Live & Learn

Went to town of Villa de Leiva. There are no natural resources beside that town, and when Spanish conquared Colombia they left the town alone since they couldn't get anything out of it. It is now declared as a national monument, as it remained untouched since the 15 hundreds. The construction or alteration of buildings is not allowed so it's very preserved. It was alright. Geoff and Eva didn't like it that much because it's too touristic, but for me it was a nice change after all the muddy villages that we've been too. It's very neat, clean and cozy with very nice dessert places :) All the houses are very looked after, have lots of flowers and little details, and each house differs from the other one. We finally went to eat in a nice restaurant, although still "fast food" which means food that's pre cooked for a few hours, so you don't have a choice of stuff, but it's pretty good, big and cheap. It was a fine restaurant quality, and for a $1 more I couldn't wish for anything better. The hotel was also the nicest hotel we've stayed in. As a backpacker you don't have much choices as you try to save every dollar, so staying in a sh*thole with no doors to the washroom, half rooms furniture broken, bed bugs, freezing water is a normal thing already.
The next day we went to a day trip around the city. Started our day with a Gaudi like house. The whole house is made out of mud, have weird shapes of rooms and hallways, there is really no sense to the structure, and it's not yet finished, yet it's already falling apart :) We continued our journey to the land of large stone penises, but when we got there, we thought that it's not worth spending $3 on these stones, so we took a few pictures with zoom, and went on. The next destination was a monestary, that was like 15 kms away. Geoff introduced us to the idea of hitch-hiking, but every car that passed by, my arm just froze and I just wasn't able to lift it up. "Come on girls, lift that hand up" was a constant reminder, but I guess I wasn't just ready yet. 3 hours later on the blazzing sun it came up by itself :) One truck stopped, and we took a ride in it, it wasn't as scary as it looked, some people are just willing to help. There was nothing interesting in the monestary except that there were 3 very angry dogs on the way without a leash barking at us like crazy, so we learned a new trick, you have to just bend down very fast as though you're picking up a rock, and right away the tail goes between their legs and they're trying to hide somewhere very quickly. Those country/city dogs are very used to the kids throwing rocks at them, so they've learned that lesson and better be safe than sorry, they lose their pride and get out of the way. It's really cool. Now we're using it every time ! :) On the way back from the monestary (15 kms back), obviously we tried to hitch-hike again. But so many cars passed by, and none of them stopped :( So Geoff said that we need to "meditate" and imagine that we're getting a ride, and cars are stopping, so I've tried that for 5 minutes, just sitting there quietly with my eyes closed and trying to imagine that situation. When I was ready, I put that hand up, and what do you know, the first car stops ! Although when we got to our next stop, they said that we need to pay them. We argued and argued, paid them at the end, but Geoff said that it was his fault, because he didn't tell us to imagine that the ride would be for free, and we need to be precise ... ok ... next time ... We went to the fossil museum. It was pretty cool. That area was once filled with a huge lake (millions of years ago), and then plates collided creating a hole, and all the water got drained. And so in this area are so many fossils and skeletons, just 8 years ago in 2000 a huge skeleton of a dinasour was found, and it's the largest and the most preserved skeleton in the world which we saw in the museum. At first I didn't think much of it, but a day later while we were having dinner it suddenly hit me "holy sh*t it was a huge dinasour !!!" :))) After that museum we went to the ostrich farm. It was pretty cool except that I didn't understand anything of what the guide was saying about them. But at least we got to interact with them, feed them and pet them. It was quite scary to walk between them, considering that they're not that smart, double our size and kick harder than a horse! We got on the last tour of the day, and on the way back it started to get dark very quickly. It was 2 kms till the main road, no lights on the road, and every step it got darker and darker. I could really feel my sense of smell, hearing and vision improving as we were walking, which I thought was pretty cool ! When we were approaching the road, Geoff told us to concentrate on getting a ride, because at that hour of the evening, it was dangerous to walk on the main road, there are no buses or taxies, and 4 more kms left to the town. So we started to concentrate, and again, the first car that went by stopped and gave us a ride! p.s. all of these things (visualization and energy) are described in a movie "the secret", so to people who are interested, I really really recommend it.
