The Sirens Of Colombia

I have been very very naughty and I propose to continue this behavior for at least another week. Tex Mex nachos on the square in Barichara? Sure…

I have allowed my true nature to surface and take control of my life. I like it very much. 

Well, says Layne the quartermaster, we are saving money even when we have an extravagant lunch. Oh dear, I reply, does that mean I have to put down my book and take a tuk tuk into town again? 

Rusty is learning to enjoy riding in the bouncy noisy three wheelers, especially if it means he doesn’t get left behind at the campground.

And the campground is the cause of my total abandonment of morality, and the Puritan work ethic and the need to produce, and test and push the boundaries. I am sunk in lassitude. 

It doesn’t look like much, a flat space in a dusty field at the height of dry season, parched leaves, croaking cicadas and the calls of weird and exotic birds filling the fields. And yet this place is absolutely magical. 

I sit in the shade in my Kermit chair and listen to the breeze and the birds, I read, I watch Rusty sleep and before long it’s dinner time and we gather in the kitchen with the volunteer farm workers from England and Massachusetts and we cook and play cards and I win. A perfect conclusion to an excellent day.

Tomorrow more of the same, sun and shade, breeze and birds, books and silence.  And perhaps a crossword and an exercise video. And a few chores. And so it goes at Guaimaro campground outside Barichara in Colombia. 

The native Guaimaro tree after which this place…

…is named. 

My sin is laziness. I confess to it and I apologize for it but were you here you’d understand, you’d sympathize or you’d leave in disgust. I had the excuse of momentary ill health to allow me to adopt the pose of the sloth early in the week, but the indigestion is gone and the strength has returned and the excuses for lounging around  have evaporated.

To be fair I have done my duty, helping with laundry, emptying the toilet, keeping us supplied with electricity and water, and even enjoying romantic walks with Himself. 

We went to eat lunch in a noted restaurant in Barichara called Elvia, owned by Colombia’s fifth best chef. Rafael Buitrago opened our meal with light fluffy corn cakes with tomato jam: 

We had fried meat balls, croquettes filled with a cream sauce and pieces of fried beef served in pot kept warm by smoke and embers. 

Grille langoustines served with pigs ears that tasted like crispy bacon and a gray creamy sauce made of ants. It had no strong taste and the ingredients were pulped. Local food…

We shared a main course of grilled yota, a vegetable unknown to me. It tasted like slightly sweet pasta served with beans and water cress and potato pieces topped with discs of toast. It was all designed to highlight local products. 

Layne had a margarita made with Yerba Buena a mint flavored leaf but I stuck to mineral water. It was the middle of the day and hot.  

There was a photographer at work helping the famous owner do some useful publicity thing. 

We had a plate of various chocolate flavors to sip up with local banana bread with our coffees. The whole extravaganza for two, all taxes and tips included cost about $68.  

We make the effort to visit Barichara from time to time, it’s only $3 and fifteen minutes in a tuk tuk from the campground, and it’s worth getting to know as it’s a pretty town known as a heritage city, history preserved in a place where there is no advertising allowed. 

That’s very cute but it’s hard to figure where the stores are and what they might be selling so Layne has enjoyed doing her usual exploration, locating the hole-in-the-wall bakery… 

She picks her way through the vegetable and fruit markets:

Or the hidden and unadvertised D-1 supermarket. That’s the grocery chain with the peculiar name. 

And while she stands in endless lines I walk Rusty. 

Barichara is a tourist center but for Colombians who live in the capital six hours away and spend weekends and holidays here enjoying the country. Foreigners are almost unknown though you will see a few Europeans meandering around pretending they know where they are going. Americans? None of those as they know Colombia is dangerous. 

Barichara spills down the hillside in curving asymmetrical slopes, each cobbled street like the last and takes several visits to identify landmarks. 

The town square is shriveled and parched by the lack of rain but locals bring their dogs to walk here in the afternoon. 

The traffic is mostly one way and the sidewalks though narrow and enormously high are regular and easy to walk. 

The city is spotless with no dogs or trash in the streets. Rusty loves it. 

An old Indian scooter caught my eye as it advertised  a scooter rental shop. 

