San Gil - Old Streets and New Adventures

San Gil from the main bridge

This was a town I found out about by accident. I hadn't really looked into the eastern part of Colombia, but as I was travelling the coast I kept hearing about this amazing place that everyone loved and no one knew how to pronounce called San Gil (said san HILL...sort of).

Cat and I spent a night in nearby Bucaramanga which was nice enough, then planned two days in San Gil itself. For me, this turned into ten days and cemented this part of Colombia as one of my favourite spots on my trip.

San Gil and the part of Colombia know as Santander is known for two things: gorgeous old towns and adventure tourism. Adventuring was the part I got stuck into first, with a visit with Cat to the extraordinary Juan Curi waterfall.

The water starts 40m above me!

Unfortunately Cat had to leave for Bogota the next day to continue her own trip, but I kept the adventure going in San Gil with a day of Whitewater Rafting on the Rio Fonce. This turned out to be a little tame (level 1-3 rapids), so I forked out some more cash for another ride on the Rio Suarez a couple of days later. This was the adrenaline I was looking for, with a series of level 3, 4 and 5 rapids with a talented guide and a great crew. The most important part is to keep paddling through the rapids so the guide can steer, but when you're getting tossed around the rocks or heading straight into a 2-3 metre high static wave its hard to hold your nerve! At $55 AUD, this was worth every cent.

After that was a day of canyoning which I booked out of my hostel, Hostel Dorado for about $30 AUD. This was a whole day of bouldering, rappelling and cliff jumps with two girls from the hostel and two local dudes who turned out to be really cool guys. It was a really fun day, starting with a 5 metre jump, rappelling down as far as 25m, then finishing with a 10m jump into a waterfall, with some fruit and sandwiches provided to keep the energy up.

Chillaxin' in Pescaderito

After spending the evening at the bar with them, the same two guys came by again to take us to another spot to hang out. Loaded up with snacks and a boozy drink that I think was made from fermented sugarcane juice, we got coolectivos and tuktuks to Pescaderito, a rocky river with deep pools formed along its length. We spent the whole day hopping from one pool to the next then sliding back down the way we came, daring each other to jump off the high rocks. 

The next day, after a long night of anguish watching Richmond with the AFL Premiership on another bloke's phone, I decided to get out of San Gil and see some of the lovely towns I had heard about to take my mind off it. I had already been to Curiti after one of the rafting trips, so this time I went to a town called Barichara, then took an ancient indigenous trail to nearby Guanes. 

The view from the Camino Real

All three are absolutely charming: stone streets, buildings a mix of yellow stone and whitewash, ancient churches and municipal buildings, indigenous heritage, and so so old. Each one was settled very early by the Spanish, and most were built on earlier indigenous settlements. They have their own curiosities as well: Barichara for example loves its goats, with goat meat and milk products on sale everywhere, and the festival times are spectacles to behold, though I wasn't lucky enough to see them. There are a network of more than 20 similar towns within two hours of San Gil, and I would have visited every one if I had the time!

The streets of Barichara roasting in the midday heat

Overall, if you are looking for a cheap, exciting place to spend a a few days, and then a few more than that, make sure you make a stop here in San Gil and see what Santander has to offer.

The main church of Guanes. The 2D bell tower is a dead giveaway that this church is old













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