We took a bus to Papaquiero Piña (amazing name!), 1200 ea, and from there another to San Gil, 12,000 ea which is a little steep for the distance but the journey was through a huge canyon called Mocachica which was amazing.
Notice the boy on the bike who was hitching a tow up the hill. We went along the bottom and along and up and over the top of one side of the canyon. At the top it was lovely and green and about an hour into San Gil. We went found a hotel a couple of blocks from the square (Hotel Palacio) with a big room with a double and two single beds, baño and cable tv for 20,000, perfect! We stayed 4 nights and mostly had the hotel to ourselves. Across the road was a cheap (1000/hr) internet too.
Next day we explored the town and found the Adventure Tour place and found that we could afford to go paragliding with them, 60,000 ea. So on the 20th we went there at 1pm but as usual they are slow, at last after being joined by 3 other guys we headed to the site way up on the hills toward the Chicamocha canyon. When we arrived they strapped Carol straight into a harness and took her up but only for 5 minutes as it started to rain and the trip for all the rest had to be cancelled.
We wanted to fly so they booked us in for the next day, the 21st and this time after a few hiccups we headed out at 2pm to find a beautiful day but no wind!
We waited patiently until 5pm and the guys didn't want us to miss out so they hooked us up and flew us to the valley below. It only took 3 minutes but was great! We only had enough lift to keep us just above the trees, in NZ it would never have been allowed. Kent actually brushed through the trees on the way down. Carol was a little unsure about the beast with horns in her landing paddock! But we both loved the short flight and the tour place also returned half of our money so we were quite happy.
We found an opticians while here and organised a spare pair of glasses for Kent for 105,000 pesos (NZ$80) a real deal! Also while here one of the comidas we had the soup was chicken feet soup, it was yummy but we had to ignore the feet floating around in it.
Mexico had been ousted by the meals here in Colombia, it is still ahead in the streetfood stakes but the meals here are better and cheaper. We had the best meal of our trip here in San Gil for 8,000 each which is a little more than we usually pay but we got - entre = papaya, soup = lentil, main = Carol had ham and cheese stuffed chicken breast in a mushroom sauce with roast potatoes and banana,rice and a side salad, desert = a blamange, real full on fruit juice to drink and coffee at the end of the meal!
