Bicycling Magazine

Positioning Colombia as the World's #1 Emerging Cycling Destination.

Aaron Gulley and Cesar Grajales climbing old Letras pass, one of the world’s biggest climbs.

Colombia has emerged as one of the world's top international cycling destinations in recent years. Although tourism to the country remains comparatively low compared to other, more established destinations like France, Italy, and Spain, Colombia has landed firmly on the radar of global cyclists looking for a dose of adventure, culture, exploration, and unexplored routes.

Through our passion for cycling, our creative studio and Colombian film production company have played a considerable role in helping to bring Colombia to the forefront of the global cycling travel scene. We produced and directed the documentary film 'Thereabouts Colombia' with the Morton brothers and an award-winning short film about the Colombian Grand Tour rider Esteban Chaves. We are currently working on a new cycling campaign with the Colombian Ministry of Tourism.

Pitching a World-Class Cycling Adventure to Bicycling Magazine

In 2017, we collaborated with intrepid journalist Aaron Gulley on one of our most important cycling projects in Colombia - a feature article in Bicycling Magazine, aimed at showcasing Colombia as an emerging travel destination for adventurous cyclists.

WhereNext founder Gregg Bleakney, who first visited Colombia in 2007 during a two-year Alaska to Patagonia bikepacking expedition, had seen firsthand the enormous potential that the country had as a cycling destination and was keen to put it on the map.

The dream was to get Aaron down to Colombia and support him on an epic bike adventure up and down the dramatic Andean peaks and passes that make this country such a cycling mecca. Colombia breeds tough riders; thankfully, those same riders finally helped us get this article commissioned. As a new generation of young cyclists, forged in the high-altitude air of Eastern Andes, came to increasing prominence in the European tour scene, suddenly editors were sitting up and taking notice of Colombia's potential. After several years of pitching to editors from multiple outdoor lifestyle magazines, Aaron presented the project to Bicycling Magazine and was on his way to Colombia.

Riding through the stunning high-altitude Andean paramos of Colombia.

Photography, Planning, and Logistics in Colombia

Aaron was assigned to write the article, Gregg was on board as the photographer, and our storytelling agency was in charge of logistics and planning. Julian Manrique, our Head of Video and office cycling legend, would also accompany Aaron and Gregg as fixer, driver, and riding companion.

Biking in Bogota With the Mayor

Our adventure began in Bogota, the capital city of Colombia and the home base for our storytelling agency. We arranged for Aaron to go out biking with the city's then-mayor, Enrique Penalosa. The mayor took Aaron and Gregg out on the Sunday ciclovia, a weekly event that sees hundreds of kilometers of highways in the capital closed off for cyclists, runners, and dog walkers. They also visited the under-developed south of the city, where Penalosa was keen to highlight how the event reaches people from all walks of life, not just the city's more affluent residents, as part of his vision of biking as a symbol of equality and accessibility.

During Aaron's time in and around the Colombian capital, we also arranged for him to ride up the iconic Patios climb - the classic weekly climb for Bogota-based riders - with a local cycling tour operator, ride out of the eastern edge of the city to Gregg's coffee farm, Palacio del Zancudo, and to ride the chilly passes to the north of the city, where famous Colombian cyclist Nairo Quintana was born and still trains. Many of these routes were barely known outside of local circles back then. Still, today, they are established as popular training routes and adventure climbs for visiting riders, partly thanks to Aaron's article. The climb up to Gregg's farmhouse, for instance, went on to feature as the final stage in the Vuelta a Colombia 2.0, an up-and-coming UCI race that brought international cycling stars to race in Colombia for the first time.

Julian and Aaron taking a breather alongside a Chiva bus, the colorful buses that provide rural transport for a huge number of people in the rugged Colombian Andes.

These various trips gave Aaron a feel for the deeply-rooted cycling culture in Colombia, its natural diversity, and the beginnings of the answer to the question: "How does Colombia produce so many world-class riders?"

"These mountains have bred a generation of the best cyclists in the world and a local passion for riding like I've seen nowhere else, and I feel like they're forging me."

Following in the Tracks of the Morton Brothers on the World's Longest Climb

After watching our feature-length cycling documentary with the Morton brothers, 'Thereabouts 3,' Aaron has wanted to experience the epic ascent of Alto de Letras, known as the world's longest climb. We had taken Gus and Lachlan up the 'true' Alto de Letras climb, the old gravel road that ascends from the Magdalena River valley thousands of feet to the windswept heights of the Central Andes. In the documentary, the brothers had joked that the main Alto de Letras climb along paved roads was for 'posers.' Naturally, when a seasoned adventure journalist like Aaron Gulley heard that it was like a red rag to a bull, he wanted to send the true Letras pass.

And send it he did, with Julian and Cesar Grajales - a retired Colombian pro racer - in tow. It's a genuinely remarkable and punishing route, ascending thousands of feet from the tropical lowlands of the Magdalena River to the vertiginous paramo moorlands of the high Andes. Riding the old Letras pass is like experiencing a cross-section of the diversity of Colombia in one ride. It was the perfect route for Aaron to contemplate what cycling in Colombia is all about. As he put it in the article: "It's one of the most formidable and sumptuous landscapes I've ever pedaled." Cesar perhaps summed it up even more succinctly when he said: "This place makes you tough. It was never if we Colombians would be successful at cycling. It was when."

The adventure ended with a few days of cycling in Medellin, where Aaron spun up the classic urban route, the Las Palmas climb, with a Medellin-based cycling tourism operator. We had explored just a sliver of the best of Colombia's cycling culture. Still, it was more than enough for him to fall in love with the country and understand why Colombia was poised and ready to finally fulfill its destiny as a global cycling tourism destination par excellence.

Sometimes you just need someone else to do the work!

The Result: Changing the Global Perceptions of Colombia

The resulting article - "Colombia Just Might Be the Bucket-List Cycling Destination You're Looking For," - was hugely popular when it was printed in Bicycling Magazine and continues to attract hit-after-hit on their website. It led to numerous other cycling and adventure projects in Colombia for WhereNext and truly helped develop Colombia as a cycling destination for the US market.

The piece was especially effective in showing Colombia as a country where elite professional cyclists are forged and an emerging and adventurous destination for bike tourism. The country is more approachable than ever for visitors, who can ride the same roads that are training grounds for the world's top cyclists.

Alongside 'Thereabouts 3,' this project for Bicycling Magazine played a massive role in growing the Colombian bike tourism industry on an international scale. It's remarkable to think that, just four years later, our storytelling agency is completing work on a new global cycling tourism project for the Colombian Ministry of Tourism, positioning Colombia as the No. 1 emerging destination for cyclists of all levels.

Everyone seems to be a cyclist in Colombia, where the biking culture is deeply-rooted.

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Learn more about our Colombia-based Creative Studio + Film Production Company HERE.

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