Sopetran and our last full day

There are a couple of small towns in the area around our hostal, and Alexis and Mathilde both said that Sopetran was the least touristy one of them all. Although they gave us a map showing us how to get there through the mountain roads, of course I missed the turn and we ended up taking another route. That was OK -- every route is gorgeous there, and our mission was to see Sopetran, have some lunch, and enjoy our last day.

The GPS we rented with our car wasn't always good about knowing whether a street was one-way or not, so as we wound our way into Sopetran, sure enough it sent us the wrong way down a one-way street. I turned on the next possible street and ran into a traffic jam getting into the square; a man who was trying to sell DirectTV said something to me, I said my usual (no habla espanol, lo siento) and he immediately smiled and helped direct me through the mess. So friendly and warm and helpful, nearly everyone we encountered.

We were there on a busy Saturday morning, and the square was filled with music, trucks, buses, cars, and people.

A big church anchors the square, as always

inside the church

paintings of Jesus lined the ceiling

After we did our little bit of ATM business, we rounded the square a couple of times to find a place we wanted to eat lunch. We settled on this one:

Hi honey!

As always, we had no idea what to do, exactly, and couldn't ask anyone. Should we go inside to the counter and place our order? Take a table? I found a young woman who worked there and just kind of pointed to a table, so she followed us and stood there, waiting. I said, "Menu?" And then my standard, no habla espanol, and she started listing dishes. We had no idea what the different options were, but pollo asado seemed like a good bet given the name of the restaurant. She rattled off what were apparently options, and we pointed at a plate on the table next to ours and nodded. Yes? She said something, I think she was asking this or that? And I said si, si. She smiled and took my hand and we went into the restaurant, to a case with a big chicken inside. Si, I said with a big smile. Again she asked me this or that, and again I said, si! She smiled again and apparently gave up on me, and waved me back to my table. We'd get whatever we got, and that would be just fine with us.

Here's what we got:

Pollo, arroz, frijoles, plantain, papas, y lettuce. I don't know the word for lettuce.
Also, a couple of arepas. 

Again, I say: Colombia is a very tough place to be a vegetarian. Given my own choices, I would only eat vegetarian, but I also don't want to be a pain so I go along. I'm also grateful when someone cooks for me so I do the best I can. And I have to say: that chicken was good.

The darling waitress had our number, and when we were finished and it was time to pay the bill, she didn't bring the check. She brought the actual kind of money we needed to pay her:

She just held one of these in her hands. It's ~$7.70 US. For both our big lunches, plus two drinks and a beer. Good food, cheap.

I laughed and wanted to hug her -- so adorable she was. So we handed her the money with a smile, and we went on our way. It still makes me happy to remember that.

We walked around a bit more and kept hearing very loud music. Each little place was blasting music, one place after another. Restaurants, cafes, shops, billiards, and even people's homes. We were standing on a corner, trying to figure out where the very loud music was coming from, and then we noticed the large speaker in the open window of someone's home, facing outward to the street. Lots of music everywhere.

a random street corner in Sopetran; we always had to take pictures of the places we parked our car,
something like leaving breadcrumbs along the way so we could find our way back.
To say that Marc and I are both directionally challenged is an understatement.

There were all kinds of buses -- some big with dark windows and air conditioning, and some like this:
brightly colored, open sides, and used to deliver both goods AND people.

We headed back to La Finca with an increasingly heavy heart, because our time there was winding down. We swung on the hammocks, Marc took a dip in the pool (I was still too sunburned), and before dinner we took a last sunset walk:

Back at La Finca; we usually ate our dinners at that little table.

A family with three kids and two other couples arrived in the late afternoon, so the whole vibe was very different than it had been. Mathilde made dinner for everyone, and afterwards Marc and I spent the evening on our deck, listening to the birds, the conversations, and the music blasting across the mountains from some house on a ridge opposite ours. At its most booked, I think 18 people can stay at the hostal; with the 11 of us there that night -- and people weren't obnoxious at all -- it made me appreciate so much the couple of days we had the place to ourselves. Mathilde and Alexis were so gracious, having easy and friendly conversations with everyone, and hosting with apparent ease.

