Wednesday, 11 December 2024

Are We There Yet...

They changed today's breakfast service from cafeteria style, to sit down table service multi-course style. Except there was only 2 staff members (who didn't speak English!) serving everyone and so our expected quick breakfast didn't eventuate! Our morning ablutions and packing had to be quick as it was time to move again, this time to Barichara. It was a long travel day and we were glad we moved our pick up time to 9am as we ended being on the road until 4:30pm due to Colombian traffic and road conditions. We had a Spanish speaking driver, Diego, who was a good driver but the van's a/c was more than subpar despite being on the coldest setting. You know its bad when the breeze outside outside was cooler. We had to channel our inner Dominican monk, drawing on what we learnt the other day at the monastery. Suffering is good, being hot and sweaty is only a state of mind...

We only stopped once which was for lunch. Even small bladder Mal made it through the drive with only the 1 stop. We were relieved to finally reach Hotel Boutique y Spa Terra Barichara, our home for the next few days. The resort looked lovely and our rooms were very spacious. Mal and I had time to wash off our sweat in the pool before dinner onsite. Both today's meals were somewhat disappointing. I'll leave it at that as nothing else of note happened!

Our ride for today

We drove through rural Colombia, other than the odd town, our views were mostly like this

Apologies for the blurry photos! Many things could slow you down on Colombian roads, including these mules used on sugar cane farms. At least that's what we thought our driver said...

Or road maintenance which only allowed traffic to flow in one direction one hour at a time...

The cars banked up behind us

Lunch stop

The setting was actually lovely 

Their version of surf and turf except the turf was hard to chew

Chicken cheese and pineapple anyone?!

We thought we ordered lemonade, but this concoction had fake cherry in it?! Nonetheless it was like a slushie and disappeared very quickly

The lobby of our hotel

The requisite central open courtyard

Our room. We only got a "standard" but we were really happy!

The sitting area to the side

Came with a hammock

The resort had big gardens

Sunset

Testing our new tripod/selfie stick

Sigh. The hotel only had an Italian restaurant onsite and it was not good Italian. The kids said one of the pastas tasted like ramen...and they were right!!



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