Bucuramanga Parks

I like Bucamaranga, a city nicknamed the pretty (“lindo”) because it is famous in Colombia for its parks, the first thing a local will say if you mention the city. Above was our street camp Thursday night after we visited the Bosque del Lago del Cacique (woods of the chief’s lake) park:

We drove into the city to see the Saint Pius Park which like every city park has no dedicated parking so we found a lot half a block away:  

We paid two dollars for an hour’s stop and it was worth it for the ease of visiting the park. Luckily the entrance gate roof was tall enough and we fit in one corner under the ridiculous low roof lining the lot. 

They have free WiFi in the park but you need an ID number and an address to register for it. Our cell signal using our Verizon international account worked fine for me. 

Rusty loved this park and surprised me playing with the local dogs as they chased balls. 

This place reminded me of Highland Avenue in Birmingham Alabama where there are similar city parks surrounded by apartment blocks on hills. 

Unlike in Alabama there were fried delicacies for breakfast and diced papaya in carrot juice, surprisingly refreshing and delicious. We asked the lady not to put grated cheese on ours. 

One comment mentioned cellphones and they are everywhere all the time. I am posting these pages on my iPhone mini 12 but in the car I use it for mapping not communicating. Colombians never put them down. 

After his romp in the park Rusty had to stay in the van at the Botanical City Park and he was none too pleased. The gate guard was cool about him coming in as long as he’s stayed in the car where he obviously suffered horribly. 

The garden  has, they say, 400 native species   planted on 18 acres of land in the city. 

They also collect and have stored dried and preserved samples of 3500 plants. 

They have some of the largest mango trees I’ve ever seen, too big to grow in Key West yards! 

These lobster claws are perfect drinking troughs for numerous small birds. 

The raked leaves are collected in bamboo compost bins. 

A Colombian botanist Luis Arango Restrepo persuaded the government to fund the park in 1982 and it was built by 1990 and this associated with Alexander Humboldt institute in Colombia. 

The garden is named for a Colombian botanist and priest Juan Eloy Valenzuela who was born near here in the town of Giron ( see below!) 1756. He lived to be 77 when he was the parish priest in Bucaramanga and a noted botanist and someone decided to murder him. Colombia is always over the top! 

The story is that a rumor went around the city that Father Valenzuela had secreted a treasure in his parish house, where in fact all he had was a few trunks of botanical souvenirs, preserved plants as mementos of his many expeditions to Colombia’s wilderness. 

Higinio Bréton and his brother Matias believed the rumors had broke into his home on the night of October 31 1834. They questioned the priest and stole a few valuable church plate but before they left they killed the old man over his pleas for mercy. 

The city was scandalized and put up a reward to find the priest killer. Sure enough the brothers were arrested and tried. Matias got a prison term but Higinio got the death penalty (which was abolished in 1910 in Colombia). Normally he would have been shot but for this heinous crime he was garroted. 

They say he walked with a firm step to the gallows but his face paled a little they say when he saw the chair with the iron noose they put around his neck. Slowly they tightened the screw at the back and slowly he was strangled in front of god and everybody. The city church bells rang when the priests murderer was dead. They say he asked for forgiveness from the gallows as he was strapped to the chair and that made everyone a little happier. 

They cut his head off and put it on a stake in the main square and it stayed there a year until the blonde hair and big blonde beard had fallen off the skull. 

And that is the story of the murder of Eloy Valenzuela here celebrated among nature’s beauty. Aren’t you glad I can read Spanish? 

And through the trees you can see some pretty wrecked housing. I wonder who might live there next to this oasis. 

We got interviewed for a school project asking tourists what they thought the park and what improvements would we like to see?

My first thought was that I’d like to see some information about the statue of Valenzuela which I subsequently looked up myself. 

The anxious dog? He was snoring. Notice the car parked right next to GANNET2. It’s a Latin thing because when there’s an empty parking lot, park right next to the single big van all by itself. Why? Beats me. 

We wanted to see the town near Bucaramanga recommended by the cop who pulled us over at the checkpoint.

Giron is a famous tourist attraction in the country and you can see why:

I’d better come clean and admit driving Giron was too much. The cobbles were awful shaking us fit to loose any dentures we might have had. 

The streets were narrow and the side street turns were impossibly tight in a 21 foot van.

I pride myself I can drive anywhere but not Girón. 

Clearly that was a destination we should have planned, not visited on a whim.

You can’t do it all…

Back out into the mountains we went and took on the dirt road towards El Cucoy which gets its own write up in the next post! 

After that we got back on the highway trying to reach Barichara and the campground before dark. 

Then the engine monitor light came on. Nerts! Layne pulled the manual out of the glove box so when we finally saw a place we could pull over we could see what had broken. 

It turns out it’s some minor engine control malfunction and I reset it at the campground. I’ll deal with that later. The brake light is on of course but I’m grateful for the comment that it doesn’t mean much. That backed by the dealer inspection helps us face travel thousands of feet above sea level. And past homes fenced in like prison cells. 

This is San Gil about half an hour from the campground and I’d advise you to stay away. I lost my shit here when Google Maps sent us up a dead end and I had to back down a narrow street for quarter of a mile. Not a wide one like this:

The sun was starting to set and Google kept wanting to send us back to hell but we picked our way out. 

The final stretch to Barichara was a horrid bouncy road but we arrived in a well kept little town. 

