No Fixed Plans

Most of us made it to breakfast before needing to be ready so we decided to eat together. Once most of us were down there, one of the guys who had gotten the uber the night before had come down and told the ceo that his roommate, one of the other guys who had went, had never actually made it back to the hotel. That when the left  him, he was dancing with a Colombian woman and was prewarned that if he didn’t come back that all of his stuff would get packed but we were going to leave him behind. While the guys did make sure to take his wallet off him before leaving (earlier in the night he had put his phone in the woman’s pocket, forgotten, and then accused her of trying to steal it), no one had heard from him and were just assuming he had gone back to her place. 

The ceo sighed and started to do the paperwork for him not coming on the bus with us. We did end up getting proof of life from him before leaving but the bus did leave without him. 

We started with an hour drive to the Colombian salt cathedral which we walked through, the local guide from the day before explaining everything to us. We were given 30 minutes to explore the market area by ourselves before starting to head back to the bus. We drove about 10 minutes to a local restaurant to have lunch. The place mostly focused on smoked meats but also had a few things that you can’t find outside of Colombia. One of these things was coconut lemonade (which is something a few of us started ordering with every meal). 

After this we had about another 4 hours until Villa de Leyva. On the way we made one stop to get more food and the bathroom. 

When we arrived it was about 6pm so we got our rooms straight away and then had 30 minutes before an orientation walk. 

We ended up at a restaurant to have a few drinks. After this we decided to move to a different restaurant to have dinner. After ordering we noticed a bunch of police offers coming in and starting to blow up balloons. They started making an archway and quickly realised that it was for someone’s birthday. 

They all had party hats on and a few had the party whistles. They all let us get in a group photo with them and one let us get a photo with her putting handcuffs on one of the guys. 

While there we noticed that one of the workers look like Don King and he let us get photos of him pretending to punch one of the guys in my group. 

After this we started the 25 minute walk back to our hotel, noticing a bar that was the Simpson’s themed and made mental notes to go there the next day. 

The next morning we all decided to take it slow and go to breakfast late-ish. About seven people from the group went to do quad bikes that finished at about 1pm. While they were doing that I walked around the town, trying to find a card my ceo for the end of the trip with no luck. After a few hours I gave up and went back to the hotel. When I was about to enter, six of the seven quad bikers came out and said they were going to lunch and then the terracotta house and offered me to join so I went with them. On the way they told me about how bad the activity was- they paid extra to go to a national park which they never went to and they got told they were going to the blue lagoons but instead went to two little ponds that looked like they were dyed blue. 

We went to a place that our ceo recommended for lunch, after which we took about 10 minutes to walk around before walking 30 minutes to the terracotta house. It was 70,000COP just to enter. We spent 20 minutes here before taking Ubers back to the hotel. 

We all relaxed for a bit before meeting with everyone to go the Simpsons bar and dinner. The guy who got left in Bogota had taken a taxi and was complaining to us about how expensive it was ($295USD). 

For dinner we went to the same place we went for lunch, after which a few of the guys went to drink at a bar while the rest of us took Ubers back.