Old Friends, White Water and Roasted Ants in Colombia

The New York Times
Travel

Frugal Traveler

By SETH KUGEL

July 27, 2010, 11:00 pm

 

Seth Kugel for The New York Times Chicamocha National Park in Colombia’s Santander province.

Six weeks without seeing a familiar face can wear on any traveler, no matter how warm and welcoming the unfamiliar faces are. So I’d been looking forward to Week 7, when two close friends – my high school classmates Jon Chapman and Doug Mollenauer – would fly down from the States. The plan: meet in Bogotá and hop a seven-hour bus to Santander province, known as Colombia’s adventure tourism hot spot, among other things. (Among the other things: it’s Colombia’s roasted-ant-consumption hot spot, but I had downplayed that aspect to them.)

 

Seth Kugel for The New York Times The Frugal Traveler with high school friends Doug and Jon.

Old friends make the best travel companions. Their company transforms monotonous bus rides into easy conversation: analyzing why none of us so much as scored a kiss from our high school prom dates, for example, is good for at least an hour. Also, there are few surprises: we learned to tolerate one another’s flaws years ago. (Doug is always running absurdly late, Jon overtips like a maniac, and I may – occasionally and infrequently – emit the slightest of snores.)

We got off to a frugal start at the Bogotá bus station, where I scored each of us  a 5,000-peso discount ($2.82 at 1,800 pesos to the dollar) by playing two neighboring ticket agents from rival bus companies off each other. Final price for the seven-hour trip to Santander: 25,000 pesos ($14) apiece.

That incident made me realize what new sets of eyes could bring to a trip. Doug and Jon were wowed by my negotiating tactics, which had become such a routine tactic for me in Latin American bus terminals that I hadn’t thought to mention it in writing. Their fresh perspectives kept coming: when the bus stopped for what I considered another monotonous lunch at a roadside restaurant, Doug and Jon raved about the freshness of the 5,000-peso ($2.78) home-style meals – potato soup, chicken, rice, lentils, salad and limeade. (Compared to your average American highway rest stop, they were completely right, I thought.) They also gawked at commonplace bags of mineral water you bite a tiny hole in and squeeze into your mouth, and became perplexed when a sign at our hotel directing travelers to deposit toilet paper in trash cans rather than flushing it.

 

Seth Kugel for The New York Times Doug and Jon explore colonial Barichara.

Santander has two prime tourist destinations, 40 minutes apart by twice-hourly buses: San Gil, a bustling commercial town home to adventure tour companies, night life and budget-style lodging; and Barichara, a postcard-ready colonial village tucked into gorgeous hills and catering to higher-end travelers.

Frugality seemed to indicate we would stay in San Gil, so I had called ahead to reserve a private room (with shared bath) for us at the well-regarded Santander Alemán hostel. It turned out to be a place full of good intentions – but seriously lacking in amenities. And by amenities, I mean hot water, toilet seats and doorknobs. Our cramped room cost us 17,000 pesos ($9) each, and was worth not a penny more.

Those with budgets and risk aversion less restrictive than ours can fill days around San Gil crashing through Class V rapids on the Rio Suárez, rappelling down waterfalls and paragliding into canyons. Our plan was to focus on (free) hiking, so the first full day we hopped the bus to Barichara (3,500 pesos, or $2) for a hike to Guane, an even tinier, sleepier colonial village about two hours – or four dozen irresistibly bucolic vistas – away. “I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Jon, the least traveled of the group, as he gazed across farmland to imposing mountains on the other side and broke out his iPhone video camera for the first of countless occasions. (We’d soon become familiar with his sign off: turning the lens on himself, he would say “Of course, no video would be complete without a shot of your handsome videographer.”)

 

Seth Kugel for The New York Times Santander’s traditional roast ants with Jon’s traditional trail mix.

Along the way, we snacked on Jon’s homemade trail mix into which I had insisted we dump about half a cup of hormigas culonas, the roasted queen ants that the region is famous for. (Like most crispy edible insects, they tasted to me like shreds of unpopped popcorn kernels.) And when we reached Guane, we tried two other regional specialties at a little restaurant called La Chinantoca: cabro con pepitoria (goat meat with innards, 9,000 pesos, or $5) and carne oreada (jerky-like dried beef, 6,500 pesos, about $3.50). Doug and Jon, I was proud to see, were game to taste anything local – yet another indication I had invited the perfect companions.

 

Doug Mollenauer Negotiating for a better rate at the Posada de Pablo 2 in Barichara.

The trip out to Barichara also provided a fortuitous find: a new place to stay. Just as the cobblestones turned to dirt on the road leading to the Guane trail, we spotted a quaint sign: “La Posada de Pablo.” Ducking in, we found a family-run inn set around a modern but colonial-style courtyard. (It was actually La Posada de Pablo 2, an annex of the main branch down the street.) Amazingly, it boasted not just views of the town center, but doorknobs and toilet to boot. Diana, a daughter of the place’s now-deceased namesake, offered us two rooms for a combined 110,000 pesos ($60). I talked her down to 100,000 ($55) and we moved in for the next three nights. That undeserved reputation for snoring won me the single room, but since we split the cost evenly, it was a cross I was willing to bear.

