Sunday 6th December

After a terrible night in the hotel from hell, we had biscuits & some of last night's chicken before walking down town & found a cafe for coffee. We then bid farewell & took a friendly taxi to Giron a small old town about 20k west of the centre of Bucaramanga.
What a contrast to yesterday. The hotel is on the corner of the main square & is a converted house with a large courtyard surrounded by rooms on one side & with more rooms on the 1st & 2nd floors looking down on it. The first thing we did was our washing & then after a rest we had drinks in the courtyard & walked to the Basilica across the square which had its altar decorated for Christmas & a large nativity tableau on one side.
After another rest, as none of us had much sleep last night, due to all the traffic & people noise, Jenny & Jane did another walk around. The old part of town has cobbled streets & mainly single storey shop/residences all painted white with dark brown woodwork & is very quaint in contrast to the newer part, which is virtually a suburb of Bucaramanga.
We had an early dinner in the hotel & an early night.

Monday 7th December

Had a good night’s sleep & went to go for breakfast only to find poor Jenny had a migraine & had to return to bed. At 9am our friendly taxi driver, Guillaume, arrived to pick us up to go to the Bolivar Museum in Bucaramanga & to our surprise, it was in the old quarter which we hadn’t seen before.

Entry to the museum, set in an old house, was via a barred gateway with a policeman inside. As it said it was open we asked to enter but he made no move to open up. Eventually we found that it cost about A$ 0.80 per person to enter but we managed to raise it between us to get in. We were the only visitors for some time & the rooms were rather sad as they were dusty & badly lit & labelled in Spanish. There were some fine Pre Colombian artefacts & also some material about the 'War of 1000 days’ at the end of the 19th century. The garden was also lovely & the old building, with 2 courtyards, was a fine example of Spanish colonial architecture, in need of maintenance.

Crossing the road, we visited a cultural centre in a similar era building which exhibits the work of local artists. On balance we were underwhelmed by the wares on show.
We returned to the square where we had been dropped & visited Bucaramanga’s oldest church where a wedding was in progress & repaired to a cafe for coffee. In the square was a marvellous display of Christmas decorations made from plastic bottle bottoms, CDs’ & bottle bodies all put together with thousands of cable ties & lit with low energy globes. We had seen the lights on when we had a meal opposite a park on the previous night.

Guillaume picked us up to return to Giron & told us how he learnt English, working as a driver in Bogota, for BP. This had allowed him to buy his house & his little Hyundai taxi. We had met him when he picked us up at the bus station on arrival & he gave us his phone number.
Jenny joined us for a drink at lunchtime & at last we have mastered how to order coffee. The local translation of coffee with milk gets one an extremely weak brew of vaguely coffee flavoured, hot sweet, milk. We now get coffee with a separate jug of milk so we can control its strength.

Jane & d*** explored more of Giron on foot & found a hairdresser where d*** had a haircut. We then wended our way back to the hotel past 2 lovely little squares & walked through the Basilica back to our hotel.

Most of the afternoon was spent on updating the blog & for dinner we each had a pasty like item before we went off to see the procession of the Virgin being carried round the square for the ‘Immaculate Conception’ complete with 2 small, local brass bands & a trail of people & children carrying candles. One band had an alto saxophone, a Sousaphone, a small tuba, bass drum, snare drum & cymbals, while the other had the drums & cymbals, a trombone & a trumpet & they all played very vigorously in an unusual Latin American style. Householders had put candles at their doorways. It really was quite an experience to see everybody enjoying it all so much.

Tuesday 8th December

A lazy start to the day as unfortunately, Jenny was still sick, so, after breakfast, we went over to the Basilica where a service for ‘The Immaculate Conception’ was on. Today is a public holiday & leaving the basilica were masses of people with the young girls dressed in very pretty, full length, white ball dresses, with their families. Some of the boys were also in white outfits ranging from shirts & trousers to a set of white tails. Later we found out that this was a First Communion for the children in white. This time there was only one brass band again playing their own distinctive Colombian music.

Services seemed to be continuous, with the basilica filled to capacity & we think that the names of the girls were being read out. The services are relayed outside on large speakers & to our surprise at one stage between the priest’s harangues we heard the weirdest rendition, in Spanish, of presumably a hymn, to the tune ‘Hey Jude’.

We walked down to another part of town where there were covered basket ball courts & returned for another orange juice at the hotel restaurant. It was quite tart & tasted different from our own at home but was very acceptable. The edge of the old town is bounded by a creek & the adjacent new town is quite different.