Waiting for Herself to finish shopping. 

It gets dark before seven and this close to the Equator there is no summer time switch as sunrise and sunset hardly change year round. We were in eastern time but now I guess we’re on central time as the US changes.

I have no idea if Colombia can outlive its civil war past in my life time but I fear that for years to come this country will be tarred with the fearsome brush of the cocaine trade. 

Colombia itself isn’t ready for tourism not least because no one anywhere speaks any English, and that is the language of travel.  I find the place fascinating and we have decided to put in a weeks tourism before Holy Week shuts the country down on the 23rd. Our idea is to see a few sights and then we will pause again, 10,000 feet high in the mountains in a rented apartment to avoid the Easter crowds. We figured we might as well start acclimating to altitude while we wait for the national week off to wind down.  

Meanwhile I promise to get my energy back and get on with posting pictures as we spend another week in the campground, enjoying the fact, still surprising to us, that we are in South America. 

Another night in the silence and serenity of a campground cool enough at night to require a blanket, dark enough to see the stars in the sky and inexpensive enough at $15 a night to allow us to save money while we bliss out.  

This overlanding life is full of surprises.

Barichara Blues

Layne passed a bug around the campground so she was sick then I got sick now the two volunteer workers are sick and so on…Rusty is doing fine thanks for asking. 

The owners have been here 14 years and this is a great place to be sick. Joep is a stone mason and his wife Julia is an architect and the whole place is a testament to their skills and their imagination. The toilet for instance is lovely, full of surprisingly elegant details. I’ll do a post later on the campground but for the past few days I have passed a huge amount of time here admiring those details while squirting my guts out. It has been rather rough. 

I wish it were food poisoning because that would be simple but food poisoning isn’t infectious last I heard so we have to wait this thing out and slowly recover.  This is a great place to do that  and I expect I will have my energy back soon.

Rusty remains the ideal companion even when I’m sick. He never demands anything and when I’m sleeping in bed during the day he jumps up beside me and sleeps with me. I knew I was doing better when he called on me to take him for a walk in the morning, yawning loudly, but he kept it short so I wouldn’t over do it. Extraordinary dog.

I’m ready to be back at full strength and I know he’ll be happy to see it. Layne? She’s off doing taxes or laundry or worrying about Greg’s state of indigestion or something. Florence Nightingale isn’t in it. 

The Hike To Barichara

It was hotter than Hades climbing the path to the town of Barichara from the campground. Apparently the town shuts down at noon for two hours so my cunning plan put me on the bridge under the blazing sun around one o’clock, which if not the hottest hour it was close enough. 

Remarkable for one as chaotic as me, I had my walking stick, a useful memento from the hospital, a hat and I hate wearing headgear, and a thermos bottle of water which I sucked dry during the hourlong stroll through the gates of hell. I was prepared to an unusually efficient degree. 

The campground is lovely, with shade, an electrical outlet, solar heated showers and splendid views. However I was on a mission as Layne wasn’t feeling well so I had to get supplies in town.

I had one false start as my camera battery was dead but luckily I found out soon enough that I could turn back. Rusty stayed with Layne as I wanted to get on with the job and not end up walking a dog that didn’t want keep going. So he stayed behind and I’m told he was on watch waiting for me to get back. I made it with his while when I staggered back three hours later and the reunion was joyful for both of us. 

After I spotted the first sign pointing the way there were no more but I had two indicators in my favor. One was from Sue, our Canadian Land Rover fellow traveler, who said the trail psssed under the radio tower so that was the general direction. You can barely see it in the hazy light through the bushes on the right. 

And then to make it easier on myself I followed my usual practice of walking the most well used trail. Anyway I snaked across the unkempt fields under the blazing sun looking up rather apprehensively at the ridge riding vertically above me. 

The trail meandered in circles it seemed like but I figured it must go somewhere. My main preoccupation was finding some ginger ale and some toilet paper for my ailing wife who spent the night projectile vomiting (I’m told, I slept through the whole drama…) and was waiting for the hero’s return under the van air conditioner. I didn’t want to walk in a big circle and miss the town entirely. 

