“Todo Me Parece Bonito”

Everyday I think to myself…“there’s no way we are going to see anything more beautiful than this,” and every time I’m proven wrong. The theme song for this week is, “Bonito” by Jarabe de Palo (a personal favorite of Kendall) describing how everything seems beautiful.

We climbed an entire day in Choachí. This has probably been my favorite stop yet because we were surrounded by farms and fog floating above the mountains. We payed one of the people in the village to climb on the mountain nearby. It was absolutely beautiful and I climbed harder routes than ever before! We were going to see a waterfall too but had so much fun climbing that we decided to stay all day.

After climbing, we walked across the street to eat food at a local restaurant. The woman who served us was so sweet, like a grandma and brought us delicious soup, tea, avocado, and bread with cheese. It was perfect to eat after climbing and to warm up from the rain. Perfect day.

The following day, we awoke especially early to drive to Villa de Leyva to walk around the town and market. This is definitely a tourist attraction but so worth it because the pebbled roads and colorful shops felt so fantastically foreign. We also drove an hour away to another, less touristy town, where we picked out a vase to give to Juliáns family as a thank you. We also tried a local artisan beer that was delicious, I tried the Maracuya flavor. 

After exploring the villages, we drove to our hostel that consisted of rooms shaped like sombreros. Definitely one of the weirdest and cutest hostels I’ve stayed in! We walked to get empanadas and had conversations about cat calling, walking solo v. with groups, traditions with peoples names in different cultures, and more. Julián is always bringing up interesting subjects to talk about and he especially likes to discuss things that we disagree on. It’s been a bit hard though to find subjects because we all agree on so much, even the topic of abortion. 

We watched “Yesterday” in our hostel room and Julián practiced English with me while watching the movie. The next morning we drove to Machetá to climb! I should have known what I was getting myself into traveling with two climbers this week, hah! It was yet another beautiful spot with amazing rocks. There were more people at this spot who were super friendly and cheering us on when we climbed. We left in the dark, having an adventure walking down the muddy mountain in the nighttime.

We had more interesting conversations in the car ride and listened to music and podcasts. Once we returned to Bogotá, Julian’s parents were home and warmed us up some food to eat — so hospitable. It was great catching up with them about their weekend and they seemed really happy to see us. 

I’ve had some great conversations with Julián about the Venezuelan refugee crisis and illegal immigration to the states. It’s useful that I studied so much of this subject in school and even did a research paper on immigration so I could clearly express my opinion with facts to back me up. He told me how happy he was to hear my opinion about immigration, coming from a place of privilege. 

During this week, we also hiked Páramo Sumapaz all day which was stunning, one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen.  On this hike, I really thought, “how could it get any more beautiful than this.” It gave me a lot of peace to be on top of the mountains, in cold fresh air, with silence. It was also comforting to be surrounded by warmer colors that reminded me of fall back home. 

Julián did a great job planning a touristy day that’s followed by a nature day, and so on. The next day we went to the Catedral de Sal and the village of Zipaquirá. The salt mines were cool to see and very religion heavy. We did a tour in Spanish and then enjoyed a delicious lunch outside in the afternoon. 

Kendall and I can hardly believe we go to Chile in a week!