The Vagrant Gypsy Life

Day 274 Thu 2/6

Woke up early to go for a walk around Bogota. Also visited the ATM to replenish diminishing funds. Got a bus to Tunja in pouring rain from Portal del Norte. 2 hours to Tunja and a collectivo to Villa. Pretty village, but hard walk to get to the lovely hostel, Renacer guesthouse. Chat with Sage, a Californian, after dinner.

Day 275 Fri 3/6

Spent most of the day on a hike, with 4 other folks in the hostel, to two waterfalls – El Angel and Hayal? After 6 hours of mostly easy hiking, we were back at the hostel. The taxi came out to be cheap for the 5 of us. Dinner was a bit expensive at one of the best restaurants in town – Antique. I had a couple of glasses of wine, my first in about 3 months!

Day 276 Sat 4/6

Headed to the market in the morning. Thanks to Sage, who informed me about the existence of a French bakery in town, I had the opportunity to taste chocolate brownie to die for and a couple of other goodies. Headed off to El Infiernito & El fosil with Mark, a Londoner and Tillman, from Frankfurt (Frankfurter? 🙂 ). Infiernito was nice, but el fosil was a waste of time and money!

Most of the people I had met the last couple of days left. However, folks from Bogota arrived to join me and Tillman in the pleasnt 8 person dorm. The dorm had a beautiful view!

While preparing dinner at the hostel, met an extremely friendly Colombian civil engg couple, Fernando & Carolina. They were enjoying their 3 day weekend and were on their way to visit Carolina’s parents. They were working in Medellin, but Carolina got a new project in Bogota and was headed there after their holidays.

Day 277 Sun 5/6

Starting to fall into a routine here – Frnech bakery in the mornign after breakfast!

Follwed by a 3.5 hours hike up a hill with Tillman to see the views of Villa and surroudings village. Met more friendly Colombians on the way down. The couple had exchanged the rigours of a Bogotan life for the more relaxing splendours of Villa. Spent the afternoon reading “Silence of the lambs”.

Tillman was off to Cucuy. I might run into him again on the lost city trek up north.

Day 278 Mon 6/6

I had thought of leaving that morning, but extended my stay. Villa in beautiful, with whitewashed houses, adorned with colourful doors and windows. The cobblestones on the streets, however, made for extremely uncomfortable walks and was the one thing I did not like about the village.

After a pleasant afternoon, ecovering from the morning spent walking on those blasted cobblestones, reading and catnapping in a hammock, I found myself all alone in the dorm. All the Colombian folks had left. I went into the common area to meet a few newcomers, a couuple of Argentine girls, Rosario and Cyntia. They were both from Buenos Aires and Cyntia is doing her PhD at U of Austin. Spent a couple of hours chatting with them and Toni, from Cataluña, before partaking a dinner of pizza.

Day 279 Tue 7/6

Spent the day hanging out with the Argentine girls. We got lost walking to Pozos Azules, local swimming holes. However, the 4 hours walk was far from unpleasant and my Spanish stood the test.

Toni and Franck, a Frenchman, joined us for a night of dinner and music at Antique. We were the only customers and the musician played for us. The girls, Franck and Toni joined in the singing and drumming. Yours truly with singing skills best left to solo pérformances in showers, took over the obligatory role of photographer.

Day 280 Wed 8/6

Toni, Franck and self went on a hike to Iguaque. We headed out eary, since we were warned it is a 6-7 hour hike. We walked really fast and made th roundtrip in 4.5 hours. The walk was through some lovely flora. We expected more fauna, but only managed to see one bird! We spent about 30 minutes at the Laguna Iguaque, located at an altitude of about 3800m.

We were driven back by Jose, the park ranger, who had some lovely bits of information to share about the flora and fauna of the park, political situation in Colombia, history of Villa, among other things. Made for a nice trip home. Dinner was pizza again with 5 other folks from the hostel.

Tags: Travel

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 26th, 2011 at 07:39 and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.