San Gil, Barichara, Guane

We headed north, making our way via a treacherous 4 hour bus ride to San Gil, a fairly small town mostly popular for its location close to rafting and other outdoor activities in which we are too scared to participate.

Our hostel there required some adjustment, since for the first time we were staying in a six bed dorm room rather than a private room. It is way less convenient since you can´t really spread out or leave your things sitting out like you can in a private room.

We arrived at night, greeted by a lot of rain and not a lot to do. After we checked into our hostel we grabbed some food then went back to the hostel for the night. It was a pretty rough night after enjoying our time in Villa De Leyva so much.

The next day Bryan went rafting, while Russ, Manuel, Cecilia, and two new friends, Karin from Holland and Valerie from Salt Lake City, and I went to explore the neighboring colonial towns of Barichara and Guane.

Barichara was a lot like Villa De Leyva, but with an even heavier dose of charm. According to our guidebook, it has been used in a lot of movies. While Villa De Leyva is mostly flat within town, all of Barichara is built on a hillside facing an awesome valley with incredible views from almost everywhere. We went to two cathedrals, the one in the main plaza, which was huge and beautiful, and another one at the top of town that must have been 500 or more years old and breathtaking.

Another massive valley lies behind the town, with an ancient stone pedestrian and livestock road running down to the town of Guane. It took us about 2 hours to walk to Guane, slowed by the need to take amazing pictures at every turn. The road twisted through countless small farms, occasionally interrupted but dried creek beds filled with massive boulders. The temperature and humidity was much higher than we had experienced in the previous towns, but it felt really good to sweat and take a long walk in such a unique place.

When the road suddenly brought us to Guane, our jaws dropped. It is tiny and beautiful. The entire population of the town is only a few hundred. We were the only tourists there. We walked around the four streets that make up the town, checked out the square and cathedral, and then got our first really odd meal of the trip.





Guane is surrounded by goat farms and the two restaurants in town feature "cabro" (goat) meat as a primary menu option. Russ, Manuel, and I all ordered the cabro. It was $4.50, and included soup, rice, potatoes, a small salad, two hunks of grilled goat meat on the bone, and a pile of what Russ and I called "goat rot". The meat was pretty good, dark red and tender with a good flavor. Unfortunately it was mostly bone, only a few bites of meat on each piece. That is where the goat rot comes into play. It looks like someone took all the leftover parts of a goat, put them in a SlapChop, and then boiled them in a crock pot for awhile. We were only able to identify about 50% of the parts, including intestines, heart, and stomach. I don't want to know the rest of them. I managed to eat a couple big bites and Russ mustered up three bites. It tasted really gamey, but not entirely bad. I think the idea of it was worse than how it tasted. Manual cleaned his plate.

We caught the last bus to come through Guane and went back to San Gil very satisfied with our day. When we got back to the hostel, a girl came up to us, said "you should try this, it is a local delicacy", and poured a few dark brown round pellets into our hands. They were crunchy and salty and bitter, like some sort of weird roasted pea. Then she dropped the bombshell. Ants. Yikes. I've never wanted to brush my teeth so bad in my entire life.

What followed was another night of nothing much going on, as we prepared to leave the following morning for the larger city of Bucaramanga.

View Photos from San Gil, Barichara, and Guane