Muy bonita

Tomorrow we leave for Peru. Our time in Colombia has been fabulous and way too short! We´ve only visited a small part of the country, but what we´ve seen has been great. Richi Mantilla from Colombia Paragliding (www.colombiaparagliding.com)has been our host in Bucaramanga and òn tour`in the region and the paragliding and the tour has been great. The hill in Bucaramanga is flyable 360 days a year and the the local paragliding community is great and very welcoming. Besides the paragliding and the beautiful mountains and villages what we´ve treasured most has been meeting the locals. Everywhere we went the Colombians have been very friendly and helpful and extremely keen to chat with a couple of gringo´s like us. One evening we went for a little walk after dinner and stopped at a ´tienda´(little shop/cafe alongside the road where they sell soap, milk, bread and beer) for an icecream. As they didn´t have any `helado` we settled for a beer instead. We sat down in front of the tienda, and before we had finished our beers we were offered another beer by one of the locals. It seemed impolite to refuse so we had another one and started to talk with them (with hand and feet and our poor spanish). After a few more beers and conversation we left a few hours later with the warm feeling we made some new friends. A few days later we walked up the hill to go to a local restaurant 5 minutes away from our hostel. It appeared to be closed and we asked a few people in a passing car. This happened to be the restaurant owner and his family on their way home, but within 5 minutes he had re-opened the restaurant and sat down with us for a chat while the rest of the family prepared us a wonderful meal. Later his wife joined us at the table and we didn´t leave untill 11 o´clock at night. We are now even more keen to learn spanish, which is what we plan to do in Cuzco, Peru.
A few more highlights: the comfortable hostel right on the paragliding site (see previous story), the stunning views every morning when waking up in this spot, the tasting of a local specialty ´Hormigas´*, our stay in and flight above the town of Baricharra, a historical little village, said to be the most beautiful town in Colombia (unfortuntely we haven´t been able to check out all the other stunning places in Colombia), rafting the rapids of the Fonse river near San Gil, paragliding the 1200m deep Chicamocha Canyon.... We could write lots more about the great food, nice bars and salsateca´s; about our hike from Baricharra to Guane, where we encountered a cow with a newborn calves that was just trying to stumble around on his legs for the first time; about the bus trip that took 10 hours to cross only 400km´s, straight through the beautiful mountain ranges and canyons.

*´Hormigas´ are giant (fat arsed) ants which come up in this time of year after the rain, they are then fried and sold as an culinary delicacy. I wasn´t that keen on trying, but did it anyway and strangely enough really liked it. Tastes almost like very hearty pieces of bacon. Hans also tried steak with salsa di hormigas which is a great combination!