The next morning, after breakfast, we packed and piddled and enjoyed the views and felt increasingly reluctant for the hours to pass. When it was time to say goodbye, I kept crying and feeling sad to leave that beautiful, beautiful place. We hugged Mathilde and Alexis and I pulled out of their driveway with eyes full of tears. What a beautiful place, what wonderful people. I can only smile when I remember them both.

I had been dreading the trip back to the airport; getting through Medellin the first time was very stressful and I kept getting lost, and I anticipated it would be the same in reverse. And it was. The GPS system kept us from being eternally lost, because when I'd miss a turn it would at least shift gears and give us a new route, but it always seemed to be confusing right when I needed clarity the most. Right when I most needed to see the route on the little map, text would pop up over my current location and I couldn't see the intersection. We did get lost a couple of times and then we hit really terrible traffic and road construction, all on the uphill climb. I spent a lot of time riding the clutch in first gear, stopping and pausing and inching ahead and stopping. By the time we got to the airport and turned in the car, I was exhausted.

Our flight left Medellin at 6:45pm for a quick trip to Panama City. We had a short layover, and left for NYC around 9:30pm, and arrived at JFK at 3:30am. By the time we got home it was 5:30-ish, and 27 degrees. The beautiful, warm loveliness of Hostal La Finca seems so far away. Of course this is a thing to love about travel -- now we carry that place, those beautiful people, with us wherever we go. Now we know what it's like there, and if we need to, we can close our eyes and revisit Colombia, Cartagena, Medellin, San Jeronimo (Heronimo, Lori!), Sopetran, the Hostal La Finca, Mathilde and Alexis.

San Jeronimo

The place we're staying doesn't really have an address; it's on "unnamed road" or "unpaved road" high up in the mountains above San Jeronimo (which, despite our mispronunciation, is actually pronounced San Heronimo, we are such gringos). Not having an address made it impossible to use our GPS system, but luckily we had directions from Mathilde, who runs the place with her boyfriend Alexis. So we left Santa Fe pretty confident we would find it.

If ever there were two people who should never be confident about driving somewhere it would be us.

We got to San Jeronimo, turned left at the Texaco, fine! Into the very small town, immediately lost. Drive drive drive, uh-oh I think we've surely missed it, turn around. Uh-oh, we're lost. Let's just head back toward Santa Fe and try the approach again. Back toward San Jeronimo, left at the Texaco, into town LOST. Again. Turn this way -- yeah, this is surely it, uh-oh we've surely gone too far and we're lost. Repeat. Finally we found our way back to San Jeronimo and stopped in the square. I parked along a curb and Marc went into an Internet cafe, hoping someone there might speak a little English. While I waited in the car, a police officer stuck his head in my window.

"No habla espanol," I said. He said something to me in Spanish, to which I held my palms up and shrugged, the universal sign of lost people everywhere. Then I pointed at the Internet cafe and said, "Mi esposa no habla espanol." My wife does not speak Spanish. He laughed and walked toward the cafe, where Marc and three other officers joined him.

They were SO NICE

They looked at our map, asked Marc if we had a telephone number for the Hostal La Finca, where we were staying, and of course we didn't. While Marc was in the car with me, frantically tearing through all our paperwork hoping that surely we had a phone number somewhere, one of the police found the number and called Mathilde. Later we learned that he had said to her, "There are two foreigners here who are wanting to stay with you."

Recognizing how hopeless we were, two police climbed on a motorcycle to escort us to the Hostal La Finca, up a rocky, rutted, unpaved road 7km up the mountain. We bounced along behind them, crawling in first gear, and they rode in front of us sweating in their heavy gear. When we finally arrived, we hopped out and asked Mathilde if it would be appropriate for us to offer them some money for their help. She asked and they said, "We wouldn't say no."

