While the last thing that I wanted to do after our 16 hour bus ride was get in any sort of moving vehicle we didn't have much time left so we sucked it up and took a microbus to Barichara. Barichara is a small coloniel town about 45 minutes away from San Gil. Our original plan was to explore Barichara, have a nice dinner and then take a taxi back to San Gil. However, the town is very small and most of the sites were closed as was the place we intended to eat dinner so we decided to hop back in to a microbus and return to San Gil.
In San Gil we dined at El Mana along with all the other tourists in town carrying a lonely planet. After a spectacular four course dinner for about $5 each, we went in search of a place to book a trip for the following day. Since both Lisa and I have been white water rafting a number of times, we decided to try our hands at rappelling down a waterfall.
We arrived at the Juan Curi Cascades and we disappointed to realize that what goes down must first go up. After signing our lives away and learning that we could not bring cameras (and therefore I have no photo-evidence of our trip) we headed out for what was supposed to be a 30 minute hike to the rappelling site. 30 minutes was a bit optimistic considering the people in our group and it actually took about twice that long. At the top, we were given brief instructions about how to rappel down during which one woman was very distraught to learn that if she let go of the rope she would indeed fall. And then we waited, and waited, and waited until it was finally our turn to harness up and rappel down. The power of the water falling from the falls made it nearly impossible to look up and soaked me to the bone with cold water. In no time I was back on the ground and rushing off to catch a microbus back to town in hopes of being able to shower before check-out. We were quite a bit late but no one was around so we quickly showered, changed and headed back to the bus station.
The next bus was supposed to be a four hour ride to Tunja with no meal stops. Except that we stopped almost immediately after boarding the bus for about 30 minutes so the driver and others could eat and then were stuck in stop and go traffic all the way to Tunja. What made it worse was that we were in the last row of the bus ensuring that we felt every bump and turn all with the accompaniment of the toilet. This was by far our worst bus ride so far. Once we got to Tunja we managed to catch the very last car to Ville de Leyva - another well-maintained colonial town.
We spent the morning exploring the artisan's shops in Ville de Leyva and wandering aimlessly along the streets. There were a number of Clint Eastwood ala The Good, the Bad and the Ugly look-alikes wandering the streets and ponchos were by far the biggest sellers in the town. It was difficult but Lisa and I both resisted purchasing one. By 11:00 we seen just about everything there was to see so we decided to catch the 1:00 bus back to Bogota.
The bus seemed to take forever but we finally made it back to Bogota and tomorrow we head back to the states and once again I will have to work my way back in the black in terms of vacation time before I can head out on a new adventure.
P.S. I'll be adding pictures as soon as I get home.
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