After a morning spent walking the streets around Parque Lleras in Medellin, Anthony and I went back to our beautiful apartment, packed up, and started our day of traveling.
Our flight was again delayed around two hours, so we got to know the domestic airport in Medellin pretty well. It was a pleasant little airport, our gate overlooking a beautiful garden, but I was happy when we finally took off. We landed in Bucaramanga after one hour and caught a taxi to the bus terminal in town, where we waited another hour for our bus to leave for Barichara. As is the way of buses in Colombia, we made several stops to cram in as many people as we could. We winded our way down and up a canyon for three hours before arriving in San Gil, which was another brief stop, and then another 40 minutes to Barichara.
I was instantly in love with the town. It was already dark out, so I couldn’t see a whole lot, but the main park was so peaceful and smelled like heaven. The Church overlooking the park was, of course, beautiful as well.
We walked up the cobblestone streets where we found our house, and our hostess showed us around. We somehow ended up in a bit of a mansion, with way too many bedrooms and bathrooms, but goodness, it was stunning (and cheap! Because Colombia). The Spanish architecture of Barichara is gorgeous, and our home was open air, the ceiling giving way to sunlight here and there to shine down into little stone basins, sitting areas surrounded by plants, the showers looking up into the stars, and then there was the beautiful pool.
There was a balcony that looked down on the pool, but also provided incredible views of town and the Church.
We grabbed dinner and daiquiris at a cute little restaurant in town, and then passed out in our giant bed that smelled of lavender, listening to the sounds of nature outside.
And speaking of the sounds of nature, the birds woke me up in the most peaceful way possible the following morning, and I went up to the hammock to take it all in until Anthony woke up.
Our hostess came over to cook us breakfast and made fresh-squeezed orange juice. We then grabbed our daypack and took off for our walk down the Camino Real to Guane.
The views were hazy and cloudy, but we could still see peaks of the canyon, and we stopped frequently to listen to the hundreds of birds around us. The weather was perfect and the cobblestone path easy to follow.
After about an hour, we came across an older man walking the opposite direction. He smiled and stopped to talk to us, asking if we were going to Guane, and telling us how much longer we had to go.
One hour more, and we arrived in the picturesque tiny pueblo. We walked down the street to the park, and sat down to eat some ice cream.
We thought we might go to the museum in town and then catch the bus that runs every half hour back to Barichara. But then learned the museum is closed on Wednesdays (when we were there), and that there was a landslide the night before that was blocking buses from going between the two towns.
Anthony went into the office of transportation and said we needed to go to Barichara, and the lady working said “Not today.” Oh.
Fortunately, we found a tuk tuk driver who said he could get us close, and then we could walk the rest of the short distance. Once we got there, though, the road had been cleared enough to let us get all the way through.
The rest of the day was spent walking around beautiful Barichara, swimming at our amazing house, and eating fresh, delicious meals at a mostly vegetarian restaurant in town.
The next day, we woke up to fog coming down over the walls. We figured it would clear up, though, and we caught an early bus to San Gil for our paragliding tour in the Chicamocha canyon.
We joined eight other people in a van to drive up to the top of the canyon. Unfortunately, the van couldn’t get up the last stretch of muddy road, so we had to get out and climb. I’m not sure if we missed the road we were supposed to take or what, but we ended up having to climb the edge the cliff to get all the way up. It was still cloudy and rainy, and I was skeptical that we were going to be able to fly.
But once the guides arrived, they said they thought it’d clear up enough in another hour, so we all hung out and took in the views.
Before we knew it, the guide was calling me over. I was the first one to go. Nerves kicked in, and I stood there shaking a bit as they got me all geared up. They typically have a bilingual guide on tours, but they were without him today. My guide knew enough English to tell me to “Run, run!” and then we were in the air, flying.
I sat back, put my arms back through the straps, and relaxed as we climbed higher and higher in the air.
Aside from the extreme height, he took things easy at first, just gliding around, offering me views of both sides of the canyons. After a few minutes, four more sets were in the air with us, but we stayed above them.
After around 20 minutes, he started doing acrobatics, asking “Es okay?” after the first one. I said “Si!” and the next five minutes were spent flipping around, doing loop-de-loops, while I screamed and laughed.
Then it was time to land. We were still high up and it took a few attempts of him swooping across the launch point before we were able to come down enough. I walked back to Anthony, feeling absolutely elated.
A few minutes later, he was the last one to take off.
His whole group disappeared from view for the majority of the time, but eventually, the others came back one at a time. I still didn’t see Anthony though. After around 40 minutes, I caught site of him, but they were low. They kept trying to increase their altitude to land back at the launch site, but it just wasn’t working.
Eventually, the lead guide came over to tell us that Anthony was going to have to land somewhere else, and that we would all leave now, and Anthony would ride back with the other guides and meet back up with me in San Gil. I was not a fan of this plan because Anthony didn’t have his phone on him, and it sounded like a nightmare trying to find him when I couldn’t communicate with him.
One of the other guys on the tour helped translate what the guides were saying to me, and told me that I could stay and wait if I wanted while the rest of them went back to town. I said that was fine, so there I was, sitting on the top of a canyon in the hot sun, with some paraglide guides who couldn’t speak any English, not knowing when or where we’d be finding Anthony.
Fortunately, they were all very nice and professional, and I never once felt like I was in any danger. Which is saying something, since I basically live with a constant feeling of being in danger. One of the guides knew enough English to reassure me “Es normal. He’s fine.”
Soon enough they were packing up their stuff, and I understood enough that Anthony had landed at some park and we were going to go get him. So I climbed into the van with them, and used a combination of my very basic Spanish and Google Translate to figure out that we were going to a park about 10 minutes away to pick him up.
The van then climbed up a dirt path to another launch site, but Anthony wasn’t there. So we went to the park parking lot, and there he was. He climbed onto the van and said “Hi baby”, and then off we went, jamming out to Spanish hip hop music with our guides, all the way back to San Gil.
From there, we caught another bus to Barichara, and we took a swim, walked up to a viewpoint for one last look around before it got dark, and then went and got a fancy meal for our last night in Barichara.
I would love to return to this heaven someday.