San Gil, Colombia, South America

Melissa and I had a great day in Barichara today! It started out with a nice long lie, and we got up around 9:30am to have breakfast at the hotel. Technically it is called a hostel, but this is much more of a hotel than a hostel. We have a nice room with a private bathroom, there is a swimming pool, gardens all over the place, and a great breakfast that I haven’t encountered in any other hostels in South America.

We checked out of the hotel, left our bags, and went for a little walk around Barichara. We went up to the main church at the top of the hill. Supposedly this is the number one attraction in the town, but I’m not sure why. It wasn’t very impressive to look at, and they filled it with very strange modern artwork, that made it feel like less of a church and more of a gallery. It was very weird.

We walked from there up to a park that had a beautiful panoramic view of the canyons and mountains surrounding Barichara. It really was stunning. There were a couple of viewpoints where we could stop and take some pictures, and luckily for me, the road ended at Igua Nauna restaurant. We stopped in there and had a couple of drinks, and then picked up our bags and caught a bus down to San Gil.

Our bus got into San Gil around 6pm, and we were just a five minute walk to Sam’s VIP hostel. I’m very impressed with this hostel, which Melissa picked out as well. This is really good to know, because I’m starting to see what kind of places she will find when we go traveling together outside of Colombia, and she has pretty good taste. Not too expensive, but very nice.

We checked in to the hostel and found out they own a steak restaurant just down the street. We had a little walk around the main square (which Sam’s is conveniently located on), and checked out the main cathedral before getting dinner. The steak was the best meal that both Melissa and I have had on this whole trip. We both had steaks (hers was 250g, mine was 400g), I had mashed potatoes on the side, and we both had a couple of drinks, and the whole meal came to 45,000 pesos ($19). I love this country!!

We came back to the hostel after dinner and we’ve been chilling on the terrace at Sam’s. We realized at one point that I had left some stuff in Melissa’s car, which JC now had, so I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to get the stuff back before I leave for Paraguay in a few days. Luckily for us, JC and the gang were in San Gil and they drove by the hostel so I could pick up my hiking shoes and neck pillow. Two pretty important things for heading into Brazil. We also spent some time checking out flights for me going back to the States, and trying to work out when Melissa can come as well. I think we found some really cheap flights for both of us, so it’s looking really good that we’ll both be visiting the States in March.