Trading places.

no photos of todays fun so instead, another church

It was our fellow bloggers who had led us to San Gil. As to what our next stop would be, it was a fellow hostel guest who helped us out. Catia was aheading north through Colombia as we were heading south. We told her about our adventures in Barichara and hiking to Guane and she told us that we should hit up Villa de Leyva next. Catia headed out to Barichara for the day but we still didn’t know what to do. Out of the big list of activities, the only one we wanted to do, the big rafting trip, was fully booked. And I didn’t want to try paragliding (although Adrian did) but even if we wanted to it had been cancelled the last few days for a lack of wind. We consulted the hostel’s book of suggested activities and decided to take a dip in the river at one of the natural pools. A lazy day but sometimes you need one.

Rather than head back across the street for another breakfast at the same place, we decided to mix it up. We headed down to the market in search of cheap local grub. It appeared we’d missed the breakfast menu. But we did find a stall selling shakes and fruit salad. The shakes were served in litre jugs and the fruit salad was a mound. Next door we picked up a huge ham and cheese croissant-type thing. And for less than $4 we were stuffed. We managed to waddle down to the square where we could catch the bus to the Pozo Azul.

We realized we probablly could have walked when the bus let us off just 5 minutes out of town. But after yesterday we’d done enough walking for a while. The waterfalls and natural pool were just off the highway on the riverbank at the bottom of a short road lined with a café, a bar, and some bathrooms. They were small but pretty but alas I didn’t bring my camera since I knew we’d have no place to store it while we jumped in the water. Well, jumping in the water was a bit ambitious. The water was freezing so I was content to have my feet dangling in the water. Adrian jumped right in and paddled around, manouevering around the local kids diving into the shallow water. The kids scared the crap out of me but I guessed they knew what they were doing so I just looked away and stuck my nose in a book. After three hours the sun dipped down and the bugs began furiously biting my legs so we picked up and caught the bus to the main square.

Back at the hostel, Catia had returned from Barichara a bit unimpressed. Apparently, our trade of Barichara for Villa Leyva was a little uneven, as Catia gushed that Villa Leyva was even prettier. She also told us about another little town just outside of Popyan where an indigenous market was held every Tuesday. Catia had had her camera and wallet stolen on a bus ride and had lost all her pictures, so we promised that if we stopped there to we would send her a link to our pictures. Hopefully it would help even out the trade. We chatted into the evening before I was starting to feel a little sniffly and had to call it a night.