Paris Dakar Stage 11 to Andorra

Stage 11 of 60, Day 13 of 71: 66 km, 1810m, 3:48, 128 shifts, ave speed 17.3, max speed 79.1

I slept really well after yesterday’s big climb, about 9 hours. Breakfast was scheduled for 8:00, unheard of luxury.

We started the ride a little after 9, and rode up to town, then the day’s climb started. It was an unusual day, with only one climb and only 66 km total distance to ride. But I had never before seen such a big single climb on my Garmin.

We headed up and it was pretty consistent. Around 5-7% grade, occasionally a little steeper or less steep. The temperature was cool and nice but the traffic was pretty heavy. Andorra is an interesting country, a tax-free haven, so lots of people go there to buy things. For instance gas is €0.50 cheaper per liter, saving you over $2/gallon. There were construction zones along the way; one time we were forced to stop for 5 minutes which was a welcome chance to eat a bar and drink. It went on and on, counting off the meters of climb and km of distance.

After entering Andorra there was a giant “town”, really just huge parking lots and a bunch of stores and gas stations. The traffic after that was much less. Then I finally came to the top, the “Roof of Paris Dakar” as Rob called it, the highest point of our tour, just over 2400m. I chatted with some cyclists who had their bikes driven up from the other side and were there to do the descent into Andorra. They were impressed at our itinerary and took my photo at the summit.

In the background of the photo you can see Ype’s Bike Dreams lunch van. I was getting hungry so it was a perfect time for lunch. After, I headed down with Wytze, cruising down the top switchbacks, fast and smooth. It was breezy so we didn’t hit really high speeds, but on one of them I just touched over 79 kph before having to slow for a construction zone. It’s nice to break the car speed limit on your bike!

It was something like 30 km and we did it non-stop, blasting through the little towns, like Canillo where I unicycled for four days in 2016. Taking the roundabouts at high speed was really fun. Pretty quickly we arrived at the campsite where the trucks had just arrived. So we did baggage unloading duty, then tent unloading duty, then set up tents. They were still wet from last night so it was good to get set up early, or so we thought.

The showers were great, then I walked over to a bar Andrew and Wytze had found. It was nice to be able to have a basic conversation with the bartender. As soon as I spoke Spanish, she switched from Catalan, the national language. The rain started as we walked back. I hung out in the tent writing for a while, then napping. We had dinner in the rain at 7pm, under some rain tents that worked pretty well. It’s supposed to stop during the night – I hope so!

We had interesting news from Bike Dreams headquarters in Holland today: we are actually going to cycle to Marrakech, but will not have two rest days there and leave by the planned route. Instead we’ll backtrack to avoid the earthquake epicenter area. It will add an extra day of cycling, so we get a little more for our money it sounds like. Bike Dreams is pretty good at adjusting to unforeseen problems.