The actual town of Guatavita was flooded at the time, and rebuilt at higher altitude.
We took a bus from where we are staying in Guasca. It cost 3,000 pesos ($1.35 CAD) each. We got to Guatavita, and things seemed busier than we expected for a Tuesday. We only found out later that yesterday was a national holiday in Colombia.
Walking down to Guatavita. It was cloudy pretty much all day, but no rain. Temperature about 20C, 68F.
The town church and plaza...built in the 1960s when the town was relocated.
Definitely different from your typical small town church.
Christmas manger scene.
Typical Colombian ponchos for sale. We see quite a few older local men who still wear the poncho, but the young people do not.
Ruth, in the plaza. This all looks older, but it is only about 50 years old.
The Tomine Reservoir is 18 kms (11 miles) long and 4 kms (2.5 miles) wide. There doesn't appear to be much private land around the lake because we think it's all owned by the hydro company. Even where the viewpoints were, there was a guard preventing you from getting to the shoreline. However further down the lake we did see some sailboats out, so there must be access somewhere.
People out enjoying the view.
You could go horseback riding if you like.
We sat and people watched for a while.
The town of Guatavita.
It even has a bull ring. Not sure how often it is used as such.
We finished wandering around at about 2:00pm, and we waited about an hour for a bus back to Guasca. Problem was, even when we did get on a bus it would only take us to the corner near Guasca and we had to either change buses or walk the mile or so in to town. Of course we chose to walk since we didn't get enough walking done the day before!
Walking back to Guasca, the town where we are staying.
As we got into Guasca, we found a restaurant and had dinner. I think it's been about a month since Ruth has used her culinary skills. It's true, you get tired of restaurant food after a while. Hope Ruth remembers how to cook when we get back to Sherman next week!
Today, we are taking a bus to the isolated village of Gacheta. They do not get many tourists up there!
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Kevin, you haven't mentioned your rash for a bit...how are doing?
ReplyDeleteWe don't like to go on about about health issues because our blog is about our travels but sometimes when it effects our travels we need to explain why. For this reason we haven't mentioned the rash as it seems to have almost cleared up and Kevin feels pretty much normal once again. He has stopped taking the antibiotics and the Prednisone as well as the cream. We will keep the leftovers in case he has another flare-up in the future, hopefully they will never have to be used again!
DeleteIsolated villages is what we like, have fun.
ReplyDeleteWe enjoy going to towns where there the normal tourists don't go because then you see the normal day to day life of the local people. And, you never know what to expect because you haven't been bombarded by all the tourist flyers and pictures of a well known place.
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ReplyDeleteDoug, I think you are the Amazon guru! ;-)
DeleteNice break from the kitchen, eh, Ruth? :- )
ReplyDeleteIt has been nice but I really do miss our own cooking. It will be nice to get back to it again.
Deletehi - we are going to bogota in a few weeks - how is it taking the buses? safe? clean? easy?
ReplyDeleteWe had no problems with the buses going from town to town. Some were nicer than others but we almost always found them to be easy to take, usually clean. As for safety we can only give you our opinion, and we found them to be safe although you might sometimes get a bit of a crazy bus driver that goes pretty quick and passes where you think they shouldn't. I think I had to close my eyes a few times. ;-)
DeleteWe never took an actual city bus in Bogota so can't really say what they were like. I know that most were totally packed with people. In the city itself we usually walked almost everywhere and occasionally took a taxi as they were pretty cheap, especially because there were two of us. Hope this answers your question.