Our Great Adventure: Barichara Day 318 02/08/2015

We'd decided to head out to visit Barichara today, about 45 minutes north west of San Gil. After a leisurely breakfast on the roof terrace we checked out, leaving our bags at the hostel and walked round the block to get the local bus. The journey there was lovely up through green rolling hills. According to Lonely Planet the village gets hordes of visitors from Bogota at the weekend so we were surprised that it was relatively quiet. We got off the bus in the main plaza, also being renovated, and headed to find somewhere for lunch. The first place we walked to was closed so we went back to Parque Principal, the square, and enjoyed coffee and croissants in the nearby bakery. We decided to go to the tourist office to get a map, only to find it closed. It started to rain as we were there so we sheltered under the roof for a short while. Barichara is a wonderful renovated 300 year old village, full of white washed single storey buildings and stone streets. It's apparently used as the set for many Spanish speaking European and American films. It's also famous for "hormiga culona", a local delicacy of fried or roasted big bottomed ants. The rain soon slowed down and we wandered back to the square to visit Catedral de la Inmaculada Concepcion and then continued up the hill to Iglesia de Santa Barbara and Parque para las Artes from where you got great views over the village and of the surrounding countryside. We wandered back along the stone streets, stopping off for fresh fruit juice, to get the bus back to San Gil. The bus was packed for most of the journey and we were lucky to have got seats (especially given how windy the road was). Back in San Gil we'd just missed a down pour which had engulfed the town for over 30 minutes. Back at the hostel we sat out on the roof top terrace for a while enjoying the slightly cooler weather. We were getting the 1910 overnight bus to Santa Marta on the Caribbean coast and decided to have an early dinner. We ate at Gringo Mike's, burger and burrito, which we thought was good pre bus journey food. Back at the hostel we sorted out our bags and got a taxi to the main bus terminal. It had started to rain again but luckily didn't seem to have too much impact on the availability of taxis. The bus station was full of westerners which surprised us given how few we've seen since we've been in Colombia (with the exception of Alastair in Bogota we've not met any other Brits since we've been here). It was good to see that everyone looked as perplexed as we did about Colombian bus times! Eventually our Brasilia bus arrived and we all boarded, leaving San Gil just after 1930. Luckily the rain and lightening had stopped by the time we set off! The bus was comfy and clean but lacked the big luxurious reclining seats that we'd had the pleasure of with Cruz del Sur. We both wondered what kind of night we'd have............