21st March 2015 – Villa de Leyva to Barichara – 2015-03-30 00:28

Today we have a late start leaving at 10:00 am as we only have a 220 kilometer drive to our overnight stop at Barichara, which is the prettiest village in Colombia. We leave town on a semi sealed pot holes road through lush farming countryside, growing potatoes. The road improves and the scenery changes to thick green hilly rainforest with tall waterfalls. Blue B starts to have trouble again, missing and stalling, so we all pull over and he’s going again in a short time but Green B won’t start and appears to be a problem with the starter motor. Blue B doesn’t go far and has another problem so Michael & Ross change the distributor over to our spare electronic one and 5 cars continue to our destination while Green, Red & Navy car stay to help fix Green Car. The road is windy and hilly with lots of trucks and it’s raining so it’s a slow drive. The black and white cows seem to have disappeared from the fields and we are now seeing Bahamas.We arrive in Barichara at about 5:00 pm just in time to look around this very beautiful village with its white painted walls, green and blue shutters and doors and red roofs. There is even a wedding at the church as it is Saturday and the bride & groom are being photographed under a gum tree. We go to a pizza restaurant for dinner with Ros & John and While waiting for a table we meet a couple who have just got engage. Their names are Maurisio & Claudia, they are a lovely young couple and they suggest that we share a table with them,which we do, despite protestations from us that they should celebrate on their own. We had a fabulous evening, Maurisio spoke excellent English and even though Claudia didn’t speak English she understood what was said. Not only did we have great company for dinner we also had the best pizza !Red, green and navy cars arrive at the hotel at 10:00 pm. Despite their efforts to fix the starter motor on green car they arrived 5 hours behind us and green car doesn’t have a starter motor so needs to be push started.