There were 2 things that we were supposed to do around the town. 1 was to walk to near-by attractions, and the other one to go on a hike. So after travelling for a long time, I chose the attractions first so I could relax a bit for a day. But after 10 hours and 25 kms of non stop walking in the sun, I wished that I chose the extreme hike first :)
The next day was a hiking day, and we cought a 7am bus to get there. There are so many farms in that area, and I always wished to try fresh milk. I was constantly talking about it, and again, what do you know, on the way to the hike there were farmers standing with fresh milk, and we bought 2 littres of it for 25 cents. It was nice, it was still warm. Eva's stomach was hurting, but after drinking the milk it stopped. 3 kms to the actual park, and for me it was more than enough, I did my part of the hike even before starting it :) But when we got there, it was very nice. It's a cloud forest, so the clouds pass very very low, and we had breakfast while enjoying the green mountains covered with clouds passing by just a few meters away from us. The entrance fee to the hike was divided into a Colombian and a non Colombian tourists. For Colombians it was $6, and for non Colombians $ 16. That it was too much for the hike, especially with our budget of $20/day. So we told them that we don't have that much money, and if we couldn't get a better price, then unfortunately we wouldn't be able to go. So they checked us in as Colombians, nice ! The hike was very pretty and very intense. 2.5 hours straight up, I learned that I need to work on my cardio. Eva and Geoff were flying up, meanwhile I needed to make like 50 stoppes to get there. But according to the guide book, it did take me 2.5 hours to get up, so maybe I'm not in such a bad shape after all :) We didn't see any animals, which was very dissapointing, but to walk along the clouds was well worth it. We could also see how the landscape changed on the way up. First there was a rain forest, then we reached the cloud level, and couldn't see anything, since it was all white, and then it was kinda deserted with bunch of flowers, small plants and clouds underneath. It was so quite on the top, there were no people, no animals, no birds, so I could hear Eva and Geoff talking very clearly 100 meters away from me. Amazing !!! On the top of the mountain is a sacred lake. It's believed that a 3 year old boy was born in it, and that how the whole civilization started. So indians sacrifized a lot of gold and threw it into the lake. Years later, there were a lot of attempts to try to get the gold out, companies invested 4 million dollars to get the gold out, but only found $20,000 of it. Some even tried to drain the lake, 100 of years and 10s of attemps later, the government prohibited further extortions of the lake, and now it's left in peace. The minute we got to the top it started raining, and with 5 degree weather it was pretty cold ! We thought that the way down would be so much easier, man were we wrong ! With the rain, now all the ground became mud, and we involuntary started practicing a new sports named mud sliding. The shoes although made for tracking didn't help at all, we fell numerous times going down, and after hours of being frozen, wet, dirty, bruised and scratched, we realized that we are late for the last bus to town, and that we have half an hour to walk 3 kms till the road. Almost running back, we barely made it, the bus was just passing by! As we've constantly heard that Colombia is dangerous, we don't really feel it, and definitely didn't feel it on the bus, when parents were putting their 3-4 year old kids on the bus with no supervision, a bunch of kids that age are going to the school/kindergarden all by themselves.
