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Published: December 22nd 2010
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"You dont want to do that? Damn girl, thats expensive. I cant afford it."
"Thats ok, it will be your christmas present"
Sweet, so paragliding in Colombia as a present from my sister. Paragliding, and other way extreme sports are the main reason people go to San Gil.
The drive there took a while, and we were sweating the whole way. Not because it was hot, but because we had a driver who I am sure aspired to be an F1 driver who was taking over turning trucks left right and centre and gave us some very invaluable gifts...about a hundred times. Paragliding wasnt as what I thought it would be, there wasnt that crazy adrenaline feeling i expected...it was more surreal and relaxing. The main attraction to this was the scenery, we flew around the most picturesque canyon I have ever seen in my 70 years of travelling every corner of the earth.
We decided to splurge and have ribs and a burger for dinner, I know...how gringo. It was amazing, and i had the pleasure of tasting it again at like 2 in the morning...I Chundered eevvverrryyywaaarrrreee! So yeah, that wasnt fun but im glad i can
include it in my blog. As a consequence, we couldnt do as many crazy things in San Gil as first planned, our time was occupied mostly from exploring a nearby river. I didnt mind this really as the River was awesome...he bathed in the river as drunk Colombians of all shapes and sizes just kinda stared. Lucky there was music playing in a nearby bar, otherwise all we would have heard was their eyes blinking. It was wierd.
The other major highlight of San Gil was visiting a nearby 180 metre waterfall. I found it quite bizarre when i found out this piece of land was privately owned, in my opinion, anything of such spectacular natural beauty should be in public hands. Nethertheless, it was beautifully kept, and in that I mean nature had been allowed to run its course without being strangled by development. As soon as we got to the waterfall, the temperature dropped at least five degrees, and I had to shout at my sister to be heard. It was an incredible experience.
Next stop, Baricharra. Baricharra is a picture perfect colonial town about 45 minutes from San Gil. We got there late so checked
into a moderately priced hotel (there are no hostels in Baricharra), and went to sleep. At breakfast the next morning we met an interesting collection of travellers from all around the world. They seemed nice, although my sister overheard a girl from Bogota complain to the owner about the type of sugar for her coffee they had on offer. I could sympathise with this, as different types of sugars have completely different flavours. The travellers recomemded that we go to a cigar factory nearby. We went straight there. It consisted of three girls in about their mid twenties rolling cigars with all manual equipment. One of them gave us a tour and showed us all the different kinds of cigars, their shapes, sizes, smells and tastes...it sounded well complicated. Knowing about cigars sounds like way too much effort to me. The highlight of this is that one of the fattest and strongest cigars was named "the churchill." Apparently he liked Colombian cigars.
That night, the positions switched; I slept soundly and Frances chundered everware. She was pretty pissed and disappointed about this as it meant she couldnt come on the walk to Guane or try the steak with ant
sauce.
I left for the walk to Guane at about seven, to try and avoid the heat. The walk was incredible, although not as incredible as Guane. As soon as I got there, it felt like someone was holding the "life" remote control and had pressed slow motion, as life seemed to crawl by there. I arrived at the main square to observe everyone stop sweeping, pretty much everyone was doing this, and stare for about ten seconds. When they remebered that white men arent necessarily ghosts, they continued. Besides that, it was like a mini Baricharra, only with much more spectacular views...again, the photos speak for themselves. I caught the bus back and went to the infamous "Color de hormiega" restaurant in Baricharra, famous for its fillet mignon with ant sauce topped with ants. I chose their signature dish. Wow orgasmic is was to have a steak that wasnt battered with a hammer and cooked on high for three hours. The bible were right, the ants did taste like a mixture of dirt and coffee beans. They were crunchy, but also had a smoky flavour. I loved em.
Cut to our abrupt stop in Bucaramunga. We had caught
the bus from San Hil headed for Santa Marta at about 7 30, the trip was to be extended by a few hours because of the floods. It ended up taking us closer to two days and we went straight to Cartagena. The driver stopped the bus at Bucaramunga and informed us all that the cops had blocked off the roads and we would have to wait until they unblock them...how long would it take? Everyone seemed to have a different opinion about that. That seems to be a characteristic of Colombians, everyone has their own opinion about things...facts seem non existent. We had met two Aussies and two Brits on the bus who we were talking about how angry everyone would have been in Australia if the bus was delayed by anything over an hour...no one seemed to even shrug when the driver informed us of the unfortunate information.
So we ended up waiting for a bit over twelve hours untill we got a partial refund and headed to the airport. Luckily we were able to catch a flight...my next talk to mum and dad pretty much consisted of "Heyyyy, yeah its great here. Remember when you said
you could help me out with that whole financial situation thing." Long story short, they loaned me the money and we got here.
Cartagena is awesome. So full of colonial History, we are staying in the coolest hostel in the middle of the old centre, which is surrounded by a wall constructed by the Spanish to keep invaders out. Its much more touristy than the other places we have been to...which has its positives and negatives. Ive met more people, but there are a whole lot more people flogging useless crap, which is annoying. The beach sucks as well. We pretty much went straight there as soon as we arrived. The "sand" was pretty much dirt, and everyone was trying to give us massages our selling us something. We decided we would rather drown in our own sweat than go to that beach again.
To the mud vulcano!!! We climed to the top of this maybe 30 metre high vulcano to a pool about seven metres squared of mud pool. It was soo awesome. Ive never been in an orgy before, probably never will, so I imagine this is the closest I will get to one. The pool
was packed and you were being touched from all sides from anonymous people. There was a guy there giving massages as well, he just kind of stroked me which was annoying. Good Day
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Caitlin Gleeson
non-member comment
ahhh jem, these stories sound amazing! such props for the ant steak, sounds just like your sort of dish (I bet your sister Harriet is super jealous). man it sounds incredible! keep up the posts! i'm off to india in a week so will hopefully be able to reciprocate with some epic tales, and probably reports of food poisoning.