We found a DBC life raft distributor in Cartagena. Because our liferaft was over 5 years overdue for a check, we decided to bite the bullet and have that done. It is expensive, but a necessity. Originally they said it would be less than a week, but it turned out to be longer. So, since we had to wait for that before leaving Cartagena, we decided to do some inland travel. This page is a little out of place because both this posting, and the one on the Amazon, actually happened before we splashed Fortuitous. We flew to Bucaramanga, inland Colombia,and then took buses through the old colonial villages and back to Bogota. We backpacked and stayed in hotels enroute.
We did not stop in Bucaramanga (gotta love that name...sounds like something from Dr. Seuss, doesn't it?). We bussed directly to Giron, declared a national monument in 1963. It was founded in 1631. This is the view from the lovely little room we had in Giron, overlooking the town square. The only drawback to this room (and, of course we didn't know this at the time) is that church you can see in the photo above. It has the most discordant bells we have every heard. Not only that, they would ring at the oddest times, and with great frequency. They stopped sometime around 11 pm, but resumed around 5am. They would ring, pause, ring again several times, pause for even longer, then ring serveral more times...and on and on it went. They'd stop, and you'd think "Thank God!", but then they'd start again. There might be 15 minutes in between, or 30 or 3?? We couldn't figure it out. There was no pattern to the bells (several different sounds, read clangs) and no pattern to the timing. At 6am, I don't usually have a sense of humour, but you just had to laugh!!
This is the view of the square. It was really quite lovely and busy. It was fun to sit there and watch the people.
Although backpacking, we didn't exactly rough it on this leg of our inland travel...you'll need to see the page on our travels to Leticia and the Amazon to witness that. We had lunch in this lovely little restaurant. We shared some food because we were saving ourselves for dinner. Little did we know, in this town all but the fast food restaurants closed early. So, we ended up on some small bakery and had ham and cheese croissants for dinner. Who closes their restaurant early??
It was a very quaint little town, but much like all the others we'd seen in Mexico, Ecuador, Guatemala etc. So, we decided to push on. We couldn't have taken another "night of church bells" either!
The buses stop, enroute, to allow riders to take a bathroom break or pick up something to eat. The bus-stop snack bars are just a mass of colour and clutter.
There are the everpresent vendors who enter the buses flogging anything from religious icons to doughnuts!
Enroute, we passed many a fruit stand selling both fruits and juices.
Our next stop was in Barichara, another old colonial town also declared a national monument. Apparently, it was founded after a farmer saw an appariton of the virgin on some rocks in his field. They built a chapel there, and the rest is history! We looked for a little spot to enjoy a glass of wine, but couldn't find anything except this corner store. Here we sat, with our bottle of Chilean wine, and looked out at the square. It was an interesting spot.
This was our view out the doorway and onto the square.
This was a really lovely little square. There were orchids blooming in some of the trees.
All town squares are a gathering place, especially for the elderly citizens...who seem to look younger, to us, every day!!
The 18th century church was constructed of a lovely sandstone.
This is a very hilly area and the town had flagstone streets. Giron had cobblestone roads, very rough on the vehicles.
We got our exercise lugging our packs around here. At least, because of the altitude, it was much cooler here than in Cartagena. We were at 1340 metres.
This was the bed and breakfast house we stayed in, quite lovely.
From there, we moved on to Villa de Leyva. It really poured here, thankfully just after we booked into our hotel. It rained most of that night. This town is at 2140 metres and was founded in 1572. It has been a national monument since 1954 and is well preserved.
This is the doorway into our hotel.
We specifically tried to get to Villa de Leyva to attend the Saturday morning market. They are always so interesting and colourful.
There is a strong military/police presence everywhere in Colombia. I don't think we've felt any safer in any other country, including Canada!
We are in this market at 9am, and already many people are drinking beer...heck, that's worse than cruisers!! This market was interesting in that we hadn't seen many indigenous people in the other areas, or even in Cartagena. You see obvious mixes, but not people like the woman above. It reminded us a lot of the markets in Peru and Ecuador.
This was early in the morning and many of the people had been there for hours beforehand setting up their stalls. So, there were also little food stalls where people were brewing up this and that and the locals were having breakie.
Soup seems to be the mainstay for any of the three meals of the day.
Even the hats reminded us of Peru.
They are fascinating places to walk around and the colour never ceases to amaze us.
Whatever type of dried bean you need, it's there!
Blackberries anyone? They are very popular there, but they taste a bit different from the ones at home; maybe more like a combination of a raspberry and a blackberry.
These poor roosters don't know their fates!!
These two were having a bit of a scuffle...such a waste of valuable time considering what would befall them in the next day or two!! The owner came over to the basket and slapped both of them and then pulled the blindfold back over the eyes of the greyish one.
Ralph loved all the old trucks that have brought everything to the market.
They tried to sell one of the pigs to Ralph...just what we needed!
Bouganvilla grows here as well. What a lovely splash of colour!!
This was the courtyard inside our hotel, how lovely!!! At this point, we had had our fill of old colonial towns and headed back to Bogota. We lost no time there and decided, since we hadn't spent as long as we'd planned in this part of our sight seeing, we'd try to book a trip to Leticia and the Amazon. On to the next leg of our trip!
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