Last Day in Barichara

Day 18 Friday, February 16, 2018

A free day today so we decided to spend it wandering around Barichara. It seems are hotel is at the low end of town so the stroll up to the square for coffee means a 5 block up hill climb on the cobblestone streets. The smell of a bakery often floats through the air when walking along Colombian streets so it didn’t take long to find coffee and pastries harder to choose amongst the abundant options. As today is Friday, more folks are coming into town for the weekend so the locals have more shops open and more of the small tuc-tucs ready to transport them around.

We found a map with various destinations listed in Spanish. We headed off to no. 9 on the map, not sure what we were looking for, Barichara is very easy to get around (other than the hills) because the streets are set up on a grid and are sometimes marked We found no. 9 that turned out to be an artisan paper-making studio with some women making the paper and others making it into various craft products. The paper is made out of a variety of plants, mostly Fique, a plant resembling Agave but also corn, pineapple and even marijuana (if you don’t like what you have written, well you know what to do). In the back of the shop is a lovely garden that grows the various plants as well as ones that are used for the natural dyes such as indigo and hibiscus.

After checking out some of the tourist shops and making another visit to the bakery to sample a couple of other options, we decided to take a trail that went across the top of the town. The temperature had climbed over 90 degrees and beat down on the rocky clay path uphill. The views down the valley were amazing. Vultures soured on the updrafts. There are a lot of vultures in Colombia. Towards the top of the hill we came across no. 11 on the map, that was a ‘biogarden’. It appeared to be a display garden of various plants that could survive in this harsh environment.

We followed a dirt road downhill that turned into Calle 8 and continued down the hill back to our hotel. Sad to leave this pretty little town, but we hit the road back to Bogotá tomorrow.

Tonite, Fred is showing his Poland travel documentary to our group, he has his productions on the lap top computer that we are traveling with and there is a large HDTV in a comfortable side room off the main entrance. Surprisingly, a number of the folks we are traveling with have been to Poland, hope they enjoy the show.