San Gil

It's a 9 hour bus ride from Santa Marta to Bucaramunga, and then a further 2-3 to San Gil, which lies on the road to Bogota. They have a habit in Colombia of setting the air con to "very cold" while not giving you blankets. I'd been warned about this so had jeans, boots and a jumper on, but it was no match for the arctic blast of the AC. The other notable thing about any road travel in Colombia is that overtaking is almost compulsory, and encouraged on blind corners. Also, the double yellow lines seem to be considered as more for illustration than instruction. Still I managed to sleep most of the time and woke up just before Bucaramanga, and it was just a short wait for the connection to San Gil.



It's hard to know what to make of San Gil after being on the coast for 3 weeks. It doesn't immediately strike you as a pretty town, but then it depends on what you're comparing it to. It's not exactly Paris, but it's nice enough. There are tourist boards up all over the town which suggests they're trying hard to build this place into a destination for visitors. One side of town covers a steep hill and the streets gave me flashbacks of the uphills and downhills on the trek. As my Swiss friends from the trek, who I'm here with, said - "if they built streets on hills like this in Switzerland, we'd be fucked".



San Gil is the self styled "adventure capital of Colombia" so, aside from being an ideal location to break up a journey between Bogota and Santa Marta, there's a lot to do here to get the adrenaline going. You can do whitewater rafting, kayaking, canyoning, caving, paragliding and more. I thought the rafting was a little expensve so I opted for paragliding.

The take off was sweet...



and I'd say no part of it got the pulse going, but there was this...



...so there was a little adrenaline, although for the most part it was tranquilo.

There´s a beautiful gardens a short walk towardsthe edge of town, too, so I went for a relaxed day. There are old trees that stand majestically, with fir sweeping down. They had a kind of shabby elegance, like old women dressed up for a ball.



I was on my way to Bogota to meet up with the crew from the trek, so the nights were quiet for me ahead of a big weekend....