A purely touristy but purely enjoyable trip to Rio Claro. I rode a series of zip lines along rivers, went kayaking 12km, then went on an awesome three hour trip to a cave made totally of marble. Gorgeous. Marble all around. It was surreal. And in the cave live these blind owlish birds called Guacharos, that screech horribly and zoom about the upper parts of the cavern. It is a little over an hour going through the cave itself, along a flowing stream, climbing, sometimes swimming through. In the middle of the cave, in the largest cavern, we turned off our flashlights and sat in silence for a minute. Pure black and rushing water. How incomprehensible things are at their most fundamental. I felt a child's delight crawling through this marble cavern.
Most people stayed in the hotel Refugio right on the reservation, but I was in a cheaper hotel 3km down the road. The first day I walked from the bus stop to the hotel, but there is an intersection right near it where people wait with there motorcycles to give cheap rides, since there is no taxi service in the area. So I'd hop on the back, and ride on up to Refugio for a few mil.
On the same cave trip there was Marcus from Queens, his Colombian girlfriend Maria Isabel, a British guy, Bill, doing research for his company 'Journey Latin America,' and a Bolivian fellow, Migro, traveling the upper part of the continent following the routes of Che Guevara and Simon Bolivar. I went with Marcus and Maria Isabel to Doradal, the town close by for dinner, delicious Bagre caught right from the river, then flagged down a bus with them to head back to Medellin, because I had just run out of money and there was no ATM in town, so I had no choice but to return.
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