Brett's Southern Crossing

After being ill with a stomach bug for a couple of days in Taganga, I continued on to San Gil.  The town is known for an abundance of cheap adventure sports, and after being cooped up in my dorm with a stomach bug for a few days I was ready to do all of them!

I'm in the front in the black t-shirt

San Gil is best known for its river rafting, with a class IV/V river a short drive from town.  It had been raining quite a bit that week and I was happy to hear that the river had just reopened the day of my arrival after being closed due to dangerous conditions (the more dangerous the better, if you ask me).  So I dropped my bags and jumped in a taxi, and an hour later I had my helmet and lifejacket on and was heading down a river with 3 meter waves nearly swallowing the raft whole.  The plus side of all the extra water from the rain is that with the water level higher it’s harder to hit rocks and boulders, and therefore harder to capsize.  So there was plenty of excitement and our biggest problem was one dropped paddle that a safety kayaker was able to quickly fetch.

The next day I decided to try Hydrospeed with the same company.  Hydrospeed is basically white water rafting, without the raft.  You go in the river and your torso floats on a foam body board with special handles to make it easy to hang on to for a long time.  Then you just swim into the rapids (with duckfeet flippers) and let the river do the rest.  Obviously we went on a more tame river than the day before, but there were still about a half-dozen rapids.  It was fun but I didn’t like my guide very much for this trip – he was way ahead of the group, and after kicking for 5 minutes to try to catch up he’d take off while I was still 50 meters away and tired from swimming too!  Eventually a bunch of us gave up on the guide, and ignored the safety kayaker trying to shoo us ahead.  It’s much more fun to just enjoy a lazy float down the river between rapids.  Hyrdrospeed is a bit intense…imagine swimming head first into the rapids, and I did bounce off a few rocks below the surface while trying to kick.  But I would definitely do it again.

That afternoon I went to explore one of the many caves nearby.  My hostel recommended a smaller cave that isn’t in the guidebook, and myself and another guy in my hostel paid about $12 for an hour-and-a-half tour of the cave.  It was interesting and had a few really tight passages plus some big chambers inside.  The beginning of the cave was probably the trickiest part.  We had to crawl under a shelf of rock with the water level standing about 2 inches below, which meant doing a sort-of crab walk or limbo so that my mouth could just make it into the gap of air to breathe.

Me and my guide, flying

The next day, it was time to try paragliding.  I went with Kadin, also staying in my hostel, and we drove with our two guides up to the top of a hill overlooking a nice valley.  Our guides didn’t speak English but I thought they would still give some kind of safety briefing in Spanish.  Instead they just clipped us to them and we zoomed into the air.  Actually, Kadin had the misfortune of going first and the guide realized the wind was so strong they would need to attach extra weight to us.  They tried to land but mostly just crashed, and Kadin scraped quite a bit of skin off his shoulder.  It was a lot of fun, and I was surprised both at how fast they could swoop around above the tree canopy but also how much control they had.  They were able to ascend, descend, move side-to-side, swing back and forth, and pretty much fly wherever they wanted.  The hill we took off from was surrounded by lush forests and tobacco fincas, so we had a great view too.

Kadin

I finally decided to keep myself at ground level and on dry land.  First I went to check out Parque Gallineral, located by the river in the city.  The park has a series of trails crossing creeks, massive old-growth trees, flowers, tropical birds, and a spring fed swimming pool for visitors to enjoy.  Next, I went to the main square in San Gil which is action packed, especially at night where it becomes the place to socialize for the town.  And I also went to check out the nearby Parque Nacional del Chicamoca.  The park includes a huge canyon with the option to take a cable car from one side to the other (a lengthy trip of at least a half hour).  The valley was nice, but overall I think this park is easily skippable.  The main park area is more of a theme park for families, with zip lines and concession stands all over the place.  The cable car is impressive but quite expensive at 36,000 pesos including park entrance (about $19-20), and roundtrip transit is another 15,000 pesos.

A Huge Tree in Parque Gallineral

Finally, I took a bus to the picturesque colonial town of Barichara and hiked the Camino Real (a historic stone path for horse travel) to the nearby town of Guane.  The Camino heads through some nice valleys and makes a great day hike.  I even came across some baby goats munching on fruit that had fallen on the trail, and they entertained me by leaping up and down off the nearby stone walls that line the trail.  They’re impressively agile, and can jump higher than I would have expected! In Guane, which must have just a few hundreds people, a telenovela was being filmed and there were packs of people in the square wearing 1800s era soldier uniforms, women in fancy victorian dresses, etc.  I watched for about a hour and to be honest acting looks like the most boring job imaginable.  You pretty much stand around all the time and for a few minutes a day, you do something on camera.

Camino Real

San Gil has plenty of other options too – multi day hikes, rock climbing, rappelling down waterfalls, or just hiking to see the waterfalls.  I think anyone could enjoy a few days here without any trouble.

Argentina, along with several other South American countries, are celebrating their 200th anniversaries this year.  As Napoleon caused chaos in Europe, most of South America took advantage of the situation to declare independence from Spain, or at least begin the process.  In Buenos Aires there was a week of celebrations culminating in a huge parade down Avenida 9 de Julio.  In Argentina’s case, while July 9th is independence day they celebrate the nation’s birthday a little earlier in May, since the first local government was formed in May of 1810 (independence wasn’t declared until 1816).

In true Argentine fashion, the parade started well after dark at 9pm.  The floats were really well done and covered all of the major events of Argentine history including the indigenous peoples, wars of independence, political upheaval, military dictatorship, Malvinas/Falkland Islands war, the Madres y Abuelos de Plaza de Mayo, Peronism, the industrial revolution, democracy, and more.  I took a video, which was difficult since with 3 million people attending the parade it was kind of a mosh pit just to stay in my spot!

A great photo album of the festivities can be found here.

On my last day of class last month I was lucky enough to witness a tradition I had heard of for new University graduates (my classes are run through a well known University here).  Most of the Argentine students are off in January and February, but a few were still working and apparently had finished their final exams that Friday afternoon.

In Argentina it’s customary to “celebrate” completion of final exams by a friend or relative by mercilessly pelting them with food.  I only saw the end of this ritual, and my video isn’t very good.  It’s a shame, I can imagine this would be great to watch start to finish!  In the brief time I was there I saw them hit with raw eggs, flour, a jar of honey, shaving foam, feathers, and who knows what else:

And a few closeup photos for detail: