As you can see we did not travel far today.
We spent a good deal of time this morning at Parque El Gallineral in San Gil. A really amazing garden or park with the most enormous trees dripping with extremely thick, long Spanish moss (called barbas de viejo or tillandsia here), and wonderful tropical flowers. Another unexpected gem!
After an internet stop and some tricky navigation through San Gil we were on our way to Barichara over even narrower roads. Barichara is a small village, with white washed buildings and narrow cobbled streets and the most beautiful main plaza and two wonderful stone churches. We wandered around the streets, had lunch and then decided to go to an even smaller village called Guane, if we could only find the way. A quick conversation with a handy member of Policia Nacional had us on our way and traversing still narrower roads.
Guane turned out to be as we could have predicted a very small village, cobbled streets, white washed buildings and another wonderful stone church. We had an ice cream and talked to the shop keeper about our travels and his son who works in Montreal. It really is a small world.
Back in Barichara we called in at the place with the camping sign only to discover that we would not fit through the entrance gate - blast.
Camping
Just before entering Barichara there is a Madonna shrine or monument on the left hand side of the road with a space behind it that is pretty well shielded from the view of passing traffic. We were in Barichara when it was time to stop for the night and the only other option was the town square. There was a place closer to town offering shaded camping but the entry gate had a height restriction and was not suitable for us. Would work for SUV's and might work for van conversions.
We had not checked out San Gil so did not want to temp fate by driving there in the dark in the hope of finding something.
