Happy 2017 blog readers!

Spent the New Year period in the tranquil town of Barichara mainly chilling, drinking beer, swimming (yippee!) and oh yes, a day risking life and limb when we went paragliding!

We were somewhat nervous about the paragliding, especially on New Year’s day; both harbouring thoughts of hung over paragliding instructors forgetting something important and smashing us into the ground from a sickening height however, once airborne, we realised that we were just a couple of drama queens and our pilot was nothing but cool, calm professionalism! A totally amazing experience. 2,500m up, floating with the birds. Very peaceful and serene – possibly one of the best New Year’s day’s ever.

Now we’re back on the back roads again – still crawling along like arthritic octogenarian sloths, still cursing and swearing our way along rough roads and up 1000m climbs but still being blown away by the awesome scenery, clouds of rainbow butterflies, stupendous trees and a zillion different kinds of birds – hadn’t realised that there could be such colour and variety.

We’ve had such great interactions with Colombians. Cowboys on their horses, little old ladies pottering along country roads, farmers leaning on gates, people giving us mandarins as it’s mandarin harvesting season and there’s mandarins everywhere; People are generally so NICE to us. Curious about where we’ve come from, where we’re going and happy to help in any way. It’s probably a good thing we are traveling so slow. We’ve plenty of time to chat to passers by while we catch our breath (hope it’s not heart failure) on the climbs.  A bit weird cycling into some of the really small villages though – probably the first western cycle-tourists they’ve ever seen; plenty of WTF expressions on peoples faces and the whole village stopping and staring at the aliens that just teleported in.  🙂

Weather has been a bit of everything. Kind of chilly in Bogota and nice to have our down jackets which we’ve bought for the higher andes. Sun and rain, torrential thunderstorms and a lightning strike that was really bloody close, like a 100m away close! Knocked out the internet in our hostel in Villa de Leyva. Had to resort to talking to people!

Hot in San Gil and Barichara. HOT and really humid leaving Barichara. So hot we’ve had to get up at 5AM for the last couple of days!!! and cycle until about 10am then sit in the shade of a town square until 3pm then cycle for a couple of hours after that.

Heading for Medellin now so likely to be off the radar again for a few days so we’ll leave you some photos and some general impressions of Colombia so far.

Paragliding over Chichamocha gorge – Second deepest in the Americas after the Grand Canyon!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

All the town squares we saw had a big neon light display of various Christmas related things however, in Barichara there were all these neon ants on account of them being a local delicacy!  Hormigas Ants!