The Finca of Santander Valley #21N #ParoNacional21N

Of course you know that many countries in South America have recently gone of the rails. Venezuela has become a failed state. Ecuador, Haiti to Honduras are suffering from demonstrations. Chile was once a model of stability but has declared a state of emergency. Most recently, Bolivia* ousted their leader.

*(A quick diversion on Bolivia. The Western news I follow is calling it a coup, another example of Western Powers ousting a popular leader. If I were still in North America, I would have never questioned that take considering how many times that has been exactly the case. However, having heard from several actual Bolivians, they HATED Morales and considered him a murderous dictator. I’m not informed enough to say which take is right, but it’s interesting to note the discrepancy.)

Bogota Protests

Unrest

In Colombia, there was a worry that things could go bad as well. A coalition of left-wing leaders including FARC, former Mayors, the three largest unions, farmers, indigenous groups, environmentalists, students, artists, and even Bogota’s two biggest football bravas (hooligans) have gathered, promising millions of marchers in the streets across all the big cities.

What brings all these disparate groups together? Well since Ivan Duque was elected there have been 188 deaths of human rights activists, community leaders, and demobilized FARC combatants. Recently, an entire camp of “dissidents” was killed but later it was revealed that 8 of the 19 were children. The army goes so far as to kill civilians then dress them in camo. Simply put, a lot of shit has been going down and people don’t want to take it anymore.

The marches were considered the biggest threat to Duque since taking the presidency a little over a year ago. Colombia’s government did not take them lightly;  closing the land and water crossings, expelling 25 Venezuelans for allegedly fomenting violence, imposing curfews, and sent 8,000 soldiers to the big cities to augment the police. I’m writing this Sunday night, 3 days later, and there are still thousands of demonstrators in Bogota. (To learn more, follow the twitter hashtags in the title: #21N #ParoNacional21N).

The Finca

The Finca

With all this in mind, Zulia and I left Medellin and went to a farm in the area of Bucaramanga. We stayed with the mother of a friend of hers. We kept hearing about the finca, the farm, which would be safe. When I heard farm, I imagined crops and produce. But as I understand it, finca is better translated as country house or perhaps the New Zealand word bach.

Whatever you call it, the finca was beautiful and safe and a good base to explore the Santander region. The entire area is packed with rugged terrain, deep river valleys, craggy mountains, beautiful colonial towns, and the infamous Chicamocha National Park.

Views of the Chicamocha canyon

The National Park is basically a crappy would-be amusement park located across an awesome canyon. The views were worth the 50,000 COP (15 USD) and the cable car covers 6.3 kilometers, descending all the way down to the bottom before climbing back up. Views of giant cactuses, little farms, grazing goats, and a big brown river accompany the trip. For some reason, you can buy a ticket for just the park and not just the cable car, even though the park is on the other side of the canyon.

Apart from the visit to the National Park, we got to spend some time in the small town; meeting locals, picking citrus fruits off over-laden trees, playing with wild cats and dogs, reading books, and so on and so on.

But the best thing we did was: Take several busses to get to one of the most beautiful towns in Colombia.

Barichara

Catedral de la Inmaculada Concepción – Founded in the 1700s

It’s an old town, one so pretty and so untouched by history that many films and telenovelas are filmed here. The famous snack around here are the famous hormigas culonas – or big-ass ants. I declined the offer of a free sample and we climbed to the top of the town. Pretty as it was, we didn’t spend a super long time in Barichara. We’d come for the walk to another pretty town.

The walk we did was only 5 km and took just over an hour. If you have more time, you can do a 3-day hike connecting lots of these small towns and if/when I come back to Colombia, it’s DEFINITELY something I’d do.

El Camino Real

El Camino Real

Tunnel of trees

Cactus Friends along the way

This walk was hyper-pleasant as it was mostly flat with beautiful views of the valley and scattered cows, horses, farms and lots of big cactuses. A few hikers coming the other way greeted us with a weary “buenas tardes.” As the afternoon clouds gathered, we reached our ultimate destination.

Guane

This little town doesn’t have much of a presence on Google, but it’s worth the trip. Not only is the walk amazing, but Gaune was, to my eye, just as pretty as Barichara. It has similar narrow cobblestone streets and a big square with a historic church and friendly wild dogs.

It would have been nice to stay and see the stars, but we had to get a move on. From Guane, we caught a bus back to Barichara, where we transferred to another bus going to San Gil, took a cab to another bus station in San Gil, hopped on a 3 hour bus to Bucaramanga, then got on the night bus to Medellin. It took about 12 hours altogether, but considering our 8 hour night bus took 20 hours to get to Bucaramanga on the way here, it was super easy, barely an inconvenience.

The demonstrations in Medellin have faded and the city feels normal. This part of South America, for now of course, is still safe and incredible to travel around.

No time for that

There are a lot of things this blog could be about. In the week since I’ve gotten here, I’ve learned about some interesting things.

Such as: the name Pablo Escobar is kind of forbidden here. Or perhaps not forbidden, but taboo. One of our walking tour guides only referred to him as Voldemort. Which makes total sense, given the damage he did to the city and to the country. However, soon after his death they sold tours of his houses. Even his own brothers led tours through the ruins of his homes. Earlier this year, a building in El Poblado (the ritziest area in the city) built by Escobar was destroyed for no other reason than that it was built by him.

Also there are at least 40 hippos that are descendants from his personal zoo that now live in the rivers; the largest enclave outside of Africa.

But there’s no time for that.

I could talk about the Metro, which as I already said is super modern. What I have learned is that was built by the citizens of Medellin just as they escaped the troubles and it serves as a civic symbol of rebirth. It’s the only metro in the country, and it won’t be paid off until 2080 something, but the stations are spotlessly clean and the cars always full and the people are very proud of it. Also the metro stops are always playing 80s English songs like Karma Chameleon or Call Me.

But there’s no time for that either.

I could tell you that this is a dog friendly country, with big and small dogs everywhere.  Over half of all people have at least one pet. Some towns have public feeders for any dog to get some food. The street dogs are well fed and not threatening and people bring their dogs into malls and banks and everywhere. I even read that they’re establishing a bus line so people can travel with their pets.

But there’s no time for that either.

The thing that has struck me about Medellin most of all is that it’s really a first-world city.  It has few hallmarks of the developing world–the streets are clean (garbage and recycling bins everywhere), drivers follow the traffic lights, motorcycle riders barely go on the sidewalk. The people are super friendly and (two would-be pickpockets notwithstanding) it’s felt safe everywhere I’ve gone.

But there’s not even time for that.

What I really want to talk about it is how weird it is to travel blog. You have to start traveling with an eye on “content.” You must take notes throughout the day, do research and conduct interviews, or change what you want to do in order to create something interesting.  But at the same time you don’t (or at least I don’t) want to do the standard, SEO based fluff pieces recommending 4 star hotels and restaurants full of unhappy rich people.

It feels inauthentic.

There is a low-key pressure to find interesting things, to document, and to observe. Not all blogging is like this, of course; some of the how-to is simply a list of facts. On the other hand, when you are traveling with “blog vision,” all the information you receive can be sorted and processed. But for thoughtful pieces, you need to collate information, add analysis, put together photos, do some kind of layout, and then disseminate via social media. When you’re on the road, it can take a lot of time. When I was traveling long term (2014-2015), I’d periodically have to take 1-2 days off just to blog.

I’d like to blog more, but ….

But there’s no time for that.