Welcome To The Jungle

The title gives a small hint of what I'm going to tell you all about... Villa de Leyva, a beautiful town a few hours North of Bogotá, was the destination for me and the De San Vicente family a week and a half ago. This place is amazing! After a long and windy road, the car kicking up some dust, we arrived at our hotel, called Hotel Getsemaní. Here's a before picture, when we stopped for lunch along the way (and you can see the wonderful family I got to live with for 2 weeks... From left to right: Zayrho, Me, Mauricio, Lirkhanna, Zharim):

And here is a sneak peak at Hotel Getsemaní:

So back to that title... if you want to see what the jungle in central Colombia looks like, here you go!

So what fun adventures did we have in Villa de Leyva? Well let me tell you. We started off by taking a walk around, looking for the eco-travel agency that offered tours through the nearby jungle. We found an... odd... fellow who gave us the schpeal about the tours and about what to expect, though I couldn't really follow everything that was going. We decided that we would disembark the next morning at 10am for... well, I wasn't sure yet. I knew we were going to some waterfalls and that was just about all. We continued on our walk, had dinner, and visited the plaza, which is actually the largest plaza in Colombia. Here is us there:

After dinner, Zayrho and I headed out for some wine at a Spanish themed restaurant/bar and became all nostalgic about Spain, then headed back to Gestemaní fairly early for a good night's sleep. I had no clue what the next day would hold.

We had breakfast around 9 the next morning then headed back to the eco-tour agency to head out. We met our tour guide and followed him and his comrades into the jungle, about a 20 minute drive outside of Villa de Leyva. When we arrived, we immediately saw our initial adventure... zipline down to where the river and waterfalls were. Each of us took turns flying down from the hill we were on, meeting down at the bottom. What a blast!! Once we all arrived at the bottom, our guide led us to our next adventure... repelling down a beautiful waterfall! Once again, we each took our turns down and then hiked back up. Here is Mauricio on his way down:

After we all had our turn down the waterfall, we continued on to our third adventure... a hike through the jungle, along the river to visit three more beautiful waterfalls. Here's the whole family together (Adriana, Lirkhanna, Mauricio, Zharim, Me, Zayrho) at waterfall number 2:

We continued on to waterfall three, then headed back to the hotel for a quick shower and dinner (which was absolutely delicious in another restaurant in Villa de Leyva). We were there just for the weekend, but it was a great bonding experience and an extreme adventure for all of us.

Catch me later :)