Leaving Bogota, we headed for the hills – literally.

Bogota is a huge city, the Uber taking us from the historic district of Candelaria drove nineteen kilometres in relatively heavy traffic to the bus station, Terminal del Norte. The bus to the little town of Ville de Leyva was surprisingly comfortable with assigned seats, plenty of legroom, air-con and phone charging points. Time is elastic here in Colombia – the bus journey was supposed to take a very precise two hours and twenty two minutes, but it was well over three hours before we reached our destination.

Strong sunshine and mountain air greeted us in Ville de Leyne, reputed to be the oldest colonial town in the country with low whitewashed buildings decorated with wooden balconies against a backdrop of brown hills.  Its claim to fame is a really enormous, cobbled plaza. The local native Indian communities used to gather there in the plaza to gaze at the heavens, a natural astronomical observatory since pre-Columban times.

We took a journey back further in time when we visited the Palaeontology Museum because Ville de Leyva also has a rich pre-human heritage. The museum recreated a very different world where giant dinosaurs roamed the land, extraordinary sea-going reptiles dominated the sea and the whole area was submerged in a shallow sea. Fossils dating back more than a hundred million years adorned the walls of many houses in the town.

After the damp coolness of Bogota we were sweating in the afternoon heat (about 24C) but many of the locals were dressed in cowboy hats, blue jeans and padded jackets. In the evening, colourful handcrafted ponchos were the clothing of choice…we weren’t temped to buy any as they wouldn’t fit into our small backpacks😁. We stayed in a family-run hostel (Hostel El Pina), great value at less than €10 a night for a room with our own wooden balcony and private bathroom.

In the coolness of the morning, we wandered around dusty roads with fields of goats, sheep, cattle and horses and also large polytunnels growing vegetables for this is agricultural country. We saw the Blue Pools(Pozos Azules)in the distance, blue because of the mineral content of copper and selenium and although not as blue as on Instagram, they were quite striking against the brown-green mountainy landscape. We clambered over barbed wire to get a closer look and after a while, we were accosted by a dodgy man looking for entrance money, Caoimhin requested he show us proof of ID which he didn’t have. A woman in the tourist office had told us that it was free to view the pools – no swimming allowed – but we had jumped over two lots of barbed wire. We turned and ran, back the way we had come, looking over our shoulders to see that he wasn’t following us.

Many of the Bus Terminals in Colombia are large modern buildings that feel like airports with rows of ticket desks, digital displays, cafes and numbered departure gates. There are many different companies with fleets of buses servicing different areas but it can be confusing to know which desk to buy the ticket for your particular destination. Some Spanish is essential as virtually no-one speaks or understands English.  It is SO easy to mispronounce the place names so even though people want to help, nobody knows where you even want to go 😲so make sure you write down the placename.

The Camino Real de Santander was on our radar before we left home. This camino is a network of stone paths, originally built by the indigenous people of the area, the Guane, to link rural villages. Winding through six remote towns & villages, across relatively untouched landscape past cactus groves, tobacco plantations and majestic mountains, it sounded just ‘our cup of tea’, a hike without the need for a guide.

We first made our way north to San Gil, known as the adventure capital of Colombia because of its extreme sports, many based around the rivers that flow both through and around the town. Walking from the bus terminal outside the town to our accommodation (Real Dreams Hostal) felt like an extreme adventure in itself. Trucks roared by in clouds of dust, buses passed within inches of us, the smell of diesel and engine oil from the garages lining the road was nauseating. In town, the footpaths were high, narrow and crowded and although there were some pedestrian crossings, cars and motorbikes didn’t stop at them. The river, Rio Fonce, with steep sides looked dirty with rubbish and very uninviting.

We left the next morning for Barichara, one of the towns on the Camino Real, and often called a filmmaker’s dream with its cobbled sloping streets, whitewashed houses with distinctive burnt orange tiles and tree and flower-filled plaza. It was declared a national monument in 1976 and we instantly loved the bustling but atmospheric feel of the place with the scent of  bougainvillea wafting around.

Creeping out of our hotel in Barichara at 6am to start our hike, we were bleary eyed and cranky after a restless night due in part to the monumental snoring of someone who wasn’t even in a room near us….he/she was across the courtyard and on a different floor. I come from a family of snorers, but this was snoring on an epic level, sounding like a mixture of cats wailing , buildings collapsing and waves crashing. We would have felt sorry for him except we were fighting the urge to throttle him. And we had splashed out on a relatively pricey hotel (Hotel Casablanca at €27 for the night including breakfast which we didn’t eat as we left so early.)

The first stage of our hike on the Camino Real from Barichara to the village of Guane, was gorgeous in soft light and birdsong, walking on a cobbled path, lined with low stone walls and with cattle grazing among the scrub, a gentle up and down walk of about 6 kms. Guane was another picture-postcard place with a central square, lots of trees, benches and sculptures and dominated by the Catholic church. After a breakfast of crispy fried eggs, sweet bread and strong black coffee, potent enough to produce palpitations, we hiked up a steep hill to begin our next leg to the town of Villenueva, past small houses with barking dogs of all shapes and sizes, who announced our presence. At the Mirador de la Virgen there were hazy views over the surrounding countryside but also a welcome breeze. Continuing uphill on dusty roads, we reached a point where we could see the welcome sight of Villanueva spread below us, about 2 kilometres away through a narrow winding path, partially through shaded wood.

