My apologies to the faithful blog readers who have harrassed me for not posting during the past two weeks. I have been lazy about parking myself at an internet cafe for more than a few minutes.
I finally left Villa de Leyva and arrived in San Gil, a small town further north of Bogota. San Gil is famous for outdoor activities so I figured I would spend a day or two rafting or something and then heading up to the Caribbean coast. I ended up staying there for a week, which keeps happening to me in Colombia. Here´s what I did:
1. Whitewater rafting (twice) – The first time was grade 3 rapids for one hour, $12. The activities here are ridiculously cheap. I got totally hooked on rafting and signed up for another trip, this time grades 4-5, safety kayaks, the whole deal for 3 hours, $60.
2. Rock climbing – all afternoon, $12 including transport. Darren (travelling buddy I met in San Gil) and I watched our “instructor” climb a wall with a cast on his right arm. Nice. They didn´t have any rock climbing shoes so I climbed barefoot. Pretty exciting.
3. Paragliding – Woooooo!! So fun, and only a little bit scary. $30. I have photos, and video, but I don´t know how to post them right now. Sorry.
Wow, what else did I do for a week? I visited another colonial town for a day (Barichara, pretty and totally deserted), drank a lot of fresh tropical juice from the market, spent many hours reading Guns, Germs and Steel in the hostel hammocks and ate a bunch of Colombian food with Darren, who is as obsessed with food as I am. $1.50 at the market will get you a soup, teeny salad, lentils, yucca, rice and a suspicious beverage. Total steal!
I am now up on the Caribbean coast in Taganga, a small fishing village. I just got back last night from a six day hiking trip to Ciudad Perdida, ancient ruins nestled deep in the jungle and only accessible by foot. Much more about that to come in my next post!