Hostal La Finca is run by a young couple, Mathilde and Alexis. She's from Stuttgart and he is from Munich and Medellin (his dad is German and his mom is Colombian). They are absolutely adorable, and their grace and energy are really what make the place so special. They have a system of volunteers; if you work ~6 hours/day, you can stay for free. Right now there is a tree surgeon staying/working here. An American woman stayed here for a while and cooked for the guests and taught Mathilde how to make bread. It's a pretty cool way to keep the property going and growing. The property includes dorms and one big room with a huge deck around it; that one's ours.

the deck is wrapped around with gorgeous views. We ate breakfast every morning at that little green table and chairs
on the far right, and spent a lot of time swinging in those hammocks, listening to and watching the birds. I did yoga there
yesterday afternoon, with the brilliant yellow birds swooping past and Marc swinging in the hammock.

It's an extraordinary place, in every way. The grounds are just breathtaking.

the view from our deck

Everywhere. Just everywhere.

We could watch the changing sky forever.

They have big plans for their property, which means we'll just have to go back to see the changes!

In addition to the gorgeous scenery, they also have this great pool.

Mathilde's and Alexis's dog, Caña (pronounced Kahn-yuh, like sugar) is such a sweet dog; it's her job to escort the hostal guests and she is very talented. Yesterday morning Marc and I hiked down to the waterfall, and I was scared and timid, requiring Marc to hold my hand as we took a zig-zag path down the hillside. Caña went slowly, took us the zig-zag route, pausing and waiting for me. Later that day Marc and Caña went alone and she just tore ahead straight down the hillside -- recognizing, apparently, that Marc was not scared. We took a walk last night and left her behind as we closed the gate to the property, but several yards down the road she came bursting through the barbed wire fence and landed on the road in front of us, to walk with us. She's pretty great.

There's Caña, at the edge of the waterfalls. Such a great dog -- we miss her already!

Because it's a hostel, there is a community kitchen and if you bring your own food you can prepare your meals here. OR, for such a shockingly small price Mathilde will cook for you, and we can't believe how great her food is. The first night here we had the best sauerkraut I've ever had, a mash of potatoes and beets and carrots, a thick slice of ham, a great little salad with juicy red cherry tomatoes, avocado, and bits of mango, and homemade bread -- plus a smoothie of ginger and something, I can't remember now. Breakfasts are big and include homemade bread and jams; our first morning the eggs were scrambled with cheese and tomatoes, and this morning it was a Spanish tortilla. The jam yesterday was orange, so delicious, and this morning it was mango and banana. Last night she made us a Belgian stew, a salad of shredded carrots and tomato in a fantastic orangey dressing, and homemade rolls -- with fresh blackberry juice (really good, by the way!). Dinner is ~$6.

We're so glad our last few days of our vacation are here, in this remote, beautiful place. We could wander the enormous grounds for days, take walks up and down the mountain, or drive to nearby villages. Or just swing in hammocks, read, nap, walk, listen to the birds and to Mathilde's great laugh.

We took a lot of walks up and down the hill from La Finca. The first afternoon we walked to a church a short ways up the mountain.

look at the top of that tree --

the church also has a school

coffee bushes, banana plants, and mangos

the cattle are MAGNIFICENT

Marc getting a good shot -- one of his art shots, he always says. That makes me smile.

These orchids are just everywhere.

And this -- looks like it's been outlined.

No filters on this picture, just the ordinary brilliance of that red.

What? Don't your chickens sit on swings?

Sigh. Gosh we miss these views.

You would too. The Colombian Andes, so beautiful.

Cows on all the hillsides.

Today, our last full day at La Finca, I think we're going to head out to see the nearby non-tourist town of Sopetran, and back to San Jeronimo (Heronimo, Lori!). We had the place entirely to ourselves yesterday, but it's a bank holiday weekend coming up and lots of Colombians are arriving today so it'll be a very different experience. And on that note, we're off!