Every Day is a Journey: Walking the Camino Real from Barichara to Guane

From San Gil it is only a short bus ride to Barichara, often called the most beautiful town in Colombia. From here, one can walk the Camino Real, a stone road used already by the Guane people who lived here before the arrival of the Spanish, to get to the small village of Guane. This is what we decided to do yesterday.

The bus left from the terminalito, the terminal for smaller busses connecting San Gil with the surrounding communities, only five or six blocks from our hostel. Busses to Barichara are frequent, and we soon were on our way. The road climbed steadily towards Barichara, and about half an hour later we got out at the plaza, like the one here in San Gil a shady haven with lots of trees and benches to enjoy the respite from the day's heat. From the moment we entered Barichara it was apparent that it was worthy of its reputation. Red-tiled roofs offset beautifully the white-washed buildings, and the deep blue sky completed the impression of a picture book town.

We oriented ourselves with the help of the street map in the Lonely Planet and slowly climbed from the plaza to the edge of town where we soon found the entrance to the Camino Real.

The ancient walkway, paved with big stones, was reconstructed in the mid 1800s by German settler and expedition leader Geo von Lengerke and once more restored in 1996.

We stood at the top of the camino and had a magnificent view of the deep, wide valley below, parts of the road we were about to walk visible here and there. It's almost all downhill to Guane, so even with the heat it would not be too hard to walk the eight kilometres (or nine, or ten, depending on the source).

At first steeply, then more gently the Camino led downhill, old stone walls lining sometimes one, sometimes both sides, the soft whites and muted browns of Brahma cows complementing the lemon yellow, red, orange, pink and blue blossoms of trees, shrubs and small herbs. Sometimes it felt as if we were walking through a spring landscape, tender green covering branches spreading wide. Yet this is fall, which, for someone used to clear definitions of seasons, is hard to distinguish.

We saw only two people on their way down, a few more – Colombians, all of them, and some jogging – on their way up. The big stones make it impossible to walk fast, and I had to pay close attention where I put my feet, so to walk here is a kind of meditation, almost a short pilgrimage. The only sounds were birdsong and the wind, a gentle, cooling breeze softening the heat.

A little over two hours after we started we saw the first red roofs of Guane and soon were walking down the almost deserted street through the village that, even more than Barichara, looked like time had stood still for centuries – as long as one was able to ignore the cars and motorcycles, at least.

We slowly walked through the village, which, at a second glance, had more little restaurants and stores with handicrafts than we had first thought. The plaza, as everywhere else the gathering point for hawkers, taxis, tuk-tuks and people out for a stroll or some shopping, also was the bus stop, but for us the next bus would not leave for two and a half hours. We were still trying to decide what to do next when a Colombian man called over from his truck if we would like to ride up to Barichara with him, his wife and their two dogs. We gladly took him up on his offer and soon found out that they had a small organic coffee farm on the other side of San Gil. They both spoke English well, and we got information not only on what the life of an organic coffee farmer (and roaster and self-marketer) was like in Colombia, but also what else we could do here in the area. They let us out at the plaza in Barichara, suggested we might want to walk up the hill to the Santa Barbara church and the small park behind to enjoy another amazing view of the canyon below, and told us where we'd find a good (local) restaurant. That's the beauty of travelling like we do, without a set schedule: every once in awhile an unexpected encounter rounds out the experience.