Friday, April 26, 2013

Picturesque Colonial Villages and Paragliding

4/19

We arrived into Bucaramanga in the morning from the overnight bus and caught a bus right away to San Gil.  It was a scenic bus ride as we entered the Andes mountain range and went over a nice pass.  San Gil is a bustling little colonial style town.  Our hostel is cute and in a colonial styled house.

After settling into the hostel, we took a short bus ride and then went on a short hike up to the very impressive Juan Curi waterfall.  It was made all the more impressive by heavy rains the night before.  The waterfall is 600 feet tall divided into several gushing tiers.

4/20

In the morning we took a bus to the little colonial gem of Barichara.  The bus ride there went through scenic land scattered with farms and red-roofed buildings that reminded us of Tuscany.  Barichara is a picture perfect small colonial styled town full of white-washed buildings with red roofs.  There are lots of pink and red flowers everywhere.  The streets are all cobbled and some are fairly steep.  The doors and windows were unique and made for nice photos.

We walked around and explored the streets, visited the 4 churches, had some icecream, and some hot drinks (Elisha of course had colombian coffee, while I had a hot fruit drink) in the main plaza, and mainly just chilled.

In the afternoon, we did the 6km hike on the Camino Real (Royal Road) to the little hamlet of Guane.  The Camino Real is a small path of made of cobbled stone that was built by the indigenous Guane people along time ago.  Guane itself is a very tiny colonial style town, but much more rustic than Barichara.  We bought an alcoholic drink that some old lady was selling on the road which we drank in the square.  It was called Barata and tasted like baileys.  We were told it was made from maize and oats.    We were able to explore the town a little bit before the bus ride back to San Gil

Back in San Gil, we hit the market and bought a whole ton of fruit.  Colombia has tasty, tasty fruit, but a lot we had never tried before, so we bought some of our favorites as well as the ones we didn't know.  Before our shopping was over, we had bought: Avocate (avacado), Mangosteena (Mangosteen), Pina (pineapple), Maracuya (passion fruit type 1), Granadilla (passion fruit type 2), Curuba (passion fruit type 3), Tomate de Arbol (sweet tree tomato), Guayaba (guava), Guanabana (sour sop), Lulo, and Manga (mango)

Our hostel has a blender, so we set to work slicing up fruits to make fruit juice.  We were extremely excited to start making the juice when a big lightning and rainstorm came in.  Some of the lightning strikes were very close and one knocked out power.  We were bummed bc we were very ready to start making the juice, but luckily, the power came back on shortly thereafter.  The lightning has stopped, but 6 hours later it's still raining pretty hard.  That's a little bit of a bummer bc we were hoping to do some abseiling (rapelling down waterfalls) tomorrow, but we were told that after it rains hard, the waterfalls are rushing too much that is becomes too dangerous.  Oh well, will just have to do some abseiling with the bro in the Southwest when I go back home.

4-21
Elisha was sick today with some stomach issues, so we mostly just hung around the hostel and walked a bit around the town.  I went to mass and enjoyed some beers and icecreams down in the plaza as this seemed to be what all the locals did on a Sunday.

4-22
Today we hung out in the morning in the square where we practiced some spanish with some people.  In the afternoon we went paragliding!!!  It was very very fun!  Nothing like feeling like you are flying!

In the evening we took a bus to Bucaramanga and then an overnight bus to Medellin

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