San Gil is dubbed the 'adventure capital of Colombia' so I figured it was kinda going to be like Baños in Ecuador. We didn't plan to do any adventure sports but I figured since it was apparently a tourist town it would be nice. How wrong we were. It was absolutely filthy. There was vultures all over the street. The traffic was insane and it was just an unpleasant place in general. We were going to stay there a few nights but we decided on just the one and escaping the next day to another Heritage Town.
We got the bus out to Barichara in the morning and there was an extremely annoying obese Colombian man trying to talk to us the entire journey. He was just a compulsive talker. I'm all up for practising my Spanish but as soon as they start asking the usual inappropriate questions such as are you married, do you have children, where is your partner, then I'm out.
Luckily we soon arrived at the gorgeous town of Barichara where literally nothing was happening.
We walked the five minutes over to our hostel Artepolis and were extremely happy with its picturesque location... and their pet goat.
There's not much to do there but there is a walk you can do to the next town called Guane (even tinier) along the 'Camino Real' which is a road originally built by the indigenous and later used by the Spanish. It's been restored in recent years for tourism purposes so we went off to find it.
We asked a few people for directions and I felt slightly confused since they were saying a lot of 'derecho, derecho, derecho'. Derecho means right in Spanish but I'd also learnt at school in Bolivia that it meant straight. I was outraged by this possibility and dismissed it immediately as nonsense since I heard people using 'recto' which is also straight. Spaghetti O didn't believe me until the next guy said the same thing while pointing straight up the road! It is true. What a language. No wonder I'm struggling!
Here's the start of the trail in Barichara.
It's advised to do the trail from Barichara to Guane since it's more downhill in this direction. It's actually kinda hard to walk on because of the cobblestones anyway so it took us a while. Not that I paid any attention to time but let's say two hours.
We were walking along the trail enjoying the scenery and next minute this guy was crossing our path.... Eek!
When we made it to Guane there was even less going on than in Barichara but it was super cute. They even have a tiny archeological museum. This is it...
I'd read that the chicha (generic term for fermented beverage) was famous. Chicha is made of all sorts of things depending where you are. We probably drank the most in Peru which was made of purple corn. But it's all homemade so it tastes different every time. There were about five shops and restaurants in the plaza with signs saying 'hay chicha' which basically means they have chicha. Great! Easy! So after the third shop says no I figure we're never trying it. Haha.
Lucky number four said yes and we were blessed with a plastic cup of thick sweet liquid. It sat on the table and looked at us for a while but eventually we finished it. The flavour was that typical fermented flavour, but pleasant enough but the texture was probably the killer for me. Haha
While sitting there I also noticed a frog in the courtyard. It was huge! Look!
After the chicha, a beer and cuddling some kittens I found at the restaurant we got the hourly bus back to Barichara and wandered round a bit more.
I saw this in the plaza so I asked Spaghetti O to take a photo. This is such a typical Colombian scene!
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