Wednesday 16 October 2013

Villanueva To Guacheta .... The Tunnel Road

Time to head back up to the highlands where we don’t dissolve in the heat , this whiteyfoo and 40 degrees hmmmm, today was grey so the big black ribbon was not bouncing heat back up at us which came as such a bonus.

A huge rain storm had crossed only seconds ahead of us at one point, only getting a few spits of rain on the screen but our boots got a good wash, Maya receiving a quick waterblast.

We hit the 56 road turnoff squirreling up the zig zag which was mint before leveling off and following the gorge which was very brown from mum nature giving the landscape some watering (turns out a lot of watering).

Stunning day



Brown soup



The supermoto circuit came to an abrupt stop and the adventure bike circuit started with gusto.



Before we knew it we were into some very rocky terrain, greasy as well, hmmmm time to back off the speed.



Turns out we were in for a massive roadworks treat, mum nature had dealt to the road in epic proportions in places and the damage is significant, several places there was roadworks with big front end loaders and a few big bullys pushing water laden earth around, the mud in these parts was up to 200 mm deep and well beyond MT 90 and Heidenau safe working limits so we slid around like an eel on a hot plate. 

Near the end when we found a small creek we washed the radiator out so Maya wouldn't overheat.



Making it through the sloppy section of about 50 km the “zona de tunels” appeared, at least we knew then we were on the right road (this time), the waterfalls inside the tunnels and entry to the tunnels were amazing, we were getting more and more soaked INSIDE the tunnels, some of them enough to fill buckets in seconds.

A clear river, seems the storm was localised, this could be anywhere in New Zealand south island



Raining inside the tunnel



This leads you all the way up to the reservoir Embalse La Esmerdald then around the reservoir towards civilization.

Villa De Leyva was meant to be our destination however we fell short of that too (see a patten forming), late in the day, spent from the mudplug we crashed it in at Guacheta.

Guacheta is a small industrial mining town, not what you would call a tourist trap but a nice quiet place to stop and the hotel had hot water ...PERFECT, parking was a little skinny but the owner said hey no worries and people had to walk sideways past Maya, she was a big grubby too from the shenanigans earlier in the day.

Dirty bum!!!



So ok, here is our second attempt at a vid, this with Latin music hopefully not banned, governed, restricted, patented or without by north American law



For those maybe unable to see it try this

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

...like an eel on a hotplate... Lol
Neda