And as we closed in on the fence the sun did its thing over the mountains. 

I took this picture the next morning, Saturday. 

Rusty loves it here. He took a turn around the campsite, played with the camp dogs and then gave me a huge kiss which is his way of saying thank you. 

Home for the rest of the week. 

Bucaramanga

We got up late at the truck stop in the village of El Playon, it was nearly eight am and all the trucks had left. Layne made me tea, I walked Rusty and soon enough we were on the road to the big city of Bucaramanga 90 minutes away through the mountains. 

It turned into a long slow march up hill and down dale following lines of cars stuck behind slow moving trucks.

We stopped for a “tinto” a small plastic cup of Colombian coffee sweetened and black like a large espresso. And our roadside barista said “good morning” and was delighted to practice his English. He doesn’t see many Americans on the road as the foreigners are mostly Germans in their campers. 

And then we had our scare when the little red “brake” warning light came on. Not again! We fixed this in Panama with the application of time and money and lots of it. We came into town tight lipped and slightly worried, I can’t lie. Well I shrugged we might as well get to the dealer where they’ll laugh at us but maybe we can persuade them…faint hope. 

Prepare to have your mind blown. We drove into the RAM/Jeep/Fiat dealer expecting the worst and hoping for the best. They took the van instantly, gave us coffee and a comfortable place to sit and came back half an hour later. Remember they’ve never seen a Promaster which isn’t sold south of Mexico. 

The service adviser at Motoreste told us we were good to go. The brakes are fine and the only problem is a broken wear sensor on the left rear wheel. He smiled hugely, shook our hands as we stood there like dummies and charged us absolutely nothing at all, so they waved us out. Imagine getting that service in a US dealership on a vehicle driven through their gate. I was stunned and delighted. Layne was grumpy wishing the time spent in Panana could have ended with no issues at all. But here we are, still rolling! 

It’s tax time even for nomads and Layne was on the phone sorting out the paperwork with our mailing service so I took Rusty for an urban walk. It’s this time of year when I know that if I outlive Layne my life will spin into bureaucratic chaos. I try not to think about it. 

Layne wanted to check out the modern art museum and Rusty needed a nap. Perfect timing. 

I won’t vote you with the details as we got the privilege of seeing the works of artists strictly local in a town not known outside this country. The problem for us was the lack of context as we know nothing about the local art scene and the cultural influences on the artists and the  museum didn’t enlighten us. 

Had I a wall in a house I’d have wanted this painting below. The spheres, the shading, the expression hinted at under the vein, it all caught my eye and then my mind. No idea who the artist is, not do I care as I doubt I shall be back but this place left its mark on me. 

Bucaramanga is the physical expression of Colombia’s struggle with tourism. This country is full of the magic expressed by Garcia Marquez but they have no clue how to invite foreigners in. I find the absence of tourist infrastructure charming as it makes me feel like a pioneer but I feel bad for the people who could be living better by lives thanks to an influx of foreign money. 

Colombians are lovely most of them

And they have a gentle curiousity that is charming as we shall show you. Consider this, Bucaramanga is a city of 600,000 known for its production of footwear and clothing. 

There is no airport here, imagine that. The city is locked away in the mountains hours from Medellin and Bogotá, a provincial capital tucked out of sight and looking in on itself. 

There are no foreigners here, no one speaks English though when asked, shyly, we switch to English to help them so they can hope to participate. They know English is the language of business and tourism and the future. 

This house was built after World War One and from what we could gather it became a hotbed of intellectual rebellion and artistic expression. 

I’d like to know the gossip of this town, the provincial stories of novels written about places not otherwise noticed. Bucaramanga hasn’t made into that list yet. 

They see us come and go and walk Rusty and they come by and stare at our license plate and glance up and I say hi! And they marvel that we live in such a small space and oddly we feel accepted. 

We are t more real than the ubiquitous telephone but we are a close second for some passersby.  

Layne got some empanadas for dinner and she came back remarking how friendly everyone was and how they encouraged her to try different flavors and they waited patiently while she chose. So different from Panama we find. I met a man pushing a child in a stroller in small circles waiting for his wife. He plays in a band and has toured the US including Florida. Now he lives in Spain and goes on tour. His family lives in Bucaramanga and he comes back to visit. You never know who you’ll meet on the streets! 

You know I said no one does is English? This young mother dies, fluently. Her children thought ours was a Barbie car and they wanted to see it. 

There is a hunger to know things they don’t know. In a way it reminds me of journeys I made behind the Iron Curtain in my youth when strangers wanted to know about the world outside. 

We drove up the hill to one of the many parks that litter this hilly secluded city. We walked a little way and Rusty, exhausted by his day walking the city, laid down in the long lush grass. 

Dog walkers, lovers, families, unaccompanied teens with picnic baskets, loners with headphones, they were all there. Sadly the sunset wasn’t. 

The sky was hazy and the sun went down on a blaze of nothing. Oh well. Layne bought a skewer with meat and sausage grilled on a hibachi at the entrance gate and put the empanadas in the fridge. 

The police who guard the park 24 hours told us it was fine to park on the street round the corner just like this. I got to talking with the security guard on the street and he marveled at our life. His youngest daughter is leaving home Wednesday to go to a Poland to start a new life which makes him sad. He told us it was fine to stay and sleep well. So we did.