That was a long day & Guys, I have some bad news.

Day 17 Thursday, February 15, 2018

Our last post was just before getting on the bus to take us from Tayrona to Santa Marta where we were to catch a plane to Bogotá then onto Bucaramanga and a bus to Barichara. The vegetation quickly changed from lush jungle to parched scrub. Our flight was slightly delayed out of Santa Marta but we arrived in time to catch our next flight. After grabbing some food we headed to the gate where Carolina greeted us with “Guys, our flight has been delayed”. No problem we would just get to our destination Barichara around midnight. That didn’t happen. 3 hours late, our flight took us to Bucaramanga where we boarded our van for the 3 hour journey to Barichara, arriving around 3 a.m. Delightfully comfortable rooms greeted us and it didn’t take long to crawl into bed.

Barichara is a 300+ year old town of about 10,000 that was made a national monument in 1978. We headed out to take a look around and soon found we were in a beautiful little town. Barichara is known for its whitewashed, red tile roofed buildings and steep cobblestone streets. We wandered to the edge of the town, definitely the edge, as the drop off to the river valley below goes down 1,000’s of feet. Most tourists here are Colombian so this isn’t tourist season so the town was very quiet with a few gringa tourists wandering about. This, as we found out, isn’t an easy place to get to so isn’t attracting a lot of foreigners.

Our afternoon activity was to go for a walk along the El Camino Real to the town next door Guave. The trail was originally built by indigenous people and later rebuilt by the Spanish and again by the Colombians. The trail is paved with large stones and more large stones form fences on either side. It’s hard not wonder at how long it would have taken the people to have built this trail without machinery. The trail wanders along the side of a hill through try scrub, past small farms and large cows. It looks across to the steep hills and a long way down to the river below.

After 2 hours we reached the small town square in Guave with it’s cobblestone streets and adobe buildings. The few locals we see are sitting in the shade hoping we might wander into their tiny shops. Fred managed to find the largest parrot in town to add to his collection while the rest of us sampled the local corn beer – yellow of course, and thick known as Chica. Its best attribute was probably being cold and wet. We jumped on the local bus for the ½ hour ride back to mountain to Barichara then after a quick shower headed out for dinner. The streets were pretty much deserted watched over by a variety of dogs and cats, healthy looking ones as most seem to be in Colombia.