Into the mountains: San Gil — The road liss traveled

Well I’m not sure if you’d call them mountains, but definitely big rolling hills with deep valleys is how I’d best describe this part of Colombia. This was my view just outside of San Gil, Colombia’s adventure sports capital. From where I was staying on the Caribbean coast it was a ten hour night bus followed by another three hour ride to get here. I must say, I did not properly dress for the night bus, it was absolutely freezing in there. You’d think we were in the Arctic with everyone bundled up in coats and blankets, not the tropics. You couldn’t even see out the windows because they were so fogged up! Foolishly, all I had was a long sleeve shirt and a rain poncho to wrap myself in. Why they make it this cold I have no idea, but I learned my lesson the hard way!

The town of San Gil is pleasant, nothing too special about it, a pretty normal, seemingly well kept Colombian town. But within and hour or two in almost any direction there are tons of canyons, caves and waterfalls with opportunities for white water rafting, kayaking, paragliding, rappelling, bungee jumping, mountain biking, etc. So it’s definitely a tourist hotspot. The first day was definitely pool and nap day. Although I did have to wait an hour to check in, so I headed to the nice coffee shop in the mall that the guy at the front desk recommended. When I was in the mall I was busy looking at my phone trying to find the exact location of this coffee shop and I managed to walk into the fountain! The pool of water starts right at floor height, so you can literally just walk right into it! It was only a foot or two deep, but still, pretty embarrassing! Fortunately only one two people actually saw it I think (I hope).

It was funny, during the course of that afternoon I saw a girl dressed in a wonderwoman outfit and someone had randomly gave me some candy out of his bag of treats, which seemed odd, and I still didn’t put the puzzle pieces together that it was Halloween! Unlike Asia, I guess Halloween is a thing here in South America! So it was kind of fun to see all the kids walking around in their costumes later that evening. Everyone was out in the central square having a good time.

I was trying to photograph the race that was going on, but I’m not sure if that is the focal point of this photo :p

Back at the hostel I met a few people and some were going white water rafting the next day, so I signed on to that as well. The river was a supposed to have some class IV rapids and two class V’s, very solid! After the bus ride and what was possibly the longest safety briefing I have ever witnessed (seriously it’s Colombia, just chuck us in the raft and send us off!) we were finally ready to hit the whitewater – although it was definitely more like murky brown water. The water was running pretty high, so there was some good action in the rapids. I will say, our paddling was pretty sloppy and about half the time our guide would just yell “everybody down” where we’d all fall into the raft. And then he’d have us paddle from inside the raft, which is something I’d never done before. As you might have guessed, it’s not very effective! Some of the rapids were pretty gnarly though, so I think they were just being very careful to make sure nobody fell out.

So we didn’t lose anybody, however the other raft dumped four people in one of the rapids! There were two rescue kayakers along to help collect the swimmers. Three out of the four swimmers laughed about it afterwards, but one Colombian girl was definitely shooken up by the whole thing. It turns out the water was moving so quick that the trip only took a little more than an hour, but at least it was an action packed hour with very little time in between rapids – bang, bang, bang. And then we had a nice meal afterwards with roasted chicken, bread, cheese, fruit, and beer. So all in all it was a fun trip, although the ratio of time driving/preparing to actually rafting was about 4:1, so not ideal. Ehh it’s Colombia.

The next day was mostly a chill day, with a little side trip to a waterfall nearby, which was worthwhile. The following day, a guy I met rafting and we decided to do some paragliding over the Chichamocha Canyon, which is apparently one the deepest canyons in the world (according to who, I don’t know, but it did not seem like one of the deepest canyons in the world!) My friend had never done paragliding before, although I’d done it a couple times now. But I’d never been to a place where you finish at the same place you started which seemed cool. I guess the thermals in this canyon are THAT good!

Now starting and finishing at the same spot originally seems like a pretty good thing, but in actuality, for the jumpers it kind of sucks. Normally when you go paragliding it’s one guide per one client, you do your two minute safety briefing and then you run off the edge, fly, and get picked up at the bottom – there’s very little downtime. But here, because you can start and finish at the same spot, a company can bring up a ton of clients and just have them cycle in between a few guides, meaning there’s a ton of downtime waiting and waiting and waiting. I was one of the last one to go, and I was bored out of my mind by the time I finally jumped, having waited almost three hours. And it was nice of course, just floating around in the sky above the canyon, very relaxing. But I think that will be my one time paragliding for this trip…

The Teleferico crossing the canyon. Without it, it’s a loooong drive if you want to get to the other side

Next our plan was not to go back with the rest of the group, but to take the cable car across the canyon and hike our way back towards San Gil, through the canyon. This was my idea, and Raul the Salvidorean American guy I met rafting, decided he’d like to do it as well. Plus It’s always nice to have a fluent Spanish speaker around! Originally we’d hoped to hike a couple hours down into the canyon that first afternoon, so when we’d hike out the following day it would be during the early morning hours, but the paragliding took so damn long that we didn’t have time. So we stayed on top of the canyon in a little town called Los Santos and started to hike down early the next morning. Our trail was called the Camino Real, which back in the day before the highway was a much used horse and donkey track. Nowadays, not so much. At the bottom of the canyon we found the town of Jordan, which is mostly a ghost town.

The trail was a little bit more than a dirt track!

After Jordan and spending some time hiking at the bottom of the canyon it was time to ascend. It was now 10:00am and the sun was absolutely scorching and the trail was very exposed. Now Raul is a bit out of shape (Sorry Raul if you read this!), but I figured since he used to be in the army, he’d be okay. But apparently Raul hasn’t hiked more than a few miles at one time since his army days, and was struggling mightily going steep uphill in the blazing sun, he looked like heatstroke waiting to happen. I told him we should just go back to Jordan and catch a lift out, which he readily agreed, although he wanted me to keep going (which is what I wanted too!) so we parted ways. I’m a bad friend.

I was feeling surprisingly great despite the heat, and I was actually really enjoying powering through the straight uphill in the midday heat. Something about being alone in the canyon, with the sweeping views, exotic looking plants and some beautiful colorful birds had me energized and ready to pump out a nice sweat. It took me another couple of hours to get out of the canyon, and it was definitely a bitch! Thankfully the sign near the top said cold drinks and ice cream at the store on the top – but of course it was closed! Arghgh. I did find a tiny shop to get water shortly after that though. Then it was another 2.5 hours of hiking through the farmlands (which was very pleasant) to get into the nearest town. So a strenuous, but ultimately satisfying day of hiking, 13 miles in all. I was originally going to stop by a scenic colonial town nearby, but screw it, I wanted to get back to my hostel in San Gil and hop in the pool! And that’s about all I’ve got for San Gil! That was my last day there and I headed out early the next the morning to a very small village called Guadalupe.