If someone would have told me …

… to go up a climb like this on loaded bikes, pulling a trailer. I would have said this is impossible.

We knew that we had a big climb ahead of us this why we planned this as a short stage of only 35 kms. So we left the farm after breakfast. First stop was the hae son national park where was supposed to be a beautiful hot spring. In fact it was quite nice and it was great for Anouk since there were a bunch of other kids and she just likes playing in the water.

After we hit the road (once again in incredibly great conditions) again we looked for another cafe to stop but could not find one and then it started to climb. Well actually it did not start really with a climb but more the worst Rollercoaster imaginable. Meaning steep up and steeper down. Everytime the momentum was gone right in the beginning of the limb. A night mare.

And then the actual climb started. With a wall. It both required us to stop and push a bit. I was strongly considering to turn around. But either Anja was already ahead of me, so I would have had to catch first anyway, and with every ramp there was the hope the next one can’t be as bad and at some point you just have reached the state where you tell yourself that since you got that far already turning around wouldn’t make sense anymore either. So (very) slow but steady, we made our way up. Rewarded with some beautiful views we climbed above 1100ms and soon reached the town for the night.

The town has a lot of places to stay for tourists and it seems some retreat for hiking and trips in the national park, but when we got there (it was a weekday) there was really nothing going on there.

After the obligatory coffee stop we searched our accomodation. Which was probably the only time we were a bit disappointed. Simply because the place – actually a beautiful garden, part of a coffee farm was still in under construction, and not really set up to host guests. Second bummer we booked another of these glamping tents, however this time we were quite high in the mountains above 1000ms, and it was not too warm when we got there and as soon as the sun set it cooled down. Definitely no temperatures for comfortable camping. Luckily our tent had a great bed with really warm sheets so it was not too bad for sleeping. It just took quite a bit of willpower to get out in the morning 😀