Thursday 3rd December

Up at 4.am to be ready for the move on to Ocaña at 5am. We piled into another twin cab ute & drove along near the river on the usual mix of roads to El Banco, further upstream. Here we were met by a man with an old Hyundai people carrier, which filled up fast with our luggage piled on the roof & at 7am we set off again for Ocaña. All went well until we left the main road south & started the climb into the foothills of the Eastern Andes, where our driver insisted on passing everything regardless of whether the road was visible, so we had a few exciting moments. We were held up then at a couple of places in queues, as the road is being upgraded so that only one traffic lane is open at a time & the vehicles pass down it in batches. This occurred twice & the whole journey took us about 4 hours instead of the 2.5 we expected. The route climbs over a high pass before descending eventually to Ocaña, which is on several hills surrounded by mountain slopes. It looked most unprepossessing as we entered it but improved as we neared the centre.

We are staying at a very smart modern hotel but there are strong elements of 'Fawlty Towers' in some departments. It has a restaurant, bar but to get food is a complex & wearying process, as some is off the menu & even Jenny finds this hard to interpret. Even pointing to what is wanted seems to baffle the staff, who are willing but less than competent. Reception was unable to find us a map of the town & didn’t know where the tourist office is.

After a rest we climbed the hill to the square above & found a fine, open church & then walked down towards an older part in search of the tourist office & passed 2 more open churches, a record for Colombia, so far. Next to the latter church was a Franciscan complex & we wandered in. Here a lady accosted us & insisted on giving us a tour of the place where an important meeting had taken place in the late 1840s of representatives from the liberated colonies of Spain. When Jenny told her that our grandfather had spent a lot of time in the town during his time in Colombia she insisted that we meet the town’s historian, a very dapper senior gentleman who became quite excited about his book. We have promised to forward him an electronic copy tomorrow. Returning home we had a meal & retired for a rest before returning to the square for an ice cream before bed.

Friday 4th December

After breakfast we returned to see the historian,carrying a USB stick with copies of our grandfather’s book & the pictures from it, etc. Unfortunately he wasn’t in when we got there so we walked to find another church & a convent before returning & meeting him again. He was a mine of information on the town & when we showed him the book he gave us some more photos of the town & also showed us newspapers of the 1890s with adverts, photos of a Sr Jacome, who may have been the person that Gerard met on his travels. We had quite a long talk with him & Jane photographed some parts of the newspapers.

Leaving him we took a cab up to a statue of Jesus, overlooking the town, to take photos & then returned to see the 2nd museum, directed by the historian’s wife. This was a gem, as it covered the development of Ocaña from before the arrival of the Spanish until the late 1970s, with storyboards in English for each of its rooms. We spent more than an hour there & the director & her assistant had their photos taken with us & ended up giving us coffee.

She also suggested that we should hire a taxi to take us out to La Playa de Belén, a quaint little village near the Parque Yaragua, which has strange eroded sand/mud forms like a miniature Monument Valley or the Pinacles near Perth. The columns up to 20m, look very unstable & obviously are badly affected by heavy rain which alters the weird configurations.

In the village it was a bit disconcerting to come across a patrol of heavily armed soldiers but apparently this was to discourage any FARC activities, which we thought had completely finished in the area.

Returning we attempted to find a restaurant but without any luck, so we reverted to a scruffy fast food joint. Here there was no menu & the choice was between, meat chicken or fish. The ladies chose chicken & d*** ordered the fish. The main courses arrived & were huge although very tasty & even d*** was defeated. All up it cost, including 3 drinks less than £10 or A$20, so we didn’t complain but rolled home absolutely full.