We weren’t even halfway up the mountain and it was getting difficult. Having climbed 60km of the Cordillera Central in the Colombian Andes since dawn, by midday I was writhing on the bike on the last curves before reaching Murillo, a traditional Andean village with colourful facades.
The village sits 3,000m above sea level on the slopes of the Nevado del Ruiz volcano, and from here, on the clearest mornings, you can see the permanent layer of frost on the volcano’s upper slopes, and the occasional plume of smoke. But today we weren’t so lucky. Most of the next four hours would be spent under drizzle and fog – all the way to the summit.
