I'd heard about a small town named Playa de Belén (Bethlehem Beach) in the north east of Colombia towards the Venezuelan border. The wasn't a great deal of information about it on the Internet and just by looking at a map it's hard to figure out just how long it will take or how many buses you will need to catch! Haha.
Colombia feels like the most mountainous country I've been to. The buses are just awful and it's rare to go on one that people aren't vomiting. It's that windy! Add to that the fact that most roads are literally one lane either way and you have a complete tranportation nightmare on your hands.
So we left Barichara on a mini bus back to San Gil (vulture town). Then we got a van to Bucuramanga (a mother and daughter on the bus literally threw up the entire journey). Next we got a bus up the straightest road in Colombia (the mother was on the bus and still throwing up) to a town called Aguachica. At Aguachica we took a mini van to the town of Ocaña. The road was a long winding road through the mountains. It took an hour and a half for just over 60km. Overtaking the odd truck on a blind corner and what have you (and no seatbelts of course). Once in Ocaña (after 5pm) we were informed that there were no buses to La Playa de Belén until the following morning. Greeeeeeeat.
Booking.com listed two hotels in town. The first was expensive and I walked into the second to see the woman shaking her head before I even opened my mouth. We found something dodgy down the street and after some harassment the guy agreed to 50 pesos (25 bucks) for a private room and not the original 70 he suggested.
Then dinner. Nightmare in Colombia as always. At the bank I asked a guy '¿Puedes recomendar un lugar para cenar?', his response was something along the lines of I can't speak your language. Umm ok, but I thought I was speaking Spanish. His friend laughed and then he pointed us to a 'restaurant' on the corner which turned out to be a fried chicken joint. Hmm. We ended up eating a questionable pizza elsewhere.
Best thing about this town was we left the following morning and were able to pick up a giant marshmallow from the dude.
When we finally arrived in La Playa (the beach) which by the way is at least 12 hours from a beach, it looked like this...
It was not possible to book anything on line so when I saw a sign for tourist information I thought well that's lucky. Off we go, only to be informed by a neighbour that it wasn't open since the girl running it was at university that day. Of course.
Off we went to find something ourselves. On the way we saw one of the only 'post offices' I've encountered in Colombia. I wanted to post something to my brother but noticed that I hadn't seen a post office. A quick Google search reveals that Colombia doesn't really have a postal system! Not sure how this is possible but they have this thing called 4/72 from what I've read just takes your postal items and your money and rarely delivers a thing. Haha. And there's zero post boxes in the entire country. ZERO.
We stumbled across this little B&B I think called Mamacriss just a block down from the church. It was a quirky little place unlike anything I'd seen in South America. This is it from the outside.
And here's some shots inside.
Next mission was lunch. There's about three restaurants in town but of course they don't open everyday. The Ocaña Tourism website lists all three if anyone is looking. This is apparently the most reliable. We got lunch for 9000 pesos each I think ($4.50).
After lunch we set off to be tourists. The entrance to the cemetery is in the plaza itself but it's actually quite a walk up a hill complete with the Virgin Mary and painted tyres.
The view from the top is incredible.
A bit higher up we got to the cemetery which according to the sign was famous for its 'beautiful architecture' which I'm still confused about. Cool wall though.
And this was the view down the other side.
Then we went off to visit a reserve containing lots of the strange rock formations. One the way we saw Virgin Mary on top of a rock...
After a ten minute walk we arrived at Los Estoraques, a unique natural area apparently.
Inside the park was another sign....saying it was closed due to rock falls and to enter at our own risk. Of course! And it's apparently been closed for years. Yep there's not much information on the Internet clearly. After such a headache trying to get there we weren't turning back though!
Not that much risk of falling rocks at this point at least.
We walked for a while until we found steps cut into the rocks. There was actually a sign here saying the path was closed so at that point we turned back.
We went back to town and stopped in the bakery. I saw some extremely strange coloured bread. I asked them why it looked weird and basically I was looked at like I was weird. So I purchased it and left. No idea what the deal was but everyone seemed to be purchasing it. People were leaving town with bags of it! And, no it wasn't good. It tasted like a dry cake. How do you even make bread look like this??
And here's me walking home from the bakery with the only other people in town. The army. About 50 of them complete with extremely large guns.
Later that day we wanted to go up to Los Pinos (the pines) since everyone in town had asked if we had been. There's supposed to be a good view of the town. We purchased some beers for the journey and the lady from the bed and breakfast nominated the locally intellectually handicapped boy to be our guide. Excellent. So off we go along all these trails past people's farms.
Back in town we got talking to some of the soldiers. We asked what they were doing and were told everything was 'tranquilo' in the town. They asked if I was scared and I said I wasn't until I saw them walking around with enormous guns. They said they were there for the election but some further research suggests that the North Santender region has had some troubles before. Glad we read that after we left though. I'm pleased to report we have not yet be kidnapped or murdered.
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