[ Dec.2016 ] On the second day in Barichara, the pretty town in Colombia, we did some hiking to the next door village called Guane.
A male guide and a female interpreter (because he did not speak English) came to our hotel to pick us up.
On the way to the hiking road, we learned some things about Barichara.
This town started when a farmer saw the Virgin Mary and she told him to build a church in this land.
The name, Barichara originally meant ‘place to rest’ and even now people visit here to have a relaxing time.
Also, he told us about how those one storey white washed houses were made.
Basically they are made of mud and stones and they use bamboos for the roofs.
Our guide who explained all these things was Oswaldo, who was 45 years old.
He has been living in Barichara for 10 years and he said he had become much happier since moving there.
Before starting our hiking, we visited his house.
It was just for borrowing his sun lotion, but we were lucky to see inside of the house.
It was a simple house with not much furniture or things, which could be used as a cafe straight away.
The hiking road is called El Camino Real.
Originally the native people created it, but in the 19th century a German officer who was an engineer made it wide and laid stones so that he could go on horseback.
It is said that because he was big and strong, the people in the village wanted his children, so they offered their daughters to him.
So even now apparently there are descendents of him with blue eyes around here.
At the starting point of this road, there was a board saying the length of the road is 5.2 km, but Oswaldo said that in fact it was 6.2 km.
Our itinerary says it is 7 km and our guide book says 9 km.
And both the itinerary and the guide book said “easy hike, mostly downhill”, but being easy or not is subjective.
And there were quite a few slopes we had to go up, too.
It was a hard walk for me.
