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 Potosí it runs 92 km to Potosí; allow about 2 h 05 of riding. It goes by way of Segment Rumichaca, La Cofradía and back through Segment Rumichaca. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 3,450 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available.
Ipiales is the last big Colombian town before Ecuador, and the high, cold plateau around it is some of the most dramatic farmland in the Andes. San Pedro lies a little north-west of the city, in a landscape of terraces, small farms and green slopes that tilt toward the canyon of the Guáitara river. The land is at about 2,900 metres and above, so mornings begin with frost on the grass and a hard blue sky.
Read the complete San Pedro write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
San Pedro is where the day begins. Next is Segment Rumichaca.
Rumichaca means stone bridge in Quechua, and the name is literal: here the Carchi River, which becomes the Guáitara on the Colombian side, flows beneath a natural arch of rock that has carried travellers between what are now Colombia and Ecuador for centuries. The Inca road passed this way, and a segment of the Qhapaq Ñan near the crossing is part of the World Heritage listing. Today the main border post between the two countries sits right here, with the modern bridge carrying the Pan-American Highway beside the old crossing.
Read the complete Segment Rumichaca write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Segment Rumichaca comes up about 19 km into the recorded legs. Next is La Cofradía.
Down in Colombia's far south, close to the border with Ecuador, the Andes spread into a high, rumpled plateau of small fields stitched together by hedges, with deep canyons cut into it by rivers rushing towards the Pacific and the Amazon. La Cofradía lies here in the department of Nariño, between Gualmatán and Contadero, at the height of the old Inca road network, the Qhapaq Ñan, which reached this far north as the empire's frontier pushed into what is now Colombia. A few stretches of the road around here are part of the Qhapaq Ñan World Heritage site.
Read the complete La Cofradía write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 46 km into the recorded legs you reach La Cofradía. Next is back through Segment Rumichaca.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Segment Rumichaca write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Segment Rumichaca, late in the day. Next is San Pedro.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete San Pedro write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at San Pedro. That is the ride.
San Pedro → Segment Rumichaca is 19 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Segment Rumichaca → La Cofradía is 27 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
La Cofradía → back through Segment Rumichaca is 26 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Segment Rumichaca → San Pedro is 20 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.