Bogota & San Gil
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We visited Bogotá for two days after Salento. It was as you would suspect, another big city. We didn’t do a whole heap while there, and also didn’t get any photos. We wandered the central city, stopping at all the market stalls selling street food, jewellery, glasses, bags, art, etc. We did a free walking tour which was interesting. Our guide took us to a square where there were all these groups of about 3-4 men all dressed nicely and chatting away. We watched them for a while whilst the guide explained to us that it’s an emerald market, and each group has a seller, a jeweller and a buyer. You occasionally see the big emerald rocks, but they’re mostly kept covered while they talk. It all looks super dodgy, but there’s actually nothing dodgy or illegal about it, just a really casual market for an expensive jewell. Apparently this market sets the price of emeralds around the world.
We then took a night bus to San Gil where we stayed for about 4 days. I probably could have stayed there longer too as there was plenty to do. It seemed like Colombias adventure city, similar to our Queenstown. But it was super cheap which was great!
We caught a 30 minute bus to Barichara where we explored for half the day. It was a very relaxed (or muy tranquillo) town and we ended up just sitting in the Central Park with an ice cream for a good while watching the birds. We also walked to the Northern end of the town to Bioparque Moncora which had native plants and fruit trees (mini mangos), and took us to a viewpoint of the valley looking towards the start/end of the Chicamocha canyon.
While in San Gil we did canyoning and a bungee jump. The canyoning also included a few zip lines and a giant swing. We abseiled down two cliffs into the base of the canyon. The canyoning wasn’t exactly as we imagined it would be since we basically just walked down a stream bed, clambering over rocks. We did get to do an 8m jump off a rock into a water hole though which was exciting.
The bungee jump did not disappoint. We ended up choosing the cheaper company with only a 70m drop vs a 140m drop. It was only about $40NZD so we thought it was too good of an opportunity to pass up. Very scary though! It goes against every instinct in the body to dive head first towards the ground. It never once felt unsafe though, we just had to get over the mental barrier. As the guy launching us off said, “don’t think, just jump”. I was just saying that over and over in my head. Definitely worth doing once I reckon! Particularly when it’s only $40.
That night we caught an overnight bus to Santa Marta on the North coast. We ALMOST made it our whole trip without missing a bus or a bus breakdown, almost haha! The bus ended up breaking down about 3 hours in to our 14 hour journey. It wouldn’t have been so bad, but the company apparently doesn’t have many buses, so we were waiting there for about 4 hours before a new bus came to pick us up (a different bus company even). We ended up getting to Santa Marta at 4pm as apposed to 10am. Not quite as bad as our stuff being stolen though. That concludes our long haul / night buses for this trip!
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