San Gil

We have been in San Gil for four days now and are loving it. San Gil is in the Santander region of Colombia and has a population of about 50,000 people. This is our favorite city so far, muy tranquila. A nice break from the larger cities we´ve been in. This city reminds me (Krista) of Caraz, the town in Peru where I did my service during SST. One of our favorite parts of the city is the parque principal (main square). There is a large fountain in the center, a sculpture, lots of trees and green, stone paths, and plenty of benches. This is definitely the central hub of the city. Families hang out here in the evenings and it´s a great place to just sit, relax, and people watch. :) There are plenty of good places to sit and drink cafe or jugo, it´s much easier to find places, we can walk everywhere in the city, and we feel safer staying out after dark. And there is so much natural beauty here! Which brings me to some highlights....

-Parque Natural El Gallineral: It´s hard to describe this park with words. And even the pictures don´t do it justice. It is truly one of the most beautiful parks we have ever seen. Our guide book said ¨it´s like a scene set in JRR Tolkein´s Middle Earth,¨ and that´s no exageration. There were flowers that were huge and brightly colored that can only be described as ¨exotic.¨ The trees were the most amazing part. They were incredibly tall with thick trunks and you could see part of the root system above the ground. The most unique part was the hanging vine-like ¨hairs¨ that hung down from these trees. They are called barbas de viejo (old man´s beard). With sunlight shining through the hair-like vines, the forest looked absolutely magical.

-Cascadas de Juan Curi: On June 15 Krista turned 23 and we celebrated by going to a waterfall (cascada). It was about 180 meters tall. We hiked a half hour trail to reach the base of the waterfall. We swam in the small but deep pool at the bottom of the falls, played under the falls, hid in the small alcove created by the water repeatedly spraying the adjacent cliff, and spent some time reading and sunbathing on the rocks (and getting sunburned). Other things we did to celebrate Krista´s birthday were getting jugo (of course) and dessert at the nearby panaderia. We also spent some time sitting in the plaza, one of Krista´s favorite places. It was a beautiful day.

¨It´s my birthday!¨ 

-Barichara y Guane: We took a day trip to the nearby city of Barichara. From Barichara we hiked the ¨Camino Real,¨ an ancient stone-paved road built by the indigenous Guane people. It was about a two hour hike with a beautiful view of the mountains. We passed many grazing cows and goats, as well as a few trees. We also saw many fossils in the stones on the path. As you can see in the pictures, there were stone walls along much of the path. We could only wonder at how long it must have taken to stack the many rocks on top of each other. The path ended in Guane (tiny town, about 1,000 people), where we chatted a bit with some of the locals and explored the local church before taking a bus back to Barichara. We spent the rest of the day exploring Barichara, including a couple more churches and some artesan markets, before it started to rain and we took a bus back to San Gil.

Until next time,
Krista and Josh