Advertisement
My last couple blogs have been long, so I´m going to try to keep this brief.
We arrived - finally! - in San Gil on Friday night. IWe checked in a hostel called Hostel Santander Aleman. It´s very nice, we have a private room and shared bath, and the owner is super nice and helpful. It was late when we got there so we didn´t do anything except grab dinner in an Italian restaurant. The next day, yesterday, we met an English couple staying in our hostel and decided to share a taxi to a natural swimming area/waterfall called El Pozo Azul. It´s just up the road from San Gil. We took a cab because we didn´t realize it was about a 20 minute walk away. Anyway, it started pouring on us as soon as we got there so we ran to a little open-air (but roofed) bar and had a couple beers until the storm passed. Then we climbed around in the waterfall and swam in the natural pool for a while. It was really nice. There are some photos in the last blog.
Matt and Rachel had heard a rumor about Damien Rice performing a benefit concert for a town up the road. They looked into it and found out it was legit so after we got back from our swimming hole, we hooked ourselves up a ride to Barichara for the show. Here´s the background on this show: Damien Rice visited Barichara a couple of weeks ago and found out that there is a serious water shortage in this town of about 9,000 people. It was experiencing a serious draught... no rain for over 3 months. People in town have to line up every day as a truck carries in bags of water. So, being the great humanitarian that he is, he decided to return and hold a benefit concert to help the town create a solution for their water shortage. As we were leaving San Gil, more rain started coming down. We asked our driver if he thought the concert might get rained out. He said "No, it never rains in Barichara. Hasn´t rained in 3 months." So we went on our merry way. By the time we got to Barichara, it was pouring. Locals kept saying "It never rains in Barichara! It never rains here!" But we were in the middle of a big storm. At first it seemed the concert might be cancelled because it was being held in an outdoor amphitheater. We waited and waited for the rain to stop but it never did. After about an hour, people started being shuffled toward a the main cathedral of the town. Someone in authority granted permission to open the doors of the church and hold the concert inside. This church had to be hundreds of years old. There were about 150 people at the show and Damien Rice put on an amazing performance. Easily one of the most memorable concerts I´ve ever been to. And the ironic thing is that the concert was to raise money for water, and it was the first rainfall the town had seen in months. It was still raining 4 hours later! Crazy and awesome experience. Great night indeed.
Otherwise, we are having a great time in San Gil. Beautiful town with extremely wonderful people. We couldn´t go rafting today because there weren´t enough people to fill a raft, so we´re hoping to go tomorrow. That´s it for now. Over and out.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.147s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 9; qc: 51; dbt: 0.1086s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Jeremy
non-member comment
Suhweet!!
Loving your blog posts! I can't believe that you got to see Damien Rice in that setting! Amazing coincidence!