Villa de Leyva
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| Villa de Leyva Plaza Mayor |
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| El Infiernito |
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| Fossil Museum |
We spent a couple of days exploring the
town, then hiring bikes and visiting the Fossil
museum, Sol
Muisca which is a small museum showcasing the history of the indigenous
Muisca people and opposite, El
Infiernito, an archaeo-astronomical site of large phallic, upstanding
rocks, used by the Muisca for ceremonial practices and astronomy. (It’s closed
on Tuesdays – guess which day we went?!)
One really cool place is we went to
was the Terracotta House, or ‘La
Casa Terracota’ apparently the largest piece of pottery in the world, it is
a full-sized home.
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| La Casa Terracota |
San Gil
Next stop; San
Gil. The place to go for adventure sports in Colombia, this bustling little
town didn’t immediately impress us much. As soon as we got off the bus we were
accosted by a guy who looked off his face on something, begging us ‘gringos’
for money. Good luck with getting anything out of us mate.
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| San Gil zocalo |
We then spent what felt like hours trying to find something
semi-healthy for dinner, but although this may be the adventure sports capital,
the haute cuisine capital it most certainly ain’t. Colombia has some weird,
exotic, interesting fruit but seems to really lack in veggies. We were humpy,
grumpy, hangry, hungry and angry and in need of alcohol, and we were even
considering leaving the next morning. Once we had a beer we were fine of
course.
We hadn’t really given much thought about what to do in San Gil, even
though there are tons of activities. Baby D, as adventurous as ever, suggested
mountain biking. We could choose from white water rafting on 2 rivers of
different levels, paragliding, bungee jumping, rappelling (abseiling), rock
climbing, canyoning, caving, assault courses, ziplines, and I shit you not, he
wanted to do mountain biking.
So, we went white water rafting on a grade 4/5 river
instead, which is the most precarious level you can get, and could mean death. About
15 or so of us were off to the River
Suarez, about an hour out of town. Once we were there, we had a
comprehensive 20 minute safety talk which put the fear of god into us and
nearly talked a couple of us out of doing it, but soon there were 6 of us, plus
our expert captain, in a flimsy boat on this scary river, ready to set sail. A
couple of people had done it before, and they reassured the rest of us that we
were highly unlikely to capsize. Phew.
OMG what a ride it was. The adrenaline was pumping and we
were screaming as the waves poured over us and the huge rocks loomed next to
us. Our boat was the first of three throughout the 14km course and on the
second last level 5 rapids, an enormous wave surged over us and that was it, we
were in the river with the boat on top of us.
I went right under the water and felt something dragging me
down, so I was sure I was going to drown. I had completely not anticipated the wave, so of course I hadn’t taken a big breath.
Just as I was about to choke under the water, something was pulling me back up.
Baby D who had been next to me on the boat, had landed on me because the wave
had hit us from his side and overturned onto my side. It was Baby D pushing me
down, but luckily, he realised what had happened and managed to grab my helmet
and pull me back up.
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| The International Bullet |
One of the other girls had hit a rock and hurt her knee
although it looked like bad bruising rather than a fracture, and another girl
was nowhere to be seen. She was safe and sound under the boat, and we were soon
all accounted for. After we had got our breath back we were whooping and
buzzing, because we had survived a potentially very dicey situation and the
other boats hadn’t had the experience of going over. We were all actually
really pleased we had capsized because we got the biggest thrill although it
was pretty hairy at the time. Such an
awesome experience, and it only cost £35 each, or 140,000 pesos, and we got
around 30 photos and 4 videos thrown in as well – including the capsize. We
went with Colombia Rafting
Expediciones – highly recommended.
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| Zipline |
We had another day in San Gil so we booked to do a circuit
in the morning and to go paragliding in the afternoon. The circuit was an 11-activity
course, which no other tourist seemed to know about and about which we couldn’t
find anything online. The 11 activities were out in the forest and the circuit
consisted of:
·
2 x 220m ziplines
·
2 x rappelling down a cliff face and cavern,
with water pouring over us (30m and 40m height)
·
1 x boulder scrambling
·
2 x hike
·
1 x crossing a ravine on a wobbly rope bridge
·
1 x crossing a ravine on a wobbly net
·
1 x crossing a ravine on a wobbly line
·
1 x climbing an extreme ladder (40m height).
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| Got soaked abseiling this cliff |
We did it all in an hour and a half and it was bloody scary and
tiring, but great fun. It can take up to 3 hours to complete, but there were
just the two of us and we had a great guide, Anderson
(@guiaprofe) taking us round. It was a bit like extreme ‘Go Ape’ but much
cheaper. All of this cost £20 each, or 80,000 pesos.
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| Anderson and me by the zipline |
In the afternoon, we were booked to go paragliding.
There are 2 options for paragliding in San Gil; the longer, higher, more
impressive one is over Chicamocha
Canyon which costs up to 160,000 pesos each including photos, (150,000
without photos), and the other is the family-friendly 10 minute one in a place
called Curiti which was 60,000 pesos each (no photos), and overlooked rural
land with the canyon in the distance.
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| Paragliding Curiti |
The canyon option looked amazing but we needed a minimum of 3 people to do it so we had to go for Curiti. We were at an altitude of 1800m above sea level and one by one we flew for around 20 minutes, rather than the advertised 10. It was a great experience and actually quite calm and peaceful.
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| Chicamocha Canyon |
We felt really safe because we had a guide
strapped to us with 20 years’ experience, a helmet and a big airbag seat, so it
wasn’t frightening…until the guide started mucking around and spinning us which
was a blast. I was the only one to ask to be spun a few times and I regretted
it for the rest of the day. Both of us felt a bit sick after that.
We had wanted to visit Barichara,
a colonial heritage town nearby, but because we got the adventure sports buzz
and we’d been told it was similar to Villa de Leyva, we didn’t bother.
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| Paragliding |
When we
left San Gil we headed to Bucaramanga,
a biggish town which was about 3 hours away for the night, before flying to
Cartagena.
#villadeleyva #sangil #whitewaterrafting #riosuarez #guiaprofe #chicamochacanyon #curiti #paragliding #colombiaraftingexpediciones #lacasaterracota #solmuisca #elinfiernito #fossilmusuem
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