Villanueva, as the name suggests, was a relatively new town and lacked the charm of the older towns of Guane and Barichara but we found accommodation in the centre of town, a cheap hotel with a friendly owner. It lacked frills and hot water, but a refreshing cool shower was just what we needed and we were the only guests so no surprise snorers. Villanueva had the usual central plaza with church and cafes and although it was well past the middle of January, the square was festooned with Christmas lights, blinking reindeers and Santa Claus. We were surprised by the number of panderias (bakeries selling breads and cakes) and also by the number of pharmacies…we wondered if there was a correlation. Half the town seemed to be having lunch in a restaurant serving the menu del dia, the usual cheap and copious amounts of food – generally soup (mainly lentil and veg) followed by a plate of rice, beans, fried vegetables and accompanied by a flattened lump of chicken or pork and a jug of juice for about €3 to €4. We joined the locals and tucked in, there was no point in saying that we didn’t want the meat, it always arrived on the plate but there was usually a friendly dog that benefitted🦮

On our second morning, our genial hotel owner was at the door at 6am to wave us off and make sure we took the right track to take us to Jordan, our next overnight stop. Walking east on red and mustard dusty roads towards the rising sun, we were accompanied by a trio of dogs for a couple of kilometres. Music blared from a small house with a couple of cattle in the field outside and a few hens pecking in the dust. In this deeply religious country,  sculptures for the stations of the Cross adorned the side of the track  to the first mirador.  The countryside gradually opened up when we reached the third mirador overlooking the Chicamocha Canyon, formed 46 million years ago.  We were wowed by the sheer majesty and the harsh beauty surrounding us.

The path from here to the small town of Jordan was all downhill but very steep. We thought that this would be easy but with heat radiating from every stone,  and without a scrap of shade or the hint of a breeze,  it was quite challenging. The surface was slippery with shale and stones and it got hotter with every step we descended until it was a baking 38C degrees on the canyon floor. We trudged on to the tiny town where workmen laying paving stones in the dense heat, were drinking Aquila beer, the same local brand that we like.  The thought of cold beer enticed us to a little restaurant with an awning where we watched a talented little girl draw on a white board and wipe away her masterpiece. The second day was only 17 kilometres, but the heat made it feel like more, much more. Our accommodation was in a small room with a fan swirling hot air all night. A Belgian couple in the hotal were also hiking the camino, the only other walkers that we met over the three days.

                The third and last stretch of our hike meant crossing the bridge over the Chicamocha river and climbing up the other steep side of the canyon. It was a mere 5.5 kms but after the day before, we were determined to climb before the heat and were on the trail by 5.30am. It was much easier that expected, it was a well-established and well-maintained track  and the only way of getting between the two towns as there are no roads. We entered  Los Santos, our final destination, after a couple of hours. Los Santos was buzzing at that early hour on a Sunday morning, all shops were open, the streets were crowded and people were hanging around, drinking coffee and beer (mainly beer).

Colombia has the feel of a modern, relatively prosperous country but in one respect, it is still in the Middle Ages. People, particularly men, drink beer instead of water, copious amounts of it at all hours of the day. Beer bottles were even lined up beside workmen, working on the roads. Most of the drinking establishments are groceries as well as bars, selling everything from deodorant to cured ham. Only bottled beer is available with no draft beer, and they often have a urinal in the corner, just a cupboard without a door. I don’t know what the women are supposed to do but I’ll let you know when the need arises.

Geography dictated that the best way to get back from Los Santos to San Gil where we had left our backpacks, was to get a bus to Mesa de Los Santos where a cablecar crossed the canyon to the other side and where we could catch a direct bus to San Gil.

The cable-car ride was amazing. Everything was clearer when seen from above, the perspective of river and rock, land and bush, houses clinging like insects in impossible places, the inter-relationship of everything.  The Chicamocha River wound it’s way  like a velvet green ribbon below us and the canyon sides looked so sheer and stratified.  We had been in that landscape, almost part of it, hiked down one side of the canyon, felt the stones and gravel move under our feet, watched lizards and snakes (just one) slither across our path, felt the heat radiating from each stone, sweated each step. We had walked along the bottom in airless heavy heat, scaled the far side of the canyon at dawn. But seeing it from above, swaying in a cable car, we were truly awestruck by the grandeur of it all.

The span from one side of the canyon to the other was too wide to go directly across so the cablecars went down one side and then climbed up the other side.

I would really recommend this hike but if hiking isn’t your thing and you ever find yourself in Colombia, take the cablecar ride from Mesa de los Santos to Parque National de Chicamocha for an amazing experience…without the sweat 🤩

The Caribbean Coast is calling us now so we have booked an overnight bus tonight to Santa Marta on the coast – supposed to be a 15 hour journey but time will tell.

Thanks for reading and until next time……