Barichara

This was a quaint colonial town about 4 1/2 hrs drive north of Villa de Leyva (remember the town with the huge cobblestoned square?). Barichara is smaller and quieter.

On the way there, we passed some colorful little villages, complete with acres of “greenhouses” under sheets of white plastic…

… beautiful vistas…

… and trees loaded with Spanish moss -

This was our hotel, showing the half door that many residents of the town had open and were hanging on, watching people and the world go by -

I didn’t feel right taking pictures of people hanging out their doors, but I had no qualms about this guy -

The hills in this town were quite impressive to climb…

… and the bright colors contrasted nicely with all the white walls -

One of the main things to do when in Barichara is to walk down a 6 km trail to the next town of Guane. We started at the top of the hill of Barichara…

… and enjoyed the views…

… including checking out the local farms…

… as we carefully managed the cobblestones -

As we descended, the vegetation was changing…

… but the epiphytes and bromeliads continued to festoon the trees -

We saw a number of these really cool looking trees (I tried searching for this, but came up empty — sorry to you die hard fans who were looking for identification ;) …

… and I also was taken with these gates, at even the most run down of properties -

I discovered that any walk or hike in Colombia was an opportunity to spy some pretty neat birds -

Straight-billed Woodcreeper

Tropical Parula

The height of the surrounding mountains was striking (note the tiny village nestled up against the mountain flank in the left half of the picture)…

… and the multi-hued hills were beautiful -

Guane is the town at the end of the hike, and is even smaller than Barichara…

… and it had a tiny, tidy square…

… with a nice little church…

… that gave me this neat shot:

I had to include this picture for my sister, who was wondering what a tuk-tuk was. We took one back to Barichara for the princely sum of $5, to avoid the hot 6 km walk back up the hill.

Back at our hotel we enjoyed the end of another beautiful day -