San Gil

The overnight bus reached San Gil at 8 am in the morning. We didn't have any places booked so we decided to go around the bus terminal and see if we could find a place to stay nearby for one night, before we try and find something better.
For a small city, San Gil packs a lot of punch. This is the outdoor capital of Colombia and a mecca for extreme-sporting enthusiasts. The area is best known for white-water rafting, but other popular pastimes include paragliding, caving, rappelling and trekking. We had planned to be here 3-4 days depending on what all we would be interested in and also the cost of doing the various activities.
We couldn't find anything within a reasonable budget around the bus terminal so we started walking towards the town. The bus terminal is about 2 kms from the town and we couldn't find any good places to stay on the way. It was downhill all the way to the 1st bridge across the river Rio Fonce into San Gil town. Here, there was a very beautiful view of the whole town. Just across the bridge we found a nice Hostel Santander Aleman Terrace Vista at a very decent price of around 70,000 COP for the 3 of us per day. After checking in, we slept for a few hours. The night bus had stopped at Bucaramanga on the way where we had had to change buses to San Gil. Because of that, we had not been able to sleep properly. We woke up around 3 pm and were hungry. We scouted around our hostel and found a nice place in Restaurante Balcon Colombiano. Here we had a sumptuous meal of eggs, rice, yukka, red beans, fried plantain and avocado salad. After the meal, we went to the main square to find tour and activities operators so that we could start off by next day only.Read more