Guatapé and Visions of Sugarplums

Enjoying a glass of vino in Plaza Mayor

22 February 2014 - Colombia is currently battling it out for the world’s most-quaint mountain town.  Barichara and Villa de Leyva are neck and neck, while Guatapé is making a late pull from behind. 

Imbibing on the steps

Villa de Leyva earns high marks for its almost laughably large plaza – but really, I admire their vision and foresight, because when can a plaza ever be too large?  That’s right – never.  It also benefits from the raucous revelry of drinking and socializing on the steps of the plaza.  Try not to fall in love with drinking wine or liters of beer on the steps of Plaza Mayor while watching the sun set behind the sleepy, green, Andean mountains.  Children run and play, old people walk arm-in-arm and weekenders from Bogota pump tunes from their portable radios, take shots of Aguardiente (the local fire water) and snap photos on their phones.  All in all, it is delightful.

The colorful buildings in Guatapé

Guatapé on the other hand, is a shockingly vibrant little town.  Each building is painted in a splash of bright colors.  Colorful trims of greens, blues, and purples, make the entire façade pop and cutesy little pictures of alpacas, Tonka trucks, mountains and boats decorate the bottoms of the buildings.  It feels as though you are walking through a play land – like a tiny, toy town has somehow come to life and you are wandering the streets. 

View from atop La Piedra

In Lance and my quest to explore every mountain town to the fullest extent – I took far too many photos, we walked the boardwalk on the lake and gorged ourselves on massive brownie sundaes.  After that we took a tuk-tuk up to La Pierdra.  This is a large monolith just outside of Guatapé that the locals somehow managed to build a set of stairs up its side.  649 steps later, you are left overlooking the sprawling Guatapé Reservoir.  Lady fingers of water dance around green forested islands that dot the lake and little inlets create smooth as glass canals.  Misty fog rolled into the distance and mighty condors soared through the air.  It was a sight to behold and so much more than I had suspected – and to think we almost bypassed this “gimmicky” tourist attraction!

The cherry on top (obligatory, cheesy pun included) was being greeted by four cheery Colombians atop the viewing tower on La Piedra.  After happily taking photos for us, they handed us cold beers and instantly befriended us.  We gladly joined in their merrymaking, guzzled Heinekens, helped them practice their English (and our Spanish) and continued the party back in Guatapé until they had to return to Medellin for the night.

Top scores for Guatapé in this round of judging.

  

 

 

Stairway up La Piedra (The Rock)

Our new Colombian friends!

 

A Fairytale Bike Ride

14 February 2014 - Once upon a time, the tres amigos came up with a wonderful idea to go on a quaint little bike ride around the countryside of Villa de Leyva.  We would leisurely admire the fincas perched on rolling hills, cruise up to a few waterfalls and take a dip, visit a few sites with fossils – really it would be a nice, splendid day.  Something for the storybooks.

Okay really, the bike ride was my idea.  I’ll take the blame.  Our cruise around the outskirts of Villa de Leyva was never just a cruise.  To start off, we rented some pretty sweet rides.  They had two sets of shocks and mountain tires that meant business – we were ready to take on the trails.

We hopped on our bikes and headed out of town.  From the get go, it was a bumpy ride – quite literally.  The streets of Villa de Leyva are cobblestoned, for lack of a better word… in reality, they are paved with quite large river rocks, that don’t exactly give you the smoothest ride. 

On top of that, we began to check each other out on our bikes and each of us was comically large for our stellar bicycles.  Looking like a bunch of clowns wheeling around on tiny bikes, we headed out of town.

The cobblestone road ended finally, but that was met with a gravel road that consisted of climbing up and down windy mountain roads for 3 hours.  On our tiny bikes that we quickly discovered only had three working gears, we huffed and puffed up and up seemingly never-ending climbs.  There would be a bend in the road, after which you would be certain that there could not be any way to go any higher, when you would round the curve and see that, in fact, there was even more mountain to climb.  This, “Ha! You’re a fool!” mountain mirage effect (as I’ve so generously coined it) continued for a good hour.  We were having a blast!

The sun beating down on our backs, sweaty sunblock dripping into our eyes, our legs aching from using bikes that would be better suited as a coat rack or hipster lawn art, we pondered how much further the waterfall could be.  We had been biking for about 2 and a half hours and figured based on the very rudimentary tourist map (those things get you every time!), the tres amigos decided that we had to be close.

The illustrious waterfall

An hour later, we arrived at the waterfall.  It was lovely.  There was water, it ran over a cliff.  We looked at it.  We ate our lunch of empanadas, looked at the time and realized we had no time to dilly-dally if we wanted to make it back to town in time to return our rental bikes.  Tires to the pavement people!

The way back was leisurely if you are inclined to use the word liberally.  We only had a third as many uphills this time and enjoyed some white-knuckle downhills that would have been a blast on a proper mountain bike.  The brakes were questionable and somehow the handgrips managed to give me bruises on my hands…but at least we weren’t pedaling uphill. That’s all that mattered.

And if you are wondering - yes, we did indeed spend the remainder of the evening lying on the beds in our hotel room in a coma.  We were full of leisure, finally.

Cobblestone Streets and Terra Cotta Rooftops

9 February 2014 – After an 11 hour bus ride from Santa Marta to Bucaramanga, we hopped in a tiny yellow cab that looked more like a go-cart than a vehicle.  Our cab driver was equally as tiny - he looked about 14 years old and still had prepubescent acne on his face.  As we were zipping down the mountain around a curve, our kid cabbie drove full speed ahead into a curb.  Unsurprisingly, our tiny car lurched and banged around as it jumped over the cement.  Instead of doing what most normal, rational drivers would do, our taxi driver quickly recovered and kept on driving as though nothing had happened.  I think it was his first day on the job and he wanted to play it cool.  We just sat in the back staring at each other, thinking what the hell?  You could hear a faint whining coming from the front tire and after a few minutes I finally asked, is everything ok?  He responded with, “Oh, you speak Spanish?  I think I might have blew out my tire.”  Yeah, I think so buddy.  He then proceeded to drive a bit further, while sticking his head out the window every now and then checking to see if everything looked okay.  Finally, I looked out the window and saw a completely blown out tire driving on its rims.  Time for a tire and cab change.

The picturesque streets of Barichara

After a quick and rather uneventful layover in Bucaramanga for the night, we caught a quick four and a half hour bus ride to the quaint mountain town Barichara.  We stumbled upon a little slice of heaven with this one.  Picturesque rolling hills with bright red clay open up to an immaculate mountain village that looks like a snapshot of another time.  Old colonial white-washed buildings with charming green trim, potted ceramic flower pots and terra cotta tiled roofs make you feel as though you are wandering around in a foregone era. 

As we meandered up and down the cobblestone streets, I bothered Lance and Jared by stopping to take picture after picture of massive old wooden doors, terraces with colorful potted plants and street after street of charming buildings.  Old men in cowboy hats and sweater vests sat in the park chatting, while a charming little old lady rolled her tiny cart of coffee and juice in thermoses back and forth, offering coffee, tea and juice to anyone that would listen.

Other than just sitting back and enjoying the sleepy vibe of Barichara, we also made quite a ritual of visiting one of the many panaderias (bakeries) in town each morning.  Their delirious scent of fresh baked bread wafts through the streets making you defenseless in saying no to a warm queso roll and a cup of café con leche. 

Catedral de la Immaculada Concepcion, and 18th Century
Church with 4 ft. thick sandstone walls

 

Massive, ancient wooden doors

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Can't get enough of my café con leche