I clambered over dry stone walls and I will admit to being extra careful. I really don’t want a twisted ankle or a broken nose to impede a journey which requires lots of perseverance as it is. When I was younger I never worried too much about hurting myself but I guess aging really does have an effect on some of us.  

The walk wasn’t far and an early start would make temperatures much more comfortable. We’re camping at 4200 feet and it’s cool enough to require a blanket to sleep  but by the middle of the day it’s hot and dry. 

I plodded along wondering how I was going to climb the apparently impenetrable ridge in front of me but I was in the correct trail and my plodding took me uphill. 

Hugh and Due stroll to town in forty minutes being lean mean Canadian hikers. It took me an hour to get to the top and ten more minutes to amble to the outskirts of town. 

But Hugh did say there was one point where the trail goes a bit vertical and you scramble rock to rock. I guess I found it. 

Walking back to the campground especially with a loaded backpack seemed a poor use of my time so it was here I confirmed in my head I was riding a tuk tuk back and for three dollars it seemed a bargain. 

Hugh and Sue’s Land Rover is parked in the sun for a sunset view, while we were barely visible through the branches of the second tree to their right. 

Up I went and around the shoulder never quite reaching the radio tower at the top of the hill. 

The brand new cement road leading to to the campground was clearly visible through the haze. 

We were quite surprised to drive it the night we arrived. Apparently it is a project of the local council much appreciated by locals, and us too. 

Back to reality and I kept pressing on up and around the ridge. 

There was the tower, my landmark, behind me: 

I knew where I was now as I had seen this design on Sue’s Instagram post. 

I’ve seen these circles show up in pictures of Colombia and I don’t know why. In North America piling up stones is now frowned upon I believe but not here: 

I was there and awake enough to get my Panasonic G95 to take an old fashioned timer selfie. 

The goal, Colombia’s best known heritage city. 

On the way into town I came across this magnificence. I skimmed the words and I think someone is taking a land ownership dispute public. There’s a park nearby and I think some one is claiming ownership to some of that land. It was too hot to stand around unraveling the mystery so I kept going. 

The park is a lovely spot to take a break so I did. 

I found the dedication to mother quite touching. 

The park is the product of a club named for Barichara’s most famous citizen. Aquileo Parra (a last name well known in Key West by the way!) was born in the city in 1825 and learned to read and write with no formal education and went on to become a successful merchant,. He used his money to enter politics and in 1876 was elected President of Colombia, the culmination of a hard fought career. There were three candidates and Congress selected the most radical of the three to break the electoral deadlock created by the popular vote. It all went south from there. 

Parra was a Liberal and as president had two main planks in his platform. One was to provide health care (in 1876!) and the other was to get public education out of the hands of religious orders and offer a public education system free for everyone. Colombia is still powerfully Catholic by the way but these ideals were revolutionary at the time and if you look around the US today it’s not so different. His plan went over like a lead balloon with the opposition, so the shooting commenced. 

The president won the war in 1877 and his presidency closed out with a treaty with France which you may heard of regarding building a canal through the Colombian province of Panamá. Parra is the only President to come out of the region of Santander so I suppose a memorial to him is a good idea. I was surprised to find it here in this eco park. 

They’ve reused plastic bottles in the construction…

…not only of the gazebo but also the shed:

Dogs welcome on a leash. The trail is not going to work for Rusty I think. Like it or not he is growing older but he likes riding tuk tuks so we can still get him to town easily. 

Outside the park I walked past an adobe remnant. 

And then I was in town. It deserves its own set of photos which will come later as it’s quite photogenic! 

Light blue races reminded me of Key West. 

I got some ginger ale and the toilet paper and some odds and ends but shipping isn’t easy as there is no advertising allowed in this heritage city. We expect to be here a week so we’ll have time to get to know Barichara, a city in a country unknown to outsiders. Colombia is really quite surprising and I might add totally safe to travel if you haven’t figured that out already. 

Hugh and Sue posing for our campground owner just before they left for the mountain road we abandoned. 

And here’s Joep (“yoop”) bringing us our morning’s freshly baked loaf. This campground isn’t normal. 

We’ll see Hugh and Sue down the road I’m sure.

Now we are the sole overlanders here. Amazing.