 172 km into the recorded legs. Next is Zone B.
North of Pereira, where Risaralda meets Caldas, the coffee country climbs into higher, wilder ground above the deep canyon of the Cauca river. Quinchía, two kilometres from this point, is a hill town in Zone B of the Coffee Cultural Landscape of Colombia, the World Heritage Site inscribed in 2011. Here the coffee farms share the slopes with sugar cane for panela, plantain and forest, and the towns feel less visited than the classic stops further south.
Read the complete Zone B write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 206 km into the recorded legs you reach Zone B. Next is Zone C.
Zone C of the Coffee Cultural Landscape lies north of Armenia, in the steeper, higher country of Caldas, near Filadelfia and Aranzazu. This is the same UNESCO landscape, but it feels different from the Quindío end: the slopes are bigger, the farms more scattered, and the volcano Nevado del Ruiz, which looms to the east, often stands out against the sky on a clear morning. The eruption of that volcano in 1985 caused one of Colombia's worst disasters, and its presence remains part of local life.
Read the complete Zone C write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Zone C, about halfway. Next is back through Zone B.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Zone B write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Zone B sits at 220 km, about halfway. Next is back through Zone A.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Zone A write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Zone A comes up about 355 km into the recorded legs. Next is Medellin.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Medellin write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Medellín closes the day.
Medellín → Zone A is 172 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Zone A → Zone B is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Zone B → Zone C is 50 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Zone C → back through Zone B is 65 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Zone B → back through Zone A is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Zone A → Medellin is 172 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.