San Gil 2/8-2/10

We arrived to San Gil from Villa de Leyva towards the evening, and after checking in went straight for food.  A couple of things were immediately apparent – that the town had a lot of hills, some of them steeper than the Lombard Street, and that during the day it would be hot (even in the evening the temperature was around 80F.)  Irin felt victim to an apparent food poisoning, so Andrey and her went to bed early.  We walked around town a bit more, but did not see anything out of the ordinary.

The next morning we decided to go on the all-in-one caving, canyoning, rappelling, waterfalling tour.  It started great – the guide came over with a baby howler monkey on his back.  He said that the monkey’s mother has abandoned him, and he just clang to the guide’s shoulder for the past few days.  Naturally Julie played with him until we absolutely had to go.

To get to the tour start the 4 of us were loaded into a beater taxi that stopped in the middle of the very first hill.  I was about to get out of the car to make it lighter when the driver said he needed to switch to gasoline from gaz. Turned out that quite a few of these cars had engines that ran on both.  Once on gasoline the car did make it to the top of the hill, not without trouble though.

At the beginning of the trail we were given $1 flashlights, and led to the cave that stank of human excrement for the first 5 minutes.  Then the stench let up.  We saw some sleeping bats, but I’m rather sure it’s not their poop that stank. For the following 20 or so minutes we walked and crawled, and sometimes got explanatory hand gestures about how to do it from our guide – he did not speak English.  Julie cursed me just a little bit when we had to get waste deep in the underground (cold) water.  When we got out of the cave the caving part started, and we were offered to make a jump into a pool of water from about 6m high.  Another guide (who spoke even less English) explained that when you hit the water you have to bend your knees.  We did not quite understand why until Andrey jumped, and discovered that the water pool is about 5 feet deep.  So of course Andrey and I jumped a couple of times. 

In another few minutes of skipping from one slippery rock to the next we reached a point where they strapped us into climbing harnesses, and with a bit of explanation let us rappel about 5 meters down. The 2nd guide appeared to be the “experienced” one, but also the more stoned of the two.  He ran the show, and apparently he was not satisfied with how slowly we were moving along; so after I descended he decided instead of letting everyone descend by themselves, he’ll lower us himself.  Luckily Andrey was going after me, and he’s been climbing for a while now, so as soon as he understood what that guy wanted to do he told him not to.  After Andrey and Irin climbed down the guy tried to lower Julie, at which point everybody told him not to.

Few more minutes of canyoning, and we reached the 2nd and final rappelling stop.  Here the guides took some time to setup.  Basically they carry all the ropes and equipment with them, there are no stations that are prearranged.  They’ve used 4 trees to attach the ropes. The descending person was supposed to have control over the speed of the descent, and the guide up top would have the 2nd, safety rope.  Normally that would sound great, unfortunately none of us really trusted the skills of the stoned guide.  Andrey once again went first, and safely made it to the bottom.  I figured that was the right time to send Julie – she was not liking the whole situation the most.  I promised I’d keep my hands on the safety line, and Andrey would encourage Julie from the bottom.  At the edge, before your feet leave the rock, and you drop vertically, the guides ask you to pose for a picture.  At that point Julie did not really feel like posing, but rather looked ready to climb back up, and disembody them both, so Irin, Andrey and I all cheered Julie down.  The guide once again proved incompetent, and pretty much none of us had to do anything going down, instead of spotting us he was lowering us himself at a very slow pace.

After all of us were safely down one of the guides was lowered, and then we waited for about half an hour for the 2nd one to gather the ropes, reassemble them so that he can come down himself, and then take the ropes down.  To take the ropes down he basically had to pull on one end as hard as he could.  The ropes were essentially between the rock and the hard place (another rock), so every time he does this the ropes get worn worse and worse.  As Andrey pointed out pretty much all the equipment we used would’ve been deemed unsafe loooong ago back in the States.

We kept on going down the canyon for another hour or so.  In the end there was another voluntary jump into water, this time from about 10m high.  Andrey jumped, then Irin jumped from a slightly lower ground.  I was considering jumping as well, but since Julie was not going to, I figured I’d wait to see where they’ll ask her to descend.  Neither Julie nor I could see an easy way to walk down.  Turns out we were correct.  We had to descend the slippery rock without apparent places to hold on.  I started thinking that if we jumped from the 10m mark hand-in-hand we’d be better off.  A local family had to guide us as the guides were seemingly oblivious to our struggles. 

The whole ordeal ended a few minutes later, and the guides light up a celebratory joint.  Unfortunately I did not take any pictures because my waterproof camera died back in Thailand. 

The next day Andrey and Irin planned on going whitewater rafting, but the water turned out to be too high because of the rains, so instead they went to a nearby park.  The walk in the heat must’ve been exhausting and we found them napping in the hostel’s hammocks.

We also took it easy, explored the town a bit more, visiting the local market and replenishing our supply of good fruits in time for our all night bus ride to Santa Marta.  

Not to be outdone by the South East Asians that could transport anything on a motorcycle, Colombians demonstrated how to transport a motorcycle in a bus.

2012.02.08 San Gil