Blogs :: Te odio. Te odio.

Te odio. Te odio.

We spent the end of December, beginning of January traveling about northern Colombia. It all started here in Bucamaranga, the capital of the departamento Santander. Lonely Planet says there is "not much to do here" and "the only real reason to stop here is to break up an overland journey". They are correct.

We spent 2 hours in the city, got chased down by a drunk homeless man yelling crazy shit while burping literally every 10 seconds, some of the loudest I have heard, and couldn't find anywhere clean or open to eat. We returned to the bus station 4 hours earlier than planned to change our tickets for San Gil, the real highlight of this state, the "adventure capital of Colombia".

Te odio. I hate you. Te odio. Those were the most common words heard from the mouth of Andrea. Weighing in at little-to-nothing and under the stated requirement, the paragliding instructors waited until the very end of the day to see if the winds would calm down enough that she wouldn't fly fly fly away. They didn't. An extra 10 pound bag of weights was rested on her lap for the flight. The hours preceding, Andrea continued to try and run away, tell me how much she hated me, say she was scared of heights, and pretend like she didn't want to go. She went. I don't like people telling me no. She enjoyed.

The views were amazing and we were quite tired by the end of the day. We went rafting that morning too, which is where the curses started flying first.

Before we even left Bogota, Andrea mentioned her fears of rafting. I had however already promised David we would float down the river. The river we signed up for however was not a float. It was a never ending roller Splash Mountain coaster ride without emergency breaks. Classified as a 4-5+, the videos when we arrived in San Gil were enough to convince both David and I we were not in shape for such a treacherous run down the Rio Suarez. We caved (and compromised) for the significantly cheaper Rio Fonce (no expensive kayak guides required). A ride everyone enjoyed without anyone hating the others after.

After sleeping the next day, we found our way to the local watering hole where we climbed up a small waterfall and swam in the pool below. A refreshing relaxing day before our night bus to Santa Marta...

sports, rafting, San Gil, Bucarramanga, locals, paragliding, Colombia