Next morning we left to another town Iza to relax in hot springs. The town with population of 2000 is really cute, but the problem is that it's not touristic, and a few hotels that are there charge a rediculous rate. We even thought to camp, but were not allowed since we didn't have a tent, and thank god for that, because in that region the difference between day and night temperature is huge! Eva took the initiative into her own hands and went from house to house to ask if somebody will host us. After a short time we found an owner who was willing to rent us a room in their house for a resonable rate. We changed and went to hot springs. The village is really cool because there is no separation between the houses and the farms, they all mixed together, and to see donkeys/horses/sheeps on the road is not uncommon. In the hot springs we were bathing along the locals, and giving each other mud massages and facials :) All the locals in these towns are not used to tourists, and simple questions with a 5 second answers usually lead to long and deep conversations :) not to mention that whenever we go there are people who just stear at us for hours. And if somebody of us is lost, we can always ask the first person on the street where our friend is, and the answer is almost 100% guaranteed :) In the evening we noticed that the light doesn't come on. Yep, there is a power outage again ! Yet nobody seems to be concerned about it. Everybody's happy, got their candles out, nobody knows what happened, what time it will be on again, or if it will be on at all. It's a bit inconvinient, but we love it, it adds something to the experience! On the main square of the town, the local tradition is to make home made desserts. There are stands of endless choices of various cakes with all the sellers trying to shove the desserts in us so we could taste them. And even without buying anything we were already full from all the samples. But they were so delicious that we found any excuse to go back and buy more and more until I became completely sick! Not a good feeling at all, but everybody seems to take care of me. People that I don't even know offering me pills and teas and giving me suggestions on how to get better!
We were supposed to leave, but after a talk with the locals discovered that there is a town nearby that has a nice hike to the lost city, and also the town (Mongui) is considered to be the most beautiful town in the province, and yes it was! It also makes footballs, and during FIFA matches, they export 100,000 footballs, and it seems like that's all that the stores sell. The town again is very clean, nice, and friendly, but cold ! Days and days later and our cloths are still wet and dirty, with no laundry service we don't have a choice but to wear them ... oh well ... asked some couple on the street where to find cheap hotel, and they ended up helping us for an hour, walking around, and calling their friends for help with accomodations. It took us a while to find a place to stay (roughly 2.5 hours). In the process found a guide to take us to the lost city, and he too ended up walking with us for 2 hours trying to find a hotel, and helping us buy food for the next day. The room had 5 beds, but we got all the blankets that we could get from the other beds that when we went to sleep we couldn't breath under the load :) but it was freezing so we didn't have much choice. I decided not to go for the hike because I was still feeling weak. So I spend the day sleeping for 12 hours for a change, and went to walk in the town by myself. It was nice, since I had to talk spanish without Geoff's of Eva's help, and I got by just fine ! :) When we were getting ready to leave, Geoff suddenly announced that he feels bad energy that we try to save money and that we negotiate too much with people, and that's not his theory on life, so it's time for him to leave. hm ... ok then ...
Next destination San Gil - the extreme sports town. Got on the bus, and the only seat for me was beside the driver, sqeezed between him and another person. It was nice. I tried talking with them with my broken spanish, but they were very eager to listen and help me out. They were all very worried about my well being, and kinda everything I needed was provided with. A guys winter jacket to warm me up, a/c was changed to heater, music was turned down, I got some space to sleep, and when we got into San Gil, they dropped us off instead of a terminal, in a hotel zone. And in the middle of the night with our bags, it was a huge help ! We just went to the first hotel, and it was sooo cheap, $8 for night, and it was quite descent. But in the morning we decided to find a hostel because it's such a touristic place, so after 2 weeks of being by ourselves, we wanted some interaction with backpackers. Now we're paying double the price as in the hotel, but it's all worth it. The first night, 20 of us went to hang out in the main park, and then off to nightclub with karayoki. Everybody's extremely friendly, and it's nice to hear some English for a change. We found out that most backpackers don't travel the way we do. We go to little towns, try to find way off the beaten track, interact with local people, do local things ... but most backpackers just go to the biggest cities, and do like 5 cities in a country in like 2-3 weeks and they're off to their next destination. We like our way better, it's way too much fun, many more interesting experiences, and we get to learn the culture much much more! Oh, right now the light went off again, and somebody's running around in a mask growling and scarying people :))) poor Eva, she's just went into the shower :)))
We went rapelling today, it was pretty cool ! We went down 60 meters in the waterfall. Wasn't scary for me and Eva, but a bunch of people got freaked out. It was cool though! On the way back, we were just shown the way, climb here, cross the river there, take the rope and go down these rocks, and we went half an hour back by ourselves without a guide ... typical Colombian attitude !
Next on the agenda: caves and water rafting ...