Parque Nacional del Chicamocha

21 de agosto 2016

Parque Nacional del Chicamocha, Bucaramanga, Santander, Colombia

This is a bit of a late post, but I finally have internet in my apartment so I can write more!

A few weeks ago on August 6th, Colleen's host father Hugo took us and his two kids to Panachi, or Parque Nacional del Chicamocha, a national park nearby.  After driving up the switchback road to the top of one mountain, we took the teleférico (cable car) down into the Chicamocha valley and back up to the park.

Hugo and his kids admiring the view from the teléferico

Hey, another teléferico goin' the other way!

The Chicamocha Canyon, with the Rio Chicamocha running through it

If you look hard enough, you can find some mountain goats havin' a great time

The sand from the Chicamocha is used a lot in construction in this area

So after a ride full of nice views and conversation, we got off and felt like we had arrived in Colombian Disney World.  The park was structured like a little missionary town, but it felt very constructed and fake.  The Claro sign acting like a Hollywood sign didn't help the image either (Claro is an internet/phone company).  However, we soon got over that as we sipped our coffee.

The beautiful parking lot, framed by the Claro sign

Most Colombians work at least a half day on Saturdays, so we were almost the only people in the park.

¡Hola de Santander!

The kids saw this, thought they were peanuts, and started eating them... coffee beans are not the best to feed your kids.

Real or decoration?  Who knows?

According to Hugo, the coffee from this area (this mountain specifically I believe) recently won "Best Coffee in the World," beating out Indonesian coffee that was harvested from the poop of animals that ate the coffee berries.  Congrats Santander on beating the poop coffee!

As we drank our coffee and the kids drank their Milo (kind of like Nesquik; you can drink it cold or hot), we learned about panela, which is a type of sugar that tastes kind of like molasses; it's essentially unrefined cane sugar.  They had some on the table; it was pretty tasty and it was hard to keep the kids from eating the whole bowl.  The next shop over had virtual reality glasses, so we watched a few people pay for the privilege to have a Colombian man spin you around and make noises at you to further enhance the VR gear experience while your friends looked on and laughed at you.  Not necessarily what I expected from a national park, but hey, whatever floats your boat.  Speaking of boats, we then strolled down to the water park.

Just a little aquaparque hidden in the mountains...

The water park was little, but had a great view.  We didn't spend long there; we went around the lazy river once and went down each of the two slides once and then the kids got cold so we left.  However, like every pool here in Colombia, you have to wear a swim cap.  Don't have one?  You must buy one.

So fashionable

Colleen and her host sister rockin' the Chicamocha rosa caps

After drying off and changing back out of our swimsuits, we walked back up the mountain to the petting zoo, where we saw a llama (pronounced jyama here), a horse, a cow, a bunch of guinea pigs (which are eaten as a delicacy in Peru; just the whole animal roasted on a stick over a fire), a bunch of bunnies, couple of piggies, and some capybara (which I had never seen in real life; only on the internet!).  Most importantly though, we got to feed baby goats out of milk bottles.

Cabras (goats) are Colleen's favorite baby animal.  Just be careful not to say "cabron," which is a curse word.

Straight chillin'

After checkin' out all the animals, we walked further up the mountain to wash up and have some lunch.  On the way, we noticed some birds of prey circling around; I hope they weren't there to snatch up the bunnies.  

The restaurant had tons of cats wandering around looking for scraps.  Hugo's daughter was terrified of them, poor thing.

At lunch we shared a pitcher of limonada con panela (lemonade with that panela I talked about earlier), and I had what was essentially a chicken schnitzel, breaded and with fries.  I also stole a breaded-and-fried yuca off Colleen's plate.  Very tasty.  

We then wandered over to a museum that talked about the native people that used to live here before the Spaniards took it over.  It was they who called the area Chicamocha.  Legend has it that the Guane were so brave that rather than surrender to the Spaniards, they just jumped off a cliff.  Now, suicide doesn't sound as brave as standing up to your conquerors, but that's just my opinion...

They bound their heads from birth for aesthetic reasons...their heads became elongated in the back and shorter from the front.  A bit over-zealous for a mullet?

Since we had the kids with limited amounts of patience, we couldn't spend as much time in the museum as I would have liked, so we continued on up the mountain, admiring the view and the foliage.

No tree trunk to carve your name in? No worries! We've got you covered with succulents!

Panachi has a wonderful monument of the Colombian revolution.  It has a bunch of famous revolutionary figures on a tobacco leaf (the original big export of the country).  The Colombian revolution had its start in Santander, so it's a pretty big deal here.

This woman tore up the tax edict, effectively starting the revolution.  She was later killed by firing squad.

The bishop put on a nice face (mask) to get into power, but then he was enslaving the Colombian people (as you can see behind him)

The say if you touch the bull's balls, you will be very fertile.  Guess Colleen and I will both be bearing many children.

After exploring all the different people and their very expressive statues, we ventured over to the very top of the park, where you can see a 360° panoramic view of the whole park.  However, we were getting a bit tired of walking around in the hot sun, so we hitched a ride.

Chivas used to be used as public transportation, like this one.  Now they are usually used as drunk trolleys through the mountains. 

We got to the top, admired the view, then stopped at the little cafe up there to quench our thirst for a bit.

There's a lot of "adventure" things we didn't do here, like the Extreme Swings that swing you over the edge of the mountain, or the ziplines that are several hundred feet above the ground.

You can trace our whole path through the park from here!

The road to Bogotá; no wonder a 1-hour flight turns into a 9-hour drive...

Colleen admiring the view

We headed back down to the teleférico, but this late in the day it was a lot windier, so the car went slower and stopped a few times, rocking in the wind...just a little bit terrifying.  But we made it back alive and spent a little bit of time looking in the shops.  We didn't buy anything, though the snack shops were selling the Bucaramanga special - Hormigas Culonas (large-bottomed-ants).  Hugo advised us to try them first while drunk, not while hungry, so we didn't try them yet.  We then piled back into the car and Hugo drove us home to the sounds of the kids' favorite CD - Justin Bieber.