Barichara became our base (and the Panadería Central Las Delicias on the town square our daily breakfast stop and source for refreshing  guanábana shakes), but the action still centered around San Gil. That is where Patricia Salazar, friend of a friend and reporter for the local Santander paper, took on the role of tour guide. (I had insisted that our mutual friend not tell her I was a fellow writer, though I revealed my identity when we left, landing her a front page story.)

She was a skilled guide, steering us mostly away from the backpacker trail – as I had requested – but back toward it when it was worth our while. Our first night, we drank in her favorite hangout, the Habana Cafe Bar, a laid-back bar in the second floor of San Gil’s cute Camino Real mall. When Doug asked to try a local drink, I proudly flashed a bit of Colombian knowledge, suggesting a mixture of beer and rust-colored Colombiana-brand soda called a refajo. Pati burst my bubble, insisting that a true local refajo called for Santander’s local soda, cherry red Hipinto. Touché. (Jon would later remark that Hipinto tasted “like cream soda with a touch of hairspray.”)

 

 Seth Kugel for The New York Times Rocks form natural whirlpools at Pozo Azul, a local swimming hole in San Gil.

Pati was our hero – another day, she skipped out of work early, grabbed her cousin Yeny and whisked us to the local swimming scene at Pozo Azul, where rocks form natural whirlpools that provide free back massages. From there we walked to Bolos Pozo Azul, a bare-bones gaming center along the highway with two important components: courts to play two Colombian games called bolos and tejo, and a refrigerator capable of dispensing copious quantities of beer. We chose tejo, a game that mixes elements of curling and horseshoes with the excitement of explosives. In short, you take turns tossing a stone disc toward a tray filled with clay, landing it as close to a metal ring as possible. A triangular paper envelope containing a minor amount of gunpowder sits on the ring, and if smacked just right causes a minor, though extremely exciting, explosion. We must have stayed three hours at least, so it was with trepidation that I asked the bartender (really refrigerator-tender) for the damage. She added up a very long tab (recorded under the heading “Gringos”) that miraculously came out to only 60,000 pesos, under $7 a person. We finished the night in the wee hours at El Trapiche dancing to salsa, merengue, reggaetón and the occasional international R&B hit.

We did spend one calmer night in Barichara, giving Pati a break and as a result, discovering our favorite restaurant of the trip: Iguá-Nauno, on the edge of town at the corner of Calle del Mirador and Carrera 7. Customers sat on tables in a semi-open courtyard dominated by the bar’s gnarled namesake tree. We dined on snacks like patacones (flattened fried plantains loaded with beef) and Colombian-style burgers (topped with crushed potato chips), and ordered an off-menu drink: a lulada (ice, sugar and muddled lulo fruit) spiked with rum. An ill-advised second rounds of luladas broke the budget, and the meal ended up costing 32,000 pesos ($18) each. I was learning that traveling with friends may eliminate boredom on buses, but it causes a severe hit to the bar tab.

 

Seth Kugel for The New York Times Whitewater rafting on the Rio Fonsi in San Gil.

We pushed the budget a little further by deciding to brave one rafting trip – the cheapest available, an 11-kilometer stretch of the Rio Fonce, with manageable Level III rapids.

Well, sort of manageable. We all ended up tossed from the boat on different occasions, but Jon suffered the most, disappearing under the raft for nine scary seconds. (We know this because we did a Zapruder-film-like analysis from the video the tour company recorded from the shore.) He finally emerged, shell-shocked but still in good humor. It could have been worse, he said – those nine seconds had allowed only the K-12 portion of his life to flash before his eyes.

Both Jon and Doug told me Colombia felt perfectly safe – in fact, they were amazed by Colombians’ interest in meeting travelers, a contrast to many countries they’d visited. “When you go to a country that has not had a ton of tourism, people really go the extra mile to reach out to you,” Doug said.

 

Seth Kugel for The New York Times The monument to Santanderian heritage in Chicamocha National Park.

One particular afternoon stood out. It was our last day, and we made a mid-afternoon trip to Chicamocha National Park, where the main attraction is a cable car that dips into the canyon of the same name. We also visited an unusual 2500-ton hilltop monument dedicated to Santanderean culture and history, set on a huge slanted base representing a tobacco leaf. As we puzzled over what the exploding rocks could possibly mean, a uniformed police officer bounded over and practically begged us to let him explain it in English. He launched into a dramatic presentation that would have undoubtedly been extremely informative, had it not been totally incomprehensible. But we were touched at his effort.

By that time, night had fallen and we were bracing ourselves for the unappetizing task of flagging down a bus on the nearby highway for the hour trip back to San Gil. But to our surprise, a man came over and offered us seats on the employee bus that would soon be dropping off cable car operators and ticket takers in the nearby town of Aratoca, where we could calmly wait at a safe bus stop.

We climbed in with the workers and sped away, marveling at how unlikely this would have been at Disney World or the Pyramids of Giza or the Eiffel Tower, where travelers are essentially walking wallets. In Colombia, for a while at least, we’re still real people.