I traveled almost 9 hours, or 240 kilometers, on winding roads by car to visit the biggest town in the departamento (or state) of Santander. The city was called Bucaramanga, and it was very busy compared to sleepy Barichara!
Colombia is sort of shaped like a hexagon and is bordered on different edges by the Atlantic Ocean, the Pacific Ocean, and the Amazon rainforest. It also shares borders with Panama, Venezuela, Brazil, Peru, and Ecuador! Just in Colombia, I have traveled over 5,000 kilometers in total (around 3,000 miles--like driving coast to coast in the USA) to visit many different ecosystems here. Whenever you drive anywhere here, you go up and down a lot. So many mountains!
To get to Bucaramanga, I drove in a car that I borrowed. It was a little scary to drive on the very thin road with many big trucks. Sometimes when I travel more near to towns close to Barichara, I can take a chiva or a tuc tuc! The chiva is my favorite because they play loud music!
