San Gil & Barichara, Colombia

San Gil is another one of the towns heading north from Bogota, heading towards the coast. The city has a nice central plaza filled with the usual hippies selling crafts and jewelry, and a fantastic Park/Gardin called the Parque el Gallineral. Other than that, the real attraction of the area are the small towns surrounding the city. One of these, Barichara, has been one of our favorite spots, although we only spent one day there. Their is not a single modern building in the whole town, and everything is painted white with a green border on the lower third of every single home, down every street and alley. It's a really cool thing to see.

At the top of a hill at the end of one of the streets we saw an old church and we decided to check it out. We lugged ourselves up the hill and parked the baby jogger in a little park out front of the church. We figured the jogger would be fine we were only going to poke our heads inside the church, take a photo or two, and head back down the hill. We then saw a path around the side of the church that headed to a nice little park with a view of the entire valley. In the park we met a nice family and chatted for a while. As we headed back to the church we noticed that something was missing. In this cute little town in the mountains where "everybody is like a big, happy family", some bastard stole our jogger.

We couldn't believe it, but we were in Colombia after all. I asked a young guy who was working on his motorcycle if he saw anything. Of course, he didn't. I pleaded with them, and told them how important this was to us. We were ready to try and get the police when I decided to appeal to their basic human nature (GREED). "I will pay much money if you happen to locate the item while we go and have lunch." (thinking that they took or knew who took it) That seemed to get things rolling. Two boys jumped on their motorbike to try and locate the jogger while I started down a side road in the hope I could see something. The mother from the family came down the path with Patty and Annika and decide to ask her neighbor if they just happended to see anything. LOW AND BEHOLD, our jogger was inside their house. They tried to explain that there were many robbers around and they were keeping it safe. They actually handed me my knife that was in one of the side pockets. They must have been keeping that safe for me also.

I actually paid them some money for the "safe-keeping", and paid the mom for turning in her neighbors. Anyhow, everything turned out OK.

Having lunch that same day, we met a family from Sacramento (father originally from Columbia). We exchanged numbers with Izzy, the father. He told us to give him a call in the next town of Bucaramanga where he would be with his family. We arrived in town and gave him a call. We met Izzy and his two lovely daughters, Mayelle and Milea, for a little shopping and then went out for a coffee/chocolate. We had a wonderful visit, and Annika loved being with the girls.

Jul 5, 2007

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