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Published: August 4th 2009
If I am honest, I was happy to be leaving Bogota. The weather was overcast and grey, the city was huge and I didn’t feel safe in La Candeleria. Three days in the capital was plenty. My next stop was San Gil, which is supposed to be the adventure capital of Colombia. Before I talk about what happened in San Gil, I missed out my previous stalking moment from my Venezuelan part of my blog. So here is the story.
The day before I was due to fly to Angel Fall, I was staying in Cuidad Bolivar. I needed to grab some drink, so I went to a shop around the corner from the hostel. In the shop there was an older man and a youngish man, the youngest guy served me. I asked the older man for a bottle of water and a bottle of Coke, paid for them both and got my change. As I went to leave, the bottle of water had a hole in the top and the water leaked over me. The younger man started making a fuss, asking me if I was ok (that’s what I thought he was saying). He was saying some
other stuff that I didn’t understand in Spanish. He asked where I was from and where I was staying etc. I thought that he said that he was local and if I needed showing about then he would be willing to. I tried to explain that I was only in town for one night and that I was leaving for Angel Falls the following day. Anyway, he wrote his number down on a piece of paper and gave it to me. Not wanting to be rude, I took it, put it in my back pocket and walked out with my drinks. I get to the doorway of my hostel and I hear someone running behind me. It was the younger of the men from the shop. He said something else in Spanish, again which I didn’t understand and then asked if he could come into my hostel. I explained, well tried to, in my best Spanish that there were no guests allowed. Maybe I said the wrong word because he tried to hold my hand. Again, in my best Spanish, I tried to explain that I liked my bread buttered on the feminine side. Think the words I used were,
‘no gay, no gay, me no gay’ I think he got the message after that, as he was walking away and I was thinking to myself that I should have got my drinks from the hostel bar, he turned around, and with his hand made the signal to call him. The following day I left for Angel Falls early in the morning. On the way to the airport though, I made sure I put his number that he had written on a piece of paper in one of the local phone boxes. A little mean I know, but if he is going to prey on unsuspecting English tourists who go to the shop for a refreshing beverage, then in the words of Urban Dictionary, tough titty.......... http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=tough+titty.
The good thing about writing this blog is that you get to look back and reflect on what you have done in the last few days and try to put it into words for people who haven’t been to the places that I have, and the ability to retell some stories which have happened. I got to Bogota bus terminal early Tuesday morning to get the bus to San Gil. They say
it is close to Bogota, but you still spend six hours getting there. I decided to be a typical back packer and go for the cheapest option. Six hours in the grand scheme of South America bus travel is easy. The most expensive bus there was 51,000COP (£17) that was for a nice coach, leg room, air condition etc. I went for the cheapest which was minibus with brakes, which was 35,000COP. Leg room was non-existent. As we left Bogota bus terminal, I was the only passenger. I thought, sweet, I laid across the back seat. I was king of the minibus for a grand total of 17 minutes until we made our first pick up, then half of Bogota got on this minibus. Air conditioning didn’t come standard on this bus. To operate it, you had to ask the guys at the front of the bus to open the windows. In Colombia, children have zero rights when it comes to public transport. If a child is sat down and someone older comes along, they have to give up the seat. Next to me, I had a woman and her son on her knee. After about 5 hours, I started
to lose all feeling below my waist from sitting in such a small space. Luckily the driver made a 10 min stop, so it gave me a chance to stretch the legs. I picked up some drink and some Fiestas (South American version of Oreos, but better). 5 hours without food or drink, as you can image, I was on ‘deaths door’. As I sat back in my seat for the final hour of the journey, I offered the child who was on his mum’s knee a Fiesta. The biscuit left my hand and went in his mouth in the flash of an eye. Guess I wasn’t alone outside ‘deaths door’ His mother started talking to me in Spanish, asking me where I was from, where I was heading etc. She explained that she was from San Gil and recommended a few places that I should visit. In the meantime her son just kept eating my biscuits, whilst I was chatting to his mum.
After being dropped off at San Gil, I had to climb the steepest hill to get to the hostel where I was staying. I actually thought about getting a taxi, but I couldn’t justify paying
for a taxi to take me 150 metres up a hill, when I had just travelled with 94 Colombians on a 12 seater minibus. Bear in mind readers that I wasn’t being lazy, I had a rucksack, lap top and sleeping back to carry.
Whilst in San Gil I went caving, paragliding, hydro speed and repelling. The activities were so cheap to do, in terms of what I would have to pay to do them in Eng land. Caving was £8 for 2 hours. Rappelling was £12, hydro boarding was £13 and paragliding was £20 for 30 minutes.
The first activity was caving. To get to the caves you had to walk through a field full of vultures’, which was a little unnerving. When in the caves, you had to squeeze through small cracks (my arse did get stuck a couple of times). Other times you had to go under water to get into other parts of the caves. I saw bats, which didn’t appreciate me flashing my head torch at them whilst they were trying to get some sleep. Then when our group got to the end of the cave where there were stalagmites and stalactites, we
were told we would have to go back the way we came as there was no other way out.
Rappelling was the next activity that was in my list. I got chatting to a couple of Dutch guys, Rob and Ron whilst on the bus to the waterfall. They were also doing the waterfall rappelling. When we got to the top of the waterfall you could go down in twos. I said to Ron and Rob that they could head down first. Ron got all the equipment on, and then he looked down from the top of the rope. He bottled it, to which he is still taking stick for. So that meant Rob and myself when down. Half way down I stopped to just admire the view. It was a brief stop as the further you went down the harder the water hit you. At one point it was like someone was throwing coins at me from above. The last 10 metres of the rappel were painful. All in all though an incredible experience, and once both Rob and I had finished, and Ron had walked back down to meet us we went swimming at the bottom of
the waterfall.
Hydro speed is going down a river with rapids with just a helmet, flippers and a foam board. The river I went down varied in depth and the strength of rapids. For 90 minutes you follow the current of the river and hope that you don’t get hurt too much when you clatter against the rocks. I was fortunate not to get to many bruises from hydro speed. I did have a couple of close encounters with big rocks which seemed to appear from nowhere. The following morning however I was stiff as a board and walking like John Wayne’s horse.
Paragliding was the last activity on the list and probably the best. For 60,000COP (£20, you got between twenty and thirty minutes up with an instructor. The odd occasion the instructor would say ‘crazy’, which meant would he head for the ground with total disregard for his life and yours. A couple of times I did see people brush the tops of trees with their feet. Unfortunately my instructor wasn’t that crazy and only did a couple of dives.
The last night in San Gil was spent getting drunk with the locals in the town
plaza. A few of the guys from hostel went down, and at one point I think there was about 15 of us, just drinking, chatting in the town square. If you needed a beer, you just went to the off licence, and the off licence even had a urinal in there for the gents. Not too sure what the ladies did. We went to the only club in town, which when we arrived we seemed to be a bit of a novelty. The club was very young though, well either that or I felt old.
Next stop for me is Villa De Leyva, which is about 5 hours away from San Gil, and an hour away from Tunja. Going to stay there for a couple of days and then head to Cali for the weekend.
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Nkem Emenike
non-member comment
Another cracker!!!
So have you just figured out how to say festival in spanish or are these fiestas called something else in different places!? ....So moral of the story!...ignore random women with small children ...they are probably looking for a free feed! PS: vultures dont give a crap about ya till you stop breathing so no worries there!x