En route to the capital, Bogotá

Guadalupe:

We left San Gil after an amazing week of camping, adventure, and riding our bikes in the mountains, and headed a few hours south to the small mountain town of Guadalupe. We stayed in a lovely hostel run by Jose, who is an adventure biker, and who runs a bar in the town too. We loved the small town feel of Guadalupe, it’s a place not many tourists visit, and we enjoyed chatting to the locals about our trip and wandering around the town. We spend an afternoon on Jose’s bar, meeting his friends and chatting to the locals. 

We did a ride out to visit a waterfall one day, though we didn’t go for a swim as the water didn’t look too clean! 

We also hiked to Las Gachas - natural swimming pools formed in a river bed from erosion of the rocks over time. We had good fun dipping in the pools and enjoying the cool water, we were lucky to be the only ones there! Ash also saved some frogs who got stuck in a deep pool. The walk there and back was nice too - lots of views of the mountains. We only stayed for a few days in Guadalupe but we really liked it. 

Villa de Leyva:

Our next stop was the beautiful colonial town of Villa de Leyva, which we visited on a Colombian bank holiday weekend. We pitched our tents at a camping spot next to a hostel, and walked to town for a coffee. Unfortunately for us, when we returned a group of 30 Colombian people (adults and children) had pitched up right next to us, they had a huge boom box and kept us awake with their party all night! Suffice to say the next morning we packed our tents up and booked into a different hostel! 

Villa de Leyva is a beautiful colonial town, with the largest cobbled town square in the whole of South America (at 14000 square metres!). It was a bank holiday weekend, and also the towns 451st birthday, so there was a big celebration of culture in the town square all weekend which we enjoyed. We saw lots of dancing, some musicians and some singers, and there were fireworks at midnight. 

The area around Villa de Leyva (Boyaca) is famous for fossils, and you could see fossils built into the walls around the town. We visited a museum with the largest complete kronosaurus skeleton in the world, which is 110 million years old! I also bought some crystal quartz which had been dug out of the ground here. 

We rode out to visit at 17th century monastery. We expected it to be a calm place to walk around and sit and relax, but there was a small child making lots of noise and ruining any contemplation we might otherwise have had! 

And we visited the artisans town of Raquira, which wasn’t quite what we expected - there were lots of shops selling identical (mass produced) things, we had expected to see workshops with artists working and selling their products. But we enjoyed browsing the colourful streets and we had a nice lunch. 

Lago Tota: 

After three nights in Villa de Leyva, we packed up and headed off to Tota lake, which is the largest lake in Colombia. The lake sits at 3000m and it was very cold! We booked an Airbnb cabin right on the lake side, and we enjoyed a few days of rest and relaxing. We had some rain one day, and it was very cold so we light the fire most afternoons to keep warm. Ash cooked some good food and we did some paperwork for our Colombian visa extension. 

We had a drive out around the lake to the ‘beach’ which was closed for cleaning (and it was way too cold to swim!). We also drove to the town of Aquitania a few times for groceries. 

Suesca:

After a lovely few days relaxing at the lake, we drove for a few hours to get to the small town of Suesca. We had the worst rain we experienced our whole trip, a complete downpour, and we got soaked. Sadly our ‘waterproof’ side bags let in rain, and all our camping gear got soaking wet! 

The hostel we stayed in was very cold and damp, we had water running down the walls of the room! We asked for a heater but apparently they didn’t have any. It was the worst hostel we’ve been in for a long time (maybe ever!), and none of our stuff dried because it was so damp. It was also freezing  - Ash lit the camping stove to try to warm the room up, but in the end we went to bed at 8pm to try to get warm! 

As the hostel was so horrible we only stayed one night, though we did have a walk along the old train track to see the rock of Suesca and watch people rock climbing (I didn’t fancy it with my bad shoulder, and Ash said he would be scared of the height!). We packed up all our wet stuff, left our motorbikes in a secure car park, and caught the bus to Bogotá (as I didn’t want to ride the bikes into the capital, having heard lots of stories about the crazy, dangerous traffic!). 

Bogotá 

We arrived in Bogotá, found our hostel and hung up all our damp stuff all over the room! We only stayed in Bogotá for a few days, as there isn’t much to do here. Bogotá sits at 2600m and it’s cold and cloudy/damp! After being so cold at the lake as well we decided to buy some puffa jackets to keep us warm! 

The main reason we visited was to see Ivonne, who we met in El Salvador 6 months ago, and to meet her family. We had a lovely day with Ivonne, her partner Jasón and child Salome, in Bogotá. We also took the cable car to Monserrate - a nearby mountain with a church and views of the city. Monserrate sits at 3100m and it was freezing! We didn’t like the vibe in Bogotá, it felt very different to Medellin, there was a lot more poverty and homelessness, and less of a friendly, welcoming vibe. 

Next step: looping back up to Medellin